All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

– Six times Facebook ignored their own community standards when removing content

Cherry picking – who knows how many people are banned or suspended on a daily basis. I come across friends who have material taken off and being suspended all the time. With a billion users, I imagine thousands are suspended or have material taken off for good cause and well just because someone felt like it. Maybe we are at a tipping point as the US was when Standard Oil was broken up or when AT&T was ordered to allow others to sell phone services – it’s not just too big to competition and civil rights issues – maybe it”s just too big to manage period!?! Although Facebook maintains their right as a private company to remove content that violates community guidelines, many critics claim this disproportionately targets marginalised people and groups.

Russia Used a Two-Year-Old Video and an ‘Alternative’ Swedish Group to Discredit Reports of Syria Gas Attack

Spreading doubt about the truth is nearly all one needs to do – Russians. ultra-left and ultra-right all practicing and feeding into no one trusting anyone. i1000.jpg

Who are the Swedish doctors that Russian media is using to drum up support for war in Syria?

Dispatch

Katerina Patin

2 May 2017

A video that Moscow used as key piece of evidence that its ally President Bashar al-Assad had nothing to do with the chemical attack in Idlib which killed more than 80 people, including many children and women one month ago, was in fact released two years ago and first cited a month before the attack actually took place.

The video was pushed out across Russian state controlled airwaves and on social media shortly after President Donald J. Trump launched the first direct U.S. military strike on Syrian government forces.

It showed what looks like a makeshift emergency room: doctors working frantically around the small bodies of limp, half-naked children, their eyes rolling back and noses foaming. A girl in pink underwear lies on top of an elderly woman who seems to have already died. One bed over, a doctor injects a long needle deep into a small child’s chest.

The video is almost unwatchable, capturing the brutality of Syria’s six-year war that has decimated the country’s population. But the way the video has been spun shows how Russian disinformation can plant doubt, obscure facts, and manipulate mainstream debate on the Syrian war and its consequences.

Russian officials and state-media went into overdrive after the April 4 chemical attack in northern Syria and the U.S. military response, circulating contradictory theories about the attack, the most cited version being that the attack never happened and was staged. The video from the makeshift emergency room was used as key evidence that the attack was in fact fake news.

All of the Russian reports omitted a crucial fact: the video was two years old.

Russian media created a confused picture where only one message was clear: Russia had proof that rebels in Syria and the West were lying about the chemical attacks.

It was originally uploaded by a local division of the White Helmets, a volunteer emergency rescue worker group that operates in rebel-held Syria, after a chemical attack in the Idlib province that killed at least six people in March 2015. But now, Russian and Syrian officials said that an NGO called the “Swedish Professors and Doctors for Human Rights” (SWEDHR) have evidence that the White Helmets video was staged, discrediting both the authenticity of the gas attack and of the White Helmets. The omission of a time references by the Russian media and by government officials created the impression that the video showed the “staged” aftermath of the more recent chemical attack this April, rather than one that took place in 2015.

“Have you read the report by Swedish Doctors for Human Rights that showed the duplicity of the so-called White Helmets?” Syria’s representative to the UN asked during a charged Security Council meeting on April 12, 2017. By that time, many in Russia had. RT, Sputnik, Rossiskaya Gazeta, Pravda, Zvezda TV, Ren TV and dozens of other Kremlin-controlled media outlets republished SWEDHR’s conclusions in a storm of coverage after Trump’s retaliatory air strike on April 6. Searching “White Helmets” in Russian on Google brings up several pages that one after the other cite SWEDHR in the article title. Nearly all of them omit that SWEDHR’s findings apply to a video from 2015.

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SWEDHR’s findings were first published in an article on the group’s online blog “The Indicter” on March 6, 2017 — nearly a month before the alleged chemical attack in Syria that prompted Trump’s strike. In it, the Swedish doctors questioned the authenticity of the two-year-old video, making several claims: the video shows “life-threatening” or “simply fake” medical procedures; the cause of the children’s death more likely could be from opiate drug overdose than from a chemical attack; the White Helmets made a propaganda video with already dead children; and that the injection given to the small boy was staged and likely “would have killed the child!”

Amnesty International in Sweden, Human Rights Watch in Sweden, the Swedish Society of Medicine and the Swedish Medical Association all say they never heard of SWEDHR, which describes itself as an “alternative NGO.”

But SWEDHR was noticed by Russia’s foreign ministry. On March 16, 2017 the ministry’s spokeswoman Maria Zakharova spoke at length about the White Helmets, a group celebrated in the West (especially after Netflix’ Oscar-winning documentary about the organization) but considered a terrorist organization in Russia. Without mentioning when the original White Helmets’ video was filmed, Zakharova cited the Swedish doctors’ findings which she said proved that the White Helmets are “talented directors and actors” and that the video even shows a child being “literally murdered under surgical lamps.”

And then after the April 4 chemical attack and the subsequent diplomatic fallout, Zakharova’s statement and the Swedish research proliferated on airwaves and social media in Russia. That SWEDHR’s key evidence was a two-year-old video was simply never mentioned. By omitting any time references, Russian media created a confused picture where only one message was clear: Russia had proof that rebels in Syria and the West were lying about the chemical attacks.

i500.jpg SWEDHR’s blog post claimed that a White Helmets video from March 2015 proved that the chemical attack in 2015 was staged.

The Swedish organization which enabled Russia’s efforts is made up of “Swedish professors, PhDs, medical doctors and university researchers,” according to its website. The head of SWEDHR is Professor Marcello Ferrada de Noli, a frequent contributor to the Kremlin’s RT network where he comments on the war in Ukraine and Syria. Professor Noli declined to comment for this article.

According to reports from Swedish Radio, Dr. Leif Elinder, an expert cited in SWEDHR’s findings alleging that the White Helmets video was staged, is a retired pediatrician who was fired from the Sweden’s Social Insurance Agency for making non-factual medical assessments.

Dr. Elinder explained that he joined SWEDHR two years ago because of his interest in human rights and because one of his life goals, he said, was to “prevent World War III.” He sounded surprised by the reach of his comments about the White Helmets video and said that Professor Noli asked him to comment specifically on a scene in the video where a Syrian boy is given an injection in the chest. “I saw the pictures. I commented on the pictures. And my assessment was that this was not done in a professional way and I explained why,” Elinder said.

i500.jpg The head of SWEDHR Professor Noli is a frequent contributor on RT, commenting on the war in Ukraine and Syria.

The White Helmets video was shown to five doctors by Coda, including a US-based pediatric specialist who has worked in Afghanistan, Sudan, Lebanon and Israel; a pediatric specialist and member of the UK’s Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health; an intensive care specialist at Royal Berkshire Hospital, a general practitioner based in London with experience working in developing countries; and a pediatrics specialist at NYU Langone medical center.

All of the specialists agreed that the individuals in the video did not appear to be carrying out a resuscitation attempt according to accepted guidelines and that the footage where the Syrian boy was given an injection was not a usual resuscitation method. All of them however, said it would be impossible to conclude from the brief video that the scene was staged.

“There is nothing to indicate this is clearly a ‘faked’ procedure, it seems to be more of a desperate or a poorly executed one,” said Dr. Melissa Hersh from NYU Langone.

“Especially after the Iraq War, if you’re not confident in the truth, no one wants to act. So even when the truth is obvious, Russia has a way of making it not obvious anymore,” Miller said. “That’s their whole strategy — as long as no one acts, they can do what they want. It’s working perfectly.”

The accusation that the April 4, 2017 chemical attack was staged was just one version of events that the Kremlin floated. Copying a disinformation strategy that was used when Flight MH-17 was shot down by Russian-backed forces in Eastern Ukraine, different Russian ministries released contradictory accounts of events that day. The Russian defense ministry announced that an airstrike had been carried out by the Syrian Army on a rebel chemical weapons factory. The Russian foreign ministry said both that rebel groups were responsible for gassing Syrian civilians and that the attack was actually fake. Neither ministry mentioned what chemical weapons experts in the West were quick to point out: the nerve agent Sarin that was found in victims of the attack is not effective if immolated in an explosion, ruling out the plausibility of Russian defense ministry’s version that a Syrian air strike caused the gas to spread.

“Some people latch on to theory one. Some people latch on to theory two. And some people latch on to theory three. At the end of the day, there are enough people who say I don’t know what really happened. And so nothing gets done,” said James Miller, an expert on Russian and Middle Eastern affairs.

Much of Russian disinformation about real events and violence is built on reports and comments by obscure groups or fringe politicians that ultimately succeed in simply confusing what actually occurred.

“Especially after the Iraq War, if you’re not confident in the truth, no one wants to act. So even when the truth is obvious, Russia has a way of making it not obvious anymore,” Miller said. “That’s their whole strategy — as long as no one acts, they can do what they want. It’s working perfectly.”

SWEDHR’s research continues to be circulated by Russian media and government officials. In the United States, conspiracy theories spread across far-right and -left “alternative” news sites about the attack, some of them also citing the Swedish research. Within hours of the U.S. retaliatory strike on April 6, #SyriaHoax was the top trending twitter topic in the United States, according to Trends24, a company that tracks Twitter data.

More recently, the Swedish doctors published updated “evidence” confirming their findings. They even uploaded a video summary of their research to Youtube which, strangely enough, is set to a violin score called “From Russia with Love.”

Additional reporting by Mariam Kiparoidze and Giorgi Tskhakaia.

Image by Coda.

Katerina Patin is a reporter and an associate editor for Coda Story. @katia_patin

DA’ESH THAT IS FOSTERED IN OUR MINDS

“It is not the “Islamic terror” that we need to defy. It is the terror in our everyday teaching of intolerance, conspiracy thinking, and mystification of the past that we need to defy”

I admit that I don’t feel well each time I hear the word “ Islamic” before the world “attack” or whatever is related within these words. Today attack in Mali is another quick example to the world’s hypocrisy. Sometimes, even if the victims are still Europeans or Americans, the fact that they are in the other part of the world where violence is becoming a norm, the world doesn’t react the same. I understand that it would be confusing to raise a flag of a country to victims who are not citizens to that country but the victims in France were all French?

This is just a flying thought.

The real reason for this article is our reactions as “Muslims” to such attacks. A French friend of mine was telling me yesterday how awkward he felt when Palestinian were apologizing to him for the attacks in Paris. I was actually expressing to him a pretty awkward sensation I had and I told him in advance that my English vocabulary might not be fulfilling and accurate to this sensation. And of course if he got me wrong I would easily as well quickly accuse his French English vocabulary). It was actually hard for me to say it, but I wanted to say it infront of a French in that particular situation. I said: “ the moment I learnt about the attacks, I was taken aback for an instant. I was watching the panic that was overwhelming the atmosphere. I definitely felt sad, bad, … but I also felt satisfied”. I was about to explain why, relying on the fact that he will misunderstand the word, thinking “satisfied” is not a word any normal person uses in such a situation. But he quickly said that he understands it completely and that was why he couldn’t understand why the Palestinians here were apologizing.

This was a moment, despite its severe damage, a moment of a global unification. At that moment I felt that everyone is becoming Palestinian. I was happy that my friend was actually a lot more tolerant than me saying it loud: “ those who did it were Muslims and this is just fine. We should ask ourselves why Muslims in France, if they were French are feeling this rage and hate. There is something about us, that we refuse to admit.”

It wasn’t much of a surprise to me later when I read about the French government decision in allowing 30 or 40 thousand refugees as a response to the terror attacks. It was a real moment of pride. And somehow, this took me to this feeling of how our world is becoming unified. If the French government decided to behave like the Israeli government for instance, by revenging and making sanctions and all those Israeli collective punitive actions, the situation would have just went to the worse. By doing this, the French government actually put those people into a corner. There is this important factor that we are all missing here. All of us “spectaculars”. The indirect support these people have from oppressed marginalized people around the globe.

But somewhere, going back to the beginning …

The stigma of Islam and terror being attached in one phrase is not something that Muslims are truly not responsible for. The whole “phenomenon” of ISIS wouldn’t have taken place or such an echo if it wasn’t there somewhere within Islamic teaching. Teaching is not about a book we carry and follow. It is about a whole education system that combines so effectively in our daily lives and strengthens what is known as “ norms”. I am not sure if other religions and cultures are really different from the Islamic cultures. But in this case I can only speak about Islam. The rush of Muslims to defend themselves from these acts. The loud exclusion from ISIS is not out of pure peaceful thinking. As much as there is trouble in the west today. There is trouble with Islamic teachings that have been fostered negatively inside our cultures for decades if not centuries. I cannot point to when did this start and where. I do understand this Islamic pride that has been defeated after ruling half of the world for centuries. There is something about Islam that turned into an act of mystification from one side, and surrounded itself with conspiracy thinking from the other side, that it ended up isolating Muslims inside a wall of conspiracies aired with mystified history that eventually lost sense with itself.

The problem here is that we cannot blame anyone on this. I cannot even blame those Islamic scholars and muftis of the past century, because they contributed to the time they lived in. the problem is with us today, who insist on handling ourselves through the teachings of the past that in depth doesn’t have to do with islam in its basic teaching, if we agree that the Quran is the base of islam. Those people worked effortlessly back then to explain, to put rules, whatever it may be that suited their time and undoubtedly was needed. When one sees that engine of mind- debates among scholars that went on to decades and even centuries to agree or defy or accept or denounce an idea, one cannot but respect how the Islamic mind was effectively working.

Today … Muslim scholars don’t think. They decide to adopt older teachings and apply it to today’s life and persuade us that this was God given choice.

When Muslims rushed in putting the French flag in solidarity. It was an act of telling the world we are not ISIS. But somewhere the hypocrisy of the act was overwhelming. How come a Muslim agrees that Muslims and not making a statement kill another Muslim in Syria and Iraq and elsewhere? Why did the Muslim world fell so easily upon the creation of Da’esh inside the Sunni –Shiites dispute this way? How can a Muslim sympathize to the killing of a French (in this case) and show no remorse to the killings of Muslims in Yemen?

If you cannot sympathize with another Muslim, how can you be genuine in your sympathy with the French in this case? If you believe that this “other” Muslim is deserving to die because of his “different” ways in believing in the same religion you hold, how can anyone believe that you really felt the sorrow in the killings of the “French” people.

Why do we have to prove that we are not like that?

The answer is as simple as that we need to look deep inside our own fears of Da’esh. Da’esh is an outcome of an education and a culture of tribal thinking, patriarchal systems, and conspiracy thinking that dominates the walls of our very own homes.

I have to admit, each time I see a profile picture of a Palestinian, an Egyptian, an Arab, any Arab with the French flag I feel like, and it’s time to block. If we are a nation that lacks empathy with its own people, how can we ever be believed with our emotions towards the others, that we believe that they are in their very best “infidels”?

There is so much that needs to be changed within the Islamic structure of education, that should start by burning all Islamic teaching books except the Qur’an, and start reading it and contemplating about life and Islam within it. The more we work on this, the less complicate Islam will appear. The closer we get to a God that truly is a Creator. No a God that is prejudiced and full of rage.

We claim to be believers, when we really have so many blocks of rocks in our believes that has nothing to do with faith in what we claim faith is.

I feel sorry for the victims of today in Mali, and a few days ago in Nigeria, and the daily victims in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere where we don’t bother to even see.

I want to apologize for the continuous deterioration of the Muslim mind of today. I apologize for the ignorance that is so intensely built inside Muslim minds of today.

God said in the Qur’an: “Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves”.

It is not the “Islamic terror” that we need to defy . It is the terror in our everyday teaching of intolerance, conspiracy thinking, and mystification of the past that we need to defy ..

Da’esh is an outcome of what is boiled in our heads.

via Da’esh that is fostered in our minds

This Week in Egypt: Week 47- 2017 ( Nov13-19)

Ali H. Soufan ✔@Ali_H_Soufan
With everything going on in the Middle East, it is appalling that the United States has no ambassador in Jordan, Turkey, Egypt, Qatar or Saudi Arabia, just to name few. https://twitter.com/ali_h_soufan/status/931529269142048768
9:48 AM – Nov 17, 2017

Nervana

Top Headlines

  • Egypt’s Sisi: No one can touch Egypt’s share of Nile waters
  • Lebanon’s Hariri to visit on Tuesday
  • Arab League: Iran’s regional threats have crossed all limits
  • Egypt-Gaza border opens under PA control for first time in a decade
  • Head of Sinai’s Arish city security forces survives assassination attempt
  • Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood leader loses appeal against life sentence

 Main Headlines

 Monday 

Tuesday

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Trump lashes out at UCLA basketball players: ‘I should have left them in jail’

11-year old #TraitorTrump #TantrumTrump

4500.jpg?w=300&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&f

US president attacks father of one of three UCLA players arrested for shoplifting in China, after he questioned Trump’s role in resolving the matter

Days after claiming credit for ensuring that three UCLA college basketball players were released after being arrested for shoplifting in China, Donald Trump tweeted that “I should have left them in jail!”

The US president lashed out at LaVar Ball, the father of one of the arrested players, for questioning how instrumental the president was in resolving the incident.

Continue reading…

Israel legalises confiscating private Palestinian land for settlement use

What is our is ours and what used to be yours is now ours – nah, nah, nah, nah. Israel leadership now believes it can totally ignore rights of Palestinians without fear of interference.

Bethlehem/PNN/

Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit yesterday announced that confiscating private Palestinian land to be used for settlement projects is legal, Israeli media reported.

The Israeli TV Channel 7 said that the private lands are to be confiscated for building infrastructure projects, including paving roads for the illegal settlements.

Mandelblit’s opinion came after demands from the Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked during a discussion on an access road project, which is currently being paved, for the illegal settlement of Harsha.

In a statement reported by the Israeli Ynet News, Shaked said: “The Iaraeli justice minister welcomes this decision that constitutes another stage in the implementation of the rights of hundreds of thousands of residents of Judea and Samaria [occupied West Bank].”

She also said, according to the statement, that she “will continue to promote a re-examination of previous legal positions on the regulation of construction in Judea and Samaria.”

Last October, the Israeli Supreme Court accepted a petition filed by the Palestinian residents of the town of Silwad in the outskirts of Ramallah against building a settlement on their land.

In February, the Israeli Knesset approved a bill which aimed to regulate the status of hundreds of illegal settlements built on private lands in the occupied West Bank.

The bill stipulates transferring the right to use the land to the commissioner of the Israeli government until a peace deal is reached between the Palestinians and Israel.

Mandelblit did not accept this bill then and said it would not represent the state in the Supreme Court, saying it was illegal even after it was modified. He also called for the Supreme Court to freeze all the confiscation orders of private Palestinian land.

The reversal of his opinion , is considered a greenlight for the Israeli authorities to continue to confiscate private Palestinian land.

Erekat : we will put on hold all our communications with this American administration

Bethlehem/PNN/

Saeb Erekat , secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) Executive Committee, said that if the American administrations close PLO offices in Washington, D.C., we will put on hold all our communications with this American administration.”

Erekat  added that “the US State Department notified us with an official letter that they cannot certify the continuance opening of the PLO office in Washington D.C. due to the fact that we are pursuing and encouraging the ICC (International Criminal Court).”

“This is very unfortunate and unacceptable. This is the pressure being exerted on this administration from the Netanyahu government. At a time we are trying to cooperate to achieve the ultimate deal they take such steps which will undermine the whole peace process,” said Erekat.

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