When various doctors and professionals in the healthcare industry were kicked off Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and social media platforms for holding a contrary view of the COVID-19 mitigation efforts, their voices found a way to alternate platforms including TikTok.  At the heart of the government argument about TikTock as a national security threat, you will find this dynamic.

The claims of data insecurity as a reason for government action against TikTok is a false justification.  The reason the U.S. govt is defining TikTok as a national security threat is not because a Chinese firm controls it, the threat is because the U.S. government does not control it.  Thus, DHS involvement in Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google, Apple, Microsoft and more takes on a more accurate perspective.  TikTok is not under DHS control, therefore TikTok’s ability to transmit information without DHS filter controls is a threat.

Bread and circuses.  In this interview with California Congressman Ro Khanna, Maria Bartiromo notes he was one of the only Democrats in congress who wrote a warning to Twitter about the censorship issue.  However, even then, a key sentence in the letter from Khanna to Yoel Roth is ignored.  He’s no hero. WATCH:

The DHS Portal – […] discussions have ranged from the scale and scope of government intervention in online discourse to the mechanics of streamlining takedown requests for false or intentionally misleading information.

“Platforms have got to get comfortable with gov’t. It’s really interesting how hesitant they remain,” Microsoft executive Matt Masterson, a former DHS official, texted Jen Easterly, a DHS director, in February. (link)

It’s not just the First amendment being compromised by this collaboration, it’s also the Fourth Amendment against unwarranted searches of private papers (communication).

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The fourth installment of the Twitter Files release dropped yesterday evening as presented by Michael Shellenberger [SEE HERE].  Overall, the Shellenberger angle covers the conversation within Twitter to block the communication and information from President Donald Trump.

Essentially, the executive filtration team in control of Twitter content was looking for ways to stop Donald Trump from using the platform and they modified all existing rules and moderation guidelines to target and censor President Trump.

[Read Twitter File Release #4 HERE]

One of the ways they justified their action was to infer motive for any content that President Trump provided through his Twitter account. “Ultimately on January 8, 2021, Twitter says its ban is based on “specifically how [Trump’s tweets] are being received & interpreted.””  The Twitter executives decided to reach their end goal of shutting down Trump’s voice, the way his message could be interpreted was their best justification.

Twitter File #4 walks through the internal conversation at Twitter in early January 2021, but again heavily redacts the specifics of who was participating in many of the conversations.  Also missing is any contact by government officials or representatives of the Biden team as the transition period was ongoing.  Given the nature of the previous contacts from the Biden campaign, the absence of communication from the transition period in Twitter File #4 release is stark.

Three other interesting Twitter developments below.

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… Both were targets of the U.S. government’s use of Twitter and social media to manipulate election outcomes.

While current conservative headlines are filled with discussion surrounding revelations of Twitter being used by U.S. government officials to control and manipulate public opinion, it is worthwhile reminding everyone how this process was first triggered – and then look at how the intelligence community applied the lessons to the USA in 2020.

The Obama administration first created the public-private partnership with Twitter and Facebook to support the “Arab Spring” uprising.   As a consequence, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was the first elected official to be taken out by former President Obama’s deployment of Twitter as a community activist tool for revolution in 2011. In direct and consequential ways, Egypt was the BETA test for a process that surface a decade later in the United States during the 2020 election.

Using and influencing social media was a tool created by the Obama state department, as noted years ago in Mic.Com:

[…] In countries like Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen, rising action plans such as protests made up of thousands, have been organized through social media such Facebook and Twitter. “We use Facebook to schedule the protests” an Arab Spring activist from Egypt announced “and [we use] Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world.” The role that technology has taken in allowing the distribution of public information such as the kinds stated by the aforementioned activist, had been essential in establishing the democratic movement that has helped guide abused civilians to overthrow their oppressor. (link)

(NationalPulse) The most popular Twitter hashtags in the Arab region in the first three months of this year were “Egypt”, “Jan25”, “Libya”, “Bahrain” and “protest”.

Nearly 9 in 10 Egyptians and Tunisians surveyed in March said they were using Facebook to organise protests or spread awareness about them. All but one of the protests called for on Facebook ended up coming to life on the streets.

These and other findings from the newly released second edition of the Arab Social Media Report by the Dubai School of Government give empirical heft to the conventional wisdom that Facebook and Twitter abetted if not enabled the historic region-wide uprisings of early 2011. (link)

Fast forward to 2020, and those same elements deployed against the Egyptian government were deployed in the United States in a coordinated public-private partnership with Twitter, Facebook and social media.

The U.S. government control over these social media platforms is ultimately what lies at the heart of the latest Twitter Files release.

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Xiaotong (Tom) Zhu joined Tesla in 2014. Before that Zhu was Vice President for Kaibo Engineering Group, a China-based project management firm that focuses on overseas projects (One Belt – One Road) invested by the Chinese government.

One would think a project manager tied to the key initiatives of Chairman Xi, would have deep CCP ties.  There is also speculation that Mr. Musk may be assigning Mr. Zhu to be the lead of Tesla internationally.

(Via Bloomberg) Elon Musk has tapped a longtime Tesla Inc. executive in China who oversaw construction of the Shanghai gigfactory to help run the electric carmaker’s newest plant in Austin, Texas, people familiar with the matter said.

Tom Zhu, who joined Tesla in 2014 to help build its Supercharger network and most recently has been heading the carmaker’s Asia Pacific operations, is in Austin this week and has brought some of his engineering team from China with him to assist in overseeing the ramp up of Giga Texas — a US hub for the Model Y and future production of the Cybertruck — the people said, asking not to be identified because they’re not authorized to speak publicly.

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Twitter File Release #3 come from Matt Taibbi – SEE HERE – and includes a review of some internal documents and internal communication in the lead up to the 2020 election.

As noted by Taibbi, “as the election approached, senior executives – perhaps under pressure from federal agencies, with whom they met more as time progressed – increasingly struggled with rules and began to speak of “vios” as pretexts to do what they’d likely have done anyway.”

“Vios” is a short-hand term for violations.

Internal Slacks, communication chats within the organization, show Twitter executives discussing various relationships with federal agencies, specifically the Dept of Homeland Security (DHS), various elements of the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, ODNI.  Twitter’s main censor Yoel Roth plays a key role in the discussion.  Mr. Roth organized many of the communication chats that surrounded the election.

The slacks (communication chats) contain channels to create sub-sets of topics with smaller groups of internal officers assembled to prioritize the discussion.

The reports being cited by Taibbi are, “based on searches for docs linked to prominent executives, whose names are already public. They include Roth, former trust and policy chief Vijaya Gadde, and recently plank-walked Deputy General Counsel (and former top FBI lawyer) Jim Baker.” … “On October 8th, 2020, executives opened a channel called “us2020_xfn_enforcement.” Through J6, this would be home for discussions about election-related removals, especially ones that involved “high-profile” accounts (often called “VITs” or “Very Important Tweeters”).”

There was internal discussion about how they should describe their contact with federal agencies who were involved in the process of filtering the public discussion.  Essentially, what were these Twitter executives going to say about how they are coordinating with DHS, FBI and ODNI?  Policy Director Nick Pickles, eventually led a discussion to label the government contacts in the generalized term “partnerships.”

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The latest release of information behind the controversial “Twitter Files”, comes from Bari Weiss complete with the strategic promotion of a new website [The Free Press] launching via the booster provided by their access to the internal Twitter documents.

Curiously intelligent people will note the Weiss website is structured to support the 2024 presidential bid of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is, not coincidentally, riding atop a multi-staged booster guided by Elon Musk and fueled by Wall Street billionaires.

For the moment, just note and I digress – but please do not miss the connections.

As noted by the former New York Times journalist, Ms. Weiss states, “the [website] authors have broad and expanding access to Twitter’s files. The only condition we agreed to was that the material would first be published on Twitter.”  You can read the entire Twitter Thread Here, and with that, we look at what the current narrative consists of.

Overall, the story as released walks through the process that Twitter used to control users and as a consequence control the flow of information on the platform.  Accounts were subject to restrictions, manipulations and other inorganic engagement controls depending on the ideology of the content being provided.

Twitter had teams set up to attach limiting flags within the Twitter platform that would essentially hide content the platform control officers did not want to see reaching a wider audience. As noted by Twitter employees Weiss writes, “we control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do,” one Twitter engineer told us. Two additional Twitter employees confirmed.”

What I find interesting is in segment/tweet #12 where Ms. Weiss reveals the existence of the top tier of Twitter control officers.  “The group that decided whether to limit the reach of certain users was the Strategic Response Team – Global Escalation Team, or SRT-GET. It often handled up to 200 “cases” a day.”

I find it curious that Ms Bari Weiss mentioned several names in her expose’ yet failed to mention the name or curriculum vitae of the head for the Strategic Response Team, a fellow named Jeff Carlton.

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Jack, who never had control, says just release everything without filter.

Elon says stuff might have been hidden from you too, and some stuff deleted:

(Source)

Knowing the background of Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop…

Obvious question… Hey fellas, who was doing the hiding and deleting?

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Yesterday, we speculated publicly the first set of “Twitter Files” released was heavily pre-filtered by internal stakeholders connected to DHS who hold a vested interest in controlling any evidence of Twitter’s former political activity.

Knowing there are multiple executives remaining within the company who previously aligned with the intents of government, specifically DHS officials, to control the platform, the prediction was not a stretch. Indeed, it just made common sense.

Former FBI Chief Legal Counsel James Baker, a man of notoriously corrupt disposition, was one of those former government officials who started working for Twitter as general counsel.  James Baker (pictured below left) working as a government mechanism for filtration of damaging information was not a leap. Again, just common sense.

Today, as an outcome of internal discoveries that indeed Jim Baker did prefilter internal documents in order to mitigate sunlight and exposure [outline here], Twitter CEO Elon Musk fired legal counsel James Baker.

Mr Musk said through his Twitter account, “In light of concerns about Baker’s possible role in suppression of information important to the public dialogue, he was exited from Twitter today.”  Mr. Musk followed up a question about James Baker being asked to explain himself by saying, “His explanation was …unconvincing.”

Matt Taibbi provides the context:

Taibbi – On Friday, the first installment of the Twitter files was published here. We expected to publish more over the weekend. Many wondered why there was a delay.

We can now tell you part of the reason why. On Tuesday, Twitter Deputy General Counsel (and former FBI General Counsel) Jim Baker was fired. Among the reasons? Vetting the first batch of “Twitter Files” – without knowledge of new management.

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… And if he does, the outlook is worse.

According to both the Senate Intelligence Committee (SSCI), via Chairman Mark Warner, and the House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI) via Mike Turner, the Chinese social media platform TikTok represents a “national security risk” to the United States.  South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, soon to be the vice-presidential candidate for the DeSantis-Noem 2024 ticket, has also called TikTok a national security threat and banned it in the state. Now, think about that carefully.

What is it about a social media app allowing short video sharing that would constitute a national security risk?  The answer is not about dog and cat videos, or dancing diatribes or funny, weird or goofy content; nor is the national security risk attached to any data of the app users or content providers.  The national security risk is found in the ability to influence public opinion that is not under the control of the United States government, or more specifically the Dept of Homeland Security (DHS).

The need for control is a reaction to fear.  TikTok, as a social media platform, is not considered a national security threat because the Chinese government can control it.  TikTok is considered a national security threat because the United States government does not control it.

For several years CTH has been outlining the relationship between DHS and social media.  Currently, the headlines are filled with stories about Twitter and revelations of censorship and government influence coming from the purchase of the platform by Elon Musk.  I promise you things are not what they seem.

Let me put some context to the dynamic that will hopefully clarify what is going on, and perhaps the context will help explain what you are seeing and what you are not seeing as this unfolds.  There are going to be a lot of citations to fill in the details and understanding the modern Fourth Branch of Government is critical.  The bigger picture also explains why SSCI Chairman Mark Warner said “people will die” if the seized Trump Mar-a-Lago documents become public.

♦ Elevator Speech: Twitter is to the U.S. government as TikTok is to China. The overarching dynamic is the need to control public perceptions and opinions. DHS has been in ever increasing control of Twitter since the public-private partnership was formed in 2011/2012.  Jack Dorsey lost control and became owner emeritus; arguably, Elon Musk has no idea (you’ll see proof toward the end).

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Carbon trading is the economic platform to generate government income.  That income then drives the carbon control financial mechanisms that will be deployed to the people.  At the end of the financial lane, we arrive at a world with Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs).  The digital money provides instant control over spending and carbon resource allocation.

For many years the carbon allowances for individuals were esoteric goals as presented by those who assemble at various global COP meetings, Davos and the World Economic Forum.  However, with rapid advances in the energy control process, a result of the pandemic and Build Back Better exit, the control officers are now quantifying the specifics for the individual citizen. [pdf Here]

In short, we are now getting down to the brass tacks.  Your resource allocation is part of the “consumption intervention” consideration, where the amount of carbon emission your consumption drives is what determines the goal for your future allocation.

[From the Abstract] – There is a growing consensus, based on compelling evidence, that the world is facing a climate crisis and rapid action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is a necessity. Historically, decision-makers and academics have discussed a range of options that can reduce our carbon footprint over the long-term. However, recent evidence demonstrates that choosing between one option and another is no longer compatible with rapid and significant emission reductions.

Increasingly, all options are required, and this involves multiple actors exploring how they can respond to the current climate crisis; including national government, cities, business and civil society. (read more)

As you can see above, the goal is to remove meat and dairy products completely.

In the next chart, you can see your allocation for “net clothing and textiles“:

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