[Peace-discuss] WSWS on 'whistle-blower'

[J.B. Nicholson]

C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/11/face-n11.html

 From that webpage:
> In an email statement, Facebook said, “Any mention of the potential
> whistleblower’s name violates our coordinating harm policy, which
> prohibits content ‘outing of witness, informant or activist’,” adding,
> “We are removing any and all mentions of the potential whistleblower’s
> name and will revisit this decision should their name be widely
> published in the media or used by public figures in debate.”
> 
> CNN also reported that YouTube issued a statement saying that it was
> using a combination of artificial intelligence software and human
> monitors to find and delete videos with the name of the “Ukrainegate”
> whistleblower. “The removals, the spokesperson added, would affect the
> titles and descriptions of videos as well as the video’s actual
> content,” the CNN report said.

First off: Why is the WSWS (which calls Eric Ciaramella a "career CIA 
analyst") not identifying him as a "spook doing spook things" as Caitlin 
Johnstone put it in 
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/msm-defends-cias-whistleblower-ignores-actual-whistleblowers-5fbe577d988d 
?

Caitlin Johnstone:
> In all seriousness, even to call this spook a “whistleblower” is
> ridiculous on its face. You don’t get to call someone from the US
> intelligence community a whistleblower unless they are actually
> whistleblowing on the US intelligence community. That’s not a thing. A
> CIA officer who exposes information about government officials is an
> operative performing an operation unless proven otherwise, because
> that’s what the CIA does; it liberally leaks information wherever it’s
> convenient for CIA agendas while withholding all other information
> behind a veil of government secrecy.
> 
> A CIA officer who exposes information about CIA wrongdoings without the
> CIA’s permission is a whistleblower. A CIA officer who exposes
> information about someone else is just a spook doing spook things. You
> can recognize the latter by the way the mass media supports, applauds
> and employs them. You can recognize the former by the way they have been
> persecuted, imprisoned, and/or died under mysterious circumstances.

As CrossTalk pointed out on Monday (see 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lelpr2m4k-s), this person's name (Eric 
Ciaramella) is mentioned in the Mueller Report (see page 71 as labeled in 
the report, which appears on page 283 of the searchable 448 page PDF at 
https://www.washingtonian.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/searchable-mueller-report.pdf). 
Peter Lavelle (CrossTalk host) and panel were aware of this ongoing 
censorship and didn't dare mention Ciaramella by name on that show, lest it 
become cause for no longer publishing that video (for which I blame RT for 
choosing to distribute the video via the censorious YouTube instead of 
their own website; the copy of this show on 
https://www.rt.com/podcast/473010-tech-politics-johnson-brexit/ only 
contains audio).

Disappointingly this same episode of CrossTalk goes on to lament the 
censorship on grounds that don't include acknowledging that Facebook, 
YouTube, Twitter, etc. are all private organizations; private organizations 
being pressured by the US government into carrying out a censorship regime 
that would be unlawful for the US government to carry out itself.

Furthermore the real problem of the Internet these days is that it is an 
overwhelmingly privately-run affair -- to do anything on the Internet one 
needs to have multiple relationships with private organizations (domain 
name hosters, network providers, and more) each of which could choose not 
to relay one's messages. This should stir people to reconsider the fantasy 
promised long ago by naive libertarians who thought that a privately-run 
Internet would be a vehicle for freedom of expression and organization. We 
see that leaving important matters in private hands is a bad choice, the 
services people pick matter, and when most users pick the same set of 
services they effectively give those services power to censor them.