Senator Lieberman Urges Google to Increase Censorship of Anti-West Blogs

Eric Blair
Activist Post

U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman sent a letter (PDF) to Google this week urging them to censor anti-West, violent jihadist content on their Blogger platform.

The letter, formally from the Committee on Homeland Security and Foreign Affairs which Lieberman chairs, cited the blog of recent “lone wolf” terrorist patsy Jose Pimentel.

“Pimentel allegedly used the Internet to access instructions to make bombs and share his support for violent Islamic extremism,” writes Lieberman. “Pimental’s (sic) site is just one of the many examples of homegrown terrorists Google-hosted sites to propagate their violent ideology.”

Lieberman, no stranger to promoting censorship of the Internet, sent a similar letter in 2008 to then CEO Eric Schmidt requesting that Google-owned YouTube remove videos that contained “offensive material” and “terrorist propaganda”.

Lieberman also appeared on CNN in June 2010 praising China’s draconian censorship of the Internet and claimed America should have the same ability to shut down Internet content that the U.S. deems dangerous.

In his recent attempt to outlaw information on the Internet, Lieberman applauded Google for complying with his previous request by adding a “flag” option to YouTube videos where anyone can vote the material as offensive or harmful.  Now, Lieberman is strongly urging Google to add the flagging option to all of their content platforms.

“I strongly believe that Google should expand that standard to include your other platforms.  The private sector plays an important role in protecting our homeland from the preeminent threat of violent Islamic extremism, and Google’s inconsistent standards are adversely affecting our ability to counter violent Islamic extremism online,” Lieberman concludes.

Notably, although Google is a global company, Lieberman only wants them to censor “violent ideology” directed towards the West.  He certainly would not censor his own violent statements openly calling to bomb Iran without any aggressive provocation on their part.

And therein lies the problem with any type of censorship.  It is always ultimately used to promote one side of an issue, where the censorship itself is used as a weapon in the information war.  A war that, according to Hillary Clinton, the West is losing.

Seemingly desperate to control information on the Internet to hide their own violent intentions and actions, the U.S. government is constantly manufacturing cyber threats while claiming that all “homegrown” terrorists become radicalized online in an apparent attempt to drum up support for their Internet-censorship ambitions.