hello and welcome to new episode of the creato news round up one stop shop for all news west asia, my name is esteban carrillo and the head of news for the creato as usual by my colleagues social media manager, content creator for the cradle sim and columnist and editor for the cradle sharmin narwan. today there's other place to start our discussion. last week, meta, the company that owns facebook, instagram and whatsapp, banned the cradle from their platforms for allegedly violating community guidelines, accusing mos of pracing terrorist organizations and engage and uh engaging in insidement to violence. we have essentially

been deplatform, there is no way to regain our username, this comes as part of a campaign that we have been seeing over several months that of silence, voices that either stand in support of palestine, or more broadly simply present current events from a non-hegemonic perspective, from a non-western perspective, there's many many things to discuss here, i'm not going to go much longer with the introduction, but you know, well what happened? so i just first wanted to make it clear that this is a uh permanent ban in the sense that we had um recently made backup account and that was also banned so uh they also down our facebook page and the facebook page hours later uh which was not you know it wasn't exactly even tied to the instagram accounts but the backup account didn't have violations on it yet so the main reason was that just that it was associated with the main account which means they don't want us to come back under the same name neither at

the facebook had any violations and yeah there was no inflamatory content even being posted on the facebook it was like much more town down in the content that was being posted wasn't that much different from where other out is posted there was no actual like smoking born maybe you would say that was like oh look this is what they did this no there was it was pretty balanced coverage the only thing was that we were referring to militant groups that are terrorist organizations as designated. by the west and israel as resistance, i think that's the only thing other than that it was very neutral coverage, i just wanted to say that in the it was really during the last two years that our instagram became the most active and during that period of time we did violate guidelides very occasionally, they were few and far between and all they claimed we violated, yes i'm saying according to unf we all agree that these aren't actually problematic and back that it was things that were were total accidents. like once we had done a three

years since qasim sulaimani was assassinated, it got taken down, you know that wasn't praise, that wasn't why qasim sulaimani is the best general of our time, it was just that it was a this day in history kind of exactly and on this day post which we've done a lot of and we tried to kind of we we had figured out that we can't really show the faces of these designated terrorists uh and that includes whoever you want to you know like secretary general of hazballah hassanlah uh is my honey what we which we will get to in a second you know there's a large uh there's a large array of well it generally the the side of the resistance that gets us in trouble of course when exactly when he say or talking about the children the human animals does seem to be any type of attempt i means that hate speech you is this figure is of always alwaysmani and there's always the

accusation of terrorism 100%. it's one side that we've we put the uh we were we did posts about uh quoting the minister that said at the time an atomic bomb should be dropped on gaza and many similar genocidal statements that are inciting hate speech or inciting violence and of course nothing happened so because israel says of course and those are far more inciding than anything that we're hearing from the resistance probably the boards stars of two million people in gaza let's do it now would have done it already if people were you know pressuring everything of definitely so it wasn't ever very clear what was allowed and what wasn't allowed and we kind of took other outlets as reference and we also knew that we couldn't show faces and we glured and we darkened and we tried to avoid certain things but after the assassination of hamas pull it your chief ismail hani on the the 31st of july tahon they updated their terms but there was notice there was no you can no longer do this this or that and and everything accelerated, like

we were okay, we weren't a, we hadn't gotten a warning before, it was after the assassination that the terms were updated and then 10 posts in one go removed in two days and we can go over those are in a bit, but the idea is this hadn't happened ever, and it was after those that they said you may lose your account in the future if you do not follow our guidelines, we had never gotten that before, so it was very accelerated thing, it all happened very fast and there wasn't that much warning, you and the kinds of things that they removed really were almost all, i have to say just reporting on things or showing things as they were, you know, for instance, hamas calls for day of rage following assassination of honey. that is like news headline all right, but so it was very that it's not incitement to violence, it's not the crater call, no we're and you know there are several things i want to mention, one of the things is of course what we talked about designated terrorist organizations now at the cradle because you

know covering this region comes with so much baggage on two sides um you know one of our foundational aims is to shine a light on events and personalities um that are not covered with any nuance whatsoever in in corporate western media or corporate arab media um so in order to do that we really have to cover everyone, i would say we cover israelis and quotes from israeli officials as much as we do quotes from hamath hisb and iran put together because the israelis are talking every single day there's every single day there's a quote from official or a um a minister or a - the defense minister or the prime minister every single day um so i would say there is balance there so basically um when we call these groups resistance organizations it's because they call

themselves resistance organizations the lebanese resistance the yemani resistance the palestinian resistance israel calls itself israel we call it israel what i'm saying, there's nothing, there's no white washing or anything, this is what these groups are, and you have to understand that the cradle is based in west asia and its focus is west saying geopolitics, we are not going to use foreign monitors to describe and characterize players and actors in this region, that's never going to happen, and that really seems audacious to them. if you're writing in english, you use our language, and we won't do that, we are independent journalist driven media. the other point i want to make, is we are now 10 months into a conflict that took the globe's eyes away from ukraine which we didn't think was possible for year and a half you know um it is a conflict uh that has captured the attention of all global media um

populations everywhere that don't often maybe you know watch the news or care about these you daily events we have the... youth of the world, you know, on instagram, on tiktok, on facebook, on twitter and all these platforms, um, weighing in on gaza, the way we haven't seen the weigh in on other conflicts, to suggest from mata, to suggest that the cradle or any news organization covering this region, holy or partially, can report on this conflict without quoting from the actors involved directly in the conflict is ridiculous. you want us to quote israeli officials and not quote: hizbillah officials or hamas officials or ansarah officials. who are you to dictate that? where is where is free speech? where is actual journalism being

practiced if you cannot present the the the perspective of both sides? you have to do that, and we do it fully. you know, you may not like our world, you... but i'll tell you, you will find the facts here that you won't find anywhere else, you know, and that's that's a really important point, take away, if you can't figure out why us policy and european policy is gone, you know, um, so badly in this region over decade, it's because you operate an information bubble, okay, your officials operate information bubbles, the cradles start to poke holes in information bubbles to present the whole facts, the whole story, from a perspective, you have heard before, then you will understand why us pol policy is gone wrong, why european policy has gone wrong? because it doesn't consider the whole array of perspectives of this region. another thing is like 100%, and we do, we have our opinions, but we do have fair coverage, and if we met does to take this into consideration, but we

seek to amplify regional voices. regional voices do not see these entities as terrorist organization, these entities are political institutions, they're part of the social fabric of the region. if we're amplifying the voice of this region. and why would we use their language to do that? if it's very simple and that's the thing you were also saying earlier after you know you were saying that you know we also quote israeli uh officials and in fact before... honey's assassination, one of the posts that was have to delete taken down was quotes by israeli journalists and officials talking about hazballah from a hebrew website that was taken down, but they w if it wasn't for terrorism, it was something to do with the regulated goods, guidelines on regulated goods, they said you all of these because they violate our guidelines on regulate goods, please delete them, we did delete that, this was before the usage, you it's the israel is talking about has b their intelligence capabilities, their abilities to reach certain israeli targets, mean that's just deliberate targeting, that's like at random will just pick on things, okay? yeah, meta, your your guide, your

community guidelines are so vague as to be um impossible for for um organizations and individuals figure out what is allowed and what is not allowed, and that is because also there are layers at sign, yes and but there are layers like you know there's like the ai stuff and the algorithm stuff where something's fly that'll detect it and take it down and then there's the next level which is i think what are from speaking to people who know people at medal, the people that were involved in this with us and our case were actual people, yeah, so this important qualification that meta's ai um detection of violations was not applied to the case of the cradle, that it was human decision and human action that took down the cradle across several metaplatforms, 100%, and so as i was saying they came after us very hard and very very fast, after honey is assassination, we

saw what happened with the malaysian prime minister, it took down his photo that was a him and he he threw a fit rightfully so they put it back for him but kept a message that said like this violates but we're keeping it up for self-expression something like that and since then everything changed they gave us very few warning like the time between when they told us you may lose your count and we actually lost our count was quite short and "we did try to take a precautions, more precautions that be more careful, and it still wasn't okay because we were objectively reporting on things like videos published by hezballah like quotes, it just it's not okay for, but here's the thing, mean this is uh something every news outlet, certainly those in the region um will be struggling with right, so what we have done when we can't understand mata's guidelines because they're vague deliberately is to follow the example of maybe larger media" lets in the region and that is not a good way to do it, not for a company, mediate company like the cradle,

because um, as we have in our article, which is featured today on our homepage about the meta permanent bat on the cradle, you will not find photographs as sima mentioned of resistance leaders and resistance officials on um on instagram from the quit, you just won't definitely not facebook, um, at the most we'll have like a... that vision, half the face, half the face, in one case, finger, finger was taken down, it was the finger of hassan, uh, was taken down, but we did a comparison to write up this article and we found examples, um, we chose uh sort of two larger outlets that over the region, al al-jazira and middle east die, both gatari owned or funded, um, so the gatari owned and funded um outlets that are larger outlets, maybe because they're paying for ads um on facebook and instagram, i don't know, but

they are putting actual photos of these leaders with what very easily men would consider inside went to violence 100% just just yeah just to give you example so first of all i'm not going to use that baby because they pay for ads, i'm not going even give my opinion of what the reason is why i think that they get to do what they want, but so that quote that had his finger. quote they got taken down was from the same speech that the middle east i posted and they get to post him and hd you know um say there's going to be a response waving his fingeround but you see his face and you know the enemies waiting and there's going to be great fear and confusion and this and that and that's fine but when we put his fingers saying do you think iran's just going to sit back uh what after after they've assassinated same speech you know it's just not acceptable from us and there are many examples of that, like of five the reals that got taken down were operations

of hamas of brigades in gaza agales and soldiers, not just snipers, everything and of course describe neutrition, but at least i can put that out, so let's speak, let me clear when hamas or hisball puts out a video, these are what in in media we call propaganda videos and not propaganda not a negative term sense of the word, but propaganda as in they are trying to propagate their vision and reach. audiences to convince them of their positions okay and their stances out bullshit like video footage and images places missiles in beyrut airport and abu abid's you know backyard stuff like that uh it's it's okay but if we clearly identified assam brigades video released today um showing this or stating this it's reporting that is reporting okay or not incitement to violence to report

on the statements and the releases of the most important players and actors in this regional escalation, conflict and war that every single capital in the world is looking at today and every single media outlet is looking at today, but on al-jazera they have a video with the hamas inverted triangle or pasambrargas inverted triangle meaning this is this is the israeli soldier we're going to blow up right now, this is the israely type we're going to blow up right now, that goes by fine. on instagram, but not not the cradles finger, exactly, i want to read you a quote from december 2023, human rights watch report on meta's practices, they talk about meta's, they say meta's policies and practices have been silencing voices in support of palestine and palestinian human rights on instagram and facebook, in a wave of heighted censorship of social media, they

call it, they say that the censorship of the counter related to palestine on instagram and facebook is systemic and so you know this was beyond, this is not just about the palestinian conflict, it's not about just silencing the palestinian voices or this huge tank platform body on by the mark suckerberg etc etc being like a we want people to to stop hearing about palesan because we lost control which is something we keep talking about here in the podcast is just about silencing voices that do not speak with the crowd that does not repeat the same silencing flags, silencing cafias exact, silencing waterm, silencing watermill, but that's another thing that i quickly wanted to say that even if we were not reporting on the resistance, the regional resistance movements, even if we avoided the terrorism all together, we could have still been compromised, they were recently deliberating, even banning the word zionist which zionists themselves use, they were, it is a

self-describing monacher, exactly, they had previously banned the word shaheed which means murder uh in arabic. that was ban and they lifted the ban and many things we do use some loaded language even in our mean we say resistance instead of terrorists we do say genocide sometimes because it is a genocide not just by our own standards and that is too loaded for them so even avoiding reporting on these movements you are still compromised and it's because finism has morped into a um negative uh description by the wrong design maybe but mean associations with that word have become so negative since october 7, but that's how they describe themselves, there's no way to disassociate um the the the the negative characterization with the actual self-describing word, exactly, yeah, which is a is a um an ideology that believes in in the establishment of a jewish homeland in

occupied palestine, it's that simple, it's a political ideology, and it's called scientism. and we like what what at the expense of what since 7 october the creation a state, you have shown it to us they in and day out and what we're doing is reporting, we are showing you what's happening, yeah, that's too dangerous, guess it is dangerous because we made lot of noise, we had lot of reach for a page with only 108,00 followers and it was everything, it was a combination of our content uh the way we the copywriting the edl, the reals from the podcast we're getting me, our analyst and our and our fair coverage, our opinions, you know, it was, it did trigger a lot of people, and lot of people, wait, i have to say everybody who was covering this issue, had their paint views increased, but i think you know the cradle was relatively neal on the scene, and what happened to us is, mean it's put us on par, we have the internal metrics, it's put us on

par, and i'm not going to mention names, but with very, very well-funded um regional... publication that have, their ceo probably gets paid more than - probably gets paid more than our entire annual budget, so ew, that may have been issue, but why did that happen, because people were not finding the answers they knew to be true even in those those major regional publications who were self-editing to a western standard, you know, um, and oftentimes leave to western narratives, we can't shape ourselves - through the language of the other, we have to shape ourselves through our own indigenous indigenously craft. did language, words, concepts, aspirations, um, you know, as it is, we stretch things by writing in english,

by publishing in english, i think that was the danger, because the crad b araby, the cradal arabic is not suffered these things with borderly, they figure the populations they want to keep away from this perspective, our english speaking western populations who might rebell against their own governments, um, but but not arab was... to have heard these narratives because these are the narratives of the region at the cradle convey they showing the english is the problem like the cradle in english being this fearless was the problem because our competitors or other regional outlets or whatever you want to call them they are also good reporter reporters they also you know cover the same things but we were different and that in english is not okay yes it shakes it it hits the wrong nerve and it did hit the wrong nerve and we know that we were just really targeted without having to know the ins and outs of how and why it went i mean you may even internally just to mention quickly another internal problems like uh the their part from discussing the the gas of war internally uh

you know heart decree almost well memo went out do limit discussions around topics that have historically net to disruptions in the work and uh former agente them for talk about the us elections is that not going to create more uh conflict in than the gaza war is yeah, it's sadly it's this thing that we keep seeing like up across the world and i think the way you said is exactly right because when you look a bit further back you now the cradle serves a purpose here feels like oh you know something was missing we became that that's why we're being targeted this is happening across the world we're seeing it happening in africa and this this is independent. is fucking up, we're seeing it in other places in asia, we're seeing it in latin america, we're seeing it, you know, even in the in the us or like even in europe, and i'm sure there's this movement towards

the truth, right, and i don't want to sound like uh, like, you know, i drink too much of my old, you with the cradle, but uh, you know, we are here to tell the story of what's happening in this region, yeah, be at the perspective of the people living in this region. "i am not from this way, i came here to do this job, to learn i come from a place that has suffered many of the same uh issues, many of the same uh by the by many of the same players, you know, maybe less intense than what has happened here, but from the one, i understood how the stories needed to be told, right? they cannot be tall from the top down, they need to be tall from the down up, yeah, it needs to be us, you know, this tiny team, you guys really have no idea how" all the creato team is with this you know in this uh in this uh in this country that allows us to do this work and to manage to reach in that way you know when when we heard

about what happened to instagram of course my first feeling was like oh you know but that sucks because we were doing so well but my second feeling was awesome we pissed them off like eat socks but we kind of knew you know like sadly we know that uh because these bands are not just happening in in meta, they're also going to happening with google, who knows with x you most like he's such debout scientist, yeah whoms which way he's going to move and saw that asset that uh you know it's like we are walking in a mind field but we do it willingly we do it happily and we do it with determination because this story needs to be told and you know another like another reason why is starting to happen toward this, guess is that these st companies, they are hiring and there so infiltrated by former state department people and former intelligence community people were

getting like vp executive vp roles in these companies in areas that governments their governments are finding sensitive, propaganda is the frontline tool for the us military, it claims so itself, you now first you have to set the scene to prepare your populations for another war. for another conflict, for another sanction, and then you go ahead and you take off that box saying public opinion, but you've propagandized them first, and so they can't have actual um free discourse on platforms that connect people from the region to americans um to to examine other options and other other perspectives um and in the case of meta uh, you know, i'm sure there are quite a few of those, but there is uh the... guy rosen, he's the chief information security officer, he's a veteran of the israeli army's unit 8200, which is a clandestine intelligence corps unit, are these not the people from? accused of not

like nothing no, but like you know same kind of you know doing, but meta's chief information security officer is veteran of the israeli army's most laughted intelligence unit. first of all, what is a chief information security officer do? mean, sounds like he can do whatever he want. well, mean seriously, it's like how google had that guy, jared, whatever, who was in charge of... global disinformation or something uh, these are things that julianna fonge and others have revealed over time, and one just doesn't know what to say really, because so many people from intelligence and policy making in western governments, especially the us government, even the head of amnesty international, usa is a former like hillary person, the state department, i mean all these ngos, all these um silicon valley. um

major social media platforms etc are are being heavily infiltrated by people who want to toe the line for the us government, so much for freedom of speech, so much for um journalistic integrity, um, i certally don't expect major media to come to the cradles defend, they are really don't, you know, um, because because they're not journalists anymore, there are corporate hacks, who will lose their access to... exclusive press releases from their governments if they support actual journalism and do actual reporting, but fortunately we have hundreds of thousands of readers and a global audience now changed lot from north america, bits of europe and little bit in australia in 2001 when we started to a full map of every country in the world, even one user from north korea, we don't even know how that came to us, but we literally have there's no

internet in north korea, we have a... these are north korea launch into the cradle um so i want to say we have we have full spectrum coverage and this is what's been worry to use to the powers that beat this is in today's show, we'll be highlighting the economic and diplomatic steps being taken by a latin american country against the scienist entity. there's a natural sympathy on the part of the colombian people for the palestinian people, engaged in their resistance to the genocide in the settler colonial occupation, the colombian people have also been subject to significant repression which is sponsored by the united states, so petro in this sense really.

presents the feelings of lot of people in colombia. the reason why most countries haven't done that is because the way in which the politics operates that the us remains the country which is uh the most powerful in the world and of course it's its power is ebbing and that's partly why we see the beginnings of countries like colombia uh and other countries starting to step step outside that uh that paradigm. one you're watching, i'm your host.

central gaza is the focus of the latest iof attacks against palestinians. netanyahu, hamas blames netanyahu for the death of israeli captives in gaza and says even the us president has admitted that. and day six of the israeli large scale offensive in the occupied west bank, 30 palestinians have been killed and lots of infrastructure damaged.