Independent journalist Matt Taibbi has released the sixth installment after review of more Twitter File data [SEE HERE].  Keep in mind, the research group containing Mr. Taibbi are only seeing the consequences side of the content removal process.  What specifically happened in/around the portal of information flowing into Twitter HQ is a different division.  Taibbi et al are only seeing the consequences from the requests that entered the Twitter system.

[Twitter Release #6, Here]

The first section of Taibbi’s analysis is the most interesting.  Having tracked the issue for several years, I would modify some of the descriptive language Taibbi presents yet agree with the overall context of his presentation.

Taibbi begins by noting, “Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary.”  I would safely take that a step further, yes there is a subsidiary relationship; however, as years of government involvement continued by 2016 Twitter became the subsidiary of DHS, not vice-versa.  This dynamic within the relationship explains some of the more curious elements that Taibbi struggles to fully understand.

Notice the timing of escalation by DHS/FBI: “The FBI’s social media-focused task force, known as FTIF, created in the wake of the 2016 election, swelled to 80 agents and corresponded with Twitter to identify alleged foreign influence and election tampering of all kinds.”

As we have noted from the lead into and out of the 2016 election, the surveillance state took action specifically to protect itself from President Trump.   This activity included the NSA, FISA court, FBI, DOJ-NSD, CIA, ODNI while specifically and purposefully enmeshing the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).

Protecting Washington DC from the risk President Trump represented was a whole of government approach.  The executive and legislative branches worked together and weaponized national security claims to involve the judicial branches in the effort.  In the aftermath of the 2016 election outcome, now we see social media being pulled further into the approach.

(more…)

Knowing what we know now about how the U.S. intelligence community operates to control just about everything, I think our nation is more awake than ever before.

Tonight, Tucker Carlson takes the context of the current revelations about the U.S. intelligence community and reopens the discussion about the CIA involvement in the assassination of President John F Kennedy.  {Direct Rumble Link} – WATCH:

.

(more…)

During a podcast Matt Taibbi describes the big picture takeaway of the data they have been permitted to review so far. {Direct Rumble Link}

Interestingly, Taibbi notes the silo effect within Twitter as the division in charge of taking action on requests is not necessarily the division that receives the requests.  There is an inflection point between two silos. Taibbi notes the current data set does not include access to the inbound requests and instructions from government officials, they are limited to only seeing what happens after the request is received.

They are also limited in only seeing the activity that is taken within the action division where the accounts are restricted.  The division within Twitter that was in the process of amplifying or boosting accounts, is a different silo.

Additionally, as Taibbi also notes, if the scale of what they are seeing in Twitter is representative of outside contacts to other social media platforms, then he is sure Facebook, YouTube, Google, Microsoft, Instagram, Apple etc. also have a process to receive and act upon these inbound DHS/FBI instructions.  WATCH:

.

In essence, everything Taibbi is seeing is fully in line with Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop.

(more…)

Arguably, Glenn Greenwald has been the most critical voice about the rise of the U.S. surveillance state and generational shift of the U.S. intelligence apparatus to conduct domestic surveillance on American citizens.  There’s a reason Greenwald lives in Brazil where no extradition treaties with the U.S. government exist.

Curiously, when it came time to release information about DHS connections to Twitter, Glenn Greenwald was not considered as an acceptable outlet for the information.  Instead, Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss were selected by Elon Musk to represent his sunlight and transparency interests.  However, in this brief video Greenwald gets to interview Taibbi about his findings. {Direct Rumble Link}

Interested viewers will note Taibbi’s #1 takeaway from his review of the Twitter Files data is that evidence of the DHS connection to Twitter exists.  Taibbi speaks of the “instructions” coming into Twitter from U.S. government officials.  Yet, curiously missing from the documented evidence provided by Taibbi was anything showing a paper trail of this instruction pathway he is describing.  WATCH:

.

Greenwald is smart, strategically smart; Greenwald also knows why he was not selected to review the files.  Glenn artfully guides Taibbi to discuss elements of the story that perhaps Taibbi himself doesn’t recognize are being shaped for his reporting.   Note: “we don’t know how the ‘ask’ works yet.”

(more…)

Axios has an interesting article today [SEE HERE] about the success of Bari Weiss and her wife Nellie Bowles website launch on the back of the Twitter Files release.

Axios – Bari Weiss, the New York Times columnist turned independent newsletter writer, has hired ten full-time employees and over a dozen contractors to help build her new media company, The Free Press, Weiss told Axios in an interview.

[…] Weiss launched The Free Press last Thursday, four days ahead of schedule, to capitalize on the media coverage around her “Twitter Files” reporting.

In less than a week, The Free Press has accrued more than 105,000 followers on Twitter and its flagship newsletter has added an additional 25,000 free and paid subscribers.

Weiss’ Twitter following itself has exploded in that time, growing from more than 500,000 followers to more than 900,000 in less than a week.

Last year, Marketwatch reported that Weiss made over $800,000 from her newsletter alone, which at the time had 14,000 paid subscribers. The newsletter has more than double that number of paid subscribers today.

(more…)

Former House Intelligence Committee lead investigator Kash Patel appeared on Steve Bannon’s podcast to discuss the Twitter Files. {Direct Rumble Link} Within the interview Mr. Patel asks the obvious question: Why are we not seeing the document trail where the FBI is making contact with Twitter?

The contacts are noted within the Twitter File release, but the specific methods, people and documents or email requests from the U.S. government into Twitter are not being released. Kash Patel asks Elon Musk to release these documents and asks why are we not seeing them? WATCH:

.

Patel’s point is well taken because insofar as the U.S. government contacts around the 2020 election would be important, the volume of contact and documents surrounding the COVID-19 control issues will be exponentially more intense and larger.

Release the government 2020 election contact information now, and then do the same thing when Twitter releases the substantive files about censorship related to COVID-19 and the vaccines.   Let the American people see who, what and how this DHS-Twitter ‘trusted partnership‘ portal was exploited.

(more…)

I’m not going to write extensively about this because I respect your intellectual ability to see the obvious.  Questions have been raised about why the Twitter File releases appear to have been structured in a fashion to protect government interests.

Well, the new Bari Weiss website that was set up to launch as an exclusive outcome of the Twitter File release, includes a current contributor and former 2020 control officer of the DOJ who would have facilitated the DHS/FBI contact with social media; the stuff that is transparently missing from the Twitter File releases.

[ SOURCE ]

Yes, former AG Bill Barr is a content partner with Twitter File narrative engineer Bari Weiss.  Gee, I wonder how that happens?

Oh look, and what a coincidence… they are both promoting Ron DeSantis.

Wait… Elon Musk is also promoting Ron Desantis… and Mr Musk is simultaneously promoting the Bari Weiss website that promotes Ron DeSantis… and contains Twitter File releases that are conspicuously missing the discussion angle of FBI influence in the 2020 election… Almost as if… wait, nah, that would be conspiracy talk.  Just ordinary coincidences everywhere, for sure.

(more…)

Former Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, appeared on Sunday with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the Twitter file release that pertained to his former office and the contact between DNI election official Shelby Pierson and Twitter executive Noel Roth. {Direct Rumble Link}

DNI Ratcliffe does not use Shelby Pierson’s name within his comments, but refutes her action as described within the release by Matt Taibbi.  WATCH:

.

Within the Twitter file release, you will find Twitter’s lead censor, Yoel Roth, meeting with an official from the U.S. Dept of National Intelligence (DNI).  From the testimony of FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan, we know that official was Shelby Pierson.  Chan was speaking under oath in an ongoing first amendment lawsuit against the Biden administration for manipulating and censoring speech on social media.

(more…)

The fifth installment of the Twitter Files release drops today courtesy of Ms. Bari Weiss [READ HERE]. The focus of Ms Weiss was on the decision to ban President Donald Trump from the platform, and her outline walks through the events leading up to the decision to remove him.

After a review of internal discussions, slacks and conversations within the social media platform, ultimately the officers within the company decided to protect their view of democracy by removing their biggest ideological opponent.

The Twitter executives justified their actions by echo-chambering a belief that President Trump was tweeting “coded messages,” the secret transmission of thoughts that can only be received by those wearing red hats, tuned to a specific psychological frequency.  As Weiss notes: “Less than 90 minutes after Twitter employees had determined that Trump’s tweets were not in violation of Twitter policy, Vijaya Gadde—Twitter’s Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust—asked whether it could, in fact, be “coded incitement to further violence.”

President Trump tweeted the term “American Patriots,” which would be viewed by the Twitter ideologues as something akin to “the leader of a terrorist group responsible for violence/deaths comparable to Christchurch shooter or Hitler and on that basis and on the totality of his Tweets, he should be de-platformed.”

It did not take long for the narrative to embed as the most senior Twitter regulatory officers assembled. “One hour later, Twitter announces Trump’s permanent suspension “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”

(more…)

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).

(more…)