17-10-2010, 09:31 PM
Google censors article on censorship
June 3, 6:40 PM
Google for the first time has censored one of my examiner.com articles on its main search engine. Most intriguing is that this case of censorship originates in a very inspiring news event.
My censored article, published on examiner.com one week ago today, told about the wonderfully refreshing story of Stanford professor Ronald Levy being the first ever Jewish recipient of the Arab equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize. It's a very encouraging development which you think would be widely reported. Yet as pointed out in my article, there was practically no media coverage of this heartening news.
A careful Google search showed that the only major U.S. or English-language European media to report this landmark event was Reuters. Yet even the Reuters article completely failed to mention Levy's Jewish heritage and the incredible significance of a Jew being awarded the prestigious $200,000 prize for the very first time.
It's quite interesting that the only major media source I found anywhere which reported this wonderful peace overture from Saudi Arabia was Israel's respected daily Haaretz, which posted a detailed and optimistic article titled "U.S. professor becomes first Jew to win 'Arab Nobel Prize'".
This media censorship in itself was astonishing, but I was even more astounded when the day after I published this article, I could not find it in a Google search. I often check Google after I publish articles to see how each article is listed, and to check its ranking. Every article I have ever checked usually shows up on the main Google search page within 12 hours, and always within 24 hours. Why on Earth did Google censor this particular article for the first time?
You can verify this for yourself. It's now been over a week and Google still has not indexed the article. Go to my article at this link. Take any string of 10 words or so in length (other than the quote from Haaretz and the first paragraph). Copy the string of words into the search box at http://www.google.com and put quotation marks at the beginning and end of the string of words. When you then click the search button, you will likely find no results, and certainly no results with that article. (Example here)
You can do this with any other article I've written for examiner.com before that one, and it will show up in the search. Note that if you do a search on the title or first paragraph of my article, you will find that a number of other websites reported the article, giving only the title and an introduction, and were listed on Google.
Since I posted that article, I've written three other, non-related articles. Two of those posted normally to Google, but the one on CIA mind control programs is now the second article ever not to be listed. So it appears I may now have someone monitoring which of my articles get indexed and which don't. On Google's specialized search for news, this kind of censorship of some of my more sensitive articles has been going on for a long time, but now it is happening on their regular searches, too.
[Update June 4th: Not long after I posted this message at 4:40 PM PDT yesterday, the article on the CIA was indexed on Google. On checking this morning, the nobel prize censorship article still had not been indexed. I checked again at 1 PM and it was indexed! Yea!!! Thanks to all who contacted Google. I also sent a call-to-action message on this to our WantToKnow.info emial list of over 6,000 subscribers this morning, so that may have played a role, too. Together, we make a difference!]
Why all the censorship?
Why did Google censor this article? Many people are not aware that the military and intelligence services have embedded key agents in all major media organizations (including Google and Yahoo) to monitor what is reported. Often, these agents work under cover. They are hired on as regular staff, yet secretly they are working for the military, FBI, or CIA to influence news selection and content. I highly suspect that these agents somehow censored my article at Google (and Yahoo) and may even have had a role in the original inspiring article not being published.
For one clear example of this, read the Project Censored news article titled "Embedded in media, U.S. Army’s Psychological Operations Personnel Worked at CNN." Here's a quote from that article:
"Psyops personnel, soldiers, and officers, have been working in CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta through our program ‘Training With Industry,’" Major Thomas Collins of the U.S. Army Information Service said in a telephone interview. Collins asserted, "They worked as regular employees of CNN. They helped in the production of news." The military/CNN personnel belonged to the airmobile Fourth Psychological Operations Group stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. One of the main tasks of this group of almost 1,200 soldiers and officers is to spread “selected information."
Two New York Times articles also reveal infiltration of the media. The first describes "an extensive and largely hidden Pentagon campaign to transform network military analysts into 'surrogates' and 'message force multipliers'". The second, titled "Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand," states:
"Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity ... is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance. Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air."
To read key excerpts of these two revealing New York Times articles with links to the full originals on the Times website, click here and here.
In my work as a top language interpreter at the U.S. Department of State, I worked with a number of FBI agents and military officers of all ranks. I probably encountered a number of CIA agents, as well, though they are careful never to admit it. I learned from a few of these insiders first-hand how politics is sometimes manipulated in big ways to profit those in power at the expense of the public.
Though I think there is a need for organizations like our military and intelligence services to protect the public and prevent violent groups from endangering public safety, I find the excessive secrecy and blatant manipulation of public perception in which these agencies engage to actually work against the public interest. Too often, they end up supporting the interests and war agenda of the power elite, while neglecting the interests of the general public. Why do you think they might want to censor inspiring articles on Jewish-Arab relations? Could such articles defeat their war agenda?
Katharine Graham, former owner of the Washington Post, once commented, "We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows." For more on this, click here. Thankfully blossoming citizen-based Internet news websites like examiner.com and articles like this are increasingly breaking through this blatant media and Internet censorship.
The box immediately below provides several ideas on what you can do to further educate yourself on these important matters and work to stop the censorship. Note that though it is very difficult to contact Google directly, you can leave messages on their "Help Forum" at this link or this one, asking them to reinstate my original article and stop censoring others. I also invite you to comment below and let me know what you think. Should the military and intelligence services be able to censor our news? Why do you think they censored the inspiring article on a Jewish professor winning a major Arab prize?
What you can do:
* Inform your media and political representatives of this important information. To contact those close to you, click here. Urge them to discuss news censorship by military and intelligence agencies and to work to stop this disempowering behavior.
* Contact Google and Yahoo and insist that they not censor news articles from reliable news sources, and that they keep the military and intelligence services out of the process.
* Learn more about media censorship in this powerful lesson from the free Insight Course.
* Read concise summaries of revealing media reports revealing censorship available here.
* Visit our Media Information Center at http://www.WantToKnow.info/mediainformation.
* Spread this news to your friends and colleagues, and bookmark this article on key news websites using the icons listed below so that we can fill the role at which the major media is sadly failing. Together, we can make a difference.
Fred Burks served as personal language interpreter to Clinton, Bush, Cheney, Gore, and other top dignitaries in secret meetings. As part of an international network of researchers and news analysts, Fred obtains and disseminates key, reliable information about powerful, yet little-known forces which shape our world.
June 3, 6:40 PM
Google for the first time has censored one of my examiner.com articles on its main search engine. Most intriguing is that this case of censorship originates in a very inspiring news event.
My censored article, published on examiner.com one week ago today, told about the wonderfully refreshing story of Stanford professor Ronald Levy being the first ever Jewish recipient of the Arab equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize. It's a very encouraging development which you think would be widely reported. Yet as pointed out in my article, there was practically no media coverage of this heartening news.
A careful Google search showed that the only major U.S. or English-language European media to report this landmark event was Reuters. Yet even the Reuters article completely failed to mention Levy's Jewish heritage and the incredible significance of a Jew being awarded the prestigious $200,000 prize for the very first time.
It's quite interesting that the only major media source I found anywhere which reported this wonderful peace overture from Saudi Arabia was Israel's respected daily Haaretz, which posted a detailed and optimistic article titled "U.S. professor becomes first Jew to win 'Arab Nobel Prize'".
This media censorship in itself was astonishing, but I was even more astounded when the day after I published this article, I could not find it in a Google search. I often check Google after I publish articles to see how each article is listed, and to check its ranking. Every article I have ever checked usually shows up on the main Google search page within 12 hours, and always within 24 hours. Why on Earth did Google censor this particular article for the first time?
You can verify this for yourself. It's now been over a week and Google still has not indexed the article. Go to my article at this link. Take any string of 10 words or so in length (other than the quote from Haaretz and the first paragraph). Copy the string of words into the search box at http://www.google.com and put quotation marks at the beginning and end of the string of words. When you then click the search button, you will likely find no results, and certainly no results with that article. (Example here)
You can do this with any other article I've written for examiner.com before that one, and it will show up in the search. Note that if you do a search on the title or first paragraph of my article, you will find that a number of other websites reported the article, giving only the title and an introduction, and were listed on Google.
Since I posted that article, I've written three other, non-related articles. Two of those posted normally to Google, but the one on CIA mind control programs is now the second article ever not to be listed. So it appears I may now have someone monitoring which of my articles get indexed and which don't. On Google's specialized search for news, this kind of censorship of some of my more sensitive articles has been going on for a long time, but now it is happening on their regular searches, too.
[Update June 4th: Not long after I posted this message at 4:40 PM PDT yesterday, the article on the CIA was indexed on Google. On checking this morning, the nobel prize censorship article still had not been indexed. I checked again at 1 PM and it was indexed! Yea!!! Thanks to all who contacted Google. I also sent a call-to-action message on this to our WantToKnow.info emial list of over 6,000 subscribers this morning, so that may have played a role, too. Together, we make a difference!]
Why all the censorship?
Why did Google censor this article? Many people are not aware that the military and intelligence services have embedded key agents in all major media organizations (including Google and Yahoo) to monitor what is reported. Often, these agents work under cover. They are hired on as regular staff, yet secretly they are working for the military, FBI, or CIA to influence news selection and content. I highly suspect that these agents somehow censored my article at Google (and Yahoo) and may even have had a role in the original inspiring article not being published.
For one clear example of this, read the Project Censored news article titled "Embedded in media, U.S. Army’s Psychological Operations Personnel Worked at CNN." Here's a quote from that article:
"Psyops personnel, soldiers, and officers, have been working in CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta through our program ‘Training With Industry,’" Major Thomas Collins of the U.S. Army Information Service said in a telephone interview. Collins asserted, "They worked as regular employees of CNN. They helped in the production of news." The military/CNN personnel belonged to the airmobile Fourth Psychological Operations Group stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. One of the main tasks of this group of almost 1,200 soldiers and officers is to spread “selected information."
Two New York Times articles also reveal infiltration of the media. The first describes "an extensive and largely hidden Pentagon campaign to transform network military analysts into 'surrogates' and 'message force multipliers'". The second, titled "Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand," states:
"Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity ... is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance. Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air."
To read key excerpts of these two revealing New York Times articles with links to the full originals on the Times website, click here and here.
In my work as a top language interpreter at the U.S. Department of State, I worked with a number of FBI agents and military officers of all ranks. I probably encountered a number of CIA agents, as well, though they are careful never to admit it. I learned from a few of these insiders first-hand how politics is sometimes manipulated in big ways to profit those in power at the expense of the public.
Though I think there is a need for organizations like our military and intelligence services to protect the public and prevent violent groups from endangering public safety, I find the excessive secrecy and blatant manipulation of public perception in which these agencies engage to actually work against the public interest. Too often, they end up supporting the interests and war agenda of the power elite, while neglecting the interests of the general public. Why do you think they might want to censor inspiring articles on Jewish-Arab relations? Could such articles defeat their war agenda?
Katharine Graham, former owner of the Washington Post, once commented, "We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows." For more on this, click here. Thankfully blossoming citizen-based Internet news websites like examiner.com and articles like this are increasingly breaking through this blatant media and Internet censorship.
The box immediately below provides several ideas on what you can do to further educate yourself on these important matters and work to stop the censorship. Note that though it is very difficult to contact Google directly, you can leave messages on their "Help Forum" at this link or this one, asking them to reinstate my original article and stop censoring others. I also invite you to comment below and let me know what you think. Should the military and intelligence services be able to censor our news? Why do you think they censored the inspiring article on a Jewish professor winning a major Arab prize?
What you can do:
* Inform your media and political representatives of this important information. To contact those close to you, click here. Urge them to discuss news censorship by military and intelligence agencies and to work to stop this disempowering behavior.
* Contact Google and Yahoo and insist that they not censor news articles from reliable news sources, and that they keep the military and intelligence services out of the process.
* Learn more about media censorship in this powerful lesson from the free Insight Course.
* Read concise summaries of revealing media reports revealing censorship available here.
* Visit our Media Information Center at http://www.WantToKnow.info/mediainformation.
* Spread this news to your friends and colleagues, and bookmark this article on key news websites using the icons listed below so that we can fill the role at which the major media is sadly failing. Together, we can make a difference.
Fred Burks served as personal language interpreter to Clinton, Bush, Cheney, Gore, and other top dignitaries in secret meetings. As part of an international network of researchers and news analysts, Fred obtains and disseminates key, reliable information about powerful, yet little-known forces which shape our world.
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"