The White House Creates Tech Bias Form - Report Censorship of Conservatives

As most people have probably noticed by now, Social Media platforms are targeting big-time conservatives and others who don't toe the liberal line.  They are being suspended in droves, many forever, from Twitter and Facebook, often for no good reason.

If you spend any time on Twitter you will also notice that many of your fellow conservative followers wind up in what has been coined Twitter Jail. Most have no clue what landed them there and Twitter usually doesn't let you know. Those with a large following are usually targeted more than those of us with few followers, but even I wound up being blocked by Twitter from posting during the Kavanaugh hearings last year. One day I discovered I had been locked out for alleged suspicious behavior. After contacting them I received an email claiming my account had exhibited "automated behavior" that violated Twitter rules. I had to jump through a zillion hoops to prove I was not a spammer, and my account was finally unlocked- right after the hearings ended. Interesting timing. I was unable to post for days, even though I had immediately provided everything they had requested. Maybe my case wasn't censorship, but it sure felt like it. Ever see those "Caution: This account is temporarily restricted" notices. Yep, usually conservatives. And even though there are liberal celebrities and others who post vile things on Twitter, rarely if ever are they suspended. It's so obvious who they are censoring.

Many times it's the result of some snowflake liberal who reports someone for something they took offense to.  This kid on Twitter got a gay conservative suspended forever because @GayPatriot responded to someone with the word "tranny". He is so proud of what he did he pinned the post where he confessed to being the one who took @GayPatriot down.

I fear this is going to get worse especially if the Democrats take control of the White House and Senate.  It is imperative we don't lose in 2020.

In the meantime, for what it's worth, the White House has created a tech bias form where you can report any censorship.  Do it now.  It's so important to make sure our voices are not silenced before it's too late.

Report here.

Iranians Posed As Anti-Trump Americans On Facebook- Accounts deleted

Looks like Iran was following the Russian bot playbook to influence American politics, but in this case it was anti-Trump.  According to The Daily Caller, 

Facebook on Friday deleted 82 pages, groups and accounts that it determined were part of an online influence operation located in Iran.

The Iranians operated 30 Facebook pages, 33 individual accounts and three groups, as well as 16 accounts on Facebook-owned Instagram, Facebook head of cybersecurity policy Nathaniel Gleicher said in a statement Friday.

The pages had over a combined 1 million followers and the groups had more than 25,000 members, Gleicher said.

Facebook provided several examples of the Iranian propaganda, which promoted former National Football League (NFL) quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s activism while criticizing President Donald Trump and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

For more info and photos of some of the memes posted on various accounts that have been deleted- like Wake Up America and No Racism No War read on Daily Caller.

Turkish Court Tells Facebook To Block Pages Insulting Mohammed, Or Else.

The Turkish government is demanding that Facebook block all pages that insult Mohammed, or else. Yes, the country that wants to join the E.U. continues to prove its unworthiness.

A Turkish court has ordered Facebook to block pages deemed insulting to the Prophet Mohammed, threatening to shut down the social media network indefinitely if it ignores the directive, state media said Monday.

The ruling came after Turkish prosecutors investigated the social media pages following a deadly attack on the Paris offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Jan. 7.

The court ruled on Sunday that Facebook would be shut down altogether in Turkey if it fails to implement the order, state-run Anatolia news agency reported.

They also targeted a newspaper, the daily Cumhuriyet, for printing some Charlie Hebdo cartoons in support of freedom of speech.

It wouldn't be the first time social media has been blocked, if it comes to that.

Twitter and YouTube were temporarily blocked in Turkey last year after both platforms were used by opponents of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to post allegations of corruption within his inner circle.

More on Al Arabiya.

Islamist Group On Facebook Claims Responsibility For Murder of Bangladeshi Professor

More tolerance from some enlightened Muslims.

A Facebook page, apparently representing an unknown militant group, has claimed the responsibility of killing Rajshahi University professor Shafiul Islam.

The page, Ansar al Islam Bangladesh 2, claimed to have executed the social science professor within hour of his death. Shafiul was hacked to death outside his house in the Chauddapai area of Rajshahi city on Saturday afternoon. He died several hours later while undergoing treatment.

Ansar al Islam Bangladesh 2 posted the announcement at 7:09pm, Saturday. The page was created hours after the killing of Professor Shafiul Islam, claiming responsibility.

Ansar_Al_Islam

"Our Mujahideens have killed an 'atheist' of Rajshahi University who had banned wearing burqa in his department," the status read.

It also warned all the "anti-Islam" people and non-believers of dire consequences.

The photographs of slain professor Shafiul Islam, blogger Rajib Haider and Ashraful Alam are crossed in red ink with one word as caption under each stating, "Finished".

Apart from the three photographs, blogger Ashif Mohiuddin and Rakib Mamun are also seen on the Facebook page, with text suggesting that there has already been an attempt and a second one is coming.

I reported the page for inciting violence, but within a very short time received notification that the page did not violate community standards. The page is in Bengali. Do you think they bothered trying to translate any of the page? No. In spite of the fact that there are a bunch of photos crossed out with red. And this is posted in the about section, in English:

We are the Helpers of Shariah in Bangladesh. We are Mujahideen fi Sabilillah.

Facebook is too concerned with taking down anti-Islam pages.

Source: Dhaka Tribune

7 Saudi Men Sentenced For Posting About Protests On Facebook

According to Human Rights Watch, seven Saudi men were sentenced from 5 to 10 years in jail (plus travel bans) for criticizing the government on Facebook. They were arrested in 2011, and have only now been sentenced.

Saudi authorities arrested the men between September 23 and 26, 2011, then detained them in the General Investigations Prison in Damman for a year and a half before charging them and putting them on trial on April 29. They were tried before the Specialized Criminal Court, set up in 2008 to deal with terrorism-related cases. Authorities did not accuse the seven of directly participating in protests, and the court failed to investigate their allegations that intelligence officers tortured them into signing confessions.

[snip]

In the court judgment, which Human Rights Watch obtained, the charges against the seven varied. But the court convicted them all of joining Facebook pages to “incite protests, illegal gathering, and breaking allegiance with the king” and of “assisting and encouraging these calls and corresponding with the [Facebook pages’] followers and concealing them.” All seven were also convicted of violating article 6 of the Anti-Cyber Crime Law, which prohibits producing, sending, or storing any material via an information network that “harms public order.”

Abd al-Hamid al-Amer received the longest sentence for founding two Facebook pages

None of the charges accused the seven of using or advocating violence, as the presiding judge confirmed in the judgment, saying, “Breaking allegiance [with the king] comes by way of arms and it comes by way of protests, marches, and writing articles and publications … the behavior of the [second] course … is sometimes the more dangerous and more malicious method.”

The Facebook groups that prosecutors cited, including the “al-Ahsa March 4 Youth Movement” and “The Free Men of al-Ahsa,” arose in early 2011 after the authorities arrested Tawfiq al-Amer, a prominent Shia sheikh and religious leader in the al-Ahsa region of Eastern Province who had publicly called for a constitutional monarchy. His arrest provoked widespread protests and the authorities arrested dozens of his supporters in al-Ahsa in March 2011. The same court sentenced the sheikh to four years in prison in April 2013 and banned him from writing and public speaking.

The seven men all admitted to participating in the Facebook pages in support of al-Amer, but told the court they were unaware that it was a crime. They denied having any intention to break allegiance with the king or harm public order.

More details here, including the list of the seven men and their sentences.

Muslim Arab Writer Gets Facebook Account Closed For Post Critical of Palestine

Khaled Abu Toameh, an Arab Muslim who writes for the Jerusalem Post, posted on his Facebook page an article he wrote entitled : The Palestinian Authority's Inconvenient Truths that was published on The Gatestone Institute website.  We're talking about the Palestinian Authority (PA) of so-called 'moderate' Mahmoud Abbas, friend of the West.

In the article, Toameh accuses the PA of a plethora of corruption and embarrassments that it's hiding from the West. Here are a few snippets, or "inconvenient truths" as he puts it:

- Over 100 senior PLO and Fatah officials hold Israeli-issued VIP cards that grant them various privileges denied to most Palestinians. Among these privileges is the freedom to enter Israel and travel abroad at any time they wish. This privileging has existed since the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO in 1993.

- Out of the 600 Christians from the Gaza Strip who arrived in the West Bank in the past two weeks to celebrate Christmas, dozens have asked to move to Israel because they no longer feel comfortable living under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

[snip]

- Tens of thousands of Palestinian Authority civil servants in the Gaza Strip receive salaries to stay at home and not work. The practice has been in effect since Hamas seized control over the Gaza Strip in 2007. According to Fatah spokesman Ahmed Assaf, the Palestinian Authority, which is funded mostly by American and European taxpayer money, spends around $120 million each month on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

- Mahmoud Abbas's ruling Fatah faction has allocated more than one million dollars for celebrations marking the 48th anniversary of the "launching of the revolution" -- a reference to the first armed attack carried out by Fatah against Israel.

Those are just a few mentioned in his commentary.

As you can well imagine, that did not sit well with some individuals who read that post (along with several other ones critical of  Middle Eastern regimes including Jordan), so Facebook closed his account, as FB is apt to do when faced with complaints that are justified or not.  Toameh then contacted Committee For Accuracy in  Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) telling them about his ordeal.

"In the past few days I have been bombarded with dozens of hate and threat messages because of the these postings and articles. Some anti-Israel folks in the UK are now publishing my photo with a Star of David on my forehead."

Not surprising at all.

CAMERA updated their report claiming his Facebook account has been reactivated, sans the PA corruption post. According to Toameh, Hamas and other terrorist groups have FB accounts.  The difference is, they probably don't have a bunch of haters flagging their accounts.

So much for freedom of speech.

Closet Republican Has A Facebook Page

If Ayatollah Ali Khamenei can have a Facebook page, so can I.  Actually, a conservative reader approached me about putting one together so I have him to thank.  Since I can't sign up as an administrator by "liking" the page from my personal Facebook account or my photography fan page, for obvious reasons, he will take care of maintaining it.

If you care to, head on over to Confessions of a Closet Republican and "like" my page I'd be delighted. 

Hypocrite Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Has A Facebook Fan Page

So Iran's head Mullah, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, now has a Facebook fan page with 14,600 fans and counting. And that's just since its creation on December 13. Ironic, considering the Iranian government believes Facebook is a Zionist entity and Khamenei's own people are blocked from accessing it, except for those who have ways of skirting the blocks. Hypocrite. Actually, they might also still believe that Facebook is a  CIA and Mossad front, unless they finally discovered that The Onion's satirical piece that PressTV (the Iranian government's mouthpiece) reported as its own, was bogus.

But Facebook isn't the Ayatollah's first and only foray into the social media world, according to RFE/RL.org old Ali also has a Twitter account, and joined Google+ and Instagram. He also has his own fancy website- with 13 language options including Swahili, no less.

Iranian journalist Hadi Nili says the Islamic establishment uses different means to spread its message and reach out to supporters around the globe.

"For the same reason that Iran launches the English-language PressTV or a Hispanic TV station for Spanish speakers or Arabic channels," Nili says, "it uses Facebook and Twitter, which are cheap and easy to use."

Nili believes Khamenei's page is more likely to attract foreign viewers than Iranian Facebook users, who might not give it such a warm welcome.

But if Khamenei's latest video post is any indication, the bulk are Iranian. At least, as far as I can tell. The shared YouTube video, entitled 'New Middle East, Islamic Middle East' has over 120 FB shares, over 1,000 likes, and over 1,900 comments. It shows Condoleezza Rice in 2006 talking about the New Middle East:

"....whatever we do, we have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old one. What we're seeing here, in a sense is the growing- the birth pangs of a new Middle East."

Then there's the typical anti-Israel rhetoric, through photos and news clips including the following prediction:

The issue of Palestine is an Islamic issue. Based on the Truths that Allah the exalted has ordained, there is no doubt that a new Middle East will be formed.  This new Middle East will be the Islamic Middle East.

This implies, no doubt, a Middle East sans Israel. Something both the Iranian government and the Palestinians have been dreaming of for decades.

There are many secular and freedom loving Iranians with Facebook accounts, and many activists armed with cellphones used Facebook and Twitter during the 2009 protests to upload videos showing the brutality of the crackdown, but posting on Facebook can get you arrested if you get caught.

Those activities are seen as a threat by Iranian officials, who have already targeted a number of activists over their Facebook posts. Blogger Sattar Beheshti, who last month died in custody, was reportedly arrested over his Facebook activism.

Abdolsamad Khoramabadi, an Iranian official with the state-run body in charge of online censorship and computer crimes, said earlier this year that posting materials on Facebook that are considered immoral, contravene sacred Islamic principles, or disrupt security and peace is considered a crime.

Check out the comments, there are some in English.

Unfortunately, it looks like the new Middle East is headed towards becoming an Islamic Middle East, and I fear for Israel.

Facebook is a CIA front! Iran's PressTV Buys Into The Onion's Story

Facebook is a CIA front, Mark Zuckerberg is a CIA agent, and he just received a prestigious award from the spy agency for his work with Facebook. That's what the satire website The Onion would have you believe. Sadly, there are many clueless people who don't realize that anything posted on The Onion is for entertainment purposes only, including the Iranian state-owned PressTV. The 24 hour English language news network, based in Tehran, glommed onto that bit of false information and actually referenced it as fact. Ha.

However, I wouldn't be surprised if conspiracy-theorists out there actually believe there is truth in the story, in spite of the source.

It's pretty darn funny, though.



Here's the original The Onion video.
Here's the original PressTV video.

Iran's Cyberpolice Arrest Four Facebook Page Administrators Over Beauty Competition

It looks like Iran's cyberpolice have nothing better to do than target young Iranians just trying to have a little fun on Facebook.  After inviting its 27,000 or so fans to take part in a 'hot' Iranian beauty competition, the cyberpolice tracked down the four administrators (two men and two women) of "Daaf and Paaf) and promptly arrested them.

The chief of the cyberpolice, Kamal Hadian, made the announcement on January 30 in a press conference in Tehran.

He said the force had “destroyed” the group, which he accused of spreading corruption and immorality.

The cyberpolice also posted a note on the group's Facebook wall in which it said that the two women and two men who administered the page have confessed to their crimes.

“In the name of God, we inform you that the page 'Daaf and Paaf' is now under the control of [the cyberpolice]," the note said. "The four main managers of this group have been identified and arrested on the charge of inciting and encouraging individuals to access vulgar content through the Internet."

Because beauty, of course, is vulgar.

I wasn't able to track down the Facebook page, but apparently FB users struck back:

“You...took away the right of the youth to be happy in the streets; they are all sitting at home spending their days and nights having online fun. Now you have an issue with this too?" wrote one user.

Others targeted Iran’s supreme leader with comments such as “Down with Khamenei! Down with the dictator!”

Many fear that those who posted their pictures on the Daaf and Paaf wall will be targeted next.

Iranian Cleric Claims Facebook Is Un-Islamic and Membership a Sin

According to Ayatollah Lotfollah Safi-Golpaygani, a senior Iranian cleric, Facebook is un-Islamic, because, you know, they had the internet back in Mohammad's time and the Quran specifically states that the social networking empire was haram (forbidden).  Or maybe it's in the hadiths somewhere. At any rate it's a no-no.

And since he deems it un-Islamic to own a Facebook page, it's therefore a sin:

"Basically, going to any website which propagates immoralities and could weaken the religious belief is un-Islamic and not allowed, and membership in it is therefore haram (a sin)," the ayatollah replied.

"Only the use of websites propagating religious criteria and not leading to any kind of ethical immoralities is of no problem," he added.

As of October last year, the official estimate of FB users was 17 million, though that figure is probably inaccurate given the fact that many young Iranians have found ways to get around the severe restrictions placed on internet use in that country. 

Over 5 million websites are reportedly blocked in Iran, but Iranians use proxy software and virtual private networks (VPN) to access them.

Iranian officials have, for over three decades, been waging what they call a "battle against the invasion of Western culture."

This has led to blockades of "immoral" internet sites and banned Western music and movies. However, pirated versions of those are easily available on the black market.

Where there's a will, as they say.

So, with a population of about 70 million people, approximately 25% or so of Iranians are sinners.

Bangladeshi Man Sentenced To 6 Months In Jail For Facebook Status

More from Bangladesh.

I bet Ruhul Khandakar, a Bangladeshi man currently teaching at a university in Australia, never thought a post on Facebook would get him into so much trouble back home, but it did. 6 months in jail for writing:

“Tareq Masud died as a result of government giving licence to unqualified drivers. Many die, why does not Sheikh Hasina die?”

Tareq Masud was a famous Bangladeshi award-winning, indie filmmaker who was killed in August, 2011 in a head-on collision with a bus. Four others died, and his wife was seriously injured.  Sheikh Hasina happens to be the Prime Minister. Oops.

Obviously, the status is gone from his Facebook page, but since he never showed up for court appearances in Bangladesh (kind of hard to do when you're living in Australia) he was sentenced to 6 months for contempt.  They're also trying to get him fired by demanding the university 'take action against him'.