What he really said…
Tag: ukraine
Orwell’s ‘Two Minutes Hate’ Becomes Reality as Facebook Now Allows Violence & Hate Directed at Russians
Over the last 6 years, Facebook, now Meta, has clamped down on any and all calls for violence by users on its platform. Users who advocated for violence were banned and some of them were reported to authorities in the company’s attempt to make its platform a more peaceful place. But all that has changed now as the world slips into a scene from George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984.
On Thursday night, Reuters reported that Meta Platforms will now allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russians in what they refer to as a “temporary change to its hate speech policy.”
Users can now openly advocate for the assassination of world leaders, so long as they are considered political enemies of the West. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko are fair game in Meta’s new world.
“As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine we have temporarily made allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules like violent speech such as ‘death to the Russian invaders.’ We still won’t allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement.
If the user gets too detailed about how and where they are going to kill these Russians, only then will Facebook and Instagram draw the line.
Citing the Reuters story, Russia’s US embassy demanded that Washington stop the “extremist activities” of Meta allowing its users to call for violence.
“Users of Facebook & Instagram did not give the owners of these platforms the right to determine the criteria of truth and pit nations against each other,” the embassy said on Twitter Thursday night in response to the change.
WHO advised Kiev to destroy disease-causing pathogens
The World Health Organization (WHO) has reportedly told Kiev to dispose of dangerous research materials kept in laboratories around the country to prevent the pathogens from being leaked or “accidentally” released.
The UN agency revealed the details behind its recommendation to Ukraine in statements to Reuters and Russia’s TASS news agency on Friday.
“As part of this work, WHO has strongly recommended to the Ministry of Health in Ukraine and other responsible bodies to destroy high-threat pathogens to prevent any potential spills,” the UN agency stated, as quoted by Reuters. It specified neither the nature of materials that should be destroyed, nor the date when it gave the advice.
The agency only reportedly told Reuters that it had been working with Kiev for “several years” to make sure “accidental or deliberate release of pathogens” never happens.
List of Ukraine biolab documents reportedly removed by US Embassy
Up until recently, the existence and details of these bioweapons labs were public knowledge. The US embassy had previously disclosed the locations and details of these laboratories in a series of PDF files online. On February 26, 2022, the official embassy website shut down the links to all 15 bioweapon laboratories.
All the documents associated with these labs have been removed from the internet. If you click on any of the links, the PDF files are no longer available. Thankfully, these files have been archived and can still be accessed.
Russian MoD on US Biolabs: One Goal Was to Create Bioagents That Can Target Certain Ethnic Groups
The Russian Defence Ministry earlier announced that the United States had poured money into biological research facilities in Ukraine, alleging they may have been used in order to create biological weapons and conduct bat coronavirus-related experiments.
Among the goals of the biological research laboratories in Ukraine suspected of having been funded by the United States was the creation of bioagents that would be capable of targeting certain ethnic groups, the Russian Defence Ministry revealed on Thursday.
“The available documents confirm numerous cases of the transfer of biological samples of Ukrainian citizens abroad. With a high degree of probability, we can say that one of the tasks of the United States and its allies is the creation of bioagents that can selectively affect various ethnic groups of the population”, said Igor Kirillov, the head of the Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Protection Troops of the Russian Armed Forces.
Kirillov said that 350 cryocontainers with blood serum samples were transferred from the Public Health Centre of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine to a reference laboratory for infectious diseases at Australia’s Doherty Institute under the pretext of determining antibody titers.
Umm… Are We The Baddies?
Reuters reports that Facebook and Instagram are now allowing calls for the death of Russians and Russian leaders in exemption from the platforms’ hate speech terms of service due to the war in Ukraine:
“Meta Platforms will allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion, according to internal emails seen by Reuters on Thursday, in a temporary change to its hate speech policy.”
Twitter has also altered its rules against incitement and death threats in the case of Russian leaders and military personnel, as Ben Norton explains here for Multipolarista.
Last month we also learned that Facebook is now allowing users to praise the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov Battalion because of the war, a move that is arguably the most liberal thing that has ever happened.
Western institutions everywhere are rejecting all things Russia with such a savage degree of xenophobia it really ought to shock anyone who was born after the 1800s. Everything from Russian athletes to Russian musicians to Russian-made films to Russian composers to Russian Netflix shows to lectures about Russian authors to Russian restaurants to Russian vodka to Russian-bred cats to Russian trees to dishes that sound a little too much like “Putin” have been cancelled to varying degrees around the western world.
Normally when the US and its allies are involved in a war they’ll at least pay lip service to the notion that they have nothing but good will for the people of the enemy nation, claiming they only oppose their oppressive rulers. With Russia it’s just a complete rejection of the entire culture, the entire ethnicity. It’s a widespread promotion of hatred for the actual people because of who they are.
These are the people who are being smashed with crushing economic sanctions while western pundits proclaim that “There are no more ‘innocent’ ‘neutral’ Russians anymore” and ask “At what point do you hold a people responsible for putting an evil despot in power?” This even as the Russian people are being arrested by the thousands in anti-war protests, putting to shame our own western society that has generally slept through war after war in the years since 9/11 while our militaries have been killing of millions of people.
The White House is briefing TikTok stars about the war in Ukraine
On Thursday afternoon, 30 top TikTok stars gathered on a Zoom call to receive key information about the war unfolding in Ukraine. National Security Council staffers and White House press secretary Jen Psaki briefed the influencers about the United States’ strategic goals in the region and answered questions on distributing aid to Ukrainians, working with NATO and how the United States would react to a Russian use of nuclear weapons.
As the crisis in Ukraine has escalated, millions have turned to TikTok for information on what is happening there in real time. TikTok videos offered some of the first glimpses of the Russian invasion and since then the platform has been a primary outlet for spreading news to the masses abroad. Ukrainian citizens hiding in bomb shelters or fleeing their homes have shared their stories to the platform, while dangerous misinformation and Russian propaganda have also spread. And TikTok stars, many with millions of followers, have increasingly sought to make sense of the crisis for their audiences.
The White House has been closely watching TikTok’s rise as a dominant news source, leading to its decision to approach a select group of the platform’s most influential names.
Meta changes policy, says Facebook and Instagram users may call for violence against Russians, Putin’s assassination
Users of Facebook and Instagram in certain countries will be temporarily allowed to call for and threaten violence against Russian citizens and Russian troops, according to a new report.
In a change to Meta‘s hate speech policy, users in these countries will be able to make such posts only in the context of Russia’s war in Ukraine, according to Reuters, citing internal emails.
“The social media company is also temporarily allowing some posts that call for death to Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in countries including Russia, Ukraine and Poland,” the report from Reuters says. “These calls for the leaders’ deaths will be allowed unless they contain other targets or have two indicators of credibility, such as the location or method.”
Gabbard: Ukrainian Labs Funded by U.S. ‘Need to Be Shut Down Immediately’
Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) weighed in on the report that the United States was operating biowarfare laboratories in Ukraine.
Gabbard slammed the Biden administration for covering up the existence of the labs and said she was “extremely concerned” should Russia seize control in its invasion of Ukraine.
“I’m extremely concerned, as should be every American and everyone in the world,” Gabbard stated. “The seriousness of this situation really can’t be overstated.”
“So, if there were or are, obviously that would be a violation of the Biological Weapons Convention,” she added. “Number two, they categorically have been trying to hide this, as you’ve laid out very, very well. And then once they were found out, rather than saying: Hey, you know what, this is a critical emergency, it’s a crisis. We have these pathogens in the midst of a warzone, not just in one location but between 20 and 30 labs in Ukraine. This is a global crisis. We’re going to take action immediately.”
Gabbard called for the labs to be “shut down immediately” because “they are posing a threat to the world.”
DuckDuckGo CEO Announces Google-Style Censorship Scheme of Content Deemed ‘Russian Disinformation’
DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg on Wednesday announced the rollout of a new Google-style censorship scheme to down-rank websites he says are “associated with Russian disinformation.”
“Like so many others I am sickened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the gigantic humanitarian crisis it continues to create. #StandWithUkraine️,” Weinberg tweeted. “At DuckDuckGo, we’ve been rolling out search updates that down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation.”
“In addition to down-ranking sites associated with disinformation, we also often place news modules and information boxes at the top of DuckDuckGo search results (where they are seen and clicked the most) to highlight quality information for rapidly unfolding topics,” he continued.
Hellbound and Down 
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