Some readers are aware I have been permanently suspended from Twitter as @wemeantwell.
This followed exchanges with several mainstream journalists over their support for America’s wars and unwillingness to challenge the lies of government.
After two days of silence, Twitter sent me an auto-response saying what I wrote “harasses, intimidates, or uses fear to silence someone else’s voice.”
I don’t think I did any of that, and I wish you didn’t have to accept my word on it. I wish instead you could read what I wrote and decide for yourself.
But Twitter won’t allow that. Twitter says you cannot read and make up your own mind. They have in fact eliminated all the things I have ever written there over seven years, disappeared me down the Memory Hole.
That’s what censorship does; it takes the power to decide what is right and wrong away from you and gives it to someone else.
Hate what I write, hate me, block me, don’t buy my books, but please don’t celebrate handing over those choices to some company.
I lost my career at the State Department because I spoke out as a whistleblower against the Iraq War. I’ve now been silenced, again, for speaking, this time by a corporation. I am living in the America I always feared.
UPDATE: I’ve made a mistake. I was wrong to criticize the government, wrong to criticize journalists, wrong to oppose war. In fact, after much reflection, I have come to understand that I Love Big Brother.
United States Foreign Service Officer (ret.) and author of Hooper’s War Peter Van Buren spent a year in Iraq. Following his first book, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, the Department of State began legal proceedings against him, falsely claiming the book revealed classified material. Through the efforts of the ACLU, Van Buren instead retired from the State Department with his First Amendment rights intact. http://wemeantwell.com/blog/
Originally published by ICH
The 21st Century
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