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October 15, 2018
Facebook Attacks Iraq War Veteran Who Gave Both Legs And One Arm For America - 'Three limbs wasn’t enough for some … now my livelihood is gone with it'
Facebook's recent purge of 800 pages and/or accounts was a blatant act of censorship, as well as Facebook's attempt to meddle, or influence the midterm elections, as they admitted in their own news release stating they took these actions "ahead of the US midterm elections." Facebook's claim that the accounts were spamming, frequently calling them "inauthentic" and claiming "the 'news' stories or opinions these accounts and Pages share are often indistinguishable from legitimate political debate," is absolutely false.
What exactly is legitimate political debate? To liberals like Mark Zuckerberg, it appears that anything that goes against their preferred narrative is not legitimate.
While we have often looked at this issue with Facebook, Twitter, Google and YouTube's censorship practices, where whole segments of the population with a certain political ideology are being silenced on a number of social media and big tech platforms, today we want to look at the human cost of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg's attempt to meddle in the 2018 midterm elections.
For example, one of those pages Facebook arbitrarily deleted, was Right Wing News, along with another page, Military Grade Coffee Company, owned by the same person, Brian Kolfage.
Military Grade Coffee was not a political page, they sold coffee, and 10 percent of net their income from selling their coffee products goes to veteran charities.
We would like to introduce our readers to Mr. Kolfage.
In Mr. Kolfage's response to having his pages arbitrarily deleted, without prior notification, by Facebook, he describes himself in the following manner:
My name is Brian Kolfage, I’m a veteran of The United States Air Force. I was severely wounded in Combat, on 9/11/2004 while serving in Iraq. I lost both my legs entirely and my right hand. I’m the most severely wounded US Airman to survive.
I worked alongside Democrat Congresswoman Gabby Giffords on her veteran advisory committee. I endorsed her, have great respect for her, and helped her win her final election with a pivotal campaign commercial. In Giffords’ Time Magazine interview, I was honored to be named as someone who inspires her.
I’m not a “conservative.” I’m not a “liberal.” I’m an American, with deep beliefs in what our country stands for. I proved this by fighting for America, knowing I may not return home. My life was spared, but I paid for freedom with one arm and both my legs.
No title represents me more than being a proud American. This is why I joined the military. I love my country, and I love my country’s people. Which is why I vowed to protect them and the freedoms that I inherited.
He left a few things out, which was covered by a fellow writer over at RWN. First off, after suffering his devastating injuries, Kolfage was not expected to survive. He did. Then he was never expected to walk again, yet nearly a year later, after recovering at Walter Reed Hospital, he walked out.
Kolfage went back to work for the Air Force as a base security manager. He then went on to enroll at the University of Arizona’s School of Architecture, where he had to learn to draw with his left hand, since he no longer had a right hand, which was his dominant. He graduated and then was awarded the Pat Tillman Scholar award. In 2014, he earned the George C. Lang Award for Courage, for his fearlessness and also his selfless actions taking care of other wounded veterans.
The point here is that Brian Kolfage is a survivor, a man that doesn't have any give in him and he is ready to take on Mark Zuckerberg, especially since Zuckerberg and Facebook had no problem over the years accepting over $300,000 from Kolfage to promote his various websites.
In Mr. Kolfage's public response to Facebook removing his Facebook pages that he has spent years building, he explains "We had a coveted, verified blue check mark 3.5 Million fans, and I invested over $300,000 in ads at Facebook’s own request, nearly begging us to spend spend spend just to reach our fans … whom they kept making more difficult to reach with every passing year."
In fact, Kolfage has provided a number of screen shots of communications between him and his Facebook representative showing his clear attempts to constantly comply with the ever-changing rules and regulations required by Facebook.
Never once did Facebook come to us to say there was any issue with Right Wing News or our other pages. Never. But they sure loved taking our money.
We did run multiple Facebook pages; Facebook allows businesses to have more than one page, and we did own them and had them for years. We were not “spamming,” we were not using fake accounts, we were not doing anything “wrong” … except we supported President Trump, and apparently that’s not allowed.
Katie Harbath, Facebook’s head of Global Politics, knew all this for years about our pages and accounts. It was no secret. Why wouldn’t they just come to us if there was a problem? We were one of the biggest ALL ORGANIC conservative news sites, and very reputable. We spoke to Katie at least once a month, and any time there was an issue, we worked together to resolve and ensure it never happened again.
We were very proactive and always remained on top of Facebook’s policies, rules, and regulations. We have all the emails to back this up.
"This isn’t the right to free speech I gave my legs and arm to defend. Three limbs wasn’t enough for some … now my livelihood is gone with it." - Brian Kolfage, October 11, 2018.
That about says it all. Heartbreaking.
In 2016, The Gary Sinise Foundation profiled Brian Kolfage, shown below:
Kolfage's personal, verified Facebook account has remained up, and in his latest update on what has been happening, he says "We have MAJOR support flowing in all the way from the top of the trump administration. Get ready!"
(PLEASE CONTACT THE ATLANTIC COUNCIL AT 202-778-4952 ABOUT THIS FIASCO!!!)
THEY AREN'T ONLY MEDDLING IN ELECTIONS, THEY ARE TRYING TO DESTROY US ALL
Mr. Kolfage is just one of hundreds of people and accounts affected by this latest purge, but to clearly understand the extent, we go back to before the 2016 election.
What happened with ANP is reflected in the hundreds of websites like ours, where prior to the 2016 presidential election, we managed to support the website and ourselves with the advertising real estate we offered without ever asking for any donations from readers.
Since the election we have watched YouTube demonetize our channel, Twitter's shadow banning, Facebook's levels of censorship became so bad we stopped posting our content on there completely. Google's manipulation of search results, and a number of other factors has brought us, and a number of other sites like Daily Caller, Daily Signal, Government Slaves, True Pundit, Campus Reform, LifeSite, etc.....to where only by the generosity of readers' donations have we been able to survive, and it is still a struggle.
So we join Mr. Kolfage in his words to President Donald Trump and the U.S. Congress when he states "We need President Trump, the US Senate and Congress to step up, do their jobs to protect Americans and investigate these crimes by Facebook and their employees." I would add in Twitter, Google, and YouTube.
It is past time.
BOTTOM LINE
While Mr. Kolfage puts a human face to this censorship issue, there were 800 accounts and pages in Facebook's latest purge. Perhaps some were "inauthentic," perhaps not, because if Facebook can attack the credibility of a man like Brian Kolfage, accusing him of "illegitimate political debate," and "misleading behavior," imagine how many others they slandered and have thrown off the platform with their claims of in-authenticity.
These are real people, trying to earn a living, and I assure readers, other than the MSM, no one creates a current news website to become rich. Big tech and social media giants are determined to not just silence Independent Media, but as shown with Kolfage, they are destroying lives, trying to prevent people from feeding their families, and why?
All in the name of meddling in elections and silencing those that believe differently than those running those companies.
President Trump should invite Mr. Kolfage to the White House and let him speak to reporters. He should offer Mr. Kolfage as much time as he wants on any of his rally stages, to bring the actions of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook to the attention of Americans that do not read a lot of political news.
Below is another Facebook page owner that was "Memory Holed," as he explains.
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