You know, AI is already embedded with us. Think about it. Reality is not real anymore.
“If you are bargaining in good faith the audience might forgive you.” (Paraphrasing)
Social media
The hypocrisy of this guy is gargantuan. I imagine you would be jailed for posting this on Facebook, his own creation.
GOP AG Jeff Landry of Louisiana released a document last week showing clearly that the regime pressured Facebook to censor Carlson after he said in no uncertain terms what most Americans knew — that the COVID-19 vaccines “don’t work,” as evidenced by the fact that so many vaccinated people caught COVID again, including many of our elected leaders (and Biden).
by: JD Heyes
Friday, January 13, 2023
The discovery phase of a lawsuit against the Biden regime brought by the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana has revealed a stunning bombshell — the White House has been busted for being directly involved in pressuring social media companies to censor Americans over COVID-19 vaccine views and facts the regime did not want anyone to hear.
One of the people the Biden administration wanted to be censored was top-rated Fox News host Tucker Carlson, one of several people who were singled out by the regime within a few months after Joe Biden was installed in the Oval Office, according to documents that the attorneys general have discovered and revealed.
GOP AG Jeff Landry of Louisiana released a document last week showing clearly that the regime pressured Facebook to censor Carlson after he said in no uncertain terms what most Americans knew — that the COVID-19 vaccines “don’t work,” as evidenced by the fact that so many vaccinated people caught COVID again, including many of our elected leaders (and Biden).
“Since we’ve been on the phone — the top post about vaccines today is [T]ucker Carlson saying they don’t work. Yesterday it was Tomi Lehren [sic] saying she won’t take one,” White House Director of Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty said in an April 14, 2021 email, which the AG posted on Twitter.
“This is exactly why I want to know what ‘Reduction’ actually looks like — if ‘reduction’ means ‘pumping our most vaccine hesitant audience with [T]ucker Carlson saying it doesn’t work’ then … I’m not sure it’s reduction!” Flaherty continued, revealing fully that he wanted Carlson to be censored.
Conservative Brief noted further:
Landry and then-Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, now a U.S. senator, sued the Biden administration in May, alleging that officials worked with social media companies to suppress information regarding the 2020 election, the pandemic, and other issues.
A federal court ordered the Biden administration to hand over relevant documents in July.
In response, the unknown Facebook employee said they were “running this down now.”
On his show’s Facebook page, Carlson wrote in September 2020: “Facebook is working hard to make sure you’re unable to see our latest post regarding a coronavirus whistleblower. They don’t want you sharing the video, and they are limiting the number of people who can view it. This is censorship.”
But it’s no wonder Facebook was bending to this pressure. In December, Democratic lawmakers wrote a letter to Facebook’s parent company, Meta, demanding new censorship and appearing to threaten the company with new regulatory legislation if the platform followed Elon Musk’s direction in reducing censorship protocols for Twitter.
The letter shocked Georgetown University law professor and attorney Jonathan Turley.
“With the restoration of free speech protections on Twitter, panic has grown on the left that its control over social media could come to an end. Now, some of the greatest advocates of censorship in Congress are specifically warning Facebook not to follow Twitter in restoring free speech to its platform,” he wrote in a column for Fox News.
In a chilling letter from Reps. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., André Carson, D-Ind., Kathy Castor, D-Fla., and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., Facebook was given a not-so-subtle threat that reducing its infamous censorship system will invite congressional action. The letter to Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, is written on congressional stationery ‘as part of our ongoing oversight efforts,’” he added.
“With House Republicans pledging to investigate social media censorship when they take control in January, these four Democratic members are trying to force Facebook to ‘recommit’ to censoring opposing views and to make election censorship policies permanent. Otherwise, they suggest, they may be forced to exercise oversight into any move by Facebook to ‘alter or rollback certain misinformation policies,’” Turley noted further.
Got that? Democrats, not Republicans, are the party of tyranny, censorship, and unconstitutional limits on speech, as they have once again proven.
Sources include:
The failed coup in Brazil is the latest CIA stunt, just as the country is forging stronger ties with the east.
January 11, 2023
According to the US source, the reason for staging the operation – which bears visible signs of hasty planning – now, is that Brazil is set to reassert itself in global geopolitics alongside fellow BRICS states Russia, India, and China.
CIA chatter was intercepted at Fort Gordon since mid-2022. The main theme then was the imposition of the widespread narrative that ‘Lula could only win by cheating.’
By Pepe ESCOBAR
A former US intelligence official has confirmed that the shambolic Maidan remix staged in Brasilia on 8 January was a CIA operation, and linked it to the recent attempts at color revolution in Iran.
On Sunday, alleged supporters of former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro stormed Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace, bypassing flimsy security barricades, climbing on roofs, smashing windows, destroying public property including precious paintings, while calling for a military coup as part of a regime change scheme targeting elected President Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva.
According to the US source, the reason for staging the operation – which bears visible signs of hasty planning – now, is that Brazil is set to reassert itself in global geopolitics alongside fellow BRICS states Russia, India, and China.
That suggests CIA planners are avid readers of Credit Suisse strategist Zoltan Pozsar, formerly of the New York Fed. In his ground-breaking 27 December report titled War and Commodity Encumbrance, Pozsar states that “the multipolar world order is being built not by G7 heads of state but by the ‘G7 of the East’ (the BRICS heads of state), which is a G5 really but because of ‘BRICSpansion’, I took the liberty to round up.”
He refers here to reports that Algeria, Argentina, Iran have already applied to join the BRICS – or rather its expanded version “BRICS+” – with further interest expressed by Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Indonesia.
The US source drew a parallel between the CIA’s Maidan in Brazil and a series of recent street demonstrations in Iran instrumentalized by the agency as part of a new color revolution drive: “These CIA operations in Brazil and Iran parallel the operation in Venezuela in 2002 that was highly successful at the start as rioters managed to seize Hugo Chavez.”
Enter the “G7 of the East”
Straussian neo-cons placed at the top of the CIA, irrespective of their political affiliation, are livid that the “G7 of the East” – as in the BRICS+ configuration of the near future – are fast moving out of the US dollar orbit.
Straussian John Bolton – who has just publicized his interest in running for the US presidency – is now demanding the ouster of Turkey from NATO as the Global South realigns rapidly within new multipolar institutions.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his new Chinese counterpart Qin Gang have just announced the merging of the China-driven Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Russia-driven Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). This means that the largest 21st-century trade/connectivity/development project – the Chinese New Silk Roads – is now even more complex, and keeps expanding.
That sets the stage for the introduction, already being designed at various levels, of a new international trading currency aimed at supplanting then replacing the US dollar. Apart from an internal debate among the BRICS, one of the key vectors is the discussion team set up between the EAEU and China. When concluded, these deliberations will be presented to BRI-EAEU partner nations and of course the expanded BRICS+.
Lula at the helm in Brazil, in what is now his third non-successive presidential term, will offer a tremendous boost to BRICS+, In the 2000s, side by side with Russian President Putin and former Chinese President Hu Jintao, Lula was a key conceptualizer of a deeper role for BRICS, including trade in their own currencies.
BRICS as “the new G7 of the East,” as defined by Pozsar, is beyond anathema – as much for Straussian neo-cons as for neoliberals.
The US is being slowly but surely expelled from wider Eurasia by concerted actions of the Russia-China strategic partnership.
Ukraine is a black hole – where NATO faces a humiliation that will make Afghanistan look like Alice in Wonderland. A feeble EU being forced by Washington to de-industrialize and buy US Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) at an absurdly high cost has no essential resources for the Empire to plunder.
Geoeconomically, that leaves the US-denominated “Western Hemisphere,” especially immense energy-rich Venezuela as the key target. And geopolitically, the key regional actor is Brazil.
The Straussian neo-con play is to pull all stops to prevent Chinese and Russian trade expansion and political influence in Latin America, which Washington – irrespective of international law and the concept of sovereignty, continues to call “our backyard.” In times where neoliberalism is so “inclusive” that Zionists wear swastikas, the Monroe Doctrine is back, on steroids.
All about the ‘strategy of tension’
Clues for Maidan in Brazil can be obtained, for instance, at the US Army Cyber Command at Fort Gordon, where it’s no secret the CIA deployed hundreds of assets across Brazil ahead of the recent presidential election – faithful to the “strategy of tension” playbook.
CIA chatter was intercepted at Fort Gordon since mid-2022. The main theme then was the imposition of the widespread narrative that ‘Lula could only win by cheating.’
A key target of the CIA operation was to discredit by all means the Brazilian electoral process, paving the way for a prepackaged narrative that is now unravelling: a defeated Bolsonaro fleeing Brazil and seeking refuge at former US president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion. Bolsonaro, advised by Steve Bannon, did flee Brazil, skipping Lula’s inauguration, but because he’s terrified he may be facing the slammer sooner rather than later. And by the way, he is in Orlando, not Mar-a-Lago.
The icing on the stale Maidan cake was what happened this past Sunday: fabricating a 8 January in Brasilia mirroring the events of 6 January 2021 in Washington, and of course, imprinting the Bolsonaro-Trump link on people’s minds.
The amateurish nature of 8 January in Brasilia suggests CIA planners got lost in their own plot. The whole farce had to be anticipated because of Pozsar’s report, which everyone who matters has read across the New York-Beltway axis.
What is clear, is that for some factions of the powerful US establishment, getting rid of Trump at all costs is even more crucial than crippling Brazil’s role in BRICS+.
When it comes to the internal factors of Maidan in Brazil, borrowing from novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, everything walks and talks like the Chronicle of a Coup Foretold. It is impossible that the security apparatus around Lula could not have foreseen these events, especially considering the tsunami of signs on social networks.
So there must have been a concerted effort to act softly – without any preventive big sticks – while just emitting the usual neoliberal babble.
After all, Lula’s cabinet is a mess, with ministers constantly clashing and some members supporting Bolsonaro even a few months ago. Lula calls it a “national unity government,” but it is more like a tawdry patchwork job.
Brazilian analyst Quantum Bird, a globally respected physics scholar who has returned home after a long stint in NATO lands, notes how there are “too many actors in play and too many antagonistic interests. Among Lula’s ministers, we find Bolsonarists, neoliberal-rentiers, climate interventionism converts, identity politics practitioners and a vast fauna of political neophytes and social climbers, all well aligned with Washington’s imperial interests.”
CIA-stoked ‘militants’ on the prowl
One plausible scenario is that powerful sectors of the Brazilian military – at the service of the usual Straussian neo-con think tanks, plus global finance capital – could not really pull off a real coup, considering massive popular rejection, and had to settle at best for a “soft” farce. That illustrates just how much this self-aggrandizing and highly corrupt military faction is isolated from Brazilian society.
What is deeply worrying, as Quantum Bird notes, is that the unanimity in condemning 8 January from all quarters, while no one took responsibility, “shows how Lula navigates virtually alone in a shallow sea infested by sharpened corals and hungry sharks.”
Lula’s position, he adds, “decreeing a federal intervention all by himself, without strong faces of his own government or relevant authorities, shows an improvised, disorganized and amateurish reaction.”
And all that, once again, after CIA-stoked “militants” had been organizing the “protests” openly on social media for days.
The same old CIA playbook though remains at work. It still boggles the mind how easy it is to subvert Brazil, one of the natural leaders of the Global South. Attempted old-school coups cum regime change/color revolution scripts will keep being played – remember Kazakhstan in early 2021, and Iran only a few months ago.
As much as the self-aggrandizing faction of the Brazilian military may believe they control the nation, if Lula’s significant masses hit the streets in full force against the 8 January farce, the army’s impotence will be graphically imprinted. And since this is a CIA operation, the handlers will order their tropical military vassals to behave like ostriches.
The future, unfortunately, is ominous. The US establishment will not allow Brazil, the BRICS economy with the best potential after China, to be back in business with full force and in synch with the Russia-China strategic partnership.
Straussian neo-cons and neoliberals, certified geopolitical jackals and hyenas, will get even more ferocious as the “G7 of the East,” Brazil included, moves to end the suzerainty of the US dollar as imperial control of the world vanishes.
Jan 9, 2023
This article was originally published by Patrick Carroll at The Foundation for Economic Education.
There’s an alternative to government licensing, and it already exists.
On January 3, Jordan Peterson used his recently-reinstated Twitter account to alert the world of a new development in his seemingly-endless battle with mainstream institutions.
“The Ontario College of Psychologists has demanded that I submit myself to mandatory social-media communication retraining with their experts for, among other crimes, retweeting Pierre Poilievre and criticizing Justin Trudeau and his political allies,” Peterson wrote.
According to Peterson, the College’s actions were prompted by roughly a dozen complaints submitted over the past four years. Notably, none of the complaints were brought by people Peterson interacted with in a clinical context. Rather, they seem to be motivated by political disagreements and only feature vague accusations of harm resulting from some of Peterson’s social media rhetoric.
“What exactly have I done that is so seriously unprofessional?” Peterson asks in a National Post column. “It is hard to tell with some of the complaints (one involved the submission of the entire transcript of a three-hour discussion on the Joe Rogan podcast), but here are some examples.”
He goes on to list some of the accusations of unprofessional conduct levied against him, which include retweeting a comment about the unnecessary severity of the Covid-19 lockdowns, criticizing Justin Trudeau and other politicians, and making a joke about the prime minister of New Zealand.
Peterson has indicated he is eager to release all the details of the accusations so the public can see the evidence and judge for themselves who is in the right, but the College has thus far not given permission to this effect.
To atone for his errors, Peterson was told he needs to take a mandatory social-media retraining course at his own expense. The course will be considered finished when the College’s experts are satisfied with his progress.
Naturally, Peterson refused to take the course. As a result, he now faces a mandatory public disciplinary hearing and the possible suspension of his clinical license. If he loses his license, he will be barred from practicing clinical psychology in Ontario and from representing himself as a psychologist.
A Tool for Censorship
This isn’t the first time the licensing system has been weaponized against professionals with unpopular views. In an infamous 2021 statement from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario—the provincial regulatory body for medical doctors—doctors were effectively told to get on board with the official Covid narrative or risk losing their license.
“Physicians hold a unique position of trust with the public,” the statement reads, “and have a professional responsibility to not communicate anti-vaccine, anti-masking, anti-distancing, and anti-lockdown statements and/or promoting unsupported, unproven treatments for COVID-19. Physicians must not make comments or provide advice that encourages the public to act contrary to public health orders and recommendations. Physicians who put the public at risk may face an investigation by the CPSO and disciplinary action when warranted.”
These were not empty threats. One Ontario physician, Dr. Patrick Phillips, had his license suspended in May 2022 for “inappropriate” COVID-19 treatments and advice.
As these and many other examples make clear, the licensing system can be a powerful weapon for censorship. And it’s no mystery why. Professionals need licenses to legally practice their profession. Even if there are relatively few suspensions in practice, the mere fact that your license could be suspended has a huge impact. Self-censorship is likely rampant in fields like law, medicine, and psychology on account of this threat.
The Underlying Problem: Government Licensing
Though the administrators of licensing systems certainly carry much of the blame for intimidating professionals into conformity, the root of the problem is the licensing regulations themselves. If these were private clubs that were threatening to revoke membership, it wouldn’t really matter. The reason this is such a big deal is that these bodies are empowered by the government to strip professionals of their livelihoods. If licensing laws were repealed, these regulatory bodies would have no teeth, and thus no ability to threaten and coerce professionals.
The objection, of course, is that we need licensing to protect consumers from unethical and incompetent practitioners. But why should the government get to decide who is unethical and incompetent? Why not you, the consumer?
“Consumers are ignorant,” we are told. “They need an expert to help them verify competence.”
Fair enough, but that doesn’t mean the government needs to get involved. There’s an alternative system that removes the coercive element while still allowing consumers to verify that the services they buy are trustworthy. That alternative is free-market certification. Anyone who cares about government censorship would do well to at least familiarize themselves with this alternative to the status quo.
Let’s briefly explore how it could work.
How a Free-Market Certification System Could Replace Government Licensing
Though a free-market certification system could take many forms, one form that would likely emerge is a series of voluntary professional associations. Though professionals would be legally allowed to work without an affiliation to a known association, their potential customers will be looking for indicators of trustworthiness, so professionals will find it to their advantage to join these groups. Professional associations like these already exist for precisely this reason in all sorts of unregulated professions, such as Osteopathy.
An association for psychologists might call themselves the Psychological Professionals of Ontario (PPO). To become a member, PPO would have certain requirements you must fulfill, such as graduating from a school they approve of and perhaps passing a test demonstrating to them that you know what you’re doing. Once you’ve met these requirements, PPO would grant you their certificate of approval (membership) which you can then use when advertising to potential clients. PPO would also likely have a series of reasonable rules that their members must abide by in order to keep their certificate. Practitioners who transgress those rules can be kicked out of the association. This could make life somewhat difficult for these practitioners, but—and this is the key difference—it doesn’t interfere with their legal right to practice.
If PPO has a good reputation for high standards, consumers can be confident that a PPO-certified psychologist will be ethical and competent. If PPO gives certificates to psychologists who turn out to be poor practitioners, however, or if they are arbitrary and capricious in their judgments, their reputation could take a hit, and members might move to a competing association with a better track record. Professional associations, then, like any organization on the free market, will live and die by their competence and probity, and will constantly face accountability from the market.
So let’s say I live in such a society without professional licensing and I decide to see a psychologist. Clearly, I won’t just pay the first person on the street who adopts that title. Instead, I might ask friends for recommendations or look online for established practitioners who have been in business for a while. Once I have a short list, I would probably look up consumer reviews on the people I’m considering and look up their professional affiliations. Armed with this information, I’d make a choice. I might not get the best person, but chances are I’ll find someone decent. At the very least, I’ll easily be able to avoid gross incompetence.
“That makes sense,” you might say, “but what about the people who don’t do their homework? Aren’t they at risk of hiring someone incompetent?”
Yes, I suppose they are. But this is hardly for lack of information. They had ample opportunity to verify the qualifications of the seller if they wanted to.
There comes a point where we simply need to say Caveat emptor—let the buyer beware. At the end of the day, it’s the buyer’s responsibility to make sure they know what they’re getting into. And if they get hurt because they didn’t do their due diligence, that’s kind of on them. It’s not the government’s job to protect people from making bad personal choices, especially since what constitutes a “bad choice” is often a matter of contention, as it is in Peterson’s case.
“Once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of the government to protect the individual against his own foolishness,” Mises warned, “no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments.”
The point is that consumers, not bureaucrats, should determine whose services will be bought on the market. And while it’s true that consumers generally know little about the field in question, professional associations, consumer reviews, and word of mouth are beyond sufficient to provide them with the necessary information to judge whether a given practitioner will be good at their job.
Peterson’s ability to practice psychotherapy should depend on his track record and reputation, not on the whims of bureaucrats. The same goes for every other professional, no matter their field.
These so-called “doctors” whipped everyone into a fear frenzy. Their tweets would get tens of thousands of retweets and engagement daily. The “doctors” posed as ER physicians and were part of the LGBTQ community in some way.
They created this hellish/apocalyptic scenario that made it sound as if bodies were piling up in the streets. Well, this probably won’t come as a huge surprise to you, but those popular “ER doctors” were fake.
https://www.naturalnews.com/2023-01-07-er-doctors-on-twitter-covid-fake.html
by: JD Heyes
Saturday, January 07, 2023
The advent of social media has become the bane of modern society, as it has created a world that literally does not exist, for the most part.
Gone are the days of “MySpace” and the early years of Facebook, when users simply posted status updates, photos from places they visited, recipes, and other things to keep in touch with family and friends.
Today’s version of social media exists to foist lies, propaganda, and false narratives on tens of millions of people by the minute, used by government and some in the private sector for non-stop psychological warfare, as Twitter boss Elon Musk has recently revealed with his dumps of “Twitter Files.”
Now, we learn that Twitter was used to spread massive lies about the COVID-19 pandemic in order to scare the public into complying with one tyrannical mandate after another.
As Revolver News reports, a pair of ‘E.R. doctors’ who claimed that they witnessed dozens of COVID deaths per shift were not even real people:
If you were on Twitter back when the COVID “fear-mongering” was at its peak, you’ll likely remember the “Twitter doctors” who popped up, seemingly out of thin air, claiming they were losing hordes of patients to COVID every single day.
These so-called “doctors” whipped everyone into a fear frenzy. Their tweets would get tens of thousands of retweets and engagement daily.
The “doctors” posed as ER physicians and were part of the LGBTQ community in some way. They created this hellish/apocalyptic scenario that made it sound as if bodies were piling up in the streets.
Well, this probably won’t come as a huge surprise to you, but those popular “ER doctors” were fake.
The site quoted a bombshell report in the San Francisco Standard, which revealed the false flag operation.
“Last month, Dr. Robert Honeyman lost their sister to Covid. They wrote about it on Twitter and received dozens of condolences, over 4,000 retweets and 43,000 likes,” the outlet reported. “Exactly one month later, on Dec. 12, Honeyman wrote that another tragedy had befallen their family.”
“Sad to announce that my husband has entered a coma after being in hospital with Covid. The doctor is unsure if he will come out,” they tweeted. “This year has been the toughest of my life losing my sister to this virus. This is the first time in my life I don’t see light at the end of the tunnel.”
Once more, the condolences and well-wishes poured in — Americans are a compassionate lot, after all, regardless of what lying leftist Democrats often say. But again, none of this was true.
It was all fake.
“Honeyman wasn’t real,” the San Francisco Standard reported. “The transgender ‘Doctor of Sociology and Feminist studies’ with a ‘keen interest in poetry” who used they/them pronouns was, in fact, a stock photo described on DepositPhotos, a royalty-free image site, as ‘Smiling happy, handsome Latino man outside—headshot portrait.’
“Their supposedly comatose husband, Dr. Patrick C. Honeyman, was also fake. His Twitter photo had been stolen from an insurance professional in Wayne, Indiana,” the outlet’s report noted further.
But it gets worse: The outlet noted that the two phony doctors, whose accounts continually urged caution about COVID-19 and pushed for lockdowns, masking, business closures, etc., were part of a larger network of at least four fake accounts that promoted alleged ties to the LGBTQ community. The accounts also posted heated criticisms of anyone who was viewed as not taking the pandemic seriously enough or who pushed back on the tyrannical measures.
And interestingly enough, the scam was uncovered by a liberal writer.
“The fake doctors were uncovered by Joshua Gutterman Tranen, a self-described “gay writer” pursuing a master’s of fine arts at Bennington College. He saw Robert Honeyman’s tweet about their husband being in a coma, noticed people he followed also followed them, and thought that they might be part of the LGBTQ+ academic community,” the outlet reported.
“But after 10 minutes of googling, Gutterman Tranen concluded that Robert Honeyman’s photo was a stock image and their biography stretched boundaries of believability: an academic who left no traces on academic websites and had lost two family members to Covid in late 2022, despite masking and distancing,” the report stated.
Once again, social media was being used to push lies, false narratives, and propaganda, proving once again that the big tech companies are no doubt tied to the American deep state.
Sources include:
This same censorship agenda by both administrations was also imposed upon Google, Facebook, Microsoft and other Big Tech platforms, the same internal files show.
https://www.naturalnews.com/2023-01-02-twitter-files-rigged-covid-debate-truth-censored.html
by: Ethan Huff
Monday, January 02, 2023
The latest drop from the Twitter Files shows that the world’s most controversial social media platform rigged the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) debate to control the narrative.
It did this, according to journalist David Zweig, by censoring information that was true but inconvenient to U.S. government policy; discrediting doctors and other experts who disagreed with the official government position; and suppressing ordinary users, including those who merely shared data from government agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
While on assignment for The Free Press, Zweig was given access to internal files from Twitter that show both the Biden and Trump administrations “directly pressed Twitter executives to moderate the platform’s pandemic content according to their wishes.”
This same censorship agenda by both administrations was also imposed upon Google, Facebook, Microsoft and other Big Tech platforms, the same internal files show.
“The Trump White House, specifically Michael Kratsios, led the Trump Administration’s calls for help from the tech companies to combat misinformation,” one of the files stated.
“Areas of focus included conspiracies around 5G cell towers, runs on grocery stores, and misinformation that could stoke panic buying and behaviors.” (Related: Twitter only opposed censorship when doing so negatively affected Twitter.)
The Trump administration was especially focused on the issue of panic buying, probably because it did not want such activity to interfere with or damage its reputation while in office.
“Twitter, alongside several other tech companies, including Google, Facebook and Microsoft, participated,” the files further said.
“Activities included a standing weekly call to share general trends and hosting a shared Microsoft Teams group. Some of the companies (not Twitter) gathered open-sources information from researchers. Our teams fed this information to the Twitter policy enforcement teams.”
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released advisory in July 2021 warning about “infodemic,” calling for more tech censorship of “misinformation”
The Biden regime, after being passed the baton from Trump and his people, continued to fight against online free speech.
Then-Surgeon General Vivek Murthy in July 2021 released a 22-page advisory about the “infodemic,” as the World Health Organization called it, that was spreading online. More needed to be done on social media, Murthy argued, to combat the “misinformation” that was spreading as a result of this infodemic.
“We are asking them to step up,” Murthy said at the time. “We can’t wait longer for them to take aggressive action.”
In private, Murthy and other government officials had already said these same things to Twitter and other tech platforms, pushing them to take action against online free speech – and particularly “anti-vaxxer accounts,” as Operation Warp Speed was in full swing at the time.
Of particular concern was Alex Berenson, whom we have cited here many times, because of his vocal skepticism against lockdowns, the “vaccines” and other tenets of the scamdemic.
The day after Murthy released his 22-page memo, Joe Biden himself publicly announced that social media companies were “killing people” by not censoring more information. Just hours later, Berenson’s Twitter account was locked, then permanently suspended a month later.
Berenson later sued and regained access to Twitter. And as part of that suit, Twitter was forced to provide certain internal communications about what had happened, revealing direct interference by the White House.
It turns out that Biden and his people were still “very angry” at Twitter for not taking more action against certain accounts, calling for more tyranny. Twitter, we now know, never fully complied with those demands, despite all the censorship that it did conspire to inflict upon users and their freedom of speech.
The latest news about the Twitter Files can be found at Censorship.news.
Sources for this article include:
…the FBI now declares us to be part of a disinformation danger that it is committed to stamping out — “conspiracy theorists” misleading the public simply by criticizing the bureau.
Dec 29, 2022
This article was originally published by Johnathan Turley at The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
Below is my column in the Hill on the need for a new “Church Committee” to investigate and reform the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after years of scandals involving alleged political bias. In response to criticism over its role in Twitter’s censorship system, the FBI lashed out against critics as “conspiracy theorists” spreading disinformation. However, it still refuses to supply new information on other companies, beyond Twitter, which it has paid to engage in censorship.
Here is the column:
“Conspiracy theorists … feeding the American public misinformation” is a familiar attack line for anyone raising free-speech concerns over the FBI’s role in social media censorship. What is different is that this attack came from the country’s largest law enforcement agency, the FBI — and, since the FBI has made combatting “disinformation” a major focus of its work, the labelling of its critics is particularly menacing.
Fifty years ago, the Watergate scandal provoked a series of events that transformed not only the presidency but federal agencies like the FBI. Americans demanded answers about the involvement of the FBI and other federal agencies in domestic politics. Ultimately, Congress not only investigated the FBI but later impaneled the Church Committee to investigate a host of other abuses by intelligence agencies.
A quick review of recent disclosures and controversies shows ample need for a new Church Committee:
The Russian investigations
The FBI previously was at the center of controversies over documented political bias. Without repeating the long history of the Russian influence scandal, FBI officials like Peter Strzok were fired after emails showed open bias against presidential candidate Donald Trump. The FBI ignored warnings that the so-called Steele dossier, largely funded by the Clinton campaign, was likely used by Russian intelligence to spread disinformation. It continued its investigation despite early refutations of key allegations or discrediting of sources.
Biden family business
The FBI has taken on the character of a Praetorian Guard when the Biden family has found itself in scandals.
For example, there was Hunter Biden’s handgun, acquired by apparently lying on federal forms. In 2018, the gun allegedly was tossed into a trash bin in Wilmington, Del., by Hallie Biden, the widow of Hunter’s deceased brother and with whom Hunter had a relationship at the time. Secret Service agents reportedly appeared at the gun shop for no apparent reason, and Hunter later said the matter would be handled by the FBI. Nothing was done despite the apparent violation of federal law.
Later, the diary of Hunter’s sister, Ashley, went missing. While the alleged theft normally would be handled as a relatively minor local criminal matter, the FBI launched a major investigation that continued for months to pursue those who acquired the diary, which reportedly contains embarrassing entries involving President Biden. Such a massive FBI deployment shocked many of us, but the FBI built a federal case against those who took possession of the diary.
Targeting Republicans and conservatives
Recently the FBI was flagged for targeting two senior House Intelligence Committee staffers in grand jury subpoenas sent to Google. It has been criticized for using the Jan. 6 Capitol riot investigations to target conservative groups and GOP members of Congress, including seizing the phone of one GOP member.
The FBI also has been criticized for targeting pro-life violence while not showing the same vigor toward pro-choice violence.
Hunter’s laptop
While the FBI was eager to continue the Russian investigations with no clear evidence of collusion, it showed the opposite inclination when given Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop. The laptop would seem to be a target-rich environment for criminal investigators, with photos and emails detailing an array of potential crimes involving foreign transactions, guns, drugs, and prostitutes. However, reports indicate that FBI officials moved to quash or slow any investigation.
The computer repairman who acquired the laptop, John Paul Mac Isaac, said he struggled to get the FBI to respond and that agents made thinly veiled threats regarding any disclosures of material related to the Biden family; he said one agent told him that “in their experience, nothing ever happens to people that don’t talk about these things.”
The ‘Twitter Files’
The “Twitter Files” released by Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, show as many as 80 agents targeting social-media posters for censorship on the site. This included alleged briefings that Twitter officials said were the reason they spiked the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 election.
The FBI sent 150 messages on back channels to just one Twitter official to flag accounts. One Twitter executive expressed unease over the FBI’s pressure, declaring: “They are probing & pushing everywhere they can (including by whispering to congressional staff).”
We also have learned that Twitter hired a number of retired FBI agents, including former FBI general counsel James Baker, who was a critical and controversial figure in past bureau scandals over political bias.
Attacking critics
It is not clear what is more chilling — the menacing role played by the FBI in Twitter’s censorship program, or its mendacious response to the disclosure of that role. The FBI has issued a series of “nothing-to-see-here” statements regarding the Twitter Files.
In its latest statement, the FBI insists it did not command Twitter to take any specific action when flagging accounts to be censored. Of course, it didn’t have to threaten the company — because we now have an effective state media by consent rather than coercion. Moreover, an FBI warning tends to concentrate the minds of most people without the need for a specific threat.
Finally, the files show that the FBI paid Twitter millions as part of this censorship system — a windfall favorably reported to Baker before he was fired from Twitter by Musk.
Criticizing the FBI is now ‘disinformation’
Responding to the disclosures and criticism, an FBI spokesperson declared: “The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public. It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.”
Arguably, “working every day to protect the American public” need not include censoring the public to protect it from errant or misleading ideas.
However, it is the attack on its critics that is most striking. While the FBI denounced critics of an earlier era as communists and “fellow travellers,” it now uses the same attack narrative to label its critics as “conspiracy theorists.”
After Watergate, there was bipartisan support for reforming the FBI and intelligence agencies. Today, that cacophony of voices has been replaced by crickets, as much of the media imposes another effective blackout on coverage of the Twitter Files. This media silence suggests that the FBI found the “sweet spot” on censorship, supporting the views of the political and media establishment.
As for the rest of us, the FBI now declares us to be part of a disinformation danger that it is committed to stamping out — “conspiracy theorists” misleading the public simply by criticizing the bureau.
Clearly, this is the time for a new Church Committee — and time to reform the FBI.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can find his updates online @JonathanTurley.
Reprinted with permission from JonathanTurley.org.
In the Twitter post of concern, dated March 26, 2021, Kulldorff said that children and those who had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 do not need to be vaccinated, but that vaccines were important for older high-risk people and their caretakers. The post was flagged by a Twitter moderator as having violated the company’s COVID-19 “misinformation policy.”
An internal email shared by Zweig showed that the moderator claimed Kulldorff had shared “false information regarding the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines, which goes against CDC guidelines.” Twitter subsequently labelled the post as “misleading” and turned off all likes and replies.
BY TYLER DURDEN
TUESDAY, DEC 27, 2022
Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times,.
Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a prominent epidemiologist and biostatistician and former Harvard School of Medicine professor, said he was “not surprised” after seeing concrete evidence that a post he shared on Twitter was flagged and prevented from wider dissemination.
Dr. Martin Kulldorff, epidemiologist and statistician. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
He expressed disapproval and said that the social media giant’s overall censorship actions have stifled free debate on COVID-19 topics and undermined trust in science.
In the latest installment of the Elon Musk-endorsed “Twitter Files” published early on Dec. 26, journalist David Zweig shared how posts from Kulldorff and several others about COVID-19, including about vaccines, were flagged and censored in various ways by Twitter.
It marked the first trove of direct evidence from the “Twitter Files” showing how Twitter censored scientists, potentially at the behest of the U.S. government, ever since journalist Bari Weiss revealed in early December that Stanford University professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya had been put on a blacklist due to his views on COVID-19-related lockdowns and school closures.
While Kulldorff said he was not surprised by evidence showing how he and others were censored, he said Twitter should not be the arbiter of which scientists have valid views, and that such censorship shouldn’t happen.
“There should be an open discussion. You can’t expect people to trust public health and trust the scientific community if you don’t have that open communication and open debate,” Kulldorff told The Epoch Times.
In the Twitter post of concern, dated March 26, 2021, Kulldorff said that children and those who had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 do not need to be vaccinated, but that vaccines were important for older high-risk people and their caretakers. The post was flagged by a Twitter moderator as having violated the company’s COVID-19 “misinformation policy.”
An internal email shared by Zweig showed that the moderator claimed Kulldorff had shared “false information regarding the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines, which goes against CDC guidelines.” Twitter subsequently labelled the post as “misleading” and turned off all likes and replies.
“But Kulldorff’s statement was an expert’s opinion—one which also happened to be in line with vaccine policies in numerous other countries. Yet it was deemed ‘false information’ by Twitter moderators merely because it differed from CDC guidelines,” Zweig wrote.
“After Twitter took action, Kulldorff’s tweet was slapped with a ‘Misleading’ label and all replies and likes were shut off, throttling the tweet’s ability to be seen and shared by many people, the ostensible core function of the platform.”
A child receives a dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine in Los Angeles, Calif., on Nov. 5, 2021. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)
Kulldorff reiterated his views on COVID-19 vaccination in children, telling The Epoch Times late Monday: “We know and we’ve known ever since the very beginning of the pandemic, and the data from Wuhan, that children are at minuscule risk … from dying from COVID-19.”
“So the benefit of the vaccine, therefore, is almost nothing, because it doesn’t prevent [transmission]. [And] the risk of death and hospitalization [with children] is very low. The benefit is very, very small. We know that,” he added.
“So then the question is, what are the potential harms? And we know there are potential harms, with myocarditis, for example. I think the benefit is so tiny it’s not worth taking the risks of adverse reactions, which we know there is myocarditis, but we don’t know the full extent of adverse reactions yet.”
Kulldorff also dismissed the view that had been promulgated incessantly by health officials and media outlets that COVID-19 vaccination is “safe and effective” at large.
“I think for many people, they only heard one voice. And when they heard alternative voices, [those voices] were sort of dismissed as cranks. But that’s not how medicine or science works,” he said.
“There are many vaccines and many drugs that are important for some people, but unnecessary for others. So to say that everybody should get a vaccine, that’s not very scientific way of thinking about things,” he said.
“Just like saying that nobody should ever be vaccinated is equally unscientific,” he added.
“But we get sort of a polarizing view between the anti-vaxxers and vaccine fanatics,” Kulldorff observed, adding that in his opinion, “the vaccine fanatics have done much more damage to vaccine confidence than anybody else with pushing vaccine mandates based on flawed scientific thinking.”
“I think that [the push for vaccine mandates] has had consequences not only for the COVID-19 vaccine but also for childhood vaccines—important childhood vaccines like polio, for example,” he said.
“So vaccine fanatics who have been pushing for mandates—that everybody should get vaccinated—they have done a lot of damage to vaccine confidence in the U.S. and other parts of the world as well.”
Amid emerging evidence that U.S. government officials have exerted influence on social media companies with regard to the sharing of views on COVID-19, Kulldorff expressed that the government “should not at all be involved” in any such influence.
While various examples have now come to light with regard to Twitter’s censorship of scientists, Kulldorff said he hopes to see the full extent of this censorship one day, such as “a summary of how many were censored, how many were blacklisted, for how long, and so on.”
He said it would also be important to know which person or people were behind the decisions to censor and whether there were people who were reporting posts to Twitter to be censored.
“Were other scientists involved in urging Twitter to censor their fellow scientists who had a different opinion?” he pondered. “And if so, to what extent, and who were those scientists?”
“I have never sent in a report to Twitter, asking them to censor a scientist with a different opinion of mine. I don’t think scientists should engage in such activity.”
Click on the Twit to get the thread.
It’s not just so-called conspiracy theories about Twitter and social media that have turned out to be true. In the last few years the narrative pushed by the global elite has collapsed and “conspiracy theorists” have been proven right about a long list of topics.
Mysterious government agencies were involved in censoring content along with Twitter Inc. on the social media platform, journalist Matt Taibbi said in newly-released Twitter Files.
The files—which mostly were internal communications among Twitter executives and employees—show that unspecified agencies worked with Twitter before Elon Musk bought the company.
The agencies were usually referred to as “Other Government Agencies,” or OGA, inside Twitter.
In one email from June 29, 2020, FBI San Francisco Field Office official Elvis Chan asked Twitter executives if he could invite an “OGA” to attend an upcoming event.
“I wanted to follow up to see if I could forward this invitation to an OGA?” he wrote.
47. One intel report lists accounts tied to “Ukraine ‘neo-Nazi’ Propaganda.’” This includes assertions that Joe Biden helped orchestrate a coup in 2014 and “put his son on the board of Burisma.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/twitter-files-clandestine-government-agency-edition
BY TYLER DURDEN
SATURDAY, DEC 24, 2022
After writing quite the pre-Christmas reflection Friday, night, Journalist Matt Taibbi has decided to grace us with a Christmas Eve edition of THE TWITTER FILES – which he says details “Twitter’s relationship to other government agencies – including some that don’t like to see their name in print much.”
Continued;
2. It didn’t refute allegations. Instead, it decried “conspiracy theorists” publishing “misinformation,” whose “sole aim” is to “discredit the agency.”
3. They must think us unambitious if our “sole aim” is to discredit the FBI. After all, a whole range of government agencies discredit themselves in the #TwitterFiles. Why stop with one?
4. The files show the FBI acting as doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship, encompassing agencies across the federal government – from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA.
5. The operation is far bigger than the reported 80 members of the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), which also facilitates requests from a wide array of smaller actors – from local cops to media to state governments.
6. Twitter had so much contact with so many agencies that executives lost track. Is today the DOD, and tomorrow the FBI? Is it the weekly call, or the monthly meeting? It was dizzying.
7. A chief end result was that thousands of official “reports” flowed to Twitter from all over, through the FITF and the FBI’s San Francisco field office.
8. On June 29th, 2020, San Francisco FBI agent Elvis Chan wrote to pair of Twitter execs asking if he could invite an “OGA” to an upcoming conference:
9. OGA, or “Other Government Organization,” can be a euphemism for CIA, according to multiple former intelligence officials and contractors. Chuckles one: “They think it’s mysterious, but it’s just conspicuous.”
10.“Other Government Agency (the place where I worked for 27 years),” says retired CIA officer Ray McGovern.
11. It was an open secret at Twitter that one of its executives was ex-CIA, which is why Chan referred to that executive’s “former employer.”
12. The first Twitter executive abandoned any pretense to stealth and emailed that the employee “used to work for the CIA, so that is Elvis’s question.”
13. Senior legal executive Stacia Cardille, whose alertness stood out among Twitter leaders, replied, “I know” and “I thought my silence was understood.”
14. Cardille then passes on conference details to recently-hired ex-FBI lawyer Jim Baker.
15.“I invited the FBI and the CIA virtually will attend too,” Cardille says to Baker, adding pointedly: “No need for you to attend.”
16. The government was in constant contact not just with Twitter but with virtually every major tech firm.
17. These included Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, Reddit, even Pinterest, and many others. Industry players also held regular meetings without the government.
18. One of the most common forums was a regular meeting of the multi-agency Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), attended by spates of executives, FBI personnel, and – nearly always – one or two attendees marked “OGA.”
19. The FITF meeting agendas virtually always included, at or near the beginning, an “OGA briefing,” usually about foreign matters (hold that thought).
20. Despite its official remit being “Foreign Influence,” the FITF and the SF FBI office became conduit for mountains of domestic moderation requests, from state governments, and even local police:
21. Many requests arrived via Teleporter, a one-way platform in which many communications were timed to vanish:
22. Especially as the election approached in 2020, the FITF/FBI overwhelmed Twitter with requests, sending lists of hundreds of problem accounts:
23. Email after email came from the San Francisco office heading into the election, often adorned with an Excel attachment:
24. There were so many government requests, Twitter employees had to improvise a system for prioritizing/triaging them:
25. The FBI was clearly tailoring searches to Twitter’s policies. FBI complaints were almost always depicted somewhere as a “possible terms of service violation,” even in the subject line:
26. Twitter executives noticed the FBI appeared to be assigning personnel to look for Twitter violations.
27.“They have some folks in the Baltimore field office and at HQ that are just doing keyword searches for violations. This is probably the 10th request I have dealt with in the last 5 days,” remarked Cardille.
28. Even ex-FBI lawyer Jim Baker agreed: “Odd that they are searching for violations of our policies.”
29. The New York FBI office even sent requests for the “user IDs and handles” of a long list of accounts named in a Daily Beast article. Senior executives say they are “supportive” and “completely comfortable” doing so.
30. It seemed to strike no one as strange that a “Foreign Influence” task force was forwarding thousands of mostly domestic reports, along with the DHS, about the fringiest material:
31. “Foreign meddling” had been the ostensible justification for expanded moderation since platforms like Twitter were dragged to the Hill by the Senate in 2017:
32. Yet behind the scenes, Twitter executives struggled against government claims of foreign interference supposedly occurring on their platform and others:
33. The #TwitterFiles show execs under constant pressure to validate theories of foreign influence – and unable to find evidence for key assertions.’
34. “Found no links to Russia,” says one analyst, but suggests he could “brainstorm” to “find a stronger connection.”
35. “Extremely tenuous circumstantial chance of being related,” says another.
36. “No real matches using the info,” says former Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth in another case, noting some links were “clearly Russian,” but another was a “house rental in South Carolina?”
37. In another case, Roth concludes a series of Venezuelan pro-Maduro accounts are unrelated to Russia’s Internet Research Agency, because they’re too high-volume:
38. The Venezuelans “were extremely high-volume tweeters… pretty uncharacteristic of a lot of the other IRA activity,” Roth says.
39. In a key email, news that the State Department was making a wobbly public assertion of Russian influence led an exec – the same one with the “OGA” past – to make a damning admission:
40. “Due to a lack of technical evidence on our end, I’ve generally left it be, waiting for more evidence,” he says. “Our window on that is closing, given that government partners are becoming more aggressive on attribution.”
41. Translation: “more aggressive” “government partners” had closed Twitter’s “window” of independence.
42. “Other Government Agencies” ended up sharing intelligence through the FBI and FITF not just with Twitter, but with Yahoo!, Twitch, Clouldfare, LinkedIn, and even Wikimedia:
43. Former CIA agent and whistleblower John Kiriakou believes he recognizes the formatting of these reports.
44.“Looks right on to me,” Kiriakou says, noting that “what was cut off above [the “tearline”] was the originating CIA office and all the copied offices.”
45. Many people wonder if Internet platforms receive direction from intelligence agencies about the moderation of foreign policy news stories. It appears Twitter did, in some cases by way of the FITF/FBI.
46. These reports are far more factually controversial than their domestic counterparts.
47. One intel report lists accounts tied to “Ukraine ‘neo-Nazi’ Propaganda.’” This includes assertions that Joe Biden helped orchestrate a coup in 2014 and “put his son on the board of Burisma.”
48. Another report asserts a list of accounts accusing the “Biden administration” of “corruption” in vaccine distribution is part of a Russian influence campaign:
49. Often intelligence came in the form of brief reports, followed by long lists of accounts simply deemed to be pro-Maduro, pro-Cuba, pro-Russia, etc. This one batch had over 1000 accounts marked for digital execution:
50. One report says a site “documenting purported rights abuses committed by Ukrainians” is directed by Russian agents:
51. Intel about the shady origin of these accounts might be true. But so might at least some of the information in them – about neo-Nazis, rights abuses in Donbas, even about our own government. Should we block such material?
52. This is a difficult speech dilemma. Should the government be allowed to try to prevent Americans (and others) from seeing pro-Maduro or anti-Ukrainian accounts?
53. Often intel reports are just long lists of newspapers, tweets or YouTube videos guilty of “anti-Ukraine narratives”:
54. Sometimes – not always -Twitter and YouTube blocked the accounts. But now we know for sure what Roth meant by “the Bureau (and by extension the IC).”
55. The line between “misinformation” and “distorting propaganda” is thin. Are we comfortable with so many companies receiving so many reports from a “more aggressive” government?
56. The CIA has yet to comment on the nature of its relationship to tech companies like Twitter. Twitter had no input into anything I did or wrote. The searches were carried out by third parties, so what I saw could be limited.
Watch @bariweiss, @ShellenbergerMD, @lhfang, and this space for more, on issues ranging from Covid-19 to Twitter’s relationship to congress, and more.
I can’t have been the only person to have struggled psychologically during this time. This is why these Twitter files have been such a balm. This is the reality they stole from us! It’s repulsive, horrifying, and dystopian, a gruesome history of a world run by anti-people, but I’ll take it any day over the vile and insulting facsimile of truth they’ve been selling. Personally, once I saw that these lurid files could be used as a road map back to something like reality — I wasn’t sure until this week — I relaxed for the first time in probably seven or eight years.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/taibbi-reflects-crazy-month-put-things-perspective
BY TYLER DURDEN
SATURDAY, DEC 24, 2022
Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,
Sitting in a hotel bar in San Francisco, going through what’s become a nightly “remembering to eat” ritual. As readers here know, this has been a crazy month, during which time I lost track of a lot of things. I’ve been an absentee father during the holidays, which is contemptible, and also remiss when it comes to responsibilities to subscribers to this site, omitting to even take time to explain basic things, which I’ll try to do now.
Once again today we did not publish the written America This Week, which frankly will have to stay on hold for at least a little while longer. Also once again, I’ve abused the patience of podcast partner Walter Kirn, who’s been a great friend during this time and deserves better. We will do another makeup episode early next week, and I’ll announce the details as soon as I can.
The reason for all this of course is the Twitter Files story. This last week saw the FBI describe Lee Fang, Michael Shellenberger and me as “conspiracy theorists” whose “sole aim” is to discredit the agency. That statement will look ironic soon, as we spent much of this week learning about other agencies and organizations that can now also be discredited thanks to these files. Selfishly I may release some of that information in the morning, to be done with it so I can be fully present Dad on the actual holiday.
A group of us spent the last weeks reading thousands of documents. For me, a lot of that time was spent learning how Twitter functioned, specifically its relationships with the government. How weird is modern-day America? Not long ago, CIA veterans tell me, the information above the “tearline” of a U.S. government intelligence cable would include the station of origin and any other CIA offices copied on the report.
I spent much of today looking at exactly similar documents, seemingly written by the same people, except the “offices” copied at the top of their reports weren’t other agency stations, but Twitter’s Silicon Valley colleagues: Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, LinkedIn, even Wikipedia. It turns out these are the new principal intelligence outposts of the American empire. A subplot is these companies seem not to have had much choice in being made key parts of a global surveillance and information control apparatus, although evidence suggests their Quislingian executives were mostly all thrilled to be absorbed. Details on those “Other Government Agencies” soon, probably tomorrow.
One happy-ish thought at month’s end:
Sometime in the last decade, many people — I was one — began to feel robbed of their sense of normalcy by something we couldn’t define. Increasingly glued to our phones, we saw that the version of the world that was spat out at us from them seemed distorted. The public’s reactions to various news events seemed off-kilter, being either way too intense, not intense enough, or simply unbelievable. You’d read that seemingly everyone in the world was in agreement that a certain thing was true, except it seemed ridiculous to you, which put you in an awkward place with friends, family, and others. Should you say something? Are you the crazy one?
I can’t have been the only person to have struggled psychologically during this time. This is why these Twitter files have been such a balm. This is the reality they stole from us! It’s repulsive, horrifying, and dystopian, a gruesome history of a world run by anti-people, but I’ll take it any day over the vile and insulting facsimile of truth they’ve been selling. Personally, once I saw that these lurid files could be used as a road map back to something like reality — I wasn’t sure until this week — I relaxed for the first time in probably seven or eight years.
Something tells me the coming year is going to be a better one. Happy Holidays, everyone. Enjoy your loved ones, ignore the rest, and see you all again soon.
The FBI has issued a statement in response to the Elon Musk’s release of THE TWITTER FILES, which boils down to ‘Of course we’ve embedded ourselves in social media companies, and anyone who has a problem with it is a conspiracy theorist trying to tarnish our stellar reputation.’
We recently learned that Twitter hired at least 15 former FBI agents during that time, while Facebook brought in at least 115 people who formerly worked for the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and DHS.
https://www.naturalnews.com/2022-12-21-social-media-facebook-twitter-infested-cia-fbi.html
by: Ethan Huff
Wednesday, December 21, 2022
Almost immediately after Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, tech giants including Facebook and Twitter started aggressively hiring former intelligence agents from the likes of the FBI and the CIA to police their social media platforms in pursuit of truth so they could eradicate it.
We recently learned that Twitter hired at least 15 former FBI agents during that time, while Facebook brought in at least 115 people who formerly worked for the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and DHS.
As Trump was being sworn in, the FBI was frantically forming a Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) to police the internet in the new age of Trump, which threatened the existing globalist power structures that have ruled this country for many decades.
In Part 6 of the Twitter Files, investigative journalist Matt Taibbi uncovered evidence showing massive coordination between the FBI (and its FITF) and Twitter between 2020 and 2022. We now know that Facebook was similarly colluding with the deep state to try to silence all truth.
At least 10 former intelligence agents were hired within Facebook’s “Trust & Safety” department, this being the department where Facebook focused its efforts to fight “misinformation.”
One of them is named Aaron Berman, or “Aaron B. (He/Him),” according to his public LinkedIn profile. This guy claims to have worked at the CIA for 17 years before joining Facebook’s misinformation team.
“Aaron states that his experience at the CIA included writing President’s Daily Brief, leading briefings for Cabinet members, senior NSC officials & members of Congress,” tweeted the “Name Redacted” Twitter account.
“On Twitter, Aaron is followed by Yoel Roth & admits he is friends with Trust & Safety people at Twitter. Was Facebook coordinating with Twitter on info-sharing to censor posts they deem as ‘misinfo?’”
(Related: According to former White House covid adviser Scott Atlas, tech platforms like Facebook and Twitter also played a critical role in the unleashing of covid pandemic tyranny.)
Facebook interfered with foreign elections, too
On Feb. 25, 2021, Berman tweeted about how Facebook’s policies regarding covid misinformation were guided by “health authorities” who instructed the tech platform as to which information is “true” and which information is “false.”
During a virtual YouTube discussion about the matter, Berman further admitted that Facebook works with a “global network of over 80 fact checker organizations” that direct the company about which posts require “reduced distribution,” “warning labels,” and “shadow-banning.”
Facebook apparently goes to great lengths, according to Berman, to censor critical information about covid protocols like “vaccines” to ensure the narrative is controlled as much as possible.
Berman also played a role in censoring truthful information about foreign elections, including those in Brazil and the Philippines.
“Here’s how Meta is preparing for the Philippines election, including combatting misinfo by removing some content, partnering with fact-checkers, and helping users find voter registration information.”
Then we have the Russia-Ukraine war narrative, which Facebook (Meta) heavily controls in support of Ukraine’s power structure and against Vladimir Putin and his military operation there.
When it comes to the matter of climate change, Berman announced on Nov. 1, 2021, the release of an update from the “Meta Newsroom” highlighting changes the platform was making at the time to combat “climate misinfo.”
“Specifically on the misinfo side, we partner with more than 80 independent fact-checking organizations globally to review and rate content, including content about climate change,” Berman tweeted.
“When they rate content as false, we reduce its distribution so fewer people see it and we show a warning label with more context. And we apply penalties to people who repeatedly share false information.”
The latest news about the Twitter Files revelations can be found at Censorship.news.
Sources for this article include:
Instead of chasing child sex predators or terrorists, the FBI has agents — lots of them — analyzing and mass-flagging social media posts. Not as part of any criminal investigation, but as a permanent, end-in-itself surveillance operation. People should not be okay with this.— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
BY TYLER DURDEN
SATURDAY, DEC 17, 2022
Following the latest ‘TWITTER FILES‘ drop, which revealed that “Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary,” journalist Matt Taibbi commented that “Instead of chasing child sex predators or terrorists, the FBI has agents — lots of them — analyzing and mass-flagging social media posts.”
Instead of chasing child sex predators or terrorists, the FBI has agents — lots of them — analyzing and mass-flagging social media posts. Not as part of any criminal investigation, but as a permanent, end-in-itself surveillance operation. People should not be okay with this.— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
In response, California Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu lashed out – telling Taibbi: “I’m on the House Judiciary Committee that has oversight over the @FBI and you are lying,” adding “The FBI has lots of agents chasing child sex predators and terrorists. Please stop undermining and lying about federal law enforcement.”
To which researcher Tracy Beanz asked FBI whistleblower Steve Friend to chime in.
Oh? Hey @RealStevefriend !! Maybe you wanna hop in here and help him?— Tracy Beanz (@tracybeanz) December 17, 2022
Friend, a former 12-year veteran of the FBI and a SWAT team member, notably came out in October to claim that the agency went into hyperdrive to track down and investigate January 6th cases to promote the appearance of right-wing domestic terrorism, at the expense of other investigations – such as child trafficking.
Friend was suspended and stripped of his gun and badge in September for refusing to participate in SWAT raids against January 6th subjects accused of misdemeanor offenses, according to the NY Post.
As Taibbi wrote in November of Friend;
He worked a child pornography detail before being transferred to the assignment that would upend his life: investigating J6. The FBI not only took Friend off vital work chasing child predators to pursue questionable investigations of people maybe connected with the Capitol riots (often in some misdemeanor fashion), they used dubious bureaucratic methods he felt put him in an impossible spot.
Essentially, the FBI made Friend a supervisory agent in cases actually being run by the Washington field office, a trick replicated across the country that made domestic terrorism numbers appear to balloon overnight. Instead of one investigation run out of Washington, the Bureau now had hundreds of “terrorism” cases “opening” in every field office in the country. As a way to manipulate statistics, it was ingenious, but Friend could see it was also trouble.
As a member of a dying breed of agent raised to focus on making cases and securing convictions, Friend knew putting him nominally in charge of a case he wasn’t really running was a gift to any good defense attorney, should a J6 case ever get to trial.
“They’re gonna see my name as being the case agent, yet not a single document has my name as doing any work,” Friend says. “Now a defense lawyer can say, ‘Hey, the case agent for this case didn’t perform any work.’ Labeling the case this way would be a big hit to our prosecution.”
And so, in response to Lieu’s tweet, Friend wrote: “Hey @tedlieu, I’ll be happy to explain how I was moved from investigating child exploitation and human trafficking and told to focus on January 6. I was told child pornographers should be considered a “local matter.””
Absolutely @tracybeanz. Hey @tedlieu, I’ll be happy to explain how I was moved from investigating child exploitation and human trafficking and told to focus on January 6. I was told child pornographers should be considered a “local matter.” https://t.co/iE7KJ9fZt7— @RealStevefriend (@RealStevefriend) December 17, 2022
So far crickets from Lieu, though he’s quite the prolific Tweeter so maybe Friend will get a response.
The FBI, meanwhile, responded to Taibbi’s “The Twitter Files” thread, in which he said that between January 2020 and November 2022, former Twitter Senior Director of Trust & Safety, Yoel Roth, had exchanged over 150 emails with the agency.
“The FBI regularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to identified foreign malign influence actors’ subversive, undeclared, covert, or criminal activities,” the FBI said in a statement. “Private sector entities independently make decisions about what, if any, action they take on their platforms and for their customers after the FBI has notified them.”
But, the most concerning revelation in the Twitter Files, according to Nunes, is that the DOJ and the FBI had informants—whether paid or volunteers—that put forward a specific directive to Twitter, and that is likely happening on other social media platforms.
BY TYLER DURDEN
SATURDAY, DEC 17, 2022
Authored by Katie Spence via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
The social media coordination between the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI isn’t limited to Twitter, former Congressman and current CEO of President Trump’s Truth Social, Devin Nunes, alleged in an interview that aired on Newsmakers by NTD and The Epoch Times on Dec. 14.
The Twitter Files, a collection of internal emails and communications made public by Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, confirmed what many Conservatives have alleged for years. Namely, Twitter was shadow-banning accounts that didn’t fit a specific ideology and suspending accounts that bucked the chosen political narrative, Nunes claimed.
But, the most concerning revelation in the Twitter Files, according to Nunes, is that the DOJ and the FBI had informants—whether paid or volunteers—that put forward a specific directive to Twitter, and that is likely happening on other social media platforms.
“The coordination that the Department of Justice and the FBI clearly had with Twitter? I don’t think it stops there,” Nunes stated.
“It seems like they were either running informants, or had paid informants, or had volunteers, where they were actively sending information on behalf of the government on who to look into, or who to ban, and that sort of thing.
“The bigger issue is, Twitter is one thing, but what about Facebook? What about Instagram?”
Censorship and Shadow-Banning
According to Nunes, Trump developed Truth Social because, before Musk bought Twitter, Trump recognized that there was absolute control over public discourse in the United States.
Furthermore, that control led to shadow banning and suspending social media accounts, so those accounts couldn’t criticize the controlling regime in the proverbial public square.
And while Nunes further stated that he’d recently discussed the Twitter File drops with Trump—and in general, Trump is glad Musk purchased Twitter—Trump still believes Musk needs to release all of the Twitter Files to the public and not go through cherry-picked journalists.
“What [do] we really need from Elon Musk and Twitter at this point? Just release all the files. Don’t just have selective journalists look at it. Release all the files so everyone can begin to evaluate them. You never know what you’re going to find [with more people looking at the files].”
Nunes said he believes that by releasing all the files, even more will be uncovered by citizen journalists and by Congress. He added he’s not alone in the belief that Musk should release all files and noted that Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s former CEO and founder, also called on Musk to release the Twitter Files to the public.
Legacy Media Silence
The Twitter Files contained explosive revelations. But the legacy media has largely avoided covering the drops. When asked why there was silence, Nunes stated that the legacy media had supported a particular narrative and political party.
Musk revealing damaging information on government censorship has put the media in an interesting predicament where if they cover the files, they also expose their complicity and damaging information to their preferred political group.
“There’s a strange cat-and-mouse game where [Musk] is sitting on what seems to be a treasure trove of really damaging information to not only the fake news media but also to probably many areas within the United States government,” Nunes stated.
Read more here…
Tales from the Conspiratum 
