03/30/15 – Dan Sanchez – The Scott Horton Show

Oh, John Kerry's Mideast Peace Talks have gone nowhere.
Hey y'all, Scott Horton here for the Council for the National Interest at councilforthenationalinterest.org.
U.S. military and financial support for Israel's permanent occupations of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is immoral, and it threatens national security by helping generate terrorist attacks against our country.
And face it, it's bad for Israel, too.
Without our unlimited support, they would have much more incentive to reach a lasting peace with their neighbors.
It's past time for us to make our government stop making matters worse.
Support CNI at councilforthenationalinterest.org.
All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
A little bit of technical difficulties, but no big deal.
We got Dan Sanchez on the line.
He runs the Mises Academy at mises.org.
And he's written this great article.
It's at medium.com.
Don't see evil.
Google's boycott campaign against war photography and alternative media.
It's the spotlight today on antiwar.com, and for good reason.
It's about Google versus antiwar.com.
Welcome back to the show.
Dan, how are you?
Great.
Great to be with you, Scott.
Good, good.
Happy to talk to you again.
Go ahead and break us down the facts of the case first for us, please.
Well, first of all, the administrator and founder of antiwar.com, Eric Garris, got an email from Google AdSense letting him know that all of their ads were disabled.
Now, these ads are a crucial part of the revenue stream of any popular website that uses ads.
And the reason that was given was Abu Ghraib photos.
It wasn't over some sort of gore for the sake of gore.
These were photos that are common knowledge and that are huge news.
They're incredibly important for the American public, for one thing, because they represent horrible state violence that has been inflicted on people with our tax money and in our name.
And for another thing, that it is terrorism-inducing.
This kind of abuse enrages people, just like it did in Paris.
One of the attackers in the recent Paris attack was actually radicalized by learning about the Abu Ghraib abuses.
And the people who defend these abuses actually completely acknowledge the fact that it induces terrorism, because they cite that as an excuse for blocking the release of such photos.
And so, not realizing that that's an excellent reason for not committing these abuses in the first place, but also not realizing that even without the release of these photos, that word would get out among Iraqis and among Muslims in general that these abuses are happening.
And so, really, these kinds of photos are important, because ultimately they reduce terrorism, because they make people, the American public, so disgusted about it that they demand that the abuses stop.
And that is most important, that the abuses stop so they stop triggering terrorism, but also just for the sake of not abusing people.
And one of the PR guys answered back to a query of Eric Garrett saying that, well, you know, these pictures, they just need to be okay to be seen by any child in any region of the world, which is just baffling, because you have to wonder, what does that mean?
Like, what are you talking about?
Are you talking about these websites being G-rated now?
Are you talking about any region of the world that are allies, that we don't want to offend our allies?
Like, does it matter the identity of the victim or the victimizer?
And what's troubling is that this is a widespread problem.
It's not just antiwar.com.
For example, Mint Press News, which is another antiwar website, they had to blur their Abu Ghraib photos because of similar objections from the absent.
The American Conservative had to disable ads on its articles because of an objection from Google AdSense over pictures of US troops urinating on horses.
It goes beyond AdSense.
Google's YouTube has been doing this kind of thing, too.
The website WeAreChange had all of its YouTube videos demonetized.
And the reason that it gave for the demonetization is that there were two ISIS videos, and these ISIS videos didn't even have any gore at all.
The reason that they gave was that it is sensitive material.
And again, you have to ask, whose sensitivities are you protecting here, exactly?
I mean, they're not banning ISIS coverage on all sites, but it seems that WeAreChange, you know, they're a very anti-establishment, anti-government and regime site.
So, is it their messages that they're objecting to?
So, there are instances with the corporate report, with Ben Twan's videos, all this kind of stuff that's happening in a widespread basis.
And this is really important because war photos have played a crucial role in turning the public against war.
And the warmongers know this.
They still complain about the Vietnam Syndrome, which was...especially when a picture is like of a naked Vietnamese child running from a napalm attack.
These kind of pictures played a big role in turning the American public against the Vietnam War in particular and against war in general, so that after the Vietnam War, what they called the Vietnam Syndrome was this anti-war sentiment, likening it to as if it was a psychological disorder.
But by the time of the Gulf War, they were ready to control the imagery.
And so, really what you saw in the Gulf War imagery were sort of like an Atari video game, like blips on the screen of aerial bombardments of Baghdad, like it's a video game or something.
And these quote-unquote precision strikes of these crosshair videos of missiles, like practically going down the chimney they'd like to have us believe of exactly who they want to kill.
And so, because of that kind of sanitized coverage, the Gulf War was really popular.
And President George H. W. Bush even exulted in his victory speech that, we've kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all.
And it's happened with the post-9-11 wars too, that they really try to control that as well, especially through the embedded journalism program, where they lure journalists with access in exchange for them submitting to censorship.
They wouldn't even let, until 2009, the flag-bearing coffins that were returning from the war zones be photographed.
All right, now let me stop you for just a second, Dan, because we're short on time here, but I want to get to, I mean, you've clearly made the case why the government doesn't want us to see these pictures, because, well, jeez, if what we're doing causes harm, then people might begin to object and that kind of thing.
But what does Google care?
Why would Google do what they're doing now?
Well, yeah, like you'd expect, it would be exactly what a company that was deeply concerned with the government's goals to do.
And indeed, as it turns out, that Google is actually deeply connected with the government.
Julian Assange has a book called When Google Met WikiLeaks, and he has this chapter that's online called Google Is Not What It Seems, where he really lays out how deeply connected Google is with the State Department, with the White House.
It's a huge defense and intelligence contractor now.
General Alexander, then head of the NSA, referred to Google as a key member of the defense industrial base, which is security state news for military industrial conflicts, of course.
And Google even helped to drum up support for the air war against Syria that Obama and Kerry wanted.
It used Google's front page, the most popular page on the Internet, to actually advertise a Google Hangout section where Kerry was basically lying people into war because she used this Hangout section to tell the debunked lie that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons against people.
And, as it turns out, there's been Pentagon and intelligence community involvement with Google from the very beginning.
And it turns out that Sergey Brin's research at Stanford was actually funded and overseen by a project that was sent to seek research that would be helpful for information warfare for the government that was set up by the Pentagon and the intelligence community.
And this was detailed by the investigative journalist Nassif Ahmed, and he totally proves it.
It's not a conspiracy theory.
It's in the documents.
It's actually in Sergey Brin's footnotes about who was backing this research.
And so it goes back to the very beginning.
Well, I sure hope that the audience will do their best to help to make this article viral because this is important to any kind of political activist, not necessarily just anti-war people, but if Google, you know, it's not the government, but as you say, it's pretty close to them, and it has such a dominant position in the market that this can be really decisive for so many people, so many activist groups fighting for this, that, or the other cause.
I mean, this has just got to be important to every freedom-loving American.
So everyone, please go find this article.
It's the spotlight today on AntiWar.com.
Don't See Evil by Dan Sanchez about Google's war against AntiWar.com, and help do what you can to tweet it out, put it up on Facebook, send it to your friends on your e-mail list, and let's see if we can really break into even TV news here with this because this is just huge.
And thank you, Dan, not just for your time on the show, but for the great work that you've done on this article here.
It's a really important one and very well done.
I'm happy to do it.
Thank you so much.
All right.
Thank you.
That's Dan Sanchez, y'all.
He teaches Mises Academy at Mises.org, and he's the author of this great article, Don't See Evil, Google's Boycott Campaign Against War Photography and Alternative Media.
It's the spotlight today on AntiWar.com.
We'll be right back with Tyler Cullis in just a second.
In America today, teachers, cops, judges, and other so-called public servants make far more than the average taxpayer, and their pensions, well, if the people knew, they'd join us.
That's where you come in.
Taxpayers United of America is embarking on a great new project to train activists how to take on the parasites in your communities, the entire process from prying loose the facts to disseminating the truth to the people.
The next of these great workshops is Saturday, April 11th in Las Vegas.
It's just $15.
For more information, go to taxpayersunited.org slash govpensions.
Hey, Al Scott here.
If you're like me, you need coffee, lots of it.
And you probably prefer it tastes good, too.
Well, let me tell you about Darren's Coffee, company at darrenscoffee.com.
Darren Marion is a natural entrepreneur who decided to leave his corporate job and strike out on his own, making great coffee.
And Darren's Coffee is now delivering right to your door.
Darren gets his beans direct from farmers around the world, all specialty, premium grade, with no filler.
Hey, the man just wants everyone to have a chance to taste this great coffee.
Darren'scoffee.com.
Use promo code Scott and get free shipping.
Darren'scoffee.com.