The US social media giant Meta, which owns Facebook, has faced allegations of censorship on its platform for years. In a letter sent to Jim Jordan, Chairman of the US House Judiciary Committee, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that “In 2021, senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content… and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree.” Zuckerberg also wrote in his letter that he believed that the pressure to censor from the Government “was wrong” and he regretted that his company wasn’t “more outspoken about it.”
Belated Admission of Guilt
This mea culpa by Zucherberg isn’t surprising. Many wonder why it took so long for Zuckerberg to admit what has been a piece of common knowledge for many for a long time. “I can’t help but ball my fist in a rage,” Mike Benz, a former State Department official, posted on X, “that Zuckerberg waited till after the [Supreme Court of the United States] ruling in the Murthy [vs. Missouri case] to say this.” An earlier admission to this effect, argued Benz in his post, “likely would have swung the case” against the government in the Supreme Court. This case, as it was made through the US judicial system, showed that many of the censorship decisions taken by Facebook (and other social media platforms, such as Twitter, now X) were under pressure from the Government.
Curtailing Virus Related Info
The US Supreme Court had ruled in the case mentioned above that neither the States nor individuals involved could show that online free speech restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic resulted from Government’s pressure.
How the US toppled Foreign Govts
1953 : Iran
After the United States established the CIA in 1947, it began to use the agency to overthrow or prop up foreign governments in a much more covert way. Before WWII, the United States didn’t try to hide its interventions in foreign governments. In 1953, the CIA orchestrated a coup of Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in order to consolidate power with Iran’s shah (or king), Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Declassified CIA documents claim the coup—known internally as Operation Ajax—was designed to prevent possible “Soviet aggression” in Iran, but Iranian-American historian Ervand Abrahamian has argued the real motivation had more to do with securing US oil interests.
1954 : Guatemala
In 1954, the CIA orchestrated another coup of a democratically elected leader: Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz. The CIA coup, code-named Operation PBSuccess, replaced the President with military dictator Carlos Castillo Armas in the name of stopping the spread of communism. However, the CIA’s main motivation for ousting Árbenz was the fear that his land reforms would threaten the interests of the American-owned United Fruit Company, which owned 42 per cent of the nation’s land and paid no taxes. The CIA continued toppling Latin American governments; in the first year of the Kennedy administration, it backed an assassination in the Dominican Republic and, under Lyndon B. Johnson, it executed a 1964 coup in Brazil.
1963 : South Vietnam
According to NYT report in 1971, the CIA had funded and encouraged the 1963 coup against, and assassination of, the President of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem. By 1963, the United States had sent thousands of U.S. soldiers to Vietnam to fight the northern communist government led by President Ho Chi Minh. The U.S. initially supported Diem because he was fighting the north. However, Diem’s persecution of Buddhists made him an unpopular ruler, leading the Kennedy administration to doubt Diem’s ability to win the war. The coup and Diem’s assassination took place in early November 1963, just a few weeks before Kennedy’s assassination.
1973 : Chile
Chile elected socialist Salvador Allende as President in 1970, The US President Richard Nixon originally wanted to block him from taking office, or else mount a coup soon after Allende became president. On Nixon’s orders, the CIA began supporting different Chilean groups plotting to overthrow the new socialist President. In 1973, military leader Augusto Pinochet staged a coup that ousted Allende. Pinochet assumed his dictatorship the following year, ruling as Chile’s president until 1990. Whether the CIA was directly involved in Pinochet’s coup is still contested. However, the agency’s support of earlier coup plots contributed to political instability that Pinochet took advantage of to seize power.
2001-2021 : Afghanistan
When the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, it established an interim Government led by Hamid Karzai to replace the Government-led by terrorist Organisation Taliban. Karzai’s rule continued in 2002, when he became head of Afghanistan’s transitional Government, and in 2004, when he became President of the US-backed Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. He was succeeded in 2014 by Ashraf Ghani. Ghani was president until the Taliban retook power in 2021, when the US formally ended its war in Afghanistan, ironically handing over the country again to the terrorist Organisation the Taliban.
2003 : Iraq
In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein’s Government. As in Afghanistan, the US attempted to establish an interim, transitional and more permanent government. The United States formally ended its war in Iraq in 2011. Since then, the country’s government structure has remained in flux.
Arab Spring and Mass Migration into Europe
Worse, the conflicts engineered in West Asia and North Africa (MENA) region through Arab Spring, was followed by facilitating mass migration of Muslims from West Asia and North Africa into Western Europe, resulting in large scale demographic change, and resultant social turmoil, as is evident now in France, Germany, Spain, UK and many others. Many fear that such endless mass migration facilitated by EU, and backed by the likes of the US based George Soros, and many other front organisations, would only result in deep conflicts between Islamists and predominantly Christian population of Europe.
Ukraine
From Orange Revolution to Euromaidan, Ukraine witnessed mass uprisings against its own Government that essentially was not pro-West. As usual, saga of regime change followed. After the initial euphoria, Ukraine eventually got sucked into a conflict with Russia. It is literally fighting a war on behalf of the US and NATO. A conflict that NATO members themselves would avoid against Russia but is using Ukrainians as dispensable pawns to fight on their behalf. A conflict in which Ukrainians die and the military industrial complex of West, especially that of US, benefits immensely due to limitless supply of weapon systems that the US Government is procuring from its defense companies to fuel the Ukraine-Russia war.
Bangladesh Saga of Turmoil
Very rarely it happens that a former head of state would openly blame the US for her ouster from power. Sheikh Hasina, the now deposed former Prime Minister of Bangladesh, who had to exit her country amidst a violent student protest that engulfed her nation, had squarely blamed the US Government for engineering her ouster from power. She even claimed that she was ousted for refusing to hand over sovereignty of the strategically located St. Martin Island to US for setting up a military base there. Also, the way Md. Yunus, known for his proximity to the US was made the de facto Prime Minister, the surprising manner in which university students leading the anti-quota movement, with no experience in governance, were hurriedly appointed as top advisors, all of it sound too surreal to have happened.
During the height of the COVID-19 crisis, Meta, like many other social media platforms, was in a challenging position regarding content about the virus. Zuckerberg admitted that some information they censored or moderated was accurate or at least debatable. This has led to discussions on the balance between preventing “misinformation” and allowing free speech.
COVID-19 exposed the groupthink and dogma of the scientific community. Any deviation from the “scientific consensus” was suppressed, condemned, and censored. The “Twitter Files” exposures have confirmed that much of this censorship was committed under pressure from various US Government agencies, including intelligence agencies of the United States Government. President Joe Biden, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and other Government officials demanded that Facebook do more to fight “misinformation” on its platform.
Mark Zuckerberg’s earlier stand on free speech
“The last thing I want is for our products to be used to divide people or rip society apart in any kind of way. But at some point, we’ve got to stand up and say, ‘No, we’re going to stand for free expression.’ Yeah, we’re going to take down the content that’s really harmful, but the line needs to be held at some point” (February 2020)
Biden even said that social media platforms like Facebook were “killing people” for allowing misinformation, specifically about COVID-19 vaccines and their efficacy or lack thereof, on their platforms. In some cases, many former intelligence officers were embedded in these companies through gainful employment. Google, for example, employs 150 former members of the US Intelligence Community in several high-ranking positions.
While a significant amount of “misinformation” suppressed and censored was about COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and injury, it is important to note that the promotion of vaccines was the stated policy of Facebook. In March 2021, Zuckerberg announced his ambitious goal – “a top company priority – to vaccinate 50 million people against COVID-19.
Meddling in internal issues of Bharat
- Senior American diplomats visited J&K on August 26 to meet various political leaders in the Union territory, including National Conference Vice President Omar Abdullah at his Gupkar residence
- On Manipur, US Ambassador to India Eric Garcetti in July 2023, said, “We stand ready and willing to assist in any way if asked. We know it’s an Indian matter and we pray for that peace and that it may come quickly. Because we can bring more collaboration, more projects, more investment if that peace is in place”
- US Consul General Jennifer Larson, who heads the American mission in Hyderabad, met Hyderabad Member of Parliament (MP) Asaduddin Owaisi, the leader of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) on August 12
The second part of Zuckerberg’s letter deals with censoring information about President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop. This laptop – a water-damaged MacBook Pro – was dropped off at a repair shop in Delaware, Biden’s home state. On October 14, 2020, weeks before the US presidential elections, the New York Post (NY Post) published a front-page story detailing some of the laptop’s contents. The story claimed that the laptop belonged to Hunter Biden, son of former US Vice President Joe Biden. The story also alleged that the laptop’s contents showed Biden may have been involved in corruption while serving as Vice President to then-President Barack Obama.
When the Hunter Biden’s laptop story broke, Biden was engaged in an intense electoral battle against incumbent President Donald Trump. In place of highlighting this incriminating story, most US corporate media outlets suppressed this story as a “non-story,” “hacked material,” “Russian plant,” etc. Media outlets even refused to mention it, and social media outlets, including Zuckerberg’s Facebook, removed all posts concerning the laptop story. Twitter went a step further, locking the NY Post’s handle and preventing it from posting on Twitter. Fifty-one former US intelligence officers signed an open letter claiming the laptop story has “classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
Hungary PM unmasks George Soros’ plot of Islamification of Europe
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban recently alleged that the ongoing Islamic migration into Europe is not a series of unfortunate events but a well-orchestrated plan led by billionaire financier George Soros. The explosive claims, made in a resurfaced viral video, have sparked widespread debate and raised questions about the influence of Soros on European politics.
Suppression of the laptop story may have altered the outcome of the 2020 presidential elections. In his letter, Zuckerberg said that Facebook shouldn’t have suppressed the New York Post story. “It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story,” Zuckerberg wrote.
There are genuine concerns about social media, big tech companies, and oligarchs interfering in democratic processes worldwide. George Soros’s NGO is known for political contributions to progressive groups and candidates
There are genuine concerns about social media, big tech companies, and oligarchs interfering in democratic processes worldwide. George Soros’s NGO is known for political contributions to progressive groups and candidates. Zuckerberg also contributed through the Chan Zuckerberg initiative to support “electoral infrastructure” during the 2020 presidential election cycle. “They were designed to be non-partisan,” wrote Zuckerberg in his letter, but “some people believe this work benefited one party over the other… So I don’t plan on making a similar contribution this [election] cycle.” Zuckerberg and his wife had donated over $400 million to nonprofits to help conduct elections in 2020. Critics claim that Zuckerberg’s donation unfairly benefited the Democrats.
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