IBM Develops a New Chip That Functions Like a Brain

See here for more about DARPA brain projects, see here for more about the B.R.A.I.N. Initiative.


By John Markoff


Inspired by the architecture of the brain, scientists have developed a new kind of computer chip that uses no more power than a hearing aid and may eventually excel at calculations that stump today’s supercomputers.

The chip, or processor, is named TrueNorth and was developed by researchers at IBM and detailed in an article published on Thursday in the journal Science. It tries to mimic the way brains recognize patterns, relying on densely interconnected webs of transistors similar to the brain’s neural networks.

The chip’s electronic “neurons” are able to signal others when a type of data — light, for example — passes a certain threshold. Working in parallel, the neurons begin to organize the data into patterns suggesting the light is growing brighter, or changing color or shape.

The processor may thus be able to recognize that a woman in a video is picking up a purse, or control a robot that is reaching into a pocket and pulling out a quarter. Humans are able to recognize these acts without conscious thought, yet today’s computers and robots struggle to interpret them.

The chip contains 5.4 billion transistors, yet draws just 70 milliwatts of power. By contrast, modern Intel processors in today’s personal computers and data centers may have 1.4 billion transistors and consume far more power — 35 to 140 watts.

Today’s conventional microprocessors and graphics processors are capable of performing billions of mathematical operations a second, yet the new chip system clock makes its calculations barely a thousand times a second. But because of the vast number of circuits working in parallel, it is still capable of performing 46 billion operations a second per watt of energy consumed, according to IBM researchers.

The TrueNorth has one million “neurons,” about as complex as the brain of a bee.

“It is a remarkable achievement in terms of scalability and low power consumption,” said Horst Simon, deputy director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

He compared the new design to the advent of parallel supercomputers in the 1980s, which he recalled was like moving from a two-lane road to a superhighway.

The new approach to design, referred to variously as neuromorphic or cognitive computing, is still in its infancy, and the IBM chips are not yet commercially available. Yet the design has touched off a vigorous debate over the best approach to speeding up the neural networks increasingly used in computing.

Photo
A silicon chip relies on webs of transistors similar to the brain’s neural networks. Credit I.B.M.

The idea that neural networks might be useful in processing information occurred to engineers in the 1940s, before the invention of modern computers. Only recently, as computing has grown enormously in memory capacity and processing speed, have they proved to be powerful computing tools.

In recent years, companies including Google, Microsoft and Apple have turned to pattern recognition driven by neural networks to vastly improve the quality of services like speech recognition and photo classification.

But Yann LeCun, director of artificial intelligence research at Facebook and a pioneering expert in neural networks, said he was skeptical that IBM’s approach would ever outpace today’s fastest commercial processors.

“The chip appears to be very limited in many ways, and the performance is not what it seems,” Mr. LeCun wrote in an email sent to journalists. In particular, he criticized as inadequate the testing of the chip’s ability to detect moving pedestrians and cars.

“This particular task,” he wrote, “won’t impress anyone in computer vision or machine learning.” Mr. LeCun said that while special-purpose chips running neural networks might be useful for a range of applications, he remained skeptical about the design IBM has chosen.

Several neuroscience researchers and computer scientists disputed his critique.

“The TrueNorth chip is like the first transistor,” said Terrence J. Sejnowski, director of the Salk Institute’s Computational Neurobiology Laboratory. “It will take many generations before it can compete, but when it does, it will be a scalable architecture that can be delivered to cellphones, something that Yann’s G.P.U.s will never be able to do.”

G.P.U. refers to graphics processing unit, the type of chip being used today to deliver graphics and video to computer screens and for special processing tasks in supercomputers.

IBM’s research was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a research arm of the Pentagon, under a program called Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics, or SyNapse. According to Gill Pratt, the program manager, the agency is pursuing twin goals in its effort to design ultralow-power biological processors.

The first, Dr. Pratt said, is to automate some of the surveillance done by military drones. “We have lots of data and not enough people to look at them,” he said.

The second is to create a new kind of laboratory instrument to allow neuroscientists to quickly test new theories about how brains function.

Correction: August 7, 2014

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the day on which the report of a new computer chip was published. It was Thursday, not Wednesday.

Correction: August 11, 2014

An article on Friday about a new IBM computer chip that is said to mimic the way a human brain works omitted the last word in the name of a program known by the acronym SyNapse, which funded IBM’s research. It is Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics.

Some People In The U.S. Military Know Israel Did 9/11

Watch Both The Videos Below!

How much do you really know about the attacks on September 11th, 2001? Besides the videos below, see here and here.  Just remember, even from the official story of the September 11th, 2001 attacks, the terrorists were Saudi's. 

Did you know that Saudi Arabia is a strong ally of Israel and the United States? For more past posts on this topic, see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. 

You have to understand there is a connection between the number 23 and the September 11th attacks. See here and here for more about the dates on the Hebrew calendar.  The September 11th attacks = 23, add it up: 9+11+2+0+0+1=23. World Trade Center = WTC. W is the 23rd letter of the Alphabet, T is the 20th letter of the Alphabet, C is the 3rd letter of the Alphabet. So, WTC = 46 (Twin Towers.) 46-23= 23.The Twin Towers were like the number 11 as they were standing side by side. The date of the attack: 11/9= 1+1+9=11. The sentence "September 11" consists of 9 letters and 2 numbers = 9+2=11. September 11th is the 254th day of the year= 2+5+4=11. After September 11 there are 111 days left to the end of the year.

The Simpsons From an Episode in 1997:
(See here for Jewish control of Hollywood)

Jewish Spy Masters - MUST Watch Videos!

See here and here for more about data-mining. See here for more about XKeyscore. See here and here for more about advanced artificial intelligence.  See here for more about Facebook and their connection to the CIA. See here and here for more about classified technology and here for more about intelligence tactics.

Zionist Terrorists & Jewish Psychopaths Who Need To Be Dealt With

For more on this topic, see here, here, and here.  See here for more about the NSA and 9/11. Also, see under the Zionist terrorism category of my blog. (Be sure to scroll down and go through all the articles.) See here and here for more about Greater Israel and the Project for a New American Century. See here, here, and here for more about Full-Spectrum Dominance. See here, here, and here for more about the JFK assassination.

U.S. Police Routinely Travel to Israel to Learn Methods of Brutality and Repression

See here for a previous post about the connections between Homeland Security and Zionism.

When McKinney, TX police officer David Eric Casebolt brutally took down a teenage girl at a pool party in June, he was using a form of martial arts called Krav Maga in which he trained exclusively. These combat techniques were developed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

This is a small reflection of a larger reality that exists in U.S. law enforcement, one that helps explain the brutality and militarization that now characterizes so many police forces.  Since 9/11, cops have been traveling abroad to learn from one of the most repressive and dangerous State forces in the world today—the Israeli military and intelligence apparatus.

Political commentator John Miranda recently stated that police brutality is directly linked to the training some officers receive in Israel.

“As for the increase in police brutality within the United States, I think this definitely can be pointed towards the Israeli training that the Department of Homeland Security is giving all of American police officers. Some police officers are actually being flown to Israel for the training, not all of them but some, and then those that are flown to Israel, they come back home and they train the head officers in the training that they’ve gotten in Israel. All these incidents, it is not just happening to African Americans. Police are literally being brutal with all Americans.”

At least 300 high-ranking U.S. sheriffs and police from all over the country, as well as FBI and US Customs and Border Protection agents, have traveled to Israel to learn first-hand the most efficient means of subduing populations.  The purported reason is counterterrorism, but protests and crowd control methods are commonly discussed.

Police are not learning from the Israeli criminal law sector that deals with Jewish residents.  U.S. police are learning from Israel’s military justice system, which controls Palestinians through paramilitary and counterinsurgency tactics.  Residents of Gaza and the West Bank live in what is essentially a giant prison camp, where oppression and brutality from the IDF is a way of life.  The use of excessive or deadly force for crowd control is rarely questioned.

Three organizations are responsible for sending U.S. cops to Israel for training—the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.  The ADL insulted victims of police brutality last month when it honored the St. Louis Police Department (SLPD) just days ahead of the anniversary of Michael Brown’s killing.  The SLPD was the first department to enroll in ADL’s training program.

The St. Louis Chapter of Jewish Voices for Peace issued a scathing statement in response: “We have cringed as the ADL positions itself locally as a champion of racial profiling legislation while sending US police – including former St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch – to train on population control in Israel, an apartheid police state with more than 60 years of sophisticated expertise in racial profiling, mass incarceration, settler colonialism, and ethnic cleansing targeting the non-Jewish indigenous Palestinian people.”

This occupation-style policing has made its way to U.S. cities and towns and has become standard operating procedure at any protest of government.  Also, the very same equipment used by Israeli military for crowd control—tear gas grenades, triple chaser gas canisters, and stun grenades—were used at demonstrations in Ferguson, Oakland, and Anaheim.  The LRAD (long-range acoustic device) was also used by both Ferguson police and Israeli military forces.

READ MORE:  Cops Taser 10 Year Old Boy at Day Care Center

Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, notes how militarized U.S. police reflect the training that is received in Israel and spread throughout the ranks.

“If American police and sheriffs consider they’re in occupation of neighborhoods like Ferguson and East Harlem, this training is extremely appropriate – they’re learning how to suppress a people, deny their rights and use force to hold down a subject population.”

To complement this Israeli military training that ramped up in the mid-2000s, the Pentagon and Homeland Security started the 1033 program which funneled billions of dollars of military-grade equipment to local law enforcement.  MRAPS and military weapons have become all too familiar on American streets. What order-following, state-sanctioned thug is going to refuse the most advanced tactics and tool of repression? Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, described how U.S. police tactics are “a near replica” of Israeli military crowd control tactics.

“Whether it is in Ferguson or L.A., we see a similar response all the time in the form of a disproportionate number of combat-ready police with military gear who are ready to use tear gas at short notice. Whenever you find 50 people at a demonstration, there is always a SWAT team in sight or right around the corner.”

This increasingly common scenario is indicative of law enforcement that views the populace as the enemy.  Peaceful protests of unjust government practices are fundamental to the progression of society.  Police with militarized tactics and gear are the progenitors of violence.

READ MORE:  20 Year Old Executed by Police,
Allegedly for Wearing Headphones, Unable to Hear Orders

Jimmy Johnson of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions explains how the training of U.S. law enforcement by Israeli military represents a grave threat to the idea of democracy. 

“Israeli methods are sought out and adopted for their perceived quality, largely led by the government’s marketing of them. But the relationships established between agencies of order, whether they be drug enforcement, civil policing, customs officials, tactical police units or any other, are done entirely outside the democratic realm…This is the danger of agencies of authority going through processes of professionalization and integration with their foreign counterparts. It’s often a strictly technocratic regime that can affect the public greatly but is done without its active knowledge or participation.”

If we are to end the militarization of U.S. law enforcement, one of the most important parts of that will be stopping the training of police by the Israeli military and intelligence apparatus.  We do not want their methods of repression and brutality replicated here.

Google & YouTube Blocking Comments On Videos

See here for previous article about Facebook blocking me. See here for he RCMP's Facebook blocking me. See here for a previous article about James Altucher.

Video 1

Video 2

Download And Listen: Must Hear JFK Assassination Interviews

Besides the interviews below, see here, here, here and here for some excellent previous posts on this topic.  Now download the interviews below and listen to them. Put them on your iPod and learn the information that is always left out of the topic of the JFK assassination. To download the files, left click on the links below, then left click on the download button in the top-right corner. The files are too large for Google to scan for viruses, but I assure you, there are no viruses on the files. Just download them. The interviews are both over 3 hours long, so you are getting a lot of information here.

Interview #1 About JFK Assassination

Interview #2 About JFK Assassination

New Video Examples About Psychopaths In High Places In Our Society

The videos below provide more examples of what I said here. These are only a few examples, they are all over the place. For more articles on this topic, see here. (There is quite a few articles there. Be sure to scroll down and go through them all.) Also see here, here and here. See here for past examples of blood libel, this is all 100% real. They will never, ever talk about this. It is happening right now in our countries.

Though no one wants to talk about it, it is all 100% connected to Zionism, Israel, and Freemasonry. People have to understand that Freemasonry connects to the intelligence agencies and it is all about Israel. Like I said before, the Stasi flag of East Germany is similar to Israel and the Masonic sign.  It also goes right up to the Royal families and into the British Intelligence too.  (See here and here.) 

You will see them talk about Freemasonry in the video below, but very rarely --- if ever, will they say how many of these people are Jews. They are highly over-represented in the 1% of our society. (See here, here, here, here and here for more about the 1%.) It is something that must be addressed because they are the ones with the most political and economic power. They are also over-represented in banking and intelligence agencies, and in being so, have unreal control of the drug trade and organized crime.  

A Video Showing More Censorship With Twitter, Google & the RCMP

See past censorship videos here, here and here. I have opened a new Facebook account, but, I have been banned from posting into groups at least 10 times for at least 5 days, sometimes for a couple weeks. (I am blocked as I currently write this.) Facebook also locked me out of my account and wanted me to upload a picture of myself. (See screenshot below.)

Apparently, a phone number, an email and other ways of verification (questions and answers only you know,) are not enough for them. The reality is, Facebook is using all of the faces that have been uploaded onto their server for facial recognition.

Click On Picture Below to Enlarge

NSA's Jewish Spy Masters

 Click Here To Watch Video

Once Again --- Some Jews Doing What They Do Best--- Terrorizing People

Absolute Must Watch Video Below!

See here for a previous post about the occupation of the "Holy" land. See here for more about Jewish terrorism in the Palestinians territories. See here and here for more about children who had to deal with Israel and the Jewish state. See here for more about dealing with Zionist lunatics when it comes to the state of Israel. See here for more about how Israel is the only country in the world to automatically prosecute children in military courts that lack basic safeguards for a fair trial.

In the video below, during the occupation...here are the words of one of the Israeli military forces starting around 10 minutes and 36 seconds into the video: "We are the occupation army, you throw stones and we will hit you with gas until you all die, the children, the youth, the old people, you will all die. We won't leave any of you alive. We have arrested one of you, he's with us now, we took him from his home, and we will slaughter and kill him while you watch.  If you keep throwing stones, go home or we will gas you until you die. Your families, your children, everyone.  We will kill you. "

An interview with a Palestinian:  We are touched by the occupation on a daily basis. It is not easy to live under occupation. You will be targeted, your family will be targeted, your children will be targeted. Everything here, even our trees are targeted. If you will see here, one day they arrested a little child. I was just trying to tell them he was six years old. Telling them he was afraid. You can see it on his face.  So a very high ranking officer came and he asked me "Where is your house?"  And he pointed to my house and said "This is your house. We can see it from there." (He points to the watchtower that the Israeli guards use to monitor the Palestinians from,)  He asked me "How many children do you have?" I told him that I have five children. So, he told me "This will be the last time we will speak with you. The second time, we will act." For me, maybe for the first day, the second day, the third day, I spent like one week just thinking, yes, I am going through this struggle. But, what about my children, my wife? Because, they targeted my house before, and my roof was burned off. But if they will target my children, what can I do for them? So trying to threaten the children, their parents, the message was clear.  To live here as a slave and to shut your mouth and not to speak about anything, the shortage of water, killing people, taking, confiscating your land, demolishing your houses-or to leave this area, that's it. 

Police Training In & With Israel

See the last post on this subject here.  See here for more connections between Zionism, Israel, and Law Enforcement in the United States and Canada. See here for FBI and InfraGard. See here for a collection of posts about the RCMP, CSIS, the CSE and the FBI. See here for more about Israeli weapons manufacturers and testing their weapons out on Palestinians. 

See here for the connections between the Jewish "Neo-Conservative" movement and Bolshevism. Former neoconservative luminary Francis Fukuyama of Stanford, (formerly of Johns Hopkins,) compares the neoconservative movement to Leninism. Neoconservatism, according to Fukuyama, is the reincarnation to some extent of both Leninism and Bolshevism. The second video below includes Max Blumenthal. His father was Sidney Blumenthal and he was a part of the Clinton administration. Sidney Blumenthal believes that the political and intellectual movement of Neo-Conservatism has found its ideology “in the disputatious heritage of the Talmud.” (See here for more articles about the Talmud. Be sure to scroll down and go through all the articles.)

Jewish Dominance in the Porn Industry

For past posts on this topic see here.

Click Here To Read The Full Article

Just One of The Problems of Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg is an evil psychopath and more than likely some sort of demon. For more about this, see here, here and here. 

EVERYTHING You Do Online Is Recorded In XKeyscore

Unfortunately, it is even worse than what Snowden says because they have access to your brain and body. This is why Snowden is a phony, he is a liar by omission as I say here. He is also if you can believe it, a character from a book and a movie! It is almost like these lying Zionist pare throwing it in your face and laughing at you. They want to see if you are awake to their lies. Like I said before, no real spy is going to get interviewed by a major media outlet like NBC and Brian Williams, no real spy will be interviewed by a comedian named John Oliver.

That being said, the Snowden revelations still have some useful information. Watch the videos below for more about XKeyscore. See past posts about this issue here and here. For more about Echelon see here. For more about the Communications Security Establishment, which is the Canadian version of the NSA, see here and here.

See here for more about nanotechnology and the brain. See here for the DARPA Control Grid. See here for a collection of videos about artificial intelligence and big data and how it's being used by intelligence agency supercomputers to enslave you. See here for a more complete list of articles and videos about classified technology. See here for more about Raytheon BBN Technologies. They have been involved with the intelligence agencies right from the beginning, they literally were involved in the creation of the internet. See here and here for more about Transhumanism and its connections to eugenics and political control.

It is very important to remember that at least 50% of the intelligence budget is being outsourced to what is known as "private" intelligence agencies who contract for the government. To learn more about this, see here. To learn more about front businesses, see here. To learn more about front organizations such as NGO's and "Human Rights Organizations" see here.

Ethiopian Jews Face Racism in Israel

Starting at the 4 minute and 10-second mark in the video below, you will see an excellent description of Israeli society from Gilad Atzmon. (See here for a past video from Gilad Atzmon about political correctness and Jewish power.) See this list for past videos about racism in Israel and the problems of Judaism. See here for some more videos about Israel's crimes against Ethiopians.

Believe it or not, this is the way countries like Canada are going. Right now, non-Jews (Gentiles,) are second class citizens in Canada. You might not believe this, but it is true. The more you find out the truth, the more it will anger you because you are paying your taxes to a government that is full of crap and corrupt. The intelligence agencies in Canada protect the banking class and the 1%. That is their real job, and they are so damn cheap they get you to pay for it.

The reality is, this plays right into the idea of what Judaism has historically been associated with..... slavery and usury.

See here for some comments from Jews when asked if Gentiles should be their slaves. See here and here for Transhumanism and its connections to Judaism. See here for the connections between Transhumanism and Eugenics, slavery and political control. See this must watch video for all Americans and Canadians about the true nature of psychopathic Zionists and what they are doing to people who pose a political threat to them.

The Jews are the Real Racists

See here for more about the Talmud. See here for racism against blacks in the Talmud. See here for more about Jewish supremacism and here for some Jewish supremacist quotes. See here and here for more outrageous comments by Rabbi's concerning Gentiles,(non-Jews.) See here for a comment from Gene Simmons who is Jewish about Gentiles.

How The RCMP Facebook Account Is Blocking Comments

For previous posts about the police, see here. The comment below was made by me on the RCMP Facebook account. It honestly was deleted in under 30 seconds. Just amazing. If you would like to read where I was directing people to in my comment, see here. (Update: Now Facebook is blocking me so I cannot even login to my Facebook account.  See here and here for more about this. For reasons why you shouldn't trust Facebook, see here and here.)

Facebook Is Collaborating With the Israeli Government to Determine What Should Be Censored

September 12 2016, 11:57 a.m.

LAST WEEK, A MAJOR censorship controversy erupted when Facebook began deleting all posts containing the iconic photograph of the Vietnamese “Napalm Girl” on the ground that it violated the company’s ban on “child nudity.” Facebook even deleted a post from the prime minister of Norway, who posted the photograph in protest of the censorship. As outrage spread, Facebook ultimately reversed itself — acknowledging “the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time” — but this episode illustrated many of the dangers I’ve previously highlighted in having private tech companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google become the arbiters of what we can and cannot see.

Having just resolved that censorship effort, Facebook seems to be vigorously courting another. The Associated Press reports today from Jerusalem that “the Israeli government and Facebook have agreed to work together to determine how to tackle incitement on the social media network.” These meetings are taking place “as the government pushes ahead with legislative steps meant to force social networks to rein in content that Israel says incites violence.” In other words, Israel is about to legislatively force Facebook to censor content deemed by Israeli officials to be improper, and Facebook appears eager to appease those threats by working directly with the Israeli government to determine what content should be censored.

The joint Facebook-Israel censorship efforts, needless to say, will be directed at Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians who oppose Israeli occupation. The AP article makes that clear: “Israel has argued that a wave of violence with the Palestinians over the past year has been fueled by incitement, much of it spread on social media sites.” As Alex Kane reported in The Intercept in June, Israel has begun actively surveilling Palestinians for the content of their Facebook posts and even arresting some for clear political speech. Israel’s obsession with controlling Palestinians’ use of social media is motivated by the way it has enabled political organizing by occupation opponents; as Kane wrote: “A demonstration against the Israeli occupation can be organized in a matter of hours, while the monitoring of Palestinians is made easier by the large digital footprint they leave on their laptops and mobile phones.”

Notably, Israel was represented in this meeting with Facebook by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, an extremist by all measures who has previously said she does not believe in a Palestinian state. Shaked has “proposed legislation that seeks to force social networks to remove content that Israel considers to be incitement,” and recently boasted that Facebook is already extremely compliant with Israeli censorship demands: “Over the past four months Israel submitted 158 requests to Facebook to remove inciting content,” she said, and Facebook has accepted those requests in 95 percent of the cases.

All of this underscores the severe dangers of having our public discourse overtaken, regulated, and controlled by a tiny number of unaccountable tech giants. I suppose some people are comforted by the idea that benevolent Facebook executives like Mark Zuckerberg are going to protect us all from “hate speech” and “incitement,” but — like “terrorism” — neither of those terms have any fixed meanings, are entirely malleable, and are highly subject to manipulation for propagandistic ends. Do you trust Facebook — or the Israeli government — to assess when a Palestinian’s post against Israeli occupation and aggression passes over into censorship-worthy “hate speech” or “incitement”?

While the focus here is on Palestinians’ “incitement,” it’s actually very common for Israelis to use Facebook to urge violence against Palestinians, including settlers urging “vengeance” when there is an attack on an Israeli. Indeed, as the Washington Post recently noted, “Palestinians have also taken issue with social-media platforms, saying they incite violence and foster an Israeli discourse of hatred, racism and discriminatory attitudes against Palestinians.”

In 2014, thousands of Israelis used Facebook to post messages “calling for the murder of Palestinians.” When an IDF occupying soldier was arrested for shooting and killing a wounded Palestinian point blank in the head last year, IDF soldiers used Facebook to praise the killing and justify that violence, with online Israeli mobs gathering in support. Indeed, Justice Minister Shaked herself — now part of the government team helping Facebook determine what to censor — has used Facebook to post astonishingly extremist and violence-inducing rhetoric against Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his other top ministers have done the same. As Al Jazeera America detailed in 2014:

The hate speech against Arabs that gathered momentum on Facebook and Twitter soon spilled out onto the streets of Jerusalem as extremist Israelis kicked up violence and caused chaos. This violence then made its way back online: YouTube and Facebookvideos show hundreds of angry Israeli mobs running around chanting, “Death to Arabs,” and looking for Palestinians to attack. A video of an Israeli Jew attacking a Palestinian on a public bus shouting, “Filthy Arabs, filthy Arab murderers of children,” emerged from Tel Aviv. And more video footage showing Israeli security forces using excessive force on a handcuffed Palestinian-American boy further called into question who was really inciting this chaos.

Can anyone imagine Facebook deleting the posts of prominent Israelis calling for increased violence or oppression against Palestinians? Indeed, is it even possible to imagine Facebook deleting the posts of Americans or western Europeans who call for aggressive wars or other forms of violence against predominantly Muslim countries, or against critics of the West? To ask the question is to answer it. Facebook is a private company, with a legal obligation to maximize profit, and so it will interpret very slippery concepts such as “hate speech” and “inciting violence” to please those who wield the greatest power. It’s thus inconceivable that Facebook would ever dream of deleting this type of actual advocacy or incitement of violence:

Facebook is confronting extreme pressure to censor content disliked by various governments. The U.S. and U.K. have jointly launched a campaignto malign Silicon Valley companies as terrorist helpers or ISIS supporters for refusing to take more active steps to ban content from those whom these governments regard as “terrorists.” Israel has been particularly aggressive in attempting to blame Facebook for violence and coerce it to censor. Family members of Israelis killed by Palestinians are suing Facebook claiming the company helped facilitate those attacks, while some Israelis have actually complained that Facebook is biased against Israel in its censorship practices.

About all of this, The Intercept submitted the following questions to Facebook, which has not yet responded; we will update this article if it does:

1) Has FB ever met with Palestinian leaders in an effort to identify and suppress posts from Israelis that incite violence? Is there any plan to do so?

2) If an Israeli advocates that Palestinians be attacked and/or bombed, would those posts violate FB’s terms of service and be deleted? Have any ever been?

3) What role, exactly, is the Israeli government playing in helping FB identify content that should be barred?

4) FB said it “granted some 95% of the requests” from Israeli officials to remove content. What percentage of requests from Palestinians to remove content has been accepted?

5) If someone says that Israel’s occupation is illegal and should be resisted using all means, would that be permitted?

It’s true that these companies have the legal right as private actors to censor whatever they want. But that proposition ignores the unprecedented control this small group of corporations now exerts over global communications. That this censorship is within their legal rights does not obviate the serious danger this corporate conduct poses, for reasons I set forth here in describing how vast their influence has become in shaping our discourse (see here for a disturbing story today on how Twitter banned a Scottish pro-independence group after it criticized an article from a tabloid journalist, who then complained she was being “harassed”).

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Facebook, at this point, is far and away the most dominant force in journalism. It is indescribably significant to see it work with a government to censor the speech of that government’s opponents. But as is so often the case with censorship, people are content with its application until it is used to suppress views they agree with or like.

One of the early promises of the internet, a key potential benefit, was its ability to equalize disparities, to enable the powerless to communicate as freely and potently as the powerful, and to politically organize in far more efficient ways. Those who continually call on companies such as Facebook and Twitter to censor content are seriously jeopardizing those values, no matter how noble their motives might be. It is difficult to imagine any scenario more at odds with the internet’s promise than Facebook executives and the Israeli government meeting to decide what Palestinians will and will not be allowed to say.