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Youtube and Facebook censoring name of Ukraine leaker

It is now being reported that both Youtube and Facebook are removing any content that mentions the name of CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella, the so-called “whistleblower” is really a leaker of classified information from a telephone conversation between President Trump and the president of the Ukraine.

From the original story at The Federalist:

For the record, it is perfectly legal to say or write the whistleblower’s name, unless you are the intelligence community inspector general (ICIG).

The federal whistleblower statute only requires the ICIG keep a whistleblower’s identity confidential, unless the ICIG determines the name necessary to disclose. No other government official or private citizen is required to protect the anonymity of a whistleblower. No such statute exists. So why the censorship on the whistleblower’s name?

Because disclosing the whistleblower’s name will likely lead to research that makes public what many on the right already know — the whistleblower blew his whistle based on a partisan agenda.

Ciaramella’s name is no secret. Not only has RealClearInvestigations revealed it, he was mentioned in the Mueller Report, and was even identified in published testimony from the secret hearings of Congressman Adam Schiff’s intelligence committee on impeachment.

For so-called news organizations to team-up to help fulfill the Democratic Party’s impeachment strategy is beyond disgraceful. This is one reason I do not allow Google advertising on Behind the Black. Google, which owns youtube, is a very corrupt company that is also a hand-in-glove supporter of the Democratic Party. This is why I also do not use it for my searches, going instead to either Startpage or DuckDuckGo. It is also why I encourage my readers to send me Evening Pause suggestions from video sources other than youtube.

Facebook is equally corrupt, and acts to block conservative sites from getting traffic. Now it is acting as an agent of the Democratic Party in its effort to overthrow the 2016 election.

One more point: It is also disgraceful for all news services, from the left and the right, to label Ciaramella a “whistleblower.” He is no such thing. All he did was leak the contents of Trump’s phonecall, based not on direct knowledge but on hearsay, and then express his objections to Trump’s foreign policy based on what he falsely thought had happened during that call. The transcript of that call demonstrates this unequivocally.

Moreover, Trump is the president. He sets foreign policy, not some lowlife CIA bureaucrat. Ciaramella broke his CIA security clearance by leaking and then spreading this tale. He should be fired, not anointed the honorary title of “whistleblower.”

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

11 comments

  • Andrew

    Censorship:

    Ugliest violation of free speech there is.

    BUT, …

    Yeah that word. Censorship is only an applicable word when it is done on a “public forum”.

    To date the only social media platform even suspected of being a public forum is Donal Trump’s tweeter feed. That’s it.

    Thus, until we can get a binding legal decision somewhere, somehow, that says that Social Media constitutes a “public forum” they are at the liberty to ban, remove, even ALTER, any content posted on THEIR PRIVATELY OWNED SERVERS.

    Just like you have to right to ask someone to leave your house for saying disgusting things to you and/or your family. Social Media companies have the same right!

    The word censorship, or censoring simply does not apply here. Social Media’s privately owned servers do not constitute a public forum, yet.

  • Cotour

    These may be privately held companies, and I agree that they can have what ever they want on them but they are as demonstrated by evidence without doubt censoring those who are Right oriented and those who support Trump.

    And these are the effects relayed to those who populate these companies and they are without doubt Liberal at the minimum and leftist and Socialist at the maximum and they are also politcally active in supporting their ideology.

    And that is where they run off the road and will in time bring governmental regulation down upon themselves because of their inability to remain more or less objective. Because as we know “By any means necessary” is their political warfare mantra, and that becomes their focus over and above our system of governance.

    And so they must be reinstructed and reminded about what and where their responsibilities exist.

  • Wodun

    They are trying to claim that if Trump benefits from an action, it’s abuse of power. However, everything a President does can either hurt them or benefit them politically. That is the nature of the job.

    Also, the President sets foreign policy and that is inherently political as well.

    It isn’t surprising that Democrats are trying to pull some shenanigans but it is surprising the media is going along with it. (OK, it isnt surprising.)

  • Jerry Greenwood

    Earlier I put “Facebook is removing any content that mentions the name of CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella” on facebook.

    Still there.

  • wayne

    I don’t need to hear what Ciaramella “feels” happened on the phone call, we have the transcript, which the president released.
    Ciaramella needs to be rendered to the naval base at Guantanamo Bay and questioned, to within an inch of his life.

    “Should we reform Section 230?” [1996 Communications Decency Act]
    American Enterprise Institute
    September 2019
    https://youtu.be/vnB-UNSHuOU
    1:27:54

  • wayne

    “Helter Stelter”
    Louder With Crowder
    August 2019
    https://youtu.be/t31rUX3QDiQ
    4:01

  • kahall

    Just wanted to mention that facebook is indeed deleting any mention of Eric Ciaramella. They removed it from my page and I have absolutely no reach at all . Maybe 100 actual real people might be able to see it if that. Also it’s just gone along with a few comments on it and those notifications. No message from FB about it notifying me or anything. This is a first for me.

  • Max

    A new twist related to the subject;
    After the IRS prevented many organizations under Obama from getting nonprofit status,(tea party’s) A newspaper has been given the status 0f 501C3 without any fuss. It appears they will not have to change their business model much either. Google has already announce their intentions to be a big donor.
    Key quote from the article;

    This approval opens the doors for many more commercial legacy newspapers to seek tax-deductible status and philanthropic funding — a potential lifeline for local news outlets whose owners agree to “”give up control””.

    https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/11/meet-the-salt-lake-tribune-501c3-the-irs-has-granted-nonprofit-status-to-a-daily-newspaper-for-the-first-time/

    Newspaper is owned by the billionaire family of the huntsman chemical, (Who developed MTB oxygenated fuel which acted as rusting agent for underground metal fuel tanks which led to the poisoning of the groundwater throughout California responsible for thousands getting cancer) his son entered politics, and all of Huntsman’s problems went away.
    They built the Huntsman Cancer Institute, (perhaps out of guilt?).(my father-in-law went in for minor cancer surgery, he didn’t survive)

    You heard of his son “John Huntsman” a Republican who ran for president. Quit as Utah governor, after his reelection, to join Obama to be his diplomat to China. Then diplomat to Russia for President Trump. he was also the leader of the deep state support organization called the Atlantic Council. (Look it up)
    Rumors are that Jon Huntsman is back, wants to be governor again. I wonder if he ever decided what party to join. I guess it doesn’t matter when you have Google behind you, and you own a nonprofit newspaper.
    It’s curious that everything you hear in the news about the Clintons, Biden, Obama, Russia and Trump happened while he was ambassador.
    Don’t look behind the curtain!

  • Edward

    Censorship can be done by anyone, anywhere, and at any time. It need not be a government official doing it, and it need not be on a public forum. We can even self-censor ourselves in what we say or write. I do this every once in a while when I mention that something, such as these organizations engaging in censorship, is a cluster [bleep].

    From the movie Heartbreak Ridge:
    Colonel Meyers: What’s your assessment of this exercise?

    Highway: It’s a cluster [bleep].

    Colonel Meyers: Say again?

    Highway: Marines are fighting men, sir. They shouldn’t be sitting around on their sorry asses filling out request forms for equipment they should already have.

    Colonel Meyers: Interesting observation.

    Look at that. I even censored a quote from a movie.

    We shouldn’t be sitting around letting our social media monopolies remove the freedoms we are supposed to already have.

    wayne wrote: “I don’t need to hear what Ciaramella “feels” happened on the phone call, we have the transcript, which the president released.

    We may not need to know what he feels about it or even what he thinks about it, but he is the source of the complaint that begat the impeachment. How this complaint came about is important, especially since he had nothing to do with the events that brought about his complaint but is based solely upon a rumor that he heard. It is important for the investigation to include all the details of how this complaint came to be. We need to hear those details. For Congress to not investigate them would be similar to government officials censoring the public forum investigation.

    A second-hand rumor is all that it took to get Congress to start looking at this event for impeachable offenses. This would be surprising, even shocking, except that at least one Democrat has said that if the president is not impeached by Congress then he would easily win reelection. Thus, the Democratic Party is doing all that it can to find some modicum of excuse for such an impeachment.

    Wait. Doesn’t that make this impeachment investigation a campaign ploy by the Democrats at taxpayer expense rather than DNC expense? They found a way to use government against their political rival.

    Wait. Isn’t that what they accused Trump of doing with a request to investigate Biden’s self-proclaimed extortion of The Ukraine — again, with taxpayer money?

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