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Dispatches and commentary from diverse sources
This is, roughly, how the group operated: American taxpayers sent their hard-earned money to the government, which used it to fund the various agencies responsible for national security, primarily the FBI. Instead of doing its direct duties, the FBI hired multiple employees to look out for “Russian” (“Chinese,” “Iranian,” etc.) propaganda. If anything even remotely fitting this definition was found, the FBI met with Twitter representatives and ordered them to censor the relevant posts or close the undesirable accounts. Accounts were regularly deleted, and that seemed to satisfy everyone: reports were drafted, "propaganda" was thwarted, and government money was spent. But there are even more shocking details. The US government was giving Twitter – a purportedly independent business – special instructions, for example, about what should be considered “anti-Ukrainian narratives.”
To comply, Twitter changed its internal settings and rejiggered its algorithms. There is a huge stone tablet across from Independence Hall in Philadelphia, a sacred place in American history where the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution were signed. The tablet is engraved with the First Amendment, which protects freedom of speech, press, religion, and assembly, which is sacred to America. This is what the founding fathers of the United States are believed to have created their country for, and something the Americans shed their blood for in the 18th century and throughout their history. As it turns out now, the stone is still there – only it has been pooped on by a twittering blue bird."
Zakharova, Taibbi, Jim Jordan, Shellenberger, and others denouncing this latest case of vast unconstitutional foul play are right, of course. But the Twitter scandal is not the exception but the rule. It's just one rotten island in a vast archipelago of deception. ALL social media—Facebook, Google (YouTube), Instagram, etc., not to mention the big legacy media who have long set the limits for what is "permissible" and not—The NYTimes, WaPo, the mainstream TV networks, the BBC, etc.—are doing the same thing. And we must not forget Hollywood and its big load of opinionated celebrity denizens and alarmingly insidious conformist productions. They are all targeting the truth, and the truthtellers, many times simply ordinary people expressing their opinions, via outright censorship, shadow banning, intimidation, vicious smears and worse. Accustomed to criminality without penalty, they do this while busily promoting a revoltingly dishonest and extremely dangerous upside-down reality that could not stand impartial scrutiny for ten seconds.
The hearings on the Judiciary Subcommittee have been instructive. Knowing they can still count on almost overwhelming media support, and an executive as compromised as the last insignificant operative in their ranks, the Democrats are out to defend and justify their involvement in narrative control (actually an establishment objective ultimately endorsed by the whole duopoly) and the introduction of huge hoaxes (Russiagate, the "danger" of fake news requiring a huge and largely secret "anti-disinformation" apparatus, a veritable "thought police", and so on). Below, some highlights from the exchanges, plus various tweets by independent third parties.
The hearings on the Judiciary Subcommittee have been instructive. Knowing they can still count on almost overwhelming media support, and an executive as compromised as the last insignificant operative in their ranks, the Democrats are out to defend and justify their involvement in narrative control (actually an establishment objective ultimately endorsed by the whole duopoly) and the introduction of huge hoaxes (Russiagate, the "danger" of fake news requiring a huge and largely secret "anti-disinformation" apparatus, a veritable "thought police", and so on). Below, some highlights from the exchanges, plus various tweets by independent third parties.
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When you can't hit them on facts, hit them with something irrelevant, like character assassination. The above is by notorious former FBI agent Pete Strzok, who became a poster boy for the FBI's anti-Trump partisan politicization, which continues to this day. |
The fake left/ Demlib legion can't resist attacking Taibbi.
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Some of the original interagency partners for the Global Engagement Center, which would be housed “within” the State Department. (This was the core network of "anti-disinformation" complex and affiliated orgs. A grifters' paradise. All breaking the law, and acting like the Neoliberal hypocritical fascists they are).
The Original Sin of the "Anti-Disinformation" Movement
Buried in the history of the Global Engagement Center is a kernel of misunderstanding that may have spawned a generation of false panics
A brief additional note on the Global Engagement Center, one of the subjects of an upcoming #TwitterFiles thread:
GEC was originally formed as a response to the problem of ISIS successfully recruiting away what one source called “well off white kids from the burbs” in both the U.S. and Europe. (The government always starts hurling money in all directions when any serious social problem reaches into the suburbs). Barack Obama’s Executive Order was specific in outlining this mission, establishing GEC to “counter the messaging and diminish the influence of international terrorist organizations, including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), al Qa’ida, and other violent extremists abroad.”
At the time, “information operations” had a specific meaning in the intelligence and counterterrorism realms. One might, for instance, spread a rumor that a certain terrorist had an STD, so that he would rush online to defend his honor just long enough to be geolocated and droned.
Others in the national security establishment had ultimate faith in quantitative information analysis, turning life and death matters over to algorithms that armed and fired at targets in places like Yemen or Syria once enough digital boxes were checked: military-age male, used the wrong cell number too many times, spotted by satellite carrying something that could be a gun, etc. “We kill people based on metadata,” boasted former NSA and CIA chief Michael Hayden in 2014.
The original conceit of the GEC was to gather pros from this world, who’d put their heads together and come up with kinder, gentler ways of “disrupting” ISIS propaganda. From the point of view of the Pentagon, which paid most of GEC’s original budget, it was a no-lose play: spending $70-$80 million a year was worth it if it meant even one fewer death in the field, be it of a U.S. soldier or a bystander to a drone strike.
Then 2016 happened, and GEC’s mission changed on a dime.
(Unfortunately, the rest is behind a paywall.)
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