PLS DIGG Silverstein's excellent piece DIGG here. And REDDIT here.
This diary needs to be highly recommended because this topic concerns the very fundamentals, the very crux of alternative news and opinions. We cannot let the blogosphere be controlled!
Recently, MuslimMatters.org started an initiative to help propagate the other side of the Israel massacre that is being white-washed in the media. Basically to digg stories in the media that needed more attention.
When I didn't see the results that should have been happening (i.e. the number of diggs we should have been getting), I researched and found out for a fact that there are Israeli "informants", IDF foot-soldiers patrolling our face-book group "Muslim DIGG club" in order to send a battalion of online mercenaries to "bury" our "dugg" posts. What does that mean? Just like you can DIGG a post's popularity, our enemies of truth and information can BURY it.
Now, there is evidence that this is a wider "internet-battle" pitching peddlers of truth and facts (us) against peddlers of Israeli propaganda (the enemies):
In an excellent piece on the Guardian, the Israel-Palestine peace activist, Richard Silverstein uncovers this "hasbara spam alert":
The hasbara brigade strikes again! You always hear about Israeli attempts at media manipulation. Everyone knows it's going on but usually the process happens through cyber insurgents like those involved with Giyus (and its media monitoring software, Megaphone). Now, we know that the Israeli foreign ministry itself is orchestrating propaganda efforts designed to flood news websites with pro-Israel arguments and information.
Many here on dailykos must have noticed how what was an initially favorable crowd towards the suffering of Palestinian was more and more turning towards Israeli favoritism. Many of us wondering how any liberal/progressive in his right mind would support a massacre that has killed nearly 1000 people, almost 50% women and children:
In 17 days 919 Palestinians killed by Israel including 284 children & 100 women, 4260 injured
Well, it seems that LGF-type lizards were launched from the IDF headquarters and the Israeli foreign-ministry to target the Internet sites in order to leave comments that favor Israel, regardless of the topic or evidence to the contrary. I wonder what dailykos admins will do about this? This is basically news-hijacking. Already, Israel gets the treatment of a beloved wife in the media here (liberal and conservative, no difference)... now they are going after the alternative news/opinion sites in order to white-wash any criticism as well!
The following were identified as "target sites": the Times, the Guardian, Sky News, BBC, Yahoo!News, Huffington Post, and the Dutch Telegraaf. Also targeted were other media sites in Dutch, Spanish, German and French considered critical of the invasion.
Read the rest of the great piece by Richard Silverstein here