Tag Archives: Elon Musk

EU Technocrat Threatens Musk With “Sanctions” Unless He Stamps Out Free Speech On Twitter, by Tyler Durden

From the article, here’s the money question: What is so threatening about free speech? Unravel that, and you get the answers to a lot of other questions. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

The battle over Twitter is often made to appear complex and chaotic, but it can all be boiled down to a simple dichotomy – It’s about the people who demand censorship in favor of the establishment narrative vs. the people who want free speech and fair rules applied to everyone equally.

Everything else is noise and distraction.

The complications arise when we try to define free speech when it comes to social media.  Private companies are not subject to many legal boundaries related to free speech rights.  This is an argument that the political left and government representatives made constantly during the massive purge of conservative and liberty oriented accounts by Big Tech companies since 2016.  And, as we saw with Twitter previous to Elon Musk’s takeover, governments took full advantage of this legal loophole in order to silence people using social media websites as middlemen.

The ongoing release of the Twitter Files proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that collusion between Big Tech and governments for the sake of censorship is a reality.  In America, at least, this is a constitutional no-no.  The fact that politicians and agencies like the FBI were actively seeking out and targeting ideological opponents and having them silenced on Twitter is a direct violation of the 1st Amendment and these people should be subject to prosecution (the FBI even shelled out at least $3 million to Twitter for services rendered).

Prosecution might never happen, but at least the evidence is undeniable today after years of the public being lied to.

The reality that Twitter was acting as an enforcement agent for government censorship around the world tells us exactly why so many establishment officials have been up in arms over Musk’s purchase of the platform.  Until now, every single major Big Tech company has been operating in lock-step with the establishment narrative.  People couldn’t even talk about Hunter Biden’s laptop, let alone talk about the inconvenient facts surrounding “climate change” or the covid mandates and vaccines.

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Elon Musk’s Twitter Is Still US State-Affiliated Media, by Caitlin Johnstone

When you get right down to it, Elon Musk is a creature of the government. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

A couple of months into Elon Musk’s control of Twitter, it’s fair to say that from an anti-censorship, pro-transparency perspective there have been a few positive results of the platform coming under new management. The revelations from the Twitter Files about US government involvement in influencing a massive social media company’s policies and actions have been indisputably newsworthy information that’s absolutely in the public interest to have, and some anti-establishment voices have been saying their accounts have been noticeably more visible since the changeover.

It’s also fair to say at this point that Musk has allowed far more negative practices to continue than he has ended. In an excellent new article titled “Under Musk, Twitter Continues to Promote US Propaganda Networks,” Fair.org’s Bryce Greene breaks down the many different ways that Twitter is still manipulating the information its users see in ways that serve the interests of the US government.

Greene contrasts the wildly unbalanced way media coming from empire-targeted governments is suppressed and labeled “state-affiliated media”, while US-aligned accounts which would deserve such a designation are not given it, and are often amplified and aided.

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Elon Musk Announces New Twitter Science Policy, Blasts Dr. Anthony Fauci: ‘Cannot Be Regarded As A Scientist’, by Daily Wire News

Elon Musk wants science to get thrashed out on Twitter, as science has been thrashed out for centuries. From the Daily Wire News at dailywire.com:

Elon Musk arrives for the 2022 Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 2, 2022, in New York.
ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images

Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced Wednesday that the social media company’s new official policy will not penalize users for legitimately questioning scientific claims and narratives that are promoted in the media.

The statement from Musk comes as he has taken multiple shots at leftists this week for buying into mainstream media narratives.

“New Twitter policy is to follow the science, which necessarily includes reasoned questioning of the science,” Musk said.

In a subsequent tweet, Musk responded to professor Gad Saad, who posted a video mocking Dr. Anthony Fauci and his decision to retire as Republicans are set to take over the House of Representatives next week.

“Anyone who says that questioning them is questioning science itself cannot be regarded as a scientist,” Musk said in response to the video about Fauci.

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TWITTER FILES: Twitter Assisted Pentagon’s “Psychological Influence Ops”, by Lee Fang

The latest Twitter File, from Lee Fang at zerohedge.com:

These Twitter Files drops are getting further and further down the dystopian rabbit-hole. Today’s drop, brought to you by The Intercepts Lee Fang, provides insight into Twitter’s efforts to aid the Pentagon’s ‘online psychological influence ops.’

Illustration via The Intercept

Take it away, Lee:

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Twitter Suppressed Early COVID-19 Treatment Information And Vaccine Safety Concerns: Cardiologist, by Katie Spence

How many lives would have been saved if Twitter had allowed other views than the approved narrative? From Katie Spence at The Epoch Times via zerohedge.com:

Thanks to Elon Musk, the public is now aware that Twitter suppressed early treatment options for COVID-19, and vaccine safety concerns, Dr. Peter McCullough alleged in an interview that aired on Newsmakers by NTD and The Epoch Times on Dec. 14.

Doses of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine and vaccination record cards await pediatric patients at UW Medical Center – Roosevelt in Seattle, Washington, on June 21, 2022. (David Ryder/Getty Images)

Further, thanks to the Twitter Files—a collection of internal emails and communications made public by Musk—the cardiologist said there’s proof that government agencies were working against him (McCullough) personally.

“I didn’t violate any of Twitter’s rules,” McCullough stated. “And what we’re learning is that secret emails between government agencies and Twitter were working to, in a sense, shadow-ban me, censor me, and inhibit my ability to exercise my rights to free speech and disseminate scientific information.”

Dr. Peter McCullough in New York on Dec. 24, 2021. (Jack Wang/The Epoch Times)

McCullough said Musk’s takeover of Twitter is a “welcome change,” especially for healthcare professionals like himself.

Twitter had become an incredibly biased and censored platform, where the public knew they weren’t getting a fair, balanced set of information on a whole variety of developments—including the early treatment of SARS-COV2 infection and a balanced view of safety and efficacy of the vaccines,” McCullough claimed.

The cardiologist further claimed that he was censored and finally suspended for sharing scientific “abstracts and manuscripts,” which didn’t fit the accepted political view. Plus, McCullough remarked, he wasn’t the only doctor targeted.

Musk lifted the suspensions of McCullough and mRNA vaccine technology contributor Dr. Robert Malone—suspended from Twitter in 2021 after criticizing the effectiveness of the mRNA vaccines—after completing his Twitter purchase.

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Two Antithetical Billionaires, by Victor Davis Hanson

One billionaire has created solar technology, electric cars, and rockets. The other created a massive scam. You can tell a lot about people by which billionaire they think is more admirable. From Victor Davis Hanson at amgreatness.com:

The hatred of the accomplished Musk and the worship of the hollow man Bankman-Fried are sad commentaries on how liberalism has descended into progressivism and ultimately into Stalinism.

efore the midterm November elections, Sam Bankman-Fried was a left-wing billionaire heartthrob. 

He properly grew up on the Stanford campus, where his parents were well-known left-wing activist law professors. He went to a tony prep school and on to MIT. 

Bankman-Fried mocked society’s bourgeois capitalist conventions by dressing and looking like a slob in cut-offs and T-shirts.

Indeed, he bested the nose-ring, Charles Manson-esque appearance of former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. He outdid the all-black, Steve Jobs copy-cat get-up of another fallen leftist icon, the now-convicted felon Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos infamy.

The Left canonized Bankman-Fried for the hundreds of millions of dollars he created out of thin air and channeled to left-wing congressional and state candidates, Joe Biden, and a host of “progressive” causes under the cool slogan “effective altruism.” 

For decades hence—or so Bankman-Fried promised—his cryptocurrency company FTX would churn out billions. Its politically correct gifting won exemptions from the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Democratic-controlled congressional oversight committees.

The loud-talking, left-wing slob promised billions of dollars more in gifts to come. He was knighted as the successor to the kindred financial market manipulator and progressive “philanthropist” George Soros.

SBF may have been a sloppy, immature fool, but he was no dummy. 

He had learned early on that loud leftist talk, big promises of philanthropy, and huge cash infusions to the media and leftist candidates—all under the veneer of “effective altruism”— ensured de facto immunity for his Ponzi schemes from both bad press and government investigation. 

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Twitter Became the Ministry of Truth, by David Stockman

Ultimately, corporations, especially Big Tech, were able to take their eye off the ball and dabble in things like woke politics because they had virtually unlimited access to cheap money. From David Stockman at brownstone.org:

Twitter Ministry of Truth

New material Musk released over the weekend confirms the very worst. The banal boys and girls previously ensconced in Twitter’s top echelons were not only having a jolly time attempting to steer the nation’s news narrative; these executives were actually meeting weekly with FBI, Homeland Security and national intelligence officials to discuss “disinformation” they wanted removed from the site, including the notorious suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.

That’s just one step removed from a state-run Ministry of Truth and is perhaps even more insidious. That’s because it didn’t even involve unwanted and unconstitutional coercion. Instead, the executives of this private enterprise were voluntarily neglecting their day jobs (maximizing corporate profits and shareholder value) in order to spend a huge amount of corporate time and resources propagating official narratives and suppressing dissenting views.

It was as if the Washington powers-that-be had nationalized a multi-billion company, drafting it to propagandize in behalf of their own political and policy agenda and continued tenure in power.

So the question recurs as to why Jack Dorsey, Parag Agrawal, Vijaya Gadde, Yoel Roth and countless more top executives were not attending to corporate “biness”, but instead were ostentatiously moonlighting on behalf of an extra-curricular agenda that had absolutely nothing to do with making money at Twitter.

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The Fifth Estate, by Mike Solana

Who has been pulling Twitter’s strings? From Mike Solana at piratewires.com:

pirate wires #85 // summary and analysis of the twitter files, a dangerous alliance of powers, and technology’s nature brings the industry home

Dangerous alliance. In 1787, Edmund Burke said there were “Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there [sits] a Fourth Estate more important than they all.” The notion of some vital power beyond our government was imported to the New World, and today constitutes a core belief of the American liberal: there is no free people, we’re often told, without a free press independent of congress, the courts, and our president. But throughout the 20th Century thousands of media outlets gradually consolidated, and by the dawn of our internet era only a few giants remained. These giants largely shared a single perspective, and in rough agreement with the ruling class the Fourth Estate naturally came to serve, rather than critique, power. This relationship metastasized into something very close to authoritarianism during the Covid-19 pandemic, when a single state narrative was written by the press, and ruthlessly enforced by a fifth and final fount of power in the newly-dominant technology industry.

It was a dark alliance of estates, accurate descriptions of which were for years derided as delusional, paranoid, even dangerous. But today, on account of a single shitposting billionaire, the existence of the One Party’s decentralized censorship apparatus is now beyond doubt.

A couple weeks back, alleging proof Twitter acted with gross political bias, and in a manner that influenced U.S. elections (!), Elon Musk opened his new company’s internal communications to a small handful of journalists. They set immediately to breaking a series of major stories that have rewritten the history of Trump-era tech. Long story short, Twitter leadership lied to the public, relentlessly, for years, and everything the most paranoid among us ever said about the platform was true. “Trust and safety” is a euphemism for political censorship, with “expert” teams comprised almost exclusively of the most radical, joyless grievance studies majors you ever met in college. Their goal is to reshape American politics by dominating the bounds of what the public is permitted to consider American politics. In these efforts, they have mostly been succeeding.

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It’s All Making Sense – Elon Musk Has No Idea What He Purchased with Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop…, by Sundance

Did Elon Musk know he was buying into an insidious public-private partnership when he bought Twitter? From Sundance at theconservativetreehouse.com:

… And if he does, the outlook is worse.

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

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

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

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

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Elon Musk: worse than Hitler, by Titania McGrath

Here it is, the horrible downsides and dangers of the recent changes in policy at Twitter. From Titania McGrath at thecritic.co.uk:

It is no exaggeration to say that Elon Musk’s annexation of Twitter is the most terrifying development in recent history. Only a fascist would seek to impose free speech on humanity.

This is why there has been such a chorus of execration from left-wing commentators, celebrities and influencers. On the day that Musk seized control of Twitter, Washington Post columnist Taylor Lorenz noted that it was “like the gates of hell opened on this site tonight”. Charlie Warzel in The Atlantic wrote that there was “an apocalyptic feel to the ordeal”.

But it was the Independent that really grasped the full gravity of this moment. Its headline read — “RIP Twitter, 2006-2022: Dead at the Hands of Elon Musk”. It is a testament to the cool-headed stoicism of left-wing journalists that they have managed not to overreact.

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