Don’t See Evil: Google’s Boycott Campaign Against War Photography and Alternative Media

Dan Sanchez, March 29, 2015

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What happens when a dynamic company, started by a couple of idealistic friends in grad school, succeeds so wildly that it becomes a mega-corporation that pervades the lives of hundreds of millions? In imperial America, it would seem, it eventually becomes corrupted, even captured. Tragically, that seems to be the unfolding story of Google.

By being the first dot-com to really get the search engine right, Google unlocked the nascent power of the internet, greatly liberating the individual. It is easy to take for granted and forget how revolutionary the advent of “Just Google it” was for the life of the mind. Suddenly, specific, useful knowledge could be had on most any topic in seconds with just a quick flurry of fingers on a keyboard.

This was a tremendous boost for alternative voices on the internet. It made it extremely easy to bypass the establishment gatekeepers of ideas and information. For example, I remember in the mid-2000s using Google to satisfy my curiosity about this “libertarianism” thing I had heard about, since the newspapers and magazines I was reading were quite useless for this purpose. In 2007, by then an avid libertarian, I remember walking through the campus of my former school UC Berkeley, seeing “Google Ron Paul” written in chalk on the ground, and rejoicing to think that hundreds of Cal students were doing just that. A big part of why today’s anti-war movement is more than a handful of Code Pink types, and the libertarian movement is more than a handful of zine subscribers, is that millions “Googled Ron Paul.”

Google and the Security State

In its early years, Google, ensconced in Silicon Valley, seemed to blissfully ignore Washington, D.C. It didn’t have a single lobbyist until 2003. Partly out of the necessity of defending itself against government threats, it gradually became ever more entangled with the Feds. By 2012, as The Washington Post reported, it had become the country’s second-largest corporate spender on lobbying.

And now, as Julian Assange of Wikileaks details, Google has become incredibly intimate with the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon, and the US intelligence community. As The Wall Street Journal recently reported, Google employees have visited the Obama White House to meet with senior officials on average about once a week.

As Assange also discusses, Google has become a major defense and intelligence contractor. And a recently leaked series of friendly emails between Google executives (including Eric Schmidt) and the NSA (including Director Gen. Keith Alexander) indicates that Google’s allegedly “unwilling” participation in the government’s mass surveillance program (revealed by Edward Snowden) may not have been so unwilling after all.

In one email, Gen. Alexander referred to Google as “a key member of the Defense Industrial Base”: security state newspeak for the Military Industrial Complex.

In 2013, Google even went so far as to enlist in the Obama Administration’s campaign to drum up public support for an air war against Syria. As Assange wrote:

“On September 10, Google lent its front page?—?the most popular on the internet?—?to the war effort, inserting a line below the search box reading “Live! Secretary Kerry answers questions on Syria. Today via Hangout at 2pm E.T.”

Kerry used the massive platform provided by Google to further spread the since-debunked claim that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against the US-backed rebels. “Don’t be evil… unless you’re helping to lie the country into war.”

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As it turns out, the national security state has been involved with Google from the very beginning: even in those fabled grad school days when Google was nothing but a research project, as investigative reporter Nafeez Ahmed has shown. Founder Sergey Brin’s work at Stanford University on what would later become Google received funding and even oversight from the CIA and the Pentagon through a program created to seed and incubate technology research that could later prove useful for information warfare.

Now, as discussed below, Google may even be actively taking part in that information warfare, especially the branch known as “perception management,” and in addition to its participation in mass surveillance.

Originally the ultimate enemy of gatekeepers, Google now seems on the verge of itself becoming the greatest gatekeeper of them all. Most foreboding in this regard is the recent revelation that Google is working to make “trustworthiness” a major new factor in its search results. How will anti-government and anti-establishment perspectives fare once Google takes on the mantle of arbiter of truth?

Google’s dominance of the online ad market is one source of its potential gatekeeping power. If a web site running its ads contains content that Google or its friends in the government find objectionable, it can simply pull its ads unless and until the content is removed: as long as it comes up with an excuse convincing enough to keep it from looking bad.

Google Vs. Antiwar.com

This may be what Google is doing right now to Antiwar.com, a long-running and popular daily news and commentary site that is strongly critical of US foreign policy.

On the morning of March 18, Eric Garris, founder and webmaster of the site, received a form email from Google AdSense informing him that all of Antiwar.com’s Google ads had been disabled. The reason given was that one of the site’s pages with ads on it displayed images that violated AdSense’s policy against “violent or disturbing content, including sites with gory text or images.”

Of course the images in question were not “snuff,” or anything intended for titillation whatsoever. They were the famous images of detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib US military prison in Iraq. Those images are important public information, especially for Americans. They are the previously secret documentation of horrific state violence inflicted in our name and funded by our tax dollars.

They are also eminently newsworthy because they show the government wantonly generating insecurity for the American public. Such abuse fuels anti-American and anti-western rage that can culminate in acts of terrorism. For example, it did just that in the case of Chérif Kouachi, who took part in one of the Paris terror attacks of early this year after becoming radicalized by learning about the Abu Ghraib abuses.

Indeed many apologists for such abuse fully acknowledge this blowback effect, since they expressly cite it as the main reason for blocking the release of abuse photos. Of course they ignore the fact that this danger they acknowledge is an excellent reason not to commit such abuses in the first place. And they are naïve if they really think word wouldn’t get out about such abuses among Iraqis and Muslims in general even without the photos. The dissemination of such photos chiefly serves to ultimately make terrorist attacks less likely by driving a disgusted American public to demand an end to such terrorism-inducing abuses.

The newsworthy nature of the photos made no difference to Google; or it made altogether the wrong kind of difference. Either way, they were considered non-compliant, and so Antiwar.com’s AdSense account, along with its revenue, were suspended immediately.

This struck Garris as odd. In all his years administering web sites, he had previously run into content policy issues with AdSense around half a dozen times. Each time, Google had not immediately disabled the ads, but instead gave the customer 72-hours to fix the violation. In fact, he had never heard of AdSense suspending an account without warning until this incident. Why the suddenly draconian response this time? Also, the Abu Ghraib page had been public for 11 years. Why the sudden concern about it only now?

In so many ways, this action struck Garris as radically unfair and quite possibly politically motivated. So he took to the Antiwar.com blog and wrote post raising hell about it. You can’t survive a decades-long career in anti-war activism (including an ongoing legal battle with the FBI over that agency monitoring Antiwar.com without cause) without developing a pugnacious streak. He remarked that the timing of the out-of-the-blue enforcement was highly suspect: coinciding as it did with the US gearing up for a re-invasion of Iraq, which will surely be accompanied by yet another wave of ugly violence and abuse.

The next morning, Gawker picked up the story. Garris told me that within 10 minutes of the sympathetic Gawker post appearing, he was contacted via email by someone from Google’s Public Relations department.

The PR guy struck a conciliatory, even apologetic note:

“Hi Eric,

Our media team noticed your blog post and informed me regarding the issue you raise in your post.

I am very sorry that you had this experience, as we should have warned you before blacklisting the site, which we didn’t. Our warning would have mentioned simply removing our AdSense code from the Abu Ghraib page, which would allow you to continue earning money on the other pages of your site that were not in violation of any AdSense policies. At this point, please remove the ad code from this page and we can reinstate ad serving throughout your site. Once complete, please file a site appeal, and our team will review ASAP. Further, revenue earned to this point, and after reinstatement will not be affected.

Google does need to be very careful with this sort of thing, since we have to make sure that our ads do not appear on pages that violate any of our policies. There are surprising instances of bad actors out there, and even otherwise trustworthy publishers can end up being the victim of bad traffic. At the same time, though, partners like you deserve a better customer service experience even when there are problems. Your post has sparked conversation here?—?you have been heard.

Please feel free to reach out again if need be. While I can’t solve everything, I’m happy to hear from great partners like you directly.

Best, [Redacted]”

As instructed, Garris removed the code and submitted an appeal that very day. After such a friendly email from the PR guy, he hoped to see the ads restored the next morning. The following day, not only were the ads still gone, but there was yet another message from AdSense in his inbox, informing him that his appeal was rejected because yet another non-compliant page was found: this one a report on the war in Ukraine that included an image of dead rebel fighters. (Contrary to various reports, Antiwar.com’s ads were never even briefly restored.) It read:

“Thank you for submitting an appeal. However, after thoroughly reviewing antiwar.com and taking your feedback into consideration, we are unable to enable ad serving to your site again at this time, as your site appears to still be in violation.

Example page where violation occurred: http://original.antiwar.com/chris_ernesto/2014/05/28/heads-up-the-us-is-losing-in-ukraine/

(…)

Please take some time to review your site again for compliance. When making changes, please note that the URL mentioned in your policy notification may be just one example and that similar violations may exist on other pages of your website. Appropriate changes must be made across your entire website before ad serving can be enabled on your site again.”

The PR guy’s message had basically been, “Sorry we didn’t give you fair warning! Just fix this one page, and we’ll have you back up in a jiffy!” The subsequent message from AdSense seemed to swap Officer Friendly with (aside from the obligatory “please and thank you”) a cross between the Colonel Klink and the Soup Nazi: “Until you scour every single page for total compliance, no ads for you!”

After receiving this scolding from the AdSense bad cop, Garris reached out again to the PR good cop, expressing his bafflement over Google’s new stringency.

Even if he could get the site “up to code,” what are the standards for future content? Are all casualties out? Only deaths, or grievous injuries too? How grievous? What if the body isn’t shown but only a blood streak? What about violence against property? A child crying beside the rubble of his home?

Are ads to only appear next to pictures of the comfortable and well-groomed elites who start wars and never the bloodied and bedraggled plebs who suffer them? If that’s the case, Antiwar.com would have so few ads as to hardly make it worthwhile.

Otherwise, what concrete instructions could he give his reporters, columnists, and bloggers? If none are possible, must Garris spend much of his time from now on playing “whack-a-mole” as new “violations” keep popping up? Will the site’s desperately-needed ad revenue suddenly dry up each time?

To help the PR guy understand his predicament, he shared with him a quandary he was dealing with at that very moment as he was preparing the front page for the next day. There had just been a wave of terror attacks in Yemen, and there was an aftermath photo of blood-splattered rescuers moving a victim in a makeshift stretcher. But you couldn’t actually see the victim. Would this be a violation?

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The PR guy couldn’t answer yes or no. He said it depended on the context, and that:

“A good rule of thumb is if it would be okay for a child in any region of the world to see that image, it’s acceptable.”

This response was astounding to Garris on many levels. First of all “it’s for the children” is the standard excuse for censorship. Are all the millions of web sites that host Google’s ads now operating under the content standards of PBS Kids or Disney Jr?

And what is “any region of the world” supposed to mean? If you can’t judge based on the violence and suffering portrayed alone, what is the decisive “context”? Is it the identity of the victims and of the victimizers? Is the goal not to offend the parents of children in allied countries? Is it okay if the Yemeni had been suicide-bombed by an ISIS affiliate, but not if he had been aerial-bombed by the Saudis? Would the prisoner abuse photos have been okay if they were from the time that Abu Ghraib was Saddam Hussein’s torture dungeon instead of America’s? Would the Ukrainian corpses have been okay had they been the victims of the eastern rebels, instead of the US-backed government in Kiev?

Also, if, as the PR guy conceded, it was a mistake that the account was immediately suspended after the Abu Ghraib photos were flagged, why did they make the same “mistake” the very next day by keeping the account suspended after discovering the Ukraine photo?

Having had enough of being jerked around, Garris wrote in an update:

“Antiwar.com has no intention of allowing Google to dictate our content. We are looking into alternate sources of advertising and will not likely be working with Google AdSense in the future.”

Whitewashing War with Blackouts

Now nobody is suggesting that Google should be forced to change its policy. Of course it has every right to refuse service to anyone for any reason. The issue is whether Google’s actions are shameful and corrupt, not whether they should be illegal.

War journalism and anti-war activism cannot be effectively pursued without war photography. This is true because such imagery conveys vital public information, and because one of the most effective ways of turning people against war is to vividly show them its horrors. Furthermore, independent web sites that cover war with small budgets and large traffic depend on ad revenue. So Google pulling ads on all of the AdSense customers who publish war photography amounts to a massive, debilitating boycott of independent online war journalism and anti-war activism.

Of course the war party in America would love nothing more. War photography is the bane of all war makers. Images like the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a naked Vietnamese child fleeing a napalm attack played a major role in turning American public opinion against the Vietnam War and against war in general. Frustrated warmongers likened the subsequent anti-war public sentiment to a mental disorder, calling it the “Vietnam Syndrome”.

By the time of the Gulf War, America’s first major war since Vietnam, the Federal government, having learned its lesson, was ready to tightly regulate the war imagery that reached the American public, both through Pentagon policy and through its sway over the media. As a result, the typical visuals of the Gulf War were constant CNN video loops of crosshairs-view “precision strikes” and night-time bombardments of Baghdad that looked like an Atari video game or a 4th of July fireworks show. What was not televised was the carnage wreaked on the ground by those blips on the screen. It wasn’t deemed fit to print either. After photographer Kenneth Jarecke captured a gruesome shot of an Iraqi soldier who was burned alive while trying to escape over the dashboard of his truck, he could not find a single major outlet who would run the picture.

After this sanitized coverage helped ensure the Gulf War’s popularity, President George H.W. Bush exulted in a speech, “And by God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all!”

The US has also carefully regulated the imagery of the post-9/11 wars, especially through its embedded media program that lures journalists with access given in exchange for submission to censorship. Until 2009, the US even banned photographs of the flag-draped coffins holding the bodies of Americans being returned home for burial.

In spite of such measures, they could not stop all of the horrors of war from reaching the public through unembedded journalists and through leaks. Yet the biggest reality gut punch was delivered by images that depicted, not just the maiming of the bodies of foreign victims, but also the mutilation of American souls. America saw its sons and daughters grinning for the camera while torturing and sexually humiliating Iraqis. It saw its young men urinating on corpses and holding a dead Afghani’s head up for the camera as though they were posing for a trophy picture with a prize buck.

Now, the war party is terrified that images such as these, combined with the abject failure of the wars, will give America an anti-interventionist “Iraq War Syndrome.” If leaks of such images can’t be stopped, at least their propagation must be slowed down.

Their problem is that media blackouts, like the one that occurred with the Gulf War torched corpse photo, have relatively little effect in an era in which anyone can post war photos to their blog and watch it go viral through social media. That is where a ubiquitous ad provider like Google can be of great service, by limiting the appearance of war photography on the millions of sites that depend on its ads.

Is that what Google is starting to do now? It is a troubling coincidence that Google’s sudden interest in the old Abu Ghraib photos happens to coincide with a Federal judge’s ruling that the government must release the remaining Abu Ghraib photos still under wraps. Will Google give the new wave of photos the same treatment they are giving the old ones, thereby suppressing the sensation it will cause? Has Google in practice changed its motto from “Don’t Be Evil” to “Don’t See Evil?”

Alt-Delete

After all, it isn’t just Antiwar.com that Google has leaned on. I have been informed that The American Conservative reluctantly decided to disable AdSense on all its article pages after Google objected to one of those troops-urinating-on-corpses photographs appearing in its article on the scandal. And anti-war activist Mnar Muhawesh had to blur an Abu Ghraib photo and remove a Syrian Civil War photo on her Mint Press News site after she received similar objections from Google.

And the troubling incidents go beyond web site ads. Google’s YouTube recently targeted Luke Rudkowski’s anti-regime alternative media project WeAreChange by, without notice, disabling ads on most of its YouTube videos and clearly suppressing their rate of appearance for users. This almost completely demonetized his account and obliterated his business model. After Rudkowski filed a complaint, Google gave absolutely no reason for demonetizing any but two of the videos. Those two, which covered the subject of ISIS, contain absolutely no gore, and yet were still deemed “not appropriate for advertising at this time” due to the “sensitive nature” of their content. Again, it must be asked of Google: exactly whose sensitivities are being protected here? And Google even preemptively disabled ads for James Corbett’s anti-imperialist Corbett Report YouTube channel even though Corbett has never even used them.

“GooTube” also took down Ben Swann’s documentary short film “Origin of ISIS”, which features Antiwar.com’s Angela Keaton, and which attributes the rise of the terror group to US intervention in Iraq and Syria and the direct funding of US regional allies. It has since been restored, but to reach its page on YouTube, one must first get past a page that advises “viewer discretion” because the video is “potentially offensive or graphic.” Swann’s video also contains no gore, yet still apparently did not pass the “any child in any region of the world” test. Wouldn’t want to scandalize any generous Qatari sheiks with kids, after all.

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No Results for “US War Atrocity.”

Did You Mean “US War Awesomeness”?

All this raises many questions.

If Google is already so heavy-handed against “inappropriate” voices and “sensitive content,” what can we expect from the government-connected search giant once its “trustworthiness” program is up and running, especially under the new “Net Neutrality” regulatory regime over the internet recently initiated by the FCC? A state-crony, semi-private internet Ministry of Truth? A return to the atmosphere of exclusively regime-friendly voices that characterized the era of crony print and broadcast media?

How true is the following assessment from Newsweek’s editorial preface for Assange’s telling of his meeting with Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt?

“They outlined radically opposing perspectives: for Assange, the liberating power of the Internet is based on its freedom and statelessness. For Schmidt, emancipation is at one with U.S. foreign policy objectives…”

And how has that identification between the two influenced his decisions and guidance concerning company projects and policies? How does Google’s cozy relationship with the national security state and its “key” membership in the Military Industrial Complex affect its approach toward internet content: particularly content that may clash with US foreign policy objectives?

Finally, if Google is bent on boycotting independent, alternative media, shouldn’t independent-minded individuals seriously consider boycotting them right back?

Given Google’s record, these questions are more than fair; they are pressing. And as may become the case for many other discomfiting and subversive questions in the future, their answers cannot be found by “just Googling it.”


Also published, along with many other essays, at Medium.com and DanSanchez.me. Follow Dan Sanchez via TwitterFacebook, or TinyLetter.

Let Google know that, whatever its motives, you don’t appreciate its stifling of independent, alternative anti-war journalism and activism. Submit a complaint to Google by using the contact methods listed here. Tweet the hashtags #DontSeeEvil, #DontExposeEvil, or #GoogleAltDelete, tagging @Google. If you have had a similar run-in with Google AdSense or YouTube, send a message about it to Antiwar.com. If you are an artist, take part in the Google #DontExposeEvil pro-peace meme contest, launched by Bitcoin Not Bombs




50 Responses to “Don’t See Evil: Google’s Boycott Campaign Against War Photography and Alternative Media”

  1. […] If you are an artist, take part in the Google #DontExposeEvil pro-peace meme contest , launched by Bitcoin Not BombsPrint This | Share This | Send a letter to the editor | |See all stories on this topic […]

  2. […] Read More… […]

  3. What Google is doing is infuriating, but if I may tweak the noses of technology-worshipping, private enterprise-loving libertarians, surprise! See how easily a near-monopoly entrepreneurial company can wreak havoc. Here's free enterprise in action: do well, get huge, abuse your power and screw those you don't like. So much for monopoly power being harmless; so much for the Internet being the cure to the stodgy old analogue media.

    The worm turns, as what was to liberate us becomes what will surveill and enslave us.

  4. A call to action for Bitcoin Not Bombs?!? "Save Everything is utopian blockchain solutionism. Google's DNA is #EvilNotEvil. Simply direct readers to YouTube's monetized jihadi recruitment videos wp.me/p2hvgt-3oh for ample evidence of Google doublespeak and targeted censorship. "Google Ron Paul?" Bit, please.

  5. Until a libertarian billionaire can be persuaded to step forward and create a network designed to support all political expressions in the marketplace, will be for ever thus. Facebook have also recently updated their content terms, Twitter has been bent to the will of third parties, Google is covered above. Yet, surely such an investor would in fact attract a wide spectrum of support and public allegiance?

  6. Wasn't that the idea behind Pierre Omidyar's First Look / Intercept? Though as Matt Taibbi discovered, freedom of speech has its limits at First Look / Intercept, too.

  7. Enter text right here!

  8. Just had to point out a few discrepancies. ..or just propose a different opinion concerning the introduction. Actually Brin reported to government departments while he was developing google in grad school. Saying google is corrupted is off the mark because it started az a vehicle for surveillance capitalism and imperialism. Source: oh, shit I have to find it.
    second point: google wasn’t the first one to get it right. Ask jeeves and dogpipe were pretty good once you got the hang of them. What google got right was enticing newcomers to the internet, most of its users were new computer users.

    Actually a third point. Google didn’t liberate individuality on the web actually there were web rings and many people had personal websites that were very rich with information and knowledge shared. I think google actually reduced the diversity by introducing rankings and seo.

  9. Apart from the wars of independence and the civil war, the inhabitants of the USA have never been "in" a war. Many have visited wars or, more correctly, been sent to wars. A small number have started many wars, and continue to do so, without leaving the their ocean-bounded safe haven.
    Its no surprise that the people enjoying the vast revenue and easy profits – whether directly or indirectly – will do all they can not to turn the source of their good fortune – US taxpayers – against warmongering. Violent and gory video games – no problem. Actual violence and gore – not way!

  10. It's not tweaking. It's an area worthy of serious discussion. Arthur Silber had a few essays about this from a libertarian perspective on http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/. -Angela Keaton

  11. […] Dan Sanchez, March 29, […]

  12. […] Dan Sanchez, March 29, […]

  13. Good lord, do you even understand libertarianism at all? Google is in bed with the State. The polar opposite of small/no-government libertarian theory. Also, last time I checked, anti-establishment websites are still readily accessible in the US, despite Google's haranguing.

  14. Why would any company which has made its fortunes in a libertarian manner want to ally itself with the State? Maybe Lenin was right: "The capitalists will compete to sell us the rope with which we hang them."

    This is totally infuriating.

  15. And your solution, of course, is to give the State more direct control of all American businesses? You are quite insane!

  16. f___k google….just use duckduckgo.com

  17. Obama and The Google are just 69ing furiously:
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/21/obama_and… – Google and Obama: You’re too close for comfort: This cosy corporatist marriage is crippling the internet

  18. (content was removed by Chrome / read licence terms)

  19. Choosing the best web design company depends on the area or areas to which the site is focused. For example, if the need is to review the information on your site, and only re-write or edit information, you may only require a freelance web designer for this service. However, if your site requires expertise in more than one area, such as a complete overhaul of site design, copy and multimedia. Thus, a full-service network as a web design company or freelancers that accommodates the full range of needs is probably the best option to handle the job. Id say check this site for the Singapore area http://www.calvinseng.com/

  20. […] published at Antiwar.com and DanSanchez.me. Discussed by the author onThe Scott Horton Show. Follow Dan Sanchez via Twitter, […]

  21. What's with the line prominent line "No Results for "US War Atrocity.""? Even if you search with quotes you get 25 results and Google doesn't suggest an alternative search term. If you replace Atrocity with the plural then there are 6,880 results, if you then remove the quotes there are 2.3 million, and if you search for "American War Crimes" without quotes you get nearly 52 million results (as opposed to just under 8 million for "German War Crimes").

  22. Great work v important..thankyou al

  23. Actually it seems to me there is currently much important content on utube Govt & The Lobby would desperately want removed?? …you can bet they are working on doing it like hell….however, from my observations "so far" they have been pretty good……the MIC & World domination freaks will get thin ends of wedges into some places at Google et al sooner or later but I suspect other systems will pop up….Keep posting & tell everyone you know….WORD OF MOUTH is EXPONENTIAL & WORKS LIKE MAGIC!. Rupert just can't hoodwink & silence everyone forever.

  24. This seems extremely bad:- Assange’s telling of his meeting with Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt?

    “They outlined radically opposing perspectives: for Assange, the liberating power of the Internet is based on its freedom and statelessness. For Schmidt, emancipation is at one with U.S. foreign policy objectives…”

  25. Google by no means is a monopoly. Less so than NBCABCCBS or the Times/Post used to be, which weren't monopolies, either.

  26. "You are quite insane!"

    If they're insane then so is Yale/Harvard graduate and doubleplusgood thinker Bush the Younger, who abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.

  27. I assume you're including the 1812 war in "the wars of independence," and that is indeed the last time we were invaded. I'd add the Mexican war, at least for Texans. There's a giant blindspot in your list, namely the Indian wars, which were examples of "total war" on a small scale (not because of racial hatred, though that was present, but because they used hit-and-run and guerrilla tactics, we couldn't beat them one on one or in small bands, and the only way we could assert our superiority was to raid their settlements, villages, encampments, etc.).

    But your point is well taken. For most of our history we've been blessed by friendly enough neighbors and great natural defenses. Starting around 1900 we threw those blessings away and gave the world hell. Luckily it hasn't much bit us back, at least directly. We nevertheless bitch and moan endlessly about the few times it has (Pearl Harbor, 9/11).

  28. He is indeed. Bush is a socialist/fascist. Whatever gave you the idea I was defending him?

  29. Well, the print media has been in the hands of wealthy corporate entities for years. Govt gives them greater licence for revenue making and they stop the truth from getting out. Bill Clinton was responsible for changing Telecom laws in the USA to help the Corporations along and was rewarded with millions of dollars. There is no democracy where the news is controlled. USA is no democracy and nor is Australia. We are fed trash like the Kardashians instead of what's really happening. They nearly have us as zombies. The next step will be introducing coded chips at birth. Give it 15-20 years. Betcha!

  30. No company that is pubically traded can be free of censorship, because the shareholders demand "due dilligence" which required that the CEO and Board do all they can do to maximize profits, and the govt then offers big incentive (ie money) that goes straight into shareholder equity.

  31. Because by it very nature a corporation is abomination. The early US was not Libertarian as it had a lot of laws and restrictions how a corporation could operate. All works of art, intellectual property, and patents where supposed to go into the domain in about a generate.
    A corporation can never be libertarian, because libertarianism for all its flaws is a HUMAN belief, and although corporations are persons, they are not human. They do not have human feelings.

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  39. "since-debunked claim that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against the US-backed rebels"

    You didn't follow Brown Moses then. I certainly agree that Google helped the USG push intervention in Syria, and that they shouldn't have, but that doesn't mean everything claimed was a lie: multiple independent citizen journalists gathered comprehensive photographic evidence that Assad's troops used "Bourkan" (Volcano) rockets modified to carry chemical weapons.

    There was a hell of a lot of misinformation, doctored photos and attempts to spread confusion, so I don't blame you, but some people did actually go to the trouble of sorting it out. Don't throw out their work just because the more hard-hitting (and conspiratorial) writers agree with your conclusion (for that matter, I'm pretty sure Brown Moses was against intervention too).

  40. […] from Antiwar.com by permission of author or […]

  41. "Now nobody is suggesting that Google should be forced to change its policy. Of course it has every right to refuse service to anyone for any reason. The issue is whether Google’s actions are shameful and corrupt, not whether they should be illegal."

    …. Protestors like you are a complete waste of skin.

  42. <iframe src="https://www.flickr.com/photos/expd/9021189849/in/photolist-eFXyjm-eKaXs2-bUmSgS-fvUAUk-dmx4Qb/player/&quot; width="75" height="75" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen></iframe>

  43. How will people react if Google buys out our police force entirely in order to *bail them out*? Our US police is almost militarized enough as it is since the 1980s.

    I won't put it past Google to come up with a scheme to buy out police departments all across America in which some will fold up entirely in rural areas while others will join mega forces and become a big corporation police state.

    Who is ready for Korporate America to come a knocking at you're door without a warrant? Again at first they will obey the laws of the warrants but then the next election time a new corporate politician will take over and find ways around the warrant laws.

    The Liberal politician will at least try not to be violent about it while a Neo Con will use a false flag to bring it about to drum support.

    Hint. Both Liberals and Republicans pass laws that are favored towards Communist police state tactics to keep control. It's basically the Nazi VS Communist war where millions of people in each type of government dye.

    In communist nations millions of jews were paved over after building roads they would be turned into cement and over 50 million jews died that way.

  44. Rural areas will be left with almost no protection except from the state police while big cities will be mega forces that have ties to the military all powered by Google.

  45. I lived up and down the West Coast and have only once traveled by plane in the 90s when I was a kid and didn't really like it then because that's when corporate pirates were taking over the airlines and cramming people like cattle.

    If you really want the *Good ole days* of flying it will have to be the pre degregulation days of the 1960s.

    Watch the movie *Hook* from the 1980s and it has many fine examples of corporate pirates.

  46. Give it the next election. Bill Gates did an interview 10 years ago and said that was their goal for the industry to get computers down to the size of nano tubes that can be inserted into you're blood and YOU will be the computer.

  47. 9/11 was not an invasion. It was a terrorist attack using airplanes but not really a full invasion as they never landed and took key people hostage to bring a settlement.

    9/11 is a once in a life time event no matter what propaganda says. The level of planning between multiple parties to act at the right time while appearing as separate is stunning and can not be repeated.

    It only happened because our air defense was *turned off* that day with stand down orders and *drilling* going on or otherwise that too would've foiled if 9/11 happened on ANY other day.

  48. BTW: We have not had a free market since the late 1930s when contracts were made with the government so big business had brought aid to Britain in the second great war.

    Unfortunately since then we never got rid of the government contracts with what was left of the American industry so we had *quasi* capitalism at best which turned into corny capitalism and the wrong areas of our infrastructure got deregulated instead of busting up the monopolies like President Taft did.

    The 1980s was only great because of the money trickling down to empower corporations which actually did work as investors didn't panic.

    Whenever you tax the rich the investors WILL panic and that's what creates the 1930s depression all over again. It is wrong for them to panic but that's what they do.

  49. It's even worse than that. On my YouTube channel I make a point of not showing any graphic images and I make sure my content is "clean" enough that it could be broadcast on TV according to FCC rules. I really only discuss topics with a focus on how U.S. mass media misrepresents stories. Well almost 2 years ago Google/YouTube started a policy where it decided SOME TOPICS are "too sensitive" to monitize and started pulling ads from my videos which discussed straightforward news stories like how the main motive for the 9/11 attack was the terrorists's anger at the U.S. foreign policy of supporting Israel. (for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQiUXc_aMoo ) Also, I made an effort to debunk the conspiracy theory about the Boston Bombing and the ads were pulled on those videos such as: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH5If6JYj3w And now I see that Google/YouTube has decided that any of my videos where I just mention ISIS in any context is "too sensitive." This is extremely unfair because I have been making videos for years on YouTube with the understanding, according to the terms of service of YouTube, that I was going to be able to generate some revenue form my journalistic efforts.

  50. Great work

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