Facebook has refused to carry an advert for my book of early collected works, Zionism is Bullshit. At first it refused the ad on grounds of “profanity”. I then removed the title of the book from the advert (though it might still be dimly discerned on a small photo if you squint) and resubmitted, but approval was denied again. I then appealed, and this time the ad was refused because it “denigrates the religious views of others”. The text was standard book blurb and in no way did that.
If I were to claim that I owned your property because God gave it to my ancestors thousands of years ago, I would expect you to denigrate my view. To refuse criticism of zionism is ridiculous.
Facebook has just announced that it is employing 10,000 more people to be directly engaged in censorship – ostensibly to weed out “fake news”, which evidently includes disagreement with Israel. The main role will of course be the suppression of any alternative view to the neo-liberal propaganda spewed out by the corporate and state media.
Twitter is just as bad. Like 100,000 others I have received an email from Twitter making the ludicrous accusation I am tweeting Russian propaganda. I was “ghost banned” for a while by Twitter last year. There is a huge danger here. This website gets over 75% of its traffic through Twitter and Facebook. The wonderful widening of political debate through citizen access to the new media of the internet is going to be under real threat as Twitter and Facebook are turned into neo-liberal gatekeepers. This website and those like it can simply be starved of traffic.
Twitter and Facebook are of course now vast global corporations, and are stating to behave absolutely to type – or arguably worse. I was happily surprised when Amazon accepted Zionism is Bullshit for publication on their “print on demand” service. Plainly Facebook is more restrictive here than Amazon.
The development of non-corporate social media platforms with the saturation coverage of Facebook or Twitter is a daunting task. Some kind of consumer revolt against censorship by existing customers may be a more hopeful route. But action is essential if the social media gains of the last few years are to be maintained.
I have also brought out on Amazon a new edition of Murder in Samarkand as Random House discontinued it after buying up Mainstream. I give the link picture here because for some reason it does not appear in a search for Murder in Samarkand on Amazon.
BBC refuses to answer complaint:
http://indyref2.scot/bbc-scotland-refuses-to-answer-broken-ankle-man-complaint
The complaint:
http://indyref2.scot/a-bbc-scotland-complaint-broken-ankle-man
BBC Scotland is itself an A&E department.
Agitprop & Evasion.
This isn’t a permanent state of affairs. A decentralised internet will be up and running (using the bitcoin blockchain) in the not too distant future. This won’t be owned by anybody, and as no one is in charge, there will be no censorship
… And using decentralised peer to peer platforms like Adshares you will be able to advertise whatever you darn well choose, without first asking for permission from an intermediary.
Strangely enough, the new edition is the first result when searching for “Murder in Samarkand” on amazon.de, amazon.fr, amazon.es, amazon.it or amazon.com. However, on amazon.co.uk I could only find it at all by adding the search term “CreateSpace”.
Yes it’s really weird. I have sent them umpteen messages about it.
Remember Myspace? They were going great guns until they started censoring Iraq War testimony from the troops. Back then Facebook was the officers’ network and Myspace was the enlisted troops’ network. Enlisted grunts who saw the worst of Iraq, and weren’t brainwashed, started talking frankly to their friends back home. Their stories would have crippled recruiting even sooner, so Myspace got censored. That killed Myspace. Now watch it happen to Facebook, now that the Harvard intro stunt is long past, and Facebook is for every helpless chump. You can replace Facebook with Diaspora any time you want to talk with your actual human friends. Zuck’s brainwasher machine is headed for the scrap heap. Monopoly abuses only persist when barriers to entry protect you.
I thought Murdoch buying Myspace put an end to it. Never seen such a mass exodus so fast, but the net was like that then, people would jump ship onto the new thing. I had always expected the same to happen to Facebook after a few years but people got stuck with it. The fundamental difference between Myspace and Facebook – Thougg they both claimed to be personal publishing sites – Myspace actually was – you found things you liked and you published them. Facebook is far more insidious – where as Myspace says “what do you want to say? What do you like?” Facebook says “do you want to say this? I think you’d that that?” It takes control and disempowerers. And as time goes on it removed more and more of your independence. Now it’s adding imaginary friends to your feed and allowing comments from people you don’t know.
Facebook’s job is to pacify.
Have you heard anything about the World Socialist Website initiative encouraging the formation of the ‘International Coalition of Socialist, Antiwar and Progressive Websites’ to function as “a broad coalition against Internet censorship and surveillance”? You can read more about it here:
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/01/23/pers-j23.html
[Mod: Caught in spam filter: time stamp updated.]
I’ve ditched Facebook. They’ve gone of the deep end, and now apparently see themselves as the Guardian of ‘real news’, and are happily censoring anything they regard as ‘fake’. Who watches the watchmen, one may wonder?
I’ve never used it as a news source anyway. It’s a stupid site, which was kind of a novelty at first, and let people see what their old school chums, or uni mates were up to, but the novelty has long worn off. Now it’s a media behemoth with very odd ideas about it’s fundamental utility, with an owner who looks and acts like a robot. FB is Dead; Long Live FB.
Gab.ai has potential. I’m sure there are others. But yes, FB is a behemoth, which will be hard to shift. Just as the CIA intended.
Two links of relevance to this post.
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/10/shlomo-sand-i-wish-to-cease-considering-myself-a-jew
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/06/how-i-stopped-being-a-jew-shlomo-sand-unchosen-julie-burchill-review
Not at all surprised about the Burchill book. I love Will Self’s description of her as “an intelligent woman who had spent her entire adult life making herself more stupid”.
Here’s another review of the JB book:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/unchosen-by-julie-burchill-book-review-author-s-tribute-to-jews-mixes-humour-passion-and-bigotry-9770345.html
A telling comment:
“The corollary of Burchill’s Zionism is contempt for Islam. While she has never been known for moderation in anything, her venom has usually been cut with a playful and sometimes self-deprecating naughtiness. But Unchosen often degenerates into EDL-style abuse that lacks any redeeming wit. It’s not a pretty sight when Burchill (a vocal supporter of Rock Against Racism at the NME in the Seventies) comes out with lines such as: ‘If a Mohammedan is searching for one’s clitoris, it’s probably not in order to give a girl some fun, but rather in order to chop it off.’”
Another insult to our humanity;
https://twitter.com/sarah_nowha1234/status/956686356008390656
I did a search on Amazon UK for Murder in Samarkand a few moments ago and it appears at the top of the list.
well, i think everyone knows that facebook is bullshit too, but in spite of this – they continue to have people pay attention to it!
There’s nothing wrong with God doing anything.
How anyone ‘judges’ God is utterly irrelevant. It’s human judgement is of God which is ridiculous (and lends itself to Zionist mirroring). If God ascribed a territory to someone, then who is anybody to say otherwise. I don’t think it was a carte blanche granting of the land however, but conditional on following the commandments of God and living their lives (as believers) accordingly. But they didn’t. The out-casting of the Hebrews on two occasions is other telling. It was marked by Satanic/Idolistic worship with prophet killing. Those actions hardly fits that bill of a people deserving of any land / administrative power.. I can’t see many Muslims or Christians protesting about a third attempt to secure the deal, but it would mean the incomers would not murder, thieve, assassinate, mass slaughter, jail, oppress, torture, enslave and brutalize those already on the land. So it’s obvious the third attempt is by force and so litigate and worthy of total resistance.
The United Nations would have a lot of fun trying to reconcile these many gods issuing edicts and land deeds to various people of different religions.
I tried to purchase “Zionism is Bullshit” from Amazon.com in early July of 2017.
My account was charged but when I attempted to download the book I received only the first page of a letter from “Litigation and Employment Group” to you, explaining that there was an Infringement of Crown Copyright.
I have been unsuccessful in replacing the letter with the book.
I trust you were given your money back.
‘Israeli authorities deported a 14-year-old epileptic Palestinian girl from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip earlier this month, without notifying her parents, and despite the fact that she has never lived there a day in her life.
Ghada, who was born in Ramallah where she has lived much of her life, was arrested by Israeli Border Police officers on January 13 for being in Jerusalem without a military permit. She was traveling back to her home in a-Ram, just northeast of Jerusalem where she lives with her mother and siblings, from her aunt’s home in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya. Her father, though originally from the Gaza Strip, currently lives in the West Bank as well, her mother told Israeli human rights group HaMoked, which is representing the family. When Ghada was born, Israeli authorities listed her address as Gaza for an unknown reason.
Following her arrest, Ghada was interrogated by Israeli police and taken to a remand hearing at the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court two days later, during which her parents were not present. Police requested the court extend her detention, but citing her age Judge Eitan Cohen ordered her released. Her family paid NIS 1,500 bail.
This was not Ghada’s first arrest for not having the right Israeli army-issued permit. Unlike those previous instances, however, this time the authorities deported her to a place she had never been, where she had only distant relatives whom she had never met, and without notifying her parents of where she was. ‘
Continues:
https://972mag.com/israel-deports-14-year-old-girl-to-gaza-without-telling-her-parents/132821/
That happened in the only democracy in the Middle East!
Love to post your new book on my FB page. Do let me know if you can do a review of my book in some worthy newspaper.
Farrukh
One of the benefits of reading this blog is that you come across individuals whom you would not have come across otherwise. This is the case here. I only know about you from the Amazon review about your book which sounds very fascinating. I hope this subject comes to prominence but sadly the trend appears to be otherwise. Mankind instead of using the natural world to benefit the majority use it to enrich the minority. The fascination of the natural world, the beauty of flowers and the richness of potential natural medicines is not a prominent area of research. Many would rather build bigger and more destructive bombs and hypersonic aircraft, but even those concerned with feeding us and treating our illness are only concerned with the quick buck. A lot of natural medicines developed over time are taken on by big Pharma and copyrighted to make a lot of money for corporations. Examples include Vincristine, a vinca alkaloid that has been one of the mainstays for treating childhood acute leukaemias, and more recently artemether, derived from Artemesia annua to treat malaria to name but two.
Good luck with your important work.