Category: Democracy Now
Somalia: Not Only a Somali Tragedy
worker | October 19, 2017 | 9:06 pm | Africa, Amy Goodman, Democracy Now, Juan Gonzalez | Comments closed

Somalia: Not Only a Somali Tragedy

AfricaFocus Bulletin October 19, 2017 (171019) (Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

“I think it’s really quite tragic that a strategy run from Washington, D.C., and from the European headquarters in Brussels pays so little attention when over 300 people are killed, massacred, and another 500 people are struggling for their lives, and that very little support comes from the United States and the European Union to help the Somali government clean up this, help the people who have been injured or people who have lost their parents or their children.” – Dr. Abdi Samatar

The disproportion in global attention, even in other African countries, paid to the truck bombing in Mogadishu, as compared to other horrific terrorist actions carried out in Europe or the United States, is shocking but not surprising, since it is part of a familiar scenario. But it is particularly egregious given the high level of responsibility of outsiders in crafting the failed counter-terrorist strategies in Somalia over decades. That responsibility is widely shared, including not only powers and international organizations outside Africa, but also the African Union and Somalia’s immediate neighbors.

This AfricaFocus features excerpts from a Democracy Now program on October 17, including the interview quoted above, as well as links to other relevant articles highlighting both insights into the massacre itself as well as the counterproductive effects of failed counter-terrorism strategies.

If you are able to contribute funds, please see the GoFundMe campaign posted by Sadia Aden for families of the victims of the Mogadishu Massacre. https://www.gofundme.com/lendhandMogadishuMassacre The GoFundMe campaign is coordinated by the Adar Foundation in Springfield, Virginia (http://adarfoundation.org/), which is a nonprofit 501(c)3 run by Sadia Ali Aden. She is a Somali American human rights advocate who publishes articles on Somalia in HuffPost and elsewhere.

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on Somalia, visit http://www.africafocus.org/country/somalia.php

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

The Mogadishu Massacre: Selected Articles Worth Noting

Jason Burke, “Thousands march in Somalia after attack that killed more than 300,” The Guardian, October 18, 2017 http://tinyurl.com/yd4y8mvw

“Thousands of Somalis have demonstrated against those behind the bombing that killed more than 300 people at the weekend, defying police who opened fire to keep them away from the site of the attack. Wearing red headbands, the crowd of mostly young men and women marched through Mogadishu amid tight security. They answered a call to unity by the mayor, Thabit Abdi, who said: ‘We must liberate this city, which is awash with graves.’The attack in the heart of Mogadishu on Saturday has been blamed on alShabaab, the local violent Islamist group, and was one of the most lethal terrorist operations anywhere in the world in recent years.”

Dr.Maryam Abdullah, among more than 300 killed in the     Mogadishu truck bombing, was due to graduate that same day     as a medical doctor after 6 yrs studying medicine.    

Jason Burke, “Mogadishu bombing: parents’ grief for medical student killed in blast,” The Guardian, October 16, 2017 http://tinyurl.com/y7sbvlfu

“On Saturday morning, Maryam Abdullahi Gedi made breakfast for her family, packed her books and laptop and set out across Mogadishu, the battered capital of Somalia, to see her supervisor at Banadir University about her thesis. She was excited about the prospect of her graduation as a medical doctor this week. Her father – who flew in from the UK to attend the ceremony – found himself at her funeral instead. Gedi, 24, was among more than 300 people killed in a massive bombing in the centre of the city on Saturday afternoon.”

Ibrahim Hirsi, “How Minnesota’s Somali community is mobilizing to help Mogadishu bombing victims,” Minnpost, October 18, 2017 http://tinyurl.com/ycqnvsda

“Minneapolis resident Ahmed Hirsi was only a few miles away from the powerful blast that killed hundreds of people in Mogadishu last Saturday. When he arrived on the scene, where a truck filled with explosives was detonated, Hirsi saw pavement covered in blood; bodies decapitated and shattered, burned beyond recognition. As the deadliest single attack in Somalia’s history, the explosions killed more than 300 people, including a Bloomington man — a death toll that’s expected to rise as crews continue to dig into the rubble for signs of life. Just hours before that fateful afternoon, Hirsi had posted smiling photos of himself on Facebook, urging young Somalis in the U.S., Europe and Canada to return to the East African country and get involved in efforts to rebuild it. On Monday, however, Hirsi returned to Minneapolis, still reeling from the shock of the bloody attacks that rocked Mogadishu, where he spent 10 days with a group invited by the Somali government to review parts of the country’s new constitution.

Alexis Okeowo, “Where is the Empathy for Somalia,” New Yorker, October 17, 2017 http://tinyurl.com/y9qqf2o9

“And so it was with a familiar disappointment that Somalis, within the country and among the diaspora, along with other concerned observers, watched as details of the attack failed to headline broadcast news or resonate globally on social media. There was no impromptu hashtag of solidarity, no deluge of television coverage. It was as if the bombing were just another incident in the daily life of Somalis—a burst of violence that would fade into all the other bursts of violence. The lack of public empathy was startling but not surprising.”

Amanda Sperber, “Shock and revulsion over Mogadishu bombing,” IRIN, October 16, 2017 http://tinyurl.com/y7yojlng

“The bomb was as enormous as the flecks of torn skin smudging the ground are miniscule. Entire overcrowded buses were blown up, every passenger killed. No one in the vicinity was spared: shopkeepers at the side of the road selling khat; office managers; children fooling around or running errands for parents; a medical student about to graduate; mothers; fathers; sisters; brothers. At approximately 3:30 on Saturday afternoon, a truck bomb was detonated in the middle of the traffic in Mogadishu’s Hodan district, next to the landmark Safari hotel, frequented by politicians and other Somali movers and shakers.”

 

Selected Related Sources on Violent Extremism

Obi Anyadike, “Unfair cop – why African police forces make violent extremism worse,” IRIN, September 28, 2017 http://tinyurl.com/yab9couf

“Undermanned, underfunded, underwhelming: African police forces struggle to contain regular crime, and they are even further out of their depth when it comes to tackling violent extremism. The best way to identify threats to public safety is a policing model that promotes trust and collaboration with the community, say the policy manuals on preventing violent extremism, better known as PVE. A positive relationship is believed to help build resilience to radicalisation. But the reality in much of the world is that the police are viewed as corrupt, violent, and people best avoided.”

UNDP, Journey to Extremism in Africa: Drivers, Incentives and the Tipping Point for Recruitment. 2017. 128-page research report, based primarily on data from Nigeria, Kenya, and Somalia. http://journey-to-extremism.undp.org/en/reports – Direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/y9g6n6qp

“The research specifically set out to discover what pushed a handful of individuals to join violent extremist groups, when many others facing similar sets of circumstances did not. This specific moment or factor is referred to as the ‘tipping point’. The idea of a transformative trigger that pushes individuals decisively from the ‘at-risk’ category to actually taking the step of joining is substantiated by the Journey to Extremism data. A striking 71 percent pointed to ‘government action’, including ‘killing of a family member or friend’ or ‘arrest of a family member or friend’, as the incident that prompted them to join. These findings throw into stark relief the question of how counter-terrorism and wider security functions of governments in at-risk environments conduct themselves with regard to human rights and due process. State security-actor conduct is revealed as a prominent accelerator of recruitment, rather than the reverse.”

Alexis Okeowo, A Moonless, Starless Sky: Ordinary Women Fighting Extremism in Africa. 2017. http://amzn.to/2xuy40W

From publisher’s description: “Okeowo weaves together four narratives that form a powerful tapestry of modern Africa: a young couple, kidnap victims of Joseph Kony’s LRA; a Mauritanian waging a lonely campaign against modern-day slavery; a women’s basketball team flourishing amid war-torn Somalia; and a vigilante who takes up arms against the extremist group Boko Haram.”

The Mogadishu Massacre in Somalia

Democracy Now, October 17, 2017

http://www.democracynow.org – Direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/ybu7fcgk

[Excerpts from transcript are below. Note that video and audio of the broadcast are also available at the link above.]

Rescue operations continue in Mogadishu, Somalia, after two massive truck bombs exploded Saturday, killing at least 300 in the country’s deadliest attack since the rise of the al-Shabab militant group a decade ago. The disaster is being referred to as the “Mogadishu massacre,” and some are calling it “the 9/11 of the Somali people.” The explosions came after the Trump administration stepped up a U.S. campaign against al-Shabab in Somalia. We speak with Somali scholar Abdi Samatar and journalist Amanda Sperber, who splits her time between Nairobi, Kenya, and Mogadishu, Somalia.

For more, we’re joined by Democracy Now! video stream by the Somali scholar and writer Abdi Samatar. He’s a professor of the Department of Geography, Environment & Society at the University of Minnesota, the author of Africa’s First Democrats: Somalia’s Aden A. Osman and Abdirazak H. Hussen. And joining us from Nairobi, Amanda Sperber, freelance journalist who splits her time between Nairobi, Kenya, and Mogadishu, Somalia. Her new article for IRIN News is headlined “Shock and revulsion over Mogadishu bombing.”

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Amanda, let’s begin with you in Nairobi, Kenya. Can you explain what you understand took place, the horrific attack that killed more than 300 people and injured roughly that same number?

AMANDA SPERBER: Yeah. I mean, it’s pretty much what you said. The attacks were horrific. The outcome has been devastating. To me, what I think I’ve seen that’s been the most upsetting aftereffect is the—is really the lack of capacity that the country has to deal with this. People are still being pulled from the rubble. The hospitals are running out of blood. The hospitals don’t have enough supplies. So, I think, to me, what’s really devastating about this is—beyond what happened, it’s what happens next. And, I mean, I talked to one of the ministers who says there aren’t enough sheets, there aren’t enough water—there isn’t enough water, there isn’t enough antibiotics. So I think that’s where the real focus needs to be now.

AMY GOODMAN: Abdi Samatar, you’re a Somali scholar and writer. Can you talk about your thoughts on what has taken place, how unusual this is, if you feel it has anything to do with the increased U.S. military push in Africa?

ABDI SAMATAR: This is more than a massacre. It’s carnage. I have absolutely no doubt that this is the work of al-Shabab. The truck came on the road that comes from the west part of the city into the heart of the capital, and that area of the country and that area west of Mogadishu is completely controlled by al-Shabab. There’s nobody else. There’s no ISIS. There’s nobody else there. And so, speculations aside, this is a fact, if you look at the geography of the route that the truck took. So that’s the first thing to note.

The second thing to note is that, yes, this is carnage, but Somalis have been bleeding slowly to death in what professor Michael Watts calls “silent violence” over the last two-and-a-half decades or so. So, yeah, the concentration of the death in a small period of time in one place is horrific, but death of this kind has been taking place among the population by terrorists and by African Union forces over the last decade or so. So we should not be really surprised at this, but we should take stock of the sober nature of the calamity that’s Somalia.

And then the final thing I would like to say is this, that the United States government and the European Union, who support AMISOM, the African Union force in Somalia, populated by Ugandans, Ethiopians, Kenyans, Djiboutians and whatnot, they spend a billion-and-a-half dollars a year on that force. And that force is a conventional military force that’s placed, holed in, in locations outside and inside Mogadishu. If they were to spend a quarter of that sum of money on developing a Somali security force that’s mobile, that it can engage in guerrilla tactics and go after al-Shabab, this kind of a carnage would have been easily sort of avoided, and the people would have been saved. I don’t think the international community is serious about this. I don’t think they are interested in helping the Somali people. I think they are more interested in containing the Somali problem, as they call it, in Somalia, rather than claiming that they are nurturing the development of peace and democracy in that country.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Abdi Samatar, I wanted to ask you about that African Union force. And specifically, what are the interests of—because they’re basically functioning as a proxy force for the United States and the European Union, that’s bankrolling them. What are the interests of specifically Ethiopia and Kenya in the ongoing military operations in Somalia?

ABDI SAMATAR: Well, let’s start with Kenya. Kenya invaded southern Somalia in 2011. The claim was that al-Shabab was damaging its economy because of a number of hostage takings along the Indian Ocean coast, the high tourist area of Kenya. Actually, the United States’ sort of reports from both the embassy and the Secret Service—I mean, the CIA, demonstrated that Kenya had this lust to occupy parts of Somalia long before those two incidents took place in 2010 and 2011. So, both Kenya and Ethiopia are interested to making sure Somalia never really comes back as a country and as a state that can challenge them in any way or sense.

So, there’s a—you have a problem here. Why would the African Union allow two countries who are neighbors, who have conflict of interest, to engage in Somalia? For instance, the Ethiopians control much of the southwest part of the country, and the Somali forces cannot really go there. They are dominated by the Ethiopians. And the Ethiopians and the Kenyans are nurturing what I consider to be tribal fiefdoms, much like apartheid and sort of bantustans, such that the central government never gains full authority across the country so that peace and order can be restored.

So, the United States is an ally of the Ethiopians. That’s where we use our drones to bomb places in the region. The Kenyans are close allies of the United Kingdom and the European Union. So, the question is really—Somalia is not the issue for them to save. It’s about sort of making sure Kenya and Ethiopia are doing what they do in the region in order to support the United States and the European Union.

AMY GOODMAN: Amanda, can you talk about the response in Somalia when President Trump announced that he was activating forces there? Explain what those forces were.

AMANDA SPERBER: Well, I think President Trump first made an announcement that he was activating offensive drone strikes. I believe that was back in March. And response then was kind of a mixture of skepticism, because, obviously, America is not known for successful drone strikes necessarily, but at the same time, Somalis really revile al-Shabab. There’s a sense that they want to move forward. So I think that there was also really a sense of hope and, genuinely, appreciation that they want—you know, like they don’t want al-Shabab to be the influential force that it is, so I think that they were—there was also a level of—a level of hope that this could turn things around. But all in all, I mean, that was mixed with a healthy sense of skepticism, given America’s reputation in this part of the world.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Amanda, you’ve written that you were surprised in your visits to Somalia about the extent of the U.S. presence there. Could you talk about that?

AMANDA SPERBER: Sure. I mean, I think when I went to Somalia, my understanding was not that the U.S. was leading—was not that the U.S. was leading the way in the country. My sense was that Turkey, the Gulf states and the United Kingdom were sort of taking the way. But upon getting on the ground, it was pretty clear to me, and made clear both by just the expats that I spoke to as well as the locals, that America is kind of at the forefront of operations and is invested strategically in Somalia’s security, both in terms of financial and—both in terms for financial reasons and security reasons.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask Professor Abdi Samatar about this question, in April, President Trump signing the directive classifying parts of Somalia as areas of active hostilities, meaning the Pentagon now has more power to carry out airstrikes and ground raids in the region, the classification also meaning the Pentagon will have more permission to kill bystanders.

ABDI SAMATAR: Well, I mean, the president did sign that, and that’s what it has meant. But as Amy suggested, we are not known, as Americans, particularly, I mean, our forces, to do the kind of surgical targets that can take terrorists out. I think if President Trump and his team were interested in reducing the level of tyranny and the, if you like, terrorism in the country, what they would have done is use the Somali security forces and spend maybe a couple of hundred million dollars on that rather than a billion dollars on the operations, and develop a mobile force that will act as a sort of a counter-guerrilla tactics—use counter-guerrilla tactics to go after al-Shabab, without involving Americans and anybody else, and, in that process, help Somalis rebuild the social and the sort of political infrastructure of their country. What you have, what Trump and his team are doing is doing their dirty work, as another scholar wrote in a book a few years back, and, in the process, not actually helping the Somali people take care of al-Shabab. I think Amanda is correct that Somalis revile al-Shabab, and I think they are capable of taking care of alShabab if they get the kind of resources they need to be able to go after them. So that’s one issue about that matter.

The other issue that needs to be brought to the table is that the Somali political class, not so much as the current government cabinet, but the Somali political class, is a rump, corrupt bunch of people who are less interested in their country and in their own people, and who are more interested in corruption and looting whatever little resources the country has, and is remaining in power. If that political class was on the same page as the Somali people in getting rid of Shabab, I am pretty certain the Somali people can raise enough resources to mobilize sufficient number of security forces that can drive al-Shabab into the sea. Unfortunately, you have two forces: the international community, who is not interested in helping Somalis save themselves, and you have a local political class, who are almost on the same page. And in between those two, the folks who are caught are ordinary people who have paid the ultimate price in this latest carnage in Mogadishu.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Professor Samatar, the goal of al-Shabab, if you could talk about that? What is the long-term political goal of al-Shabab? And also, the spread of the U.S. war on terrorism across sub-Saharan Africa—we had the report recently of four U.S. servicemen killed in Niger—could you talk about that, as well?

ABDI SAMATAR: I think the loss of American lives in the form that took place in Niger is quite tragic and not necessary. I think if we—as a government and as a country, if we were serious—that’s Americans—if we were serious in developing a mutually beneficial strategy, mutually beneficial for Americans, mutually beneficial for Africans, whether they are Somalis or Nigerians or whatnot, we will do a very different strategy in which local people are mobilized to defend themselves, and we will provide the resources necessary. So, my thinking is that sort of AFRICOM is doing the wrong tactics, much like AMISOM in Somalia is using conventional military resources and strategy to fight al-Shabab. So, it’s the wrong strategy, in my opinion. And the American government—not the American people, but the American government—is more interested in this, rather than in helping the local populations at a lower cost to all of us. So that’s the first thing.

If we come back to al-Shabab, al-Shabab controls much of the rural areas of southern Somalia, while AMISOM is holed in, in particular locations. And so, when AMISOM, for instance, moves into a town, takes over that town, Shabab just simply melt away into the bush, if you like, into the tropical bush in Somalia. The minute AMISOM withdraws, Shabab comes safely back and controls that territory. What you need here is a 10,000 to 20,000 Somali security forces, military and police forces, that are trained in guerrilla tactics, that are highly mobile. And the cost of that will be literally a fraction of the amount of money the European Union and the American government is spending on AMISOM, $1.5 billion. We can spend less than $200 million and get the job done and help the Somalis put Humpty Dumpty back together in a way that’s beneficial to them. But that doesn’t seem to be in the gray matter of those who are running the “war on terror” in Washington, D.C.

AMY GOODMAN: A final comment, Professor Samatar, on Niger and Somalia and the connection we should see? In the U.S. media, far more attention is being paid to, of course, the four U.S. Special Forces soldiers dead than the more than 300 people dead in Somalia.

ABDI SAMATAR: I think it’s really quite tragic that a strategy run from Washington, D.C., and from the European headquarters in Brussels pays so little attention when over 300 people are killed, massacred, and another 500 people are struggling for their lives, and that very little support comes from the United States and the European Union to help the Somali government clean up this, help the people who have been injured or people who have lost their parents or their children. By contrast, the Turkish government, literally immediately, as the explosions took place, sent a military plane with doctors and whatnot. Even the small country of Djibouti did something like that. So, the contrast between the bravado about fighting terrorism and supporting the local people who have become the victims of such terror is quite telling about what our agenda and strategy is in that part of the world.

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Americans pushed into pro-war frenzy by elite-controlled MSM & NATO – Max Blumenthal
worker | October 8, 2017 | 8:29 pm | Analysis, Democracy Now, DPRK, Fascist terrorism, Russia | Comments closed

https://www.rt.com/usa/406059-msm-nato-americans-war-support/

Americans pushed into pro-war frenzy by elite-controlled MSM & NATO – Max Blumenthal

Americans pushed into pro-war frenzy by elite-controlled MSM & NATO – Max Blumenthal
Years of Russia hysteria and North Korea fearmongering led by the US mainstream media and NATO propaganda have built support for war among Americans, making them ready to “fight and die” in overseas lands, author and journalist Max Blumenthal told RT.

READ MORE: Red Scare redux? US imposes World War II-era ‘foreign agents’ designation on Russia media

A recent study by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs has pointed at a shift in the collective thinking and feeling of Americans, when it comes how they view global conflict.

The study was conducted over the last two years leading up to the elections in 2016 and found that Americans seem to have found a new appetite for war.

Blumenthal, who co-hosts the “Moderate Rebels” podcast focused on US interventions and is the Senior Editor of AlterNet’s Grayzone Project, spoke to RT America’s Manila Chan about these developments.

RT:What do you make of this Chicago Council study?

Max Blumenthal: The Washington Post in a commentary framed these numbers as kind of the failure of Donald Trump’s America First policy. And I think Trump has done a pretty horrible job selling his policy. There was a non-interventionist component that he campaigned on, which proved pretty popular, particularly in places like the Rust Belt.

However, I really think that if you look at these numbers, you should look at the internals, and look at when the poll was taken, and when the numbers started to shift. They started to shift when the election campaign began. They reflect a concerted campaign by the mainstream media and by the national security state, which has unprecedented access and control over mainstream media – particularly CNN and MSNBC – to bring the American public’s views in line with the elites’ [views] of our interventionist bipartisan foreign policy consensus in Washington. Two years of non-stop red-baiting, Russia hysteria, and fearmongering over North Korea have done the trick, particularly among Democrats.

READ MORE: Senate found ‘zero’ evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, time to do ‘other things’ – White House

RT:Speaking of the mainstream media, why do liberals tend to support interventionist policies at higher rates than even Republicans? It’s unusual, isn’t it?

MB: Yes, it is unusual. We should just talk about some of the numbers first. From 2015 to this summer we saw a 20 percent surge in the number of Americans who would support sending troops to defend South Korea. We also see, for the first time in history, a majority of Americans willing to send US troops to fight and die for Latvia against Russia, and that is a reflection of their support for NATO.
Liberals disproportionately support these militaristic policies, which seem to suggest support for a hot war with Russia, and even hot war with China. It would be disastrous if they took place. So why didn’t that take place? Because of the partisan war against Trump, who has been portrayed as an enemy of NATO – even though he is now as supportive of NATO as ever; as someone who is a Manchurian candidate of Russia, who is controlled by Putin’s nine-dimensional chess and has colluded with Russia. So, Democrats tend to see Russia in a negative light, and they support interventionist policies.

But if you also look at CNN and MSNBC versus Fox News, which is the de-facto channel of the Republican Party and Trump, you see non-stop contributors from the national security state – like James Clapper, Michael Hayden, the former CIA director – pushing these kinds of militaristic policies. So, these are the channels that Democrats watch. Their media, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, has really stepped up the fearmongering and militarism.

So, you see a total reversal from the Bush period, the Bush era – when Democrats were staunchly against the Iraq war, because it was Bush’s war. And now you see the people that are against guns that are against mass shooting – favoring pointing guns and committing mass shootings abroad.

RT:How do you view the posture of the American people on defending eastern European countries like Lithuania and Latvia, who are members of NATO?

MB: In 2014, Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State, wife of the neo-conservative Robert Kagan, said that Americans were ready to fight and die for Latvia. That wasn’t true at the time. Now it is. These attitudes have been manufactured.

They’ve been partly manufactured by NATO propaganda. We heard at lot – especially on CNN from figures like Jake Tapper, “Deep State Jake,” who almost every show is pushing regime change in one of the non-compliant states. We heard a lot about the Zapad [West] military exercises, thinking Romania, where Russia was said to have amassed 100,000 troops on NATO borders – even “Democracy Now!” reported that.

It turns out that Jens Stoltenberg, the head of NATO, was pushing this lie – that there will be 100,000 troops. I think less than 10,000 troops in the end appeared for these military exercises. This was supposed to terrify the states. It was absolute blaster and pro-war propaganda. We’ve seen that reflected in these attitudes.

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Google’s New Search Protocol Is Restricting Access to 13 Leading Socialist, Progressive and Anti-war Web Sites
worker | August 18, 2017 | 6:25 pm | Democracy Now, Discrimination against communists | Comments closed

Google’s New Search Protocol Is Restricting Access to 13 Leading Socialist, Progressive and Anti-war Web Sites

Google’s New Search Protocol Is Restricting Access to 13 Leading Socialist, Progressive and Anti-war Web Sites

 

New data compiled by the World Socialist Web Site, with the assistance of other Internet-based news outlets and search technology experts, proves that a massive loss of readership observed by socialist, anti-war and progressive web sites over the past three months has been caused by a cumulative 45 percent decrease in traffic from Google searches.

The drop followed the implementation of changes in Google’s search evaluation protocols. In a statement issued on April 25, Ben Gomes, the company’s vice president for engineering, stated that Google’s update of its search engine would block access to “offensive” sites, while working to surface more “authoritative content.”

The World Socialist Web Site has obtained statistical data from SEMrush estimating the decline of traffic generated by Google searches for 13 sites with substantial readerships. The results are as follows:

* wsws.org fell by 67 percent
* alternet.org fell by 63 percent
* globalresearch.ca fell by 62 percent
* consortiumnews.com fell by 47 percent
* socialistworker.org fell by 47 percent
* mediamatters.org fell by 42 percent
* commondreams.org fell by 37 percent
* internationalviewpoint.org fell by 36 percent
* democracynow.org fell by 36 percent
* wikileaks.org fell by 30 percent
* truth-out.org fell by 25 percent
* counterpunch.org fell by 21 percent
* theintercept.com fell by 19 percent

Of the 13 web sites on the list, the World Socialist Web Site has been the most heavily affected. Its traffic from Google searches has fallen by two thirds.

The new statistics demonstrate that the WSWS is a central target of Google’s censorship campaign. In the twelve months preceding the implementation of the new Google protocols, the WSWS had experienced a substantial increase in readership. A significant component of this increase was the product of Google search results. The rapid rise in search traffic reflected the well-documented growth in popular interest in socialist politics during 2016. The rate of growth accelerated following the November election, which led to large protests against the election of Trump.

Search traffic to the WSWS peaked in April 2017, precisely at the point when Google began the implementation of its censorship protocols.

Another site affected by Google’s action has provided information that confirms the findings of the WSWS.

“In late May, changes to Google’s algorithm negatively impacted the volume of traffic to the Common Dreams website from organic Google searches,” said Aaron Kaufman, director of development at progressive news outlet Common Dreams. “Since May, traffic from Google Search as a percentage of total traffic to the Common Dreams website has decreased nearly 50 percent.”

The extent and impact of Google’s actions prove that a combination of techniques is being employed to block access to targeted sites. These involve the direct flagging and blackballing of the WSWS and the other 12 sites listed above by Google evaluators. These sites are assigned a highly negative rating that assures that their articles will be either demoted or entirely bypassed. In addition, new programming technology teaches the computers to think like the evaluators, that is, to emulate their preferences and prejudices.

Finally, the precision of this operation strongly suggests that there is an additional range of exclusion techniques involving the selection of terms, words, phrases and topics that are associated with socialist and left-wing websites.

This would explain why the World Socialist Web Site, which focuses on issues such as war, geopolitics, social inequality and working class struggles has experienced such a dramatic fall in Google-generated searches on these very topics. We have seen that the very terms and phrases that would under normal circumstances be most likely to generate the highest level of hits—such as “socialism,” “Marxism” and “Trotskyism”—produce the lowest results.

This is an ongoing process in which one can expect that Google evaluators are continuously adding suspect terms to make their algorithm ever more precise, with the eventual goal of eliminating traffic to the WSWS and other targeted sites.

The information that has been gathered and published by the WSWS during the past week exposes that Google is at the center of a corporate-state conspiracy to drastically curtail democratic rights. The attack on free speech and uncensored access to information is aimed at crippling popular opposition to social inequality, war and authoritarianism.

The central and sinister role of Google in this process demonstrates that freedom of speech and thought is incompatible with corporate control of the Internet.

As we continue our exposure of Google’s assault on democratic rights, we demand that it immediately and unequivocally halt and revoke its censorship program.

It is critical that a coordinated campaign be organized within the United States and internationally against Google’s censorship of the Internet. We intend to do everything in our power to develop and contribute to a counter-offensive against its efforts to suppress freedom of speech and thought.

The fight against corporate-state censorship of the Internet is central to the defense of democratic rights, and there must be a broad-based collaboration among socialist, left and progressive websites to alert the public and the widest sections of the working class.

Bernie Sanders on the Life and Legacy of Late Cuban Revolutionary Fidel Castro
worker | December 19, 2016 | 6:17 pm | Analysis, Bernie Sanders, Cuba, Democracy Now, Donald Trump, Fidel Castro, political struggle | Comments closed

‘Democracy Now!’ journalist pursued by N Dakota prosecutors despite dropping of charges
worker | October 18, 2016 | 8:22 pm | Amy Goodman, Analysis, Democracy Now, political struggle, Struggle for Native American equality | Comments closed

https://www.rt.com/usa/363225-goodman-dakota-access-charges/

Amy Goodman. © Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images for Cinema for Peace New York 2012
Though trespassing and riot charges against journalist Amy Goodman over her coverage of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests have been dropped, a North Dakota prosecutor has hinted the state will continue to pursue her and wants her unedited footage.

On Monday, a district court judge rejected a riot charge filed against Goodman for her coverage of ongoing protests of the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Goodman, host and executive producer of “Democracy Now!” who has won a Polk Award for her journalism, was originally charged with criminal trespass on September 8 after “Democracy Now!” reported on a violent encounter between protesters, led by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, and private security guards on September 3.

The rioting charge was filed by McLean County State’s Attorney Ladd R. Erickson on October 15, after he dropped criminal trespassing charges. Erickson is assisting the Morton County state’s attorney’s office in the case.

“I wasn’t trespassing,” Goodman said Monday from a courthouse in Mandan, North Dakota, in a Facebook Live broadcast. “I wasn’t rioting. The ‘Democracy Now’ team and I were there to report, to document what was happening on the ground. These charges are simply a threat to all journalists around the country: Do not come to North Dakota.”

Reacting to the dropped charges, “Democracy Now!” hailed the judge’s decision as a “press freedom victory.”

Having failed twice to successfully charge Goodman with a crime connected to her coverage of the pipeline protests, Erickson told the New York Times on Monday that the state will continue to pursue criminal charges.

“I believe [the Morton County state’s attorney’s office] want to keep the investigation open and see if there is any evidence in the unedited and unpublished videos that we could better detail in an affidavit for the judge,” he said in an email. “The Democracy Now video that many people have seen doesn’t have much evidence value in it.”

Erickson said last week that reporting by “Democracy Now!” and Goodman does not deserve First Amendment press protections.

“She’s a protester, basically,” he told the Bismarck Tribune. “Everything she reported on was from the position of justifying the protest actions.”

Reed Brody, an attorney for Goodman, told NYT that “the prosecutor seems to be determined to charge Amy with something,” adding that another charge such as disturbing the peace could come next.

“It’s hard to see what the State of North Dakota gains by charging a reporter with a crime for doing her work,” he said. “If the attempt is to prevent people from talking about the Dakota Access pipeline, it certainly has not worked out for them.”

Freedom of the Press Foundation’s Trevor Timm says to access any unedited, unaired “Democracy Now!” footage, the state will likely have to subpoena it.

“North Dakota has a strong reporter’s shield law that should protect Goodman and Democracy Now from turning it over, but given how much the prosecutors have disregarded the law so far, there’s no indication they’ll stop now,” he wrote.

The $3.78 billon 1,172-mile Dakota Access Pipeline, being developed by the company Energy Transfer Partners, has been the subject of heated protests for months, after Standing Rock Sioux alleged the project would destroy several cultural sites and burial grounds, and claimed it would taint their water supply.

If completed, the pipeline would travel across four states and is expected to carry nearly half-million barrels of crude oil daily from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota. The pipeline would travel through North and South Dakota, under the Missouri River, through Iowa to an existing pipeline in Illinois.

On Tuesday, authorities in Iowa said a fire that caused damage to construction equipment being used to build the Dakota Access pipeline in Jasper County, Iowa, was likely the work of arsonists.

Goodman is not the only journalist facing a criminal charges of late for covering activists in opposition of fossil fuel pipelines. On October 11, documentary filmmaker Deia Schlosberg was arrested in North Dakota for filming activists who shut down a valve of a tar sands pipeline. Schlosberg was charged with three counts of felony conspiracy and now faces a potential 45 years in prison.

The action Schlosberg was filming was part of a multi-state protest by “Climate Direct Action,” which targeted valve stations of five pipelines moving tar-sands oil from Canada into the US, and to show solidarity with ongoing protests led by the Standing Rock Sioux in North Dakota. Eight others were arrested and initially charged with trespassing.

On October 15, Schlosberg released a video thanking her supporters.

“I’ll be saying more in the coming days and weeks after I talk to some legal folks, but for now I really wanted to say thank you. I feel amazingly supported and that gives me hope that this is going to work out and we can move the focus back to where I think it should be, the original story that I was trying to cover.”