The Twitter Files
By Dr. Joseph Mercola | January 2, 2023
If you’re still under the naively mistaken belief that there is no Deep State, the Twitter file dumps1 from Elon Musk detailing how Twitter, before his acquisition of the company, was coerced into doing the FBI’s bidding, with actual FBI agents on its staff to control the online narrative, ought to set the record straight.
In fact, the lawlessness of our intelligence agencies and the psychological warfare against the American public is far worse than most people ever expected.
FBI paid Twitter huge sums of money — your tax dollars, might I add — to censor certain views and stories, such as the damning Hunter Biden laptop story, which likely would have sunk Joe Biden’s bid for the presidency had it received the attention it legitimately deserved.
The FBI even ran a tabletop exercise about “hacked” information relating to Hunter Biden ONE MONTH before the real story broke. During that exercise, they practiced the narrative (i.e., lies) that weeks later became “official truth.”
There is a Deep State running the show, and they’re doing whatever they damn well please, without regard for the law or the U.S. Constitution. They’re acting completely outside the rules of our Constitutional Republic and the laws of the land, and they’ve weaponized the very agencies that are supposed to protect us and act in the public’s best interest and turned them against us.
The Twitter files saga is expanding by the day, so I won’t be able to cover every last detail here. Books will be needed to cover this scandal in depth. In the meantime, I suggest you review the references cited and keep your eyes peeled for later updates.
FBI Used Twitter to Track and Spy on Americans
In a recent video, investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald reviews how Washington has expanded the war state and the Democrat’s censorship regime. About 39 minutes in, he begins reviewing evidence showing the FBI was not only censoring social media content, but the agency was also, on a regular basis, asking Twitter to reveal the location of specific Twitter users — for what purpose, no one knows. As noted by independent journalist Matt Taibbi in a December 17, 2022, Twitter post:
“What ‘law enforcement’ objective is served by asking for Billy Baldwin’s location information? Why is the FBI/DHS [Department of Homeland Security] in the business of analyzing and flagging social media content at all? When were these programs created and who approved them?”
These are all good questions. Historically, the FBI’s job has been to monitor and address criminal activity, not “misinformation.” Somewhere along the way, and it’s unclear exactly when the mandate changed and by whom, the DHS/FBI (the FBI supports the DHS by investigating threats) and other agencies tasked themselves with illegally suppressing free speech and shaping public narratives through public-private partnerships with Big Tech.
The Biden administration’s Orwellian “Ministry of Truth,” revealed in the summer of 2022, was one of the first indicators we had that something was horribly amiss. And even though that agency was quickly disbanded after public outcry (and no small amount of mockery), the policing of mis- and disinformation was simply shifted elsewhere within the federal government.
Moreover, as reviewed by Greenwald, internal DHS memos, emails and documents show the DHS has worked on expanding its influence over tech platforms for YEARS. So, government censorship is not something that “just happened” in response to the COVID crisis.
Nor is the censorship limited to COVID or public health information in general. We now have evidence showing the FBI has actively interfered in multiple elections, for example — activity that Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) accurately warns is “the biggest threat to our constitutional democracy today.”2
FBI Invented ‘Foreign Interference’ Narrative
Not surprisingly, the FBI invented the narrative that foreign nations were interfering in U.S. elections, which is precisely what they were doing. As reported by Taibbi and attorney Jeff Childers,3 the FBI asked Twitter to investigate “malicious actors” spreading election disinformation on Twitter. Twitter looked into the matter and reported there was no evidence of foreign interference.
The FBI was none too pleased with that answer and made it clear that Twitter better find some. As “evidence” that Twitter’s investigation was flawed, the FBI cited mainstream media articles and think-tank reports that claimed foreign interference was indeed taking place.4
In response, Twitter’s former censorship head Yoel Roth did an about-face and informed the team that “official state propaganda is DEFINITELY A THING ON TWITTER.”
How Media Have Been Weaponized to Provide False Evidence
The FBI’s tactic appears to be a variation of what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls the “wrap-up smear,” where they leak a lie to the media, and then they use that media report as “evidence” that the lie is true, and it just goes in circles from there.
Here, the FBI used reports — which were based on leaked information from anonymous intelligence agents5 — to pressure Twitter into making something up to further support the fiction the FBI itself invented and leaked to the sources they cited.
As noted by Childers, this variant on the political wrap-up smear is also being used by U.S. health agencies:6
“It’s a nifty trick … The NIH or CDC needs evidence to support some guidance they want to issue, like masking. So they fund some studies intended to show masks work. The pay-for-play scientists publish cartoonish, anti-scientific clown studies ‘proving’ cotton masks can somehow magically filter nanoscale virus particles.
Then the NIH and CDC cite those same studies — the same ones they procured — to ‘recommend’ unconstitutional mask mandates, or even outright order mandates, like for air travel and on cruise ships. Ditto vaccines … It’s a closed loop.”
Twitter-FBI Exercise: Managing the Hunter Biden Laptop Story
We now also have evidence showing it was the FBI that quenched the Hunter Biden laptop story. They, in collaboration with Twitter, Facebook and the Aspen Institute, even held a tabletop exercise in October 2020 to practice the shaping of the media’s coverage of a potential “hack and dump” operation involving Hunter Biden material.7,8 National security reporters from The New York Times and The Washington Post were also in attendance.9 As reported by the New York Post :10
“The exercise by the ‘Aspen Digital Hack-and-Dump Working Group’ involved an 11-day scenario in October 2020 that began with the imaginary release of falsified records related to Hunter Biden’s controversial employment by the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, which paid him as much as $1 million a year to serve on its board when his father was vice president.
‘The goal was to shape how the media covered it — and how social media carried it,’ Shellenberger wrote. But the drill was put into practical use weeks later, when The Post broke the news about Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop — which was either ignored or downplayed by most mainstream news outlets and suppressed by both Twitter and Facebook.”
In the video below, independent journalist Matt Taibbi speaks with Russell Brand about the Twitter files and the kinds of censorship tactics Twitter secretly engaged in on the government’s behalf.
However, it turns out the FBI didn’t just attempt to sideline the Hunter Biden story a month in advance. No. They’ve been shielding it and working with social media to shield it for them, since 2018. As reported by Childers:11
“In December 2020, Twitter’s former censorship head Yoel Roth explained in a sworn statement that for almost two years leading up to the leak, the FBI told him, over and over, to expect a Russian leak about Hunter Biden in October 2020:
‘During these weekly meetings [since 2018], the federal law enforcement agencies communicated that they expected ‘hack-and-leak operations’ by state actors might occur in the period shortly before the 2020 presidential election, likely in October.
I was told in these meetings that … those hacking attacks would likely be disseminated over social media platforms, including Twitter … [and] that there were rumors that a hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden.’ Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, made comments on a podcast suggesting he’d had similar conversations with the FBI.”
FBI Agents Assigned to Twitter Censorship Duty
As reported by attorney Jeff Childers,12 FBI field agent Elvis Chan was one of the agents assigned to work with Twitter. He was recently deposed in the Missouri v. Biden case about his role in Twitter’s censoring of Americans. Below is just one of Chan’s emails to Twitter in which he directs them to ban specific accounts for imagined “crimes.”
As noted by Childers:13
“Note that Chan only provided a list of accounts. He didn’t bother to say WHICH terms of service were violated. He didn’t say anybody broke the law. He didn’t even say WHICH tweets were problematic.”
Still, within 48 hours, Twitter had obliged, and the accounts listed by Chan had either been suspended or banned. Below is Twitter censorship employee Patrick Conlon’s reply to Chan. As you can see, a long list of other FBI employees were also carbon copied.
Another FBI “plant” is Jim Baker.14 Before becoming Twitter’s head lawyer, he spent three decades with the FBI, most recently as its Deputy General Counsel. He too used his authority at Twitter to censor the Hunter Biden story. While his comment (see email below) may seem innocuous enough — just a polite suggestion — it’s clear, with facts in hand, that Baker was trying to influence the situation.
Intelligence Agencies Have Weaponized Social Media
For the record, Facebook also employs no less than 115 “former” employees of the FBI, CIA, NSA and other intelligence agencies.15 Most of them now work in Facebook’s content moderation department, which seems like a massive career slide, if you ask me, but what do I know? As noted by Childers:16
“The inescapable conclusion of what we’re seeing from the Twitter Files is that our country’s intelligence agencies, by and through the FBI, now control all the large social media outlets … and are using them to manipulate American public opinion and change the outcome of domestic elections. But for whom?”
My answer would be they’re doing it on behalf of the Deep State, the same unelected globalists that so doggedly push for a Great Reset and Fourth Industrial Revolution (i.e., eugenics rebranded as transhumanism). Childers continues:17
“If Elon Musk hadn’t spent $44 BILLION DOLLARS to buy Twitter, nobody would have ever believed the extent to which the intelligence community has absorbed private social media platforms in this country and turned them against the people. It’s literally unbelievable.
Exposure will probably be fatal. The Constitution does not provide for any internal security service in the United States. The agencies are WAY off the reservation, well into criminal territory, no matter how clever their lawyers are …
Of course, we still have the teensy-weensy little problem of ‘who’ will charge and arrest these people, since they’re in control of the entire federal law enforcement apparatus. Don’t worry, there ARE answers. But let’s wait a little bit and see how things play out.”
FBI Paid Twitter Millions
As mentioned, the FBI was also using taxpayer dollars to pay Twitter for their censorship services — $3,415,323 to be exact, between October 2019 and February 2021 alone.18
FBI and other intelligence agencies were also trying to gain even greater and more direct influence over Twitter. In a January 2020 email, Carlos Monje wrote to Roth, warning that a “sustained effort by the IC [intelligence community] to push us to share more information and change our API policies.” Apparently, the FBI wanted direct access into Twitter’s database.19
Lies and More Damn Lies
Investigative journalist Lee Fang with The Intercept 20 has also provided us with some real bombshells. While Twitter has publicly insisted that it was cracking down on ALL covert government propaganda accounts, that was only partially true.
In reality, Twitter worked with the U.S. Department of Defense to promote and protect American propaganda accounts, and aided U.S. intelligence agencies in their efforts to influence foreign governments using fake news, computerized deepfake videos and bots.21 They only hunted down the foreign government-affiliated propaganda accounts. As reported by Fang:22
“Behind the scenes, Twitter gave approval and special protection to the U.S. military’s online psychological ops. Despite knowledge that Pentagon propaganda accounts used overt identities, Twitter did not suspend many for around two years or more. Some remain active …
In 2017 a U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) official sent Twitter a list of 52 Arab language accounts ‘we use to amplify certain messages.’ The official asked for priority service for six accounts, verification for one and ‘whitelist’ abilities for the others.”
Whitelisted accounts have a “validated” status similar to that of the blue check mark, which ensures they are promoted in searches. These accounts also don’t get shadow-banned or limited by other means. In closing, I think Childers makes an excellent and accurate observation:23
“Combine all this Twitter censorship, influence peddling, and pure propaganda with the vast budget for pushing vaccines by buying scientists and influencers during the pandemic, and we can begin to see the outlines of a vast private market for censorship and fake news created by the deep state, which then became its biggest customer.”
As for the FBI, it released a single-sentence “rebuttal” on December 21, 2022 — on Twitter — to the mountain of scandalous evidence presented against it.24
Sources and References
- 1, 7 Twitter Michael Shellenberger December 19, 2022
- 2 Rumble Glenn Greenwald December 19, 2022 Timestamp: 44:23
- 3, 4, 5, 6, 12, 13 Coffee & Covid 2022 December 19, 2022
- 8, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19 Coffee & Covid December 20, 2022
- 9, 10 New York Post December 19, 2022
- 18 Meryl Nass Substack December 20, 2022
- 20, 22 The Intercept December 20, 2022
- 21, 23 Coffee & Covid December 21, 2022
- 24 Coffee & Covid December 22, 2022
I understand ‘The Most Important Thing’ for our rulers …
But, going forward, what’s the most important thing for ‘We the People?’
By Bill Rice, Jr. | January 1, 2023
Author’s note: The start of a new year is perhaps a good time to reflect on lessons gleaned from almost three years of observing our surreal Covid New Normal. In this meditation, I try to identify the bigger themes and the many scandals still concealed. I think I now understand how vast conspiracies and cover-ups could occur … and what thinking will have to change if a country that is listing seriously is going to right itself.
***
In my writings on Covid topics, I’ve begun to filter my thoughts and theories through one question: What was “the most important thing” to officials?
The answer to this question seems almost undeniable: Officials and key allies in the Establishment wanted as many people as possible to receive the Covid “vaccines” (and now “boosters”).
While mass vaccination was the paramount goal, rolling out “vaccine passports” and, perhaps even more important, digital control of the population are also key components of the unfinished agendas of society’s real rulers in my opinion.
That is, everything that’s occurred in the last three years was done to promote these overriding goals/objectives. Promoting (non-sensical) mass fear was of course a prerequisite for achieving the goal of mass compliance.
Any evidence that might debunk any of the false Covid narratives – and reduce the level of public fear – had to be concealed to advance the vaccination objective, but also to keep the conspirators from one day being tried for perpetrating “crimes against humanity.”
Thus, I also believe “self-protection” quickly became another overriding goal of those most responsible for producing the tragic outcomes of the last three years.
Another way to express my hypothesis is that certain officials engaged in on-going disinformation campaigns, all of which sought to achieve these two goals.
If most Americans ever realized all of the important “disinformation” was spread by officials, transformational change might be possible.
If more Americans belatedly realized it was the skeptics who were right all along, the future might be a better place. More Americans might realize that holding officials with great power accountable, and challenging false narratives, are actually vital civic duties.
It’s possible that one day the public will learn the scores of mechanisms officials used to conceal their crimes and lies.
For the last few years, I’ve tried to produce journalism that might be of use to future historians. For example, I’m currently finishing an article that will list approximately 20 ways that evidence of “early spread” has been concealed.
I’m sure many independent journalists could write articles listing at least 20 ways that vaccine injuries have been concealed. Still another journalist could compile a list just as long that shows how iatrogenic deaths have been concealed, or lockdowns and masks were unnecessary, or how Covid statistics were manipulated.
The fact so many Covid topics could provide so many examples of cover-ups and shocking scandals should be telling the American public something significant, lessons that should disturb any person who still cares about the truth.
Nothing that happened would have been possible
if the Fourth Estate had not been captured
It’s also significant that the views of skeptics have been ignored by the mainstream press and public health officials. This suggests censorship and “cancellation” are vital tools to protect false narratives.
As almost all “journalists” at mainstream press organizations refuse to seriously investigate evidence that might debunk any false narrative, this suggests the Fourth Estate has been captured or recruited by the organizations seeking to advance nefarious agendas.
Indeed, I’d argue this represents perhaps the most sinister development in the history of our nation. If “science,” every agency and branch of government and “watchdog journalism” are now all captured, no important truths (or scandals) are likely to ever be exposed.
Some critics might argue I am positing a massive (and thus implausible) conspiracy or cover-up.
In one sense, I guess I am. My future article will argue that officials pursued at least 20 different “projects” just to conceal evidence of early spread. This does suggest a wide-spread conspiracy.
However, I think most officials or employees who played a part in concealing evidence of early spread probably had no idea they were engaging in a wider conspiracy.
The same belief would apply to all the Covid conspiracies and cover-ups. Most of the people involved were simply following orders.
I’ve also come to believe that the “most important thing” for people in bureaucratic organizations is to NOT create waves, to not be considered mavericks or contrarians, to not challenge any politically-correct or “authorized” narratives.
In layman’s terms, people working below the apex of the organizational pyramids intuitively pick up on the authorized narrative and are able to quickly identify which way the proverbial wind is blowing.
My theory posits that a relatively few “masterminds” of any conspiracy – the few people really “in the know” – exploited this knowledge to procure the support of subordinate workers “in the field.”
This, I believe, explains how widespread conspiracies or cover-ups are easier to achieve than one might imagine was possible.
The people who could blow the whistle are not likely to do so. Also, those who might refuse to “go along” are quickly removed from positions of influence.
In other words, while I believe numerous tactics were employed to cover-up evidence of early spread, it probably wasn’t that difficult for the key “conspirators” to make sure their objectives were achieved.
If the effort to conceal evidence of vaccine injuries necessarily entails the participation of vast numbers of people (which it obviously has), achieving this level of participation was also far easier to achieve than one might have thought possible … for the same reasons.
The cover-up is always bigger than the original crime
I also believe cover-ups almost always require the participation of far more actors than the original crimes.
In this conspiracy, the overriding goal was to get everyone vaccinated. However, it must have quickly become apparent to numerous officials inside the U.S. government that “rogue actors” in the government played at least some role in creating this virus.
If this was proven and then revealed, U.S. “national security” might be jeopardized. At best, the international image and reputation of the U.S. government would suffer immense harm.
The liability issues and reparation movements that might emerge infer economic damages mind-blowing to fathom.
Domestically, citizen trust in our trusted public officials might be irreparably damaged.
Given the above possibilities, it does not seem farfetched to suggest that every important official of every important agency in the U.S. government might now possess a strong motive to cover-up Covid facts that, if revealed, could produce seismic repercussions.
In short, the truth – ever revealed – would jeopardize the standing, reputation, influence (and government funding) of practically every important organization in the world.
As it’s almost impossible to identify an important organization that did not enthusiastically support lockdowns, draconian “mitigation” mandates and vaccination agendas, the number of organizations with a strong incentive to conceal the truth is virtually all-encompassing.
This observation also explains how a conspiracy originally involving only a small number of people could expand to include legions of officials, both inside and outside of government.
Which is why society’s true patriots and truth-seekers are so important
The same observation also highlights the vital role being performed by the few organizations staffed with contrarian voices who posses the courage and intellectual integrity to challenge false or dubious narratives.
Whether citizens realize it or not, we now live in a world where much of the accepted conventional wisdom is either false or dubious. As erroneous conventional wisdom ultimately creates flawed public policy, false narratives that are never challenged or exposed can and do inflict great harm on society.
In such a world, the few groups pointing this out are performing a vital public service. The fact the Powers that Be want these voices silenced is perhaps the greatest and most-ominous “tell” of them all.
It’s painful for someone to admit he was duped …
For most people, the belated realization that staples of conventional wisdom might have been false all along would cause psychological pain, an uncomfortable result most people seek to avoid.
The same people might intuitively sense that exposing and correcting these false narratives could produce more-tangible negative effects in their own lives and throughout society.
But any short or mid-term pain must be endured if the world’s long-term prospects are going to be brighter.
The bottom-line is our children’s future …
The reason the population should support such a “cure” is not necessarily to benefit the remainder of our own lives, but because we want the lives of our children and grandchildren to be better than our own lives.
However, the future of our own generation’s children and grandchildren will be bleaker unless the frauds and lies of today are belatedly exposed.
Refusing to perform this painful but necessary task ensures that the same “leaders” who are dismantling the founding principles of our nation (people who created and mandated policies that are literally killing and injuring large swaths of the population) will be in charge next year … and 10 and 20 years from now.
Exposing narratives that were false would expose and purge many of society’s worst leaders. A better class of leaders could guide us into the future.
Also, more people might realize it’s dangerous to put so much blind faith in government officials and the giant corporations that are now so closely aligned with government. Instead of being cancelled and maligned, skeptics might be more appreciated.
It might make people uncomfortable to admit to themselves that they trusted the wrong leaders on Covid topics. However, if more people are beginning to consider this possibility such a development would be very significant.
If more people realize how important it is to keep these same policy makers from ruining the lives of their children and grandchildren, this potential “silver lining” of Covid might end up saving the world.
Circling back to where I started … When something is “the most important thing” to a cadre of highly-motivated, committed and powerful individuals, such people usually find a way to make sure this thing happens.
For almost three years, too many decent people accepted the pronouncements of officials, alleged experts, CEOs of Big Pharma and Big Media as the gospel truth when these words were really evil lies. In short, we let ourselves be led by the wrong people.
Today, the most important thing decent people can do is to expose and purge such dangerous charlatans before they make it impossible that our children live in a better world in the future.
Let’s Emancipate Ourselves From Mental Slavery In 2023
A Better Way to Health with Dr Tess Lawrie | January 1, 2023
In 2023, I have resolved to be especially curious and open minded and I’m trusting you may wish to join me! Where signposts say “Go this way” we’ll be exploring the other way, where television presenters say “Look over here” we’ll be looking over there, and where people have been labelled “conspiracy theorists” we will be hearing them out with an open mind. This desire to investigate the contrary is not for the sake of being contrarian but stems from the profound realisation over the past three years that all is not as it seems.
Fact is, if we have been fed a pack of lies about a deadly pandemic, what other lies have we been sold?
It’s with much gratitude to Covid-19 that our eyes have been opened – so let’s keep them open and seize the opportunity to free our minds in 2023, by exploring what’s been kept from us no matter how dark the matter. It is only by shining our torches into the hidden recesses of control that we can truly emancipate ourselves and ensure that what just happened never happens again.
Now, with eyes wide open it is apparent that fear and dependency have been cultivated by corrupt leaders to relieve us of our most valuable possession: our free will.
We’ve been encouraged not to look to our elders and ancestors for their learned wisdom, not to look to Mother Nature for healing, not to seek answers in the movement of our heavens, not to see our common humanity, and not to use our intuition to seek the truth. Wars are started that never benefit the people they are supposed to liberate, and atrocities are performed in the name of democracy and freedom. Globalist propaganda has positioned injections as the only route to maintaining health, and toxic drugs are plied for cancer, diabetes, and heart disease by fearful health professionals within a captured “health” system. The word ‘safety’ is the excuse for the incremental violation of our inalienable rights and it all stops when we say a firm “No”. As Bob Marley sang, only we can free our minds.
For longer than we may like to admit, we have been living in a world with fixed perceptions propagated by official authorities and shaped by billionaires and supra-national organisations. Many of us are only just realising that we’ve been told what to believe, and allowed those at the top of the power hierarchy to determine what is ‘good’ for us and what is ‘bad’, what we need to know and what we don’t. Whatever they deem not necessary for us to know is called a “conspiracy theory”.
So, for 2023…
Let’s not feel down about the nasty plans emanating from a bunch of megalomaniacs and eugenicists.
Yes, they want to control us, yes, they want to change us, yes, they want to own us, and yes, they want to play God. In 2023, they will be escalating their plans as they attempt to manifest their New World Order. Expect a reveal of their one world government in the form of the new Conference of Parties, along with a relentless schedule of injections, tags and surveillance of all creatures, especially us, from birth to death.
But do not despair. Armed with curiosity and wide eyed, there is reason to be optimistic about what 2023 holds. We see them now, and knowledge is power.
In 2023, we are taking our power back. They can forget their one world government. We are creating a Better Way.
Thus, in 2023 let’s all commit to returning ourselves to optimal health and full power. We are not the tired, fearful and flaccid specimens to be locked in cages that they are training us to be – generators and consumers of despair, degeneracy and horror – “hackable animals” glued to screens to receive our daily dose of junk. To the contrary, we are inquisitive, courageous and spirited men and women who are capable of great acts of love and kindness, and who can achieve anything when we set our hearts to it.
Please join me and the team on our 2023 journey of discovery, exploring all the things that have been kept hidden from us or deemed taboo. Knowledge censored and denigrated by the hierarchy in the name of science and safety will be examined as we decide for ourselves what is true and what is false, and we enjoy rendering and questioning the unknown – which is infinite. We will no longer exist in a cell, reading the permitted writing on the walls, accepting reductionist theories and limiting beliefs of us and the universe. We will entertain old and new theories and facilitate the discovery of genius.
What does a Better Way look like in 2023?
A better way will be expressed by a unified global effort to highlight and promote positive initiatives around the world that further health, freedom and sovereignty.
When we unite with others so that we may complement and aid one another and thereby hold together against the mad megalomaniacs of this world, we are co-creating a Better Way.
If ever in doubt about what constitutes a Better Way, let’s ask ourselves how a particular thought, action or communication makes us feel and relinquish those practices that no longer serve us, that keep us in mental slavery. Let’s amplify the positives and turn our backs on dystopia, and let’s harness the full power of our collective intuition. As Terrence McKenna said, “Intuition is the most powerful epistemic tool we have”. I say, intuition manifests good always.
Wishing you all an abundant, inquisitive and intuitive 2023.
Merriam-Webster Declares ‘Gaslighting’ 2022 Word of the Year
From the film Gaslight: Paula has finally had enough of Gregory’s Gaslighting
By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | January 1, 2023
Merriam-Webster just announced the following:
In this age of misinformation—of “fake news,” conspiracy theories, Twitter trolls, and deepfakes—gaslighting has emerged as a word for our time.
A driver of disorientation and mistrust, gaslighting is “the act or practice of grossly misleading someone especially for one’s own advantage.” 2022 saw a 1740% increase in lookups for gaslighting, with high interest throughout the year.
Merriam-Webster’s report and definition of the term acknowledge that the meaning of ‘gaslighting’ has evolved since the word was coined. In my opinion, the current spike of usage is based on a misunderstanding of the concept. In the current, popular imagination, gaslighting is often confused with gross lying and deception, but in fact the term refers to tricking the victim into believing he is losing his mental competence so that he will doubt his perceptions of reality.
The term originated in a play and 1944 film Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer, in which a woman is manipulated by her sinister husband into believing she is losing her sanity. In his initial gambit, he rigs their home’s gaslights to flicker periodically. When she asks him, “Why do the lights keep flickering?” He says he doesn’t know what she’s talking about—that the lights are NOT flickering.
In another notable scene, he gives her a valuable brooch—a family heirloom that he claims had belonged to his mother—while warning her that she must be very careful not to lose it. “You know how you tend to lose things,” he says. Later, when the brooch goes missing from her purse, it seems (in her mind) to confirm her husband’s concern (not realizing that he removed it from her purse).
Gaslighting is a particularly malevolent form of psychological warfare, most often deployed in interpersonal relationships by what the Austrian psychoanalyst Otto Kernberg called “malignant narcissists.” The concept of the malignant narcissist is closely related to Dr. Robert Hare’s concept of the psychopath. Incidentally, in a recent conversation with the British cardiologist, Aseem Malhotra, he observed that the pharmaceutical industry displays distinct traits of psychopathy in the way it conducts business.
I suspect that the spike in usage of ‘gaslighting” is an outcome of our current Orwellian administration. As Orwell memorably wrote in 1984:
The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
I frequently thought of this command as I was reading Edward Dowd’s new book, Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 and 2022. Every day we see reports of young people suddenly dropping dead, and our mainstream media would have us believe the cause is unknown.
This is a crazy-making form of mass deception and pretending that indeed bears a resemblance to the original meaning of ‘gaslighting.’
US government funds research on correcting “false beliefs”
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | December 29, 2022
The US government is funding research on how to fight online “misinformation” by correcting “false beliefs.” The funding is in partnership with fact-checkers.
On July 7, 2021, the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded a project titled, “How False Beliefs Form and How to Correct Them.”
The NSF allocated $444,345 to Lisa Fazio, an Associate Professor of Psychology and Human Development at Vanderbilt University. Since then, the total amount granted to the researcher has reached $506,478, as was first surfaced by a War Room report.
Published on NSF’s website is the grant’s purpose, which states:
“There is currently an urgent need to understand the real-world effects of misinformation on people’s beliefs and how to best correct false beliefs.
“Through a series of laboratory and naturalistic experiments, the project team is examining the effects of repetition on belief in real-world settings and how to more effectively counteract misinformation.
“By examining these basic psychological processes in the primary domain within which they affect daily life – misinformation on social media – this work will have implications for real-world practices aimed at reducing the impact of misinformation.”
The idea is for the research to “inform real-world practices aimed at reducing the impact of misinformation.” The NSF claims that “fact-checking practitioners are consulted to help guide the research, and results will be discussed with them.” However, it does not name the fact-checkers, many of which have already built up notoriety for the often biased way they apply fact-checks.
No rise in temps or rainfall in Bangladesh for 100 years, despite alarmists pointing to it as ‘canary in the coalmine’
BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | DECEMBER 28, 2022
The country of Bangladesh is mostly a floodplain. Over 80% of the territory is classified as such, while 75% of the land is less than 10 metres above sea level. Heavy monsoons and widespread flooding are common. In an average year, 18% of the landmass is inundated, a figure that rose to 75% in 1988. What better place for western guilt-trippers to highlight and claim that all the natural tribulations are down to humans changing the climate? And what better ‘poster child’ for grant-hungry activists and local politicians to highlight when demanding large amounts of ‘compensation’ from developed nations to assuage the sins of industrialisation?
Earlier this year, Bangladesh was hit by the regular monsoon rains and flooding. Sky News reported that “experts say that climate change is increasing the frequency, ferocity and unpredictability of floods in Bangladesh”. Needless to say, the BBC made the same point, adding that “experts say that climate change is increasing the likelihood of events like this happening around the world”.
Presumably, when they talk about climate change, Sky and the BBC are worried about flooding being caused by rising temperatures and increased rainfall. It might therefore be considered curious that these climate changes do not seem to have affected Bangladesh.
According to figures compiled for the World Bank, the average temperature in Bangladesh is the same today as it was 100 years ago. There are the usual cyclical changes, but global warming is not much in evidence around the Bay of Bengal.
Let’s try rainfall.
Again according to the World Bank, we see little change in the overall trend going back 100 years. If anything, rainfall has slightly decreased, and there‘s certainly nothing unusual in the recent past. The graph shows that rainfall can vary widely between years. Severe monsoons in the past have caused enormous damage and heavy loss of life. Six catastrophic floods were recorded in the 19th century and 18 in the 20th. These days, hundreds of people can die in the flooding; in the past the figures could run into hundreds of thousands.
In a recent article in Climate Home News, it was said that Bangladeshis were dealing with wave after wave of climate chaos. The article “sponsored” by the international ngo Helvetas told its Western audience that one of the impacts of these disasters is “forced migration”. Of course, this plays into another common climate scare, suggesting, without any discernible evidence, that huge numbers of people will become ‘climate refugees’ in the future, mostly from tropical areas, and inevitably seeking to move northwards to ‘safety’.
Making Bangladesh a poster country for Western Armageddonites spreading the pseudoscientific notion that humans are causing the climate to radically change, does the country few favours. It is sited in many geographically fragile areas, and is prone to tropical cyclones. But over 160 million people are sustained by good agriculture, increased manufacturing development, and economic growth of around 6% per annum.
As countries become more prosperous, they can become more resilient in the face of what nature has always thrown at them. This appears to have happened in the case of Bangladesh, where the number of fatalities from flooding has significantly declined over the last 50 years. Surely, this is the good news story that should be spread in mainstream media, and probably would be if the climate change narrative was not embedded in every part of the discourse.
As we have reported throughout the year, it has been a disastrous period for climate alarmists preaching their gospel of doom to inflict a controlling Net Zero political agenda across the world. Global warming ran out of steam years ago, and no amount of ‘adjusting’ of surface temperature databases can hide that fact. Weather events are cyclical, and attributing any one event to human activity is model-driven junk science. Summer Arctic sea ice stopped declining over a decade ago, but David Attenborough still says it could all be gone by 2035. Polar bears, penguins and coral – all doing nicely thank you. More prosperous and healthier societies are learning to protect themselves against the ravages of Mother Nature. Small increases in carbon dioxide, otherwise known as plant food, continue to green up the planet, leading to higher food yields, reduced famine and healthier eco systems.
Is Trump Tucker Carlson’s JFK Assassination Source?
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | December 27, 2022
On December 15, 2022, Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson delivered a monologue stating his conviction that the CIA was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The presentation was remarkable given that that sort of thing is never found in the mainstream media. As most everyone knows, the mainstream media avoids the Kennedy assassination like the plague.
Carlson’s presentation motivated Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to issue the following highly dangerous tweet: “The most courageous newscast in 60 years. The CIA’s murder of my uncle was a successful coup d’état from which our democracy has never recovered. @TuckerCarlson.”
Carlson made his presentation in the context of the CIA’s continued steadfast refusal to disclose thousands of its assassination-related records to the American people, along with President Biden’s decision to go along with the CIA’s decision. These are records that the CIA was mandated to release to the American people by the JFK Records Act, which was enacted in 1992 — thirty years ago!
As I have long maintained, there is only one reason for the CIA’s continued secrecy. Those thousands of records contain pieces of incriminating circumstantial evidence that further establish criminal culpability on the part of the CIA in the assassination of President Kennedy. Obviously, the CIA has concluded that it simply cannot afford to permit the American people, especially assassination researchers, to view those records. Better to have the American people believing that the records are incriminating rather than letting them know that they are incriminating.
On November 8, 2022 — approximately one month before the Carlson presentation — Gerald Celente conducted an interview with Judge Andrew Napolitano, a former judicial analyst for Fox News. In that interview, Napolitano recounted a conversation with President Trump, with whom he was friends. In that interview, the pertinent part of which you can view here, Napolitano stated:
I once had a conversation … with President Trump when he was in the White House. He used to call me all the time. And we talked about everything under the sun. I said, “Are you going to release those documents or not?” And he said to me, “If you saw what I saw, you wouldn’t release them.”
In his presentation, Carlson stated the following:
In 1992, Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act. That act mandated full disclosure of all documents by 2017, 54 years after JFK was killed. The last administration promised to comply fully with that law. But under intense pressure from CIA Director Mike Pompeo, withheld, in the end, thousands of pages of CIA documents.
Today, this afternoon, the Biden administration did exactly the same thing. That would be thousands of pages of documents after nearly 60 years, after the death of every single person involved. But we still can’t see them. Clearly, it’s not to protect any person. They’re all dead. It’s to protect an institution. But why?
Well, today we decided to find out. We spoke to someone who had access to these still hidden CIA documents, a person who was deeply familiar with what they contained. We asked this person directly, “Did the CIA have a hand in the murder of John F. Kennedy, an American President?” And here’s the reply we received verbatim. Quote, “The answer is yes. I believe they were involved. It’s a whole different country from what we thought it was. It’s all fake.” (Emphasis added.)
Is Trump Carlson’s source? It would make sense that he is. After all, just a little more than a month ago, Trump told Napolitano that he had seen the CIA’s still-secret records. He also implied to Napolitano that the still-secret records contain explosive information of an incriminating nature. What else could he have meant when he said, “If you saw what I saw, you wouldn’t release them”?
It also stands to reason that Carlson would have known about the Napolitano interview, given Napolitano’s longtime relationship with Fox News. It also stands to reason that Carlson would have reached out to Trump and that Trump would have talked to him, given Trump’s longtime close relationship with Fox News.
But whether Trump is Carlson’s source or not, the obvious question arises: Why didn’t Trump order the release of those long-secret records of the CIA? Why did he, like Biden, participate in the CIA’s assassination cover-up by authorizing the CIA to continue keeping its half-century-old records secret? Indeed, why doesn’t Trump, a recently announced candidate for president, go public right now with what he saw in those records?
One possibility is that the CIA “Hoovered” Trump into continuing to keep the CIA’s decades-old assassination-related records secret. By “Hoovered” I am referring to J. Edgar Hoover, who was a serial blackmailer when he was serving as FBI director. Hoover would acquire personal information about people with the aim of blackmailing them into bending them to his will. If they complied, he would keep the information secret. If they refused to comply with Hoover’s will, he would release the information through trusted assets in the mainstream press.
My hunch is that that is what happened with Trump. After all, when the deadline for release was coming due, Trump publicly announced that he intended to order the release of the CIA’s assassination-related records. Then, just before the deadline came due, however, the CIA somehow prevailed on Trump to suddenly change his mind and instead to grant the CIA’s demand to extend the time for secrecy.
In the final analysis though, the CIA’s steadfast refusal to disclose those thousands of assassination-related records is, largely, irrelevant. As I have maintained over the years, once it was established beyond a reasonable doubt that the national-security establishment conducted a fraudulent autopsy on Kennedy’s body, the gig was up. That’s because there is no innocent explanation for a fraudulent autopsy. None! No one has ever come up with an innocent explanation for the fraudulent autopsy, and no one ever will. A fraudulent autopsy necessarily means criminal culpability in the assassination itself. See my article “Why the JFK Assassination Should Matter to Everyone.” Also see my books The Kennedy Autopsy, The Kennedy Autopsy 2, Regime Change: The JFK Assassination, and, most recently, An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story,
The CIA’s continued steadfast refusal to release the thousands of remaining assassination-related records tends to confirm what Trump told Napolitano. But those records would simply add additional evidence to what the fraudulent autopsy has already established: that the November 22, 1963, assassination was a regime-change operation intended to protect “national security” from a president who was determined to lead America in a direction different from the direction that the Pentagon and the CIA were determined to lead America.
NOTE: Credit is given to Charles Burris, who first raised the possibility that Trump is Carlson’s source in the following article at LewRockwell.com: “Will Tucker Carlson Reveal The High Level Source Which Confirmed That The Deep State Murdered JFK In A Regime Change Coup d’état?
Every social media company censoring for government – Elon Musk
RT | December 27, 2022
All social media platforms work with the US government to censor content, Twitter CEO Elon Musk claimed on Tuesday. Documents released by Musk following his purchase of Twitter showed that the platform colluded with the FBI, CIA, Pentagon and other government agencies to suppress information on elections, Ukraine, and Covid-19.
“*Every* social media company is engaged in heavy censorship, with significant involvement of and, at times, explicit direction of the government,” Musk tweeted, adding that “Google frequently makes links disappear, for example.”
Musk was referring to internal Twitter communications published by journalist Matt Taibbi, which suggested that the platform’s senior executives held regular meetings with members of the FBI and CIA, during which the agencies gave them lists of “hundreds of problem accounts” to suspend in the runup to the 2020 election.
In addition to Twitter, the government was in contact “with virtually every major tech firm,” Taibbi claimed. “These included Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, Reddit, even Pinterest.” CIA agents “nearly always” sat in on meetings of these firms with the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, Taibbi claimed, explaining that although this task force was convened to fight alleged election interference by foreign states, it made “mountains of domestic moderation requests.”
A lawsuit filed earlier this year by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana alleges that officials from no fewer than 12 government agencies met weekly with representatives of Twitter, Facebook, and other Big Tech firms in 2020 to decide which narratives and users to censor, with topics ranging from alleged election interference to Covid-19.
A self-described “free speech absolutist,” Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in October. He has since released batches of documents shedding light on the platform’s previously opaque censorship policies. Published by several independent journalists, these document dumps have shown how Twitter suppressed information damaging to Joe Biden’s election campaign, colluded with the FBI to remove content the agency wanted hidden, assisted the US military’s online influence campaigns, and censored “anti-Ukraine narratives” on behalf of multiple US intelligence agencies.
The FBI said last week that correspondence between its agents and Twitter staff “show nothing more than examples of our tradition [of] longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements.”
The White House has refused to answer allegations that the FBI directed Twitter to censor information damaging to Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign.
FBI COINTELPRO Is Back, And Worse Than Ever
By Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | December 27, 2022
Elon Musk has opened the floodgates to expose the FBI’s latest war on Americans’ freedom of speech. The FBI massively intervened to pressure Twitter to suppress accounts and tweets from individuals the FBI disapproved of, including parody accounts. The FBI and other federal agencies also browbeat Facebook, Instagram, and many other social media companies.
Thus far, most of the American corporate media has ignored or downplayed the story, known as the Twitter Files. Since many of the individuals who the FBI got squelched were pro-Trump, the violation of their rights is a non-issue (or a cause for quiet celebration). At this point, it is difficult to know whether the scant reaction to the Twitter Files is the result of political bias, collective amnesia, or simply a total ignorance of American history.
The history of the FBI provides the best guide to the abuses that may be now occurring. From 1956 to 1971, the FBI carried out “a secret war against those citizens it considers threats to the established order,” a 1976 Senate report noted. The FBI’s Operation COINTELPRO involved thousands of covert operations to incite street warfare between violent groups, to get people fired, to portray innocent people as government informants, to destroy activists’ marriages, and to cripple or destroy left-wing, black, communist, white racist, and anti-war organizations. The FBI let no corner of American life escape its vigilance; it even worked to expose and discredit “communists who are secretly operating in legitimate organizations and employments, such as the Young Men’s Christian Association and Boy Scouts.”
While many people are aware of how the FBI hounded Martin Luther King Jr. and pressured him to commit suicide, that was not even the tip of the iceberg of the FBI’s racial persecution. Almost any black organization could be targeted for illegal wiretaps. One black leader was monitored largely because he had “recommended the possession of firearms by members for their self-protection.” At that time, some southern police departments and sheriffs were notorious for attacking blacks who stood up for their civil rights.
The FBI office in San Diego instigated violence between the local Black Panthers and a rival black organization, US (United Slaves Inc.). Agents sent forged letters making accusations and threats to the groups purportedly from their rivals, along with crude cartoons and drawings meant to enrage the recipients. Three Black Panthers and one member of the US were killed during the time the FBI was fanning the flames. A few days after shootings in which two Panthers were wounded and one was killed, and in which the US headquarters was bombed, the FBI office reported to headquarters: “Efforts are being made to determine how this situation can be capitalized upon for the benefit of the Counterintelligence Program.” The FBI office bragged shortly thereafter: “Shootings, beatings, and a high degree of unrest continues to prevail in the ghetto area of southeast San Diego… it is felt that a substantial amount of the unrest is directly attributable to this [FBI] program.”
The FBI set up a Ghetto Informant Program that continued after COINTELPRO and that had 7,402 informants, including proprietors of candy stores and barbershops, as of September 1972. The informants served as “listening posts” “to identify extremists passing through or locating in the ghetto area, to identify purveyors of extremist literature,” and to keep an eye on “Afro-American type bookstores” (including obtaining the names of the bookstore’s “clientele”). The informants’ reports were stockpiled in the FBI’s Racial Intelligence Unit. The FBI also created a national “Rabble Rouser” Index, a “major intelligence program… to identify ‘demagogues.’”
The FBI targeted the women’s liberation movement, resulting in “intensive reporting on the identities and opinions of women who attended” women’s lib meetings. One FBI informant reported to headquarters of a meeting in New York: “Each woman at this meeting stated why she had come to the meeting and how she felt oppressed, sexually or otherwise… They are mostly against marriage, children, and other states of oppression caused by men.” Women’s lib informants were instructed to “go to meetings, write up reports… to try to identify the background of every person there… [and] who they were sleeping with.” The Senate report noted that “the intensive FBI investigation of the Women’s Liberation Movement was predicated on the theory that the activities of women in that Movement might lead to demonstrations and violence.”
The FBI took a shotgun approach toward protesters partly because of its “belief that dissident speech and association should be prevented because they were incipient steps toward the possible ultimate commission of an act which might be criminal.” Some FBI agents may have viewed dissident speech or protests as a “gateway drug” to blowing up the Washington Monument. The Senate report noted that the clearest FBI COINTELPRO constitutional violations consisted of “targeting speakers, teachers, writers or publications, and meetings or peaceful demonstrations… The cases include attempts (sometimes successful) to get university and high school teachers fired… to prevent the distribution of books, newspapers, or periodicals; to disrupt peaceful demonstrations, including… most of the large antiwar marches.”
The FBI especially loathed any opposition to the Vietnam War. The bureau ordered field offices in 1968 to gather information illustrating the “scurrilous and depraved nature of many of the characters, activities, habits, and living conditions representative of New Left adherents.” FBI agents were told: “Every avenue of possible embarrassment must be vigorously and enthusiastically explored. It cannot be expected that information of this type will be easily obtained, and an imaginative approach by your personnel is imperative to its success.” One FBI internal newsletter encouraged agents to conduct more interviews with antiwar activists “for plenty of reasons, chief of which are it will enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles and will further serve to get the point across that there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox.”
An FBI memo warned that “the anarchist activities of a few can paralyze institutions of learning, [conscription] induction centers, cripple traffic, and tie the arms of law enforcement officials, all to the detriment of our society.” The FBI declared: “The New Left has on many occasions viciously and scurrilously attacked the Director [J. Edgar Hoover] and the Bureau in an attempt to hamper our investigation of it and to drive us off the college campuses.”
Other federal agencies also trampled citizens’ privacy, rights, and lives during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The IRS used COINTELPRO leads to launch audits against thousands of suspected political enemies of the Nixon administration. The U.S. Army set up its own surveillance program, creating files on 100,000 Americans and targeting domestic organizations such as the Young Americans for Freedom, the John Birch Society, and the Anti-Defamation League of B’Nai B’rith. Nixon aide Tom Charles Huston, testifying to Congress in 1973, lamented the FBI’s tendency “to move from the kid with a bomb to the kid with a picket sign, and from the kid with the picket sign to the kid with the bumper sticker of the opposing candidate. And you just keep going down the line.”
Throughout the COINTELPRO era, presidents, congressmen, and other high-ranking federal officials assured Americans that the federal government was obeying the law and upholding the Constitution. It took a burglary of an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania to break the biggest scandal in the history of federal law enforcement. After hundreds of pages of confidential records were commandeered, the “Citizen’s Commission to Investigate the FBI” began passing out the incriminating documents to the media. The shocking material sparked congressional and news investigations that eventually (temporarily) shattered the FBI’s legendary ability to control its own image.
The Senate report on COINTELPRO concluded: “Only a combination of legislative prohibition and Departmental control can guarantee that COINTELPRO will not happen again.” But the Ford administration derailed legislative reforms by promising an administrative fix. In 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft threw out many of those reforms as part of “a concerted effort to free the [FBI] field agents… from the bureaucratic, organizational, and operational restrictions” imposed after their prior abuses. Ashcroft declared: “In its 94-year history, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been… the tireless protector of civil rights and civil liberties for all Americans.” The same tripe has been uttered by many Democrats and liberals in the last five years.
The FBI’s latest war on wrong-thinking Americans took off after the FBI helped fabricate the narrative that the Russian government conspired with the Trump presidential campaign to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The 1976 Senate report noted that COINTELPRO’s origins “are rooted in the Bureau’s jurisdiction to investigate hostile foreign intelligence activities on American soil” and that the FBI used the “techniques of wartime.” William Sullivan, former assistant to the FBI director, declared, “No holds were barred…We have used [these techniques] against Soviet agents… [The same methods were] brought home against any organization against which we were targeted. We did not differentiate.” Senate investigators warned in 1976 that the “FBI intelligence system developed to a point where no one inside or outside the bureau was willing or able to tell the difference between legitimate national security or law enforcement information and purely political intelligence.”
In our time, FBI officials pressured Twitter to suppress Americans based on false claims of fighting foreign influence. The same pretext was used by the Department of Homeland Security to massively suppress Americans’ criticism of election procedures (especially mail-in ballots) for the 2020 presidential election.
One of the biggest “misses” in the media coverage of the Twitter Files is the stunning failure of Congress to expose the abuses that Elon Musk is revealing. A few months ago, FBI director Christopher Wray, facing vigorous questioning from Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) and others, walked out of a Senate oversight hearing claiming that he had an urgent appointment he must keep. It was later revealed that Wray’s “appointment” was hopping on an FBI jet for a family vacation. Congress punished the FBI with a $570 million budget increase, plowing $11.3 billion into its coffers in the coming year.
Is Congress terrified of the FBI nowadays like congressmen were in the COINTELPRO era? In 1971, House Majority Leader Hale Boggs revealed the shameless kowtowing on Capitol Hill: “Our very fear of speaking out [against the FBI]… has watered the roots and hastened the growth of a vine of tyranny… Our society cannot survive a planned and programmed fear of its own government bureaus and agencies.” Boggs vindicated a 1924 American Civil Liberties Union warning that the FBI had become “a secret police system of a political character.” (The Louisiana congressman died a year later in an apparent plane crash.)
But old quotes provide no protection against new depredations. The Twitter Files prove that G-men have been off the leash for years. We still have no idea how far the FBI and other federal agencies have gone to suppress our freedom of speech. Until federal abuses are fully exposed, Americans would be damn fools to believe their constitutional rights are safe.
Jim Bovard is the author of Public Policy Hooligan (2012), Attention Deficit Democracy (2006), Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994), and 7 other books. He is a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors and has also written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, and other publications. His articles have been publicly denounced by the chief of the FBI, the Postmaster General, the Secretary of HUD, and the heads of the DEA, FEMA, and EEOC and numerous federal agencies.
Iran, Syria, Yemen: Twitter’s collaboration with the US military in information warfare
The damning exposure of collusion between the Pentagon and Twitter raises further suspicions about Washington’s ongoing online operations in West Asia
By Kit Klarenberg | The Cradle | December 27, 2022
The Cradle has previously deconstructed the Pentagon’s online bot and troll operations targeting Iran. These wide-ranging efforts, over many years, sought to destabilize the Iranian government by disseminating and inciting negative sentiment against it, on a variety of social media platforms.
Their exposure led to the White House demanding an internal audit of all Department of Defense (DoD) “psychological operations online.” Ostensibly, this was triggered by high-level concerns that Washington’s “moral high ground” was potentially compromised by the “manipulation of audiences overseas.”
The audit was revealed in a Washington Post article, the details of which pointed to a very different rationale. One passage noted that representatives of Facebook and Twitter directly informed the Pentagon, repeatedly, over several years, that its psychological warfare efforts on their platforms had been detected and identified as such.
Weaponizing social media
Frustratingly, the focus wasn’t even that these operations were being conducted in the first place, but that the Pentagon got busted doing so.
For example, Facebook’s Director of Global Threat Disruption, David Agranovich, who spent six years at the Pentagon before serving as the US National Security Council’s Director for Intelligence, reportedly reached out to the DoD in the summer of 2020, warning his former colleagues that “if Facebook could sniff them out, so could US adversaries.”
“His point was, ‘Guys, you got caught. That’s a problem,’” an individual “familiar with the conversation” told the Washington Post.
The obvious takeout from this excerpt – unnoticed by any mainstream journalist at the time – was that Facebook and Twitter staffers actively welcome their platforms being weaponized in information warfare campaigns, as long as it’s the US intelligence community doing it, and they don’t get caught in flagrante.
Moreover, in the event they are compromised, those same social network luminaries readily provide intimate insight on how US spooks can improve their operational security, and better conceal their activities from foreign enemies. Unmentioned is that these “foes” include tens of millions of ordinary people who are the ultimate target of such malign initiatives, of which residents of West Asia are preponderant victims.
‘Whitelisting’
Internal emails and documents from Twitter, published by journalist Lee Fang, have now confirmed that Twitter executives not only approved of the Pentagon’s network of troll and bot accounts, but also provided significant internal protection for them through “whitelisting.”
This practice allowed these ‘superpower accounts’ to operate with impunity, despite breaking numerous platform rules and behaving egregiously. The “whitelist” status also effectively granted these accounts the algorithmic and amplificatory privileges of Twitter verification without a “blue check.”
As The Cradle previously reported, these accounts over many years sought to influence perceptions and behavior across West Asia, in particular Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. In many cases, users had “deepfake” profile photos – mocked up pictures of realistic human faces generated by artificial intelligence.
Target: West Asia
In respect to Twitter-enabled activities against Tehran, multiple different personae were formed to attack the Iranian government from different ideological and political positions. These were not your standard ‘opposition’ accounts – the ops were more sophisticated. Some posed as ultra-conservative Shia Muslims critical of the administration’s “liberal” policies; others as progressive radicals condemning the extent of the Republic’s enforcement of Islamic code.
Many users amplified Washington’s disinformation, disseminated by US government-funded Voice of America’s Farsi-language service, among a myriad of other US funded and directed propaganda platforms. All along, Twitter higher-ups were aware of these accounts, but did not shut them down and even protected them.
The impact of the collaboration between Twitter and the Pentagon on the tweets that users around the world saw and did not see is unknown, but likely significant. Twitter staff were aware of what they were doing.
For example, in July 2017, an official from the Pentagon’s central command for West Asia and North Africa (CENTCOM) emailed the social media network to request the “blue check” verification of one account and the “whitelisting” of 52 accounts that “we use to amplify certain messages.”
The official was concerned that some of these accounts, “a few” of which “had built a real following,” were no longer “indexing on hashtags.” He moreover requested “priority service” for several accounts, including the since-deleted @YemenCurrent, which broadcast announcements about US drone strikes in Yemen. The account emphasized how “accurate” these attacks were; that they only killed dangerous terrorists, never civilians – a hallmark of US drone war propaganda.
Of course, US drone strikes are anything but precise. In fact, declassified Pentagon documents indicate there was “an institutional acceptance of an inevitable collateral toll,” and that innocent people were killed indiscriminately.
In 2014, it was calculated that, in attempting to slay 41 specific, named individuals, Washington had murdered 1,147 people, among them many children – a rate of 28 deaths for every person targeted.
‘Misleading, deceptive, and spammy’
In June 2020, Twitter spokesperson Nick Pickles testified to the US House Intelligence Committee on the company’s determined efforts to end any and all “coordinated platform manipulation efforts” on the part of hostile enemy states, stating these efforts were his employer’s “top priority.”
“Our goal is to remove bad faith actors and to advance public understanding of these critical topics. Twitter defines state-backed information operations as coordinated platform manipulation efforts that can be attributed with a high degree of confidence to state-affiliated actors,” he declared.
“State-backed information operations are typically associated with misleading, deceptive, and spammy behavior. These behaviors differentiate coordinated manipulative behavior from legitimate speech on behalf of individuals and political parties.”
The following month, however, Twitter executives were invited by the Pentagon to attend classified briefings in a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF) to discuss the defense of the Pentagon’s “coordinated and manipulative” social media activities.
Then-Twitter lawyer Stacia Cardille noted in an internal email the Pentagon may be seeking to retroactively classify its malign online activities “to obfuscate their activity in this space, and this may represent an overclassification to avoid embarrassment.”
Jim Baker, then-deputy general counsel of Twitter and an FBI veteran, subsequently noted that the DoD had employed “poor tradecraft” in setting up numerous Twitter accounts, and was now covering its tracks in order to prevent anyone finding out multiple users “are linked to each other” or to the US government, one way or another.
“DoD might want to give us a timetable for shutting them down in a more prolonged way that will not compromise any ongoing operations or reveal their connections to DoD,” he speculated.
Free speech absolutism
So it was the compromised accounts that were permitted to stay active, spreading disinformation and distorting the public mind all the while. Some even remain extant to this day.
To say the least, Twitter executives were well-aware that their eager and enthusiastic support of Pentagon psyops would not be received well if publicized. Shortly before the September Washington Post report on the DoD’s audit of these efforts, Twitter lawyers and lobbyists were alerted by a company communications executive about the forthcoming exposé.
After the Post story was published, Twitter staffers congratulated themselves and each other over how effectively the company concealed its role in covering up CENTCOM’s deeds, with one communications official thanking a welter of executives “for doing all that you could to manage this one,” noting with relief the story “didn’t seem to get too much traction.”
Were it not for the series of #TwitterFiles disclosures since Elon Musk controversially took over the company, these dark, shameful secrets would likely have remained buried forever. The full extent of the company’s mephitic collusion with US intelligence agencies, and the comparable, simultaneous collaboration of every major social network, must now be told in full.
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From the Archives
Infertility: A Diabolical Agenda
Dr. Joseph Mercola | July 9, 2022
“Infertility: A Diabolical Agenda,” is the fourth vaccine-related documentary by Dr. Andrew Wakefield. It tells the story of an intentional infertility vaccine program conducted on African women, without their knowledge or consent.
While it’s been brushed off as a loony conspiracy theory for years, there’s compelling evidence showing it did, in fact, happen, and there’s nothing to prevent it from happening again. … continue
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