London Times graphic: Morano, Milloy and Musk!

By Craig Rucker, President, @ CFACT

The once sensible Times of London published a graphic featuring mega-entrepeneur Elon Musk, energy analyst Steve Milloy and CFACT's own Marc Morano! The subject?  Extended whining that once Musk freed Twitter, more and more people signed on to hear from Marc and Milloy on social media! 

Boo hoo Times, all those people judging and choosing for themselves.  The horror!

What got this started?

Do Some left-wing group calling itself The Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) said Morano and Milloy's rapid social media growth resulted from Twitter's new paid-for "Twitter Blue" subscription.   

By "giving users blue verified badges for $8 a month," CCDH told The Times, "Musk is giving climate 'deniers' a veneer of credibility they just couldn't get before...  it helps them look legitimate, like a comparable source of authority to all the scientists and expert."

It seems when all the "scientists and experts" agree that a natural weather event should be attributed to climate change, it is a sin to publish clear historical scientific data which contradicts climate computer models.  How about letting people judge for themselves?   Even better, London Times, how about doing your job, asking the tough questions and actually vetting the alarming claims of the climate-Left? 

P.S.  Don't let the Left shut free speech down!  Like, follow, comment, share, tweet, retweet and forward CFACT's and Climate Depot's posts on Twitter, Facebook and on every platform you can.  Let's force this debate wide open!

Litigating The Government's Metastasizing Censorship Regime

March 28, 2023Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

For years, conservatives have complained of apparent censorship of their voices on the principal social media platforms, like Facebook, Google and Twitter. Posts or tweets get taken down, or de-boosted, or de-monetized, or degraded in search results, or “shadow-banned,” or slapped with content warnings, or otherwise suppressed. But the response from Big Tech has always been, hey, we’re private companies, and we’re not subject to the First Amendment. We can do as we please.

Then Elon Musk took over Twitter, and followed by giving several journalists access to Twitter’s electronic archives to investigate any untoward government manipulation. The result has been the Twitter Files, an ongoing series of Twitter threads laying bare the coordination between pre-Musk Twitter and dozens of government actors to suppress disfavored speech. The most recent nineteenth segment of the Twitter Files series was published on March 20 by Matt Taibbi.

Now that it is clear that the systematic censorship of conservative voices is very real and has been largely directed and coordinated by the government itself behind the scenes, is there anything that can be done about that through litigation? There actually are some significant efforts under way in that regard. Probably the most important is the case titled Missouri v. Biden, pending in the Western District of Louisiana. The case seeks declaratory and injunctive relief against the government under the First Amendment to stop it from continuing to pressure social media platforms to suppress speech that the current government does not like. On March 20, the court issued a major opinion denying the government’s motion to dismiss. That opinion is available here. With the motion to dismiss denied, the case will proceed through full discovery and, presumably, trial.

The plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden are the states of Missouri and Louisiana, plus a group of private plaintiffs that includes some prominent names in the area of Covid-19 response — most notably Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford and Martin Kulldorff of Harvard. The two states are represented by their offices of Attorney General. The individual plaintiffs are represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, the public interest law firm that is recently making a huge name for itself in cutting-edge civil rights litigation.

Being no dummies, the NCLA has brought this case in a Louisiana District Court where it was likely to find a favorable judge, and which is part of the federal Fifth Circuit, known as the most conservative of the federal courts of appeal. It’s the flip side of how the game of environmental and “climate” litigation has long been played by the Left. When climate activists brought federal lawsuits trying to get some judge to declare a constitutional right to shut down use of energy, they went to the federal courts in San Francisco and Oregon, known to be home to multiple activist judges, and both part of the liberal Ninth Circuit. OK, two can play this game.

Although the original Complaint in Missouri v. Biden pre-dates the Twitter Files exposé, the plaintiffs were able to compile substantial information about federal involvement in the suppression of their speech. And, as more information has come out, the plaintiffs have amended their complaint twice. Here are just a few examples from the court’s Opinion of allegations of speech suppressed as a result of threat from or coordination with the government. (The allegations in question come either from the plaintiffs’ Second Amended Complaint, or from declarations submitted by plaintiffs as part of the motion papers.):

• “The Media Research Center found more than 640 examples of bans, deleted content and other speech restrictions placed on those who criticized [President] Biden on social media over the past two years.” . . . “The list of censorship targets included an array of prominent influencers on social media: Trump; lawmakers like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA); news outlets like the New York Post, The Washington Free Beacon and The Federalist; satire site The Babylon Bee; and others.”

• Jay Bhattacharya, one of the Private Plaintiffs, stated in his declaration, “Because of my views on COVID-19 restrictions, I have been specifically targeted for censorship by federal government officials.” . . . [T]he “Great Barrington Declaration,” which Bhattacharya co-authored, was subject to “immediate backlash from senior government officials who were the architects of the lockdown policies” for COVID- 19. . . . Bhattacharya alleges that “Google deboosted search results for the Declaration, pointing users to media hit pieces critical of it, and placing the link to the actual Declaration lower on this list of results.” Further, a “roundtable” discussion between Bhattacharya and others, posted via video to YouTube, was removed from the social-media platform, with YouTube claiming that the video “contradicts the consensus of local and global health authorities regarding the efficacy of masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19.” Additionally, Bhattacharya alleges that he and his co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration were personally censored on social media, primarily on Twitter and LinkedIn.

• [Martin] Kulldorff co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration and allegedly “experienced censorship on social media platforms due to [his] views on the appropriate strategy for handling the COVID-19 pandemic.” . . . As just one example, Kulldorff alleged that Twitter censored the following tweet in March of 2021: “Thinking that everyone must be vaccinated is as scientifically flawed as thinking that nobody should. COVID vaccines are important for older, higher risk people and their caretakers. Those with prior natural infection do not need it. Nor children.” Kulldorff echoed Bhattacharya’s belief that the censorship of COVID-19-related opinions on social media was driven by government officials.

There are numerous additional examples in the Opinion, and the Opinion indicates that it has only scratched the surface of the many allegations in the Complaint.

So is there precedent for the proposition that sufficient government involvement in speech suppression can turn what would otherwise be private activity into “state action” that violates the First Amendment? The court cites several precedents that have so found. Notable examples are:

• Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U.S. 58, 67, is a 1963 case from the U.S. Supreme Court. In that case the Court held that a legislatively-created commission, by notifying publishing distributors, on official commission stationary, that certain designated books or magazines had been declared objectionable for sale or distribution, thereby engaged in a scheme of governmental censorship.

• A more recent precedent is Backpage.com, LLC v. Dart, 807 F.3d 229, 230, from the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in 2015. That case involved threats by a local law enforcement official against MasterCard and Visa to get them to stop processing payments for the backpage.com website. (Backpage was known as a site featuring advertisements from people in the sex trade, although that was far from its only business.). The Seventh Circuit held “A public-official defendant who threatens to employ coercive state power to stifle protected speech violates a plaintiff's First Amendment rights.”

So it looks like the two states and the individual plaintiffs are going to get the chance to prove their cases. Given the material so far revealed in the Twitter Files, there may be no shortage of evidence of deep government involvement in widespread censorship.

In addition, the Louisiana court is giving the plaintiffs substantial opportunity to take discovery of the government players to explore their involvement in censorship. From November 2022 through January of this year, a series of depositions has already been taken of government officials on this subject. Deponents so far have included the likes of Anthony Fauci of NIAID and Elvis Chan of the FBI. The NCLA has posted the full videos of the depositions on its YouTube channel. The depositions average almost 7 hours in length, so there’s no way I have time to watch them, but I’m sure there are plenty of interesting revelations for those willing to watch.

It may be some considerable time before there is a trial in this matter. However, as discovery proceeds, more and more information about the government censorship regime is likely to come out. Thanks are due to NCLA for undertaking the large effort to expose this completely improper conduct by our authorities.

Meet The Partisans Who Wove The Censorship Complex’s Vast And Tangled Web

By Margot Cleveland February 28, 2023

While federal funding is not solely responsible for the rapid expansion of the Censorship Complex, it is the most troubling because our government is using our money to censor our speech. 

While the “Twitter Files” and the Washington Examiner’s coverage of the Global Disinformation Index have revealed an expansive Censorship Complex that seeks to silence Americans for money, politics, ideology, and power, much still needs to be unraveled.

A search of government contracts and grants for the eight fiscal years from 2016 through today for the keywords “misinformation” or “disinformation” reveals 538 federal government grants and 36 contracts were awarded to a wide range of academic institutions and non-governmental organizations..............To Read More.....

My Take-  What does a nation do when those who've been empowered to enforce the nations laws, are breaking those laws, and doing it with complete knowledge and understanding of what they're doing?

This is a long and complicated read, but a necessary one.  When anything gets this complicated, and there's a secret government/private enterprise mix, it's probably criminal.  And it appears this not only involved criminal activity by the bureaucracy, but also elected officials.  I can't see how this isn't a clear RICO violation, but it's worse than just criminal. It's treason, or at the very least a conspiracy to commit treason. 

World Economic Forum cancels Twitter, directs followers to Chinese social media apps The WEF and the CCP are close allies.

Jordan Schachtel Dec 27, 2022

Prior to its upcoming conference in Davos next month, the World Economic Forum (WEF) appears to have joined the cancel campaign against Twitter, taking to recommending Chinese state-controlled social media apps to “follow along” with Davos Man into the future.

Twitter is noticeably absent from the entities listed on the organization’s “How to follow Davos 2023” social media pamphlet, and that appears to be no accident. 

To stay up to speed with all that is happening within the invite-only doors of the ruling class confab, the WEF recommends following along through a handful of social media sites. They include the U.S.-based narrative-compliant Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube, along with the Chinese social media apps TikTok WeChat, and Weibo. Twitter, which has freed itself from the grasp of the WEF-endorsed censorship-compliant social apps, is no longer included.

Through its founder Klaus Schwab and partner organizations, the WEF has a very cozy relationship with the Chinese government. Davos recently revealed that their China office now has 40 full time staffers. Moreover, every year in Beijing, the WEF hosts its “Annual Meeting of the New Champions,” which facilitates partnerships between international businesses and the Chinese Community Party. In 2018, the CCP awarded Klaus Schwab with its China Reform Friendship Medal, a medal for non-Chinese people who do the CCP’s bidding overseas. ..................To Read More....

The Twitter Files: Lenin Would Be Proud

Brian Balfour January 8, 2023 @ American Institute for Economic Research

''The vast majority of commercial and industrial establishments are now working not for the free market but for the government.” V.I. Lenin, State and Revolution; 1917

 

 This Lenin quote leapt to mind amid the recent revelations coming from the “Twitter files” and exposed over the past several weeks. Among other disclosures, the files revealed direct lines of communication between government agencies, including the FBI and Department of Defense, and the social media company. 

Twitter was found to not only be a landing spot for many agents in the government intelligence community, but also doing the bidding of agencies to suppress information deemed to be antithetical to the agencies’ goals and preferred narratives. Indeed, journalist Matt Taibbi went so far as to describe Twitter as an “FBI subsidiary.” 

And it wasn’t just Twitter that the government targeted. Late last month Elon Musk tweeted “*Every* social media company is engaged in heavy censorship, with significant involvement of and, at times, explicit direction of the government,” illustrating his point by saying, “Google frequently makes links disappear, for example.”

Such revelations undercut many defenders of tech giants, who insist “they’re private companies, they can do what they want.” Instead, we must ask: are these truly ‘private companies’ in any meaningful sense?

Indeed, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrup Grumman are all nominally “private companies.” But they are private in name only because they are in reality appendages of the state, relying on defense contracts (not market transactions) for their success. 

We should treat big tech companies with the same skepticism we apply to tools of the military industrial complex. Certainly so after the “Twitter file” revelations.

In his quote above, Lenin was, of course, bragging about the progress made toward complete nationalization of industry in the Soviet Union of the time.

But we can also consider his statement as descriptive. When your main mission is to do the bidding of the state, rather than serving consumers in the voluntary marketplace, you are not really a private company in the true sense of the term. Your company is not a market phenomenon.

It’s no longer possible to defend social media corporations on the basis of private property rights, because big tech are what Michael Rectenwald would describe as “governmentalities,” not private companies.

Michael Rectenwald, former professor of liberal studies at New York University and author of the book “Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom,” provided context for how he believes tech goliaths like Google and Twitter come to do the state’s bidding in a November 2020 lecture.  

“In a series of lectures entitled Security, Territory, Population, the postmodern theorist Michel Foucault introduced the term ‘governmentality’ to refer to the distribution of state power to the population, or the transmission of governance to the governed,” Rectenwald noted. 

“Foucault referred to the means by which the populace comes to govern itself as it adopts and personalizes the imperatives of the state, or how the governed adopt the mentality desired by the government—govern-mentality,” he added.

Rectenwald, however, went even further than Foucault. “I adopt and amend the term to include the distribution of state power to extragovernmental agents—in particular to the extension and transfer of state power to supposedly private enterprises.”

What transpires, then, is a form of ‘governmentalization’ of nominally private enterprises, rather than the privatization of government functions that free market advocates prefer. 

How intertwined with the government are the tech giants? The relationship predates the more recent phenomena revealed by Elon Musk’s divulgences. 

“First, both Google and Facebook received start-up capital—both directly and indirectly—from US intelligence agencies,” Rectenwald informs us. In their early days, Google in particular was heavily reliant on CIA contracts and deals with other U.S. intelligence agencies. 

As Lenin boasted, “The vast majority of commercial and industrial establishments are now working not for the free market but for the government.” And work for the government, including shutting down dissident voices, is what big tech has indeed been doing for years.

As a result, they can no longer be defended with cries of “but they’re private companies,” and instead be called out for what they really are: tools of state oppression.

READ MORE

Brian Balfour is Senior Vice President of Research for the John Locke Foundation, where he oversees the organization’s research and analysis on a variety of issues. He previously worked for the Civitas Institute for 13 years, and has a master’s degree in economics from Wayne State University in Detroit, MI.  Get notified of new articles from Brian Balfour and AIER. SUBSCRIBE

 

Covidians And Their Paper-Thin Skins

Scott Morefield  |  Jan 09, 2023 

 

In the pre-Musk Twitter days, pencil-necked leftist overlords would simply censor dissidents for daring to cite inconvenient facts. That’s because they don’t like to be challenged or even politely questioned openly. They know their dumb ideas can’t stand up to scrutiny, so instead of rethinking and revising those dumb ideas they look for ways to ‘win’ the debate by silencing the opposition.

Now, since silencing the opposition - on Twitter at least - is a bit more difficult, many leftists have developed a particularly silly habit of simply blocking en masse anyone who disagrees with them. This is especially true of the Covidian Left, whose notoriously thin skin makes Donald Trump’s notoriously thin skin seem like rhinoceros hide..........To Read More....

My Take - While I applaud this view, I take exception to calling Trump thin skinned.  Yes he attacks anyone....everyone.... who attacks him, but why is that being thin skinned versus being combative in his own defense?  Are we to assume Bush was thick skinned because he allowed these misfits to smear and ridicule him while saying nothing in his defense?   Why would that be thick skinned but versus cowering?   

The fact is Americans liked Trump for his combative response to these nitwits in the media and on the left who've been getting away with this for years, and now the gauntlet has been thrown down by Trump who doesn't care what they think or say about his reactions,.............and they're losing. 

Twitter Files Reveal How the Left Uses Big Tech to Create an Illusion of Scientific Consensus and Stifle Debate, Especially on COVID-19

Tyler O'Neil 

The Left has long used the notion of scientific consensus as a tool to silence debate on controversial issues, but the Twitter Files revealed just how far some Big Tech companies have gone to suppress legitimate scientific dissent—particularly on COVID-19 pandemic policy. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford professor of health policy who wound up on a Twitter Trends blacklist after he argued for focused protection of the vulnerable and an end to lockdowns, opened up in an article for The Free Press about the lesson he learned in 2022.  “I learned in a very concrete and painful way the effects of Washington and Silicon Valley working together to marginalize unpopular ideas and people to create an illusion of consensus,” Bhattacharya wrote...............To Read More...

The Architecture of Corruption: Why Elon Musk is Justified to Call for the Prosecution of Dr. Anthony Fauci

January 3, 2023 By Kent Heckenlively

Recently, Elon Musk tweeted out that his preferred pronouns are “prosecute/Fauci.” Of course, the usual suspects in the media were clutching their pearls, screaming that Musk was putting the sainted Dr. Fauci at risk, while their daily attacks against conservatives (and even moderates) continue unabated.

I’ve been on the Fauci beat for about a decade. He was the primary focus of my first book,

PLAGUE: One Scientist’s Intrepid Search for the Truth About Human Retroviruses and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), Autism, and Other Diseases,

co-authored with Dr. Judy Mikovits (a government scientist with twenty years of experience).

Over the past eight years, I’ve concentrated on telling whistleblower stories, and publishing exposès of Google, Facebook, Big Science and Big Tech. People often know the names of my whistleblowers, such as Zach Vorhies of Google, Ryan Hartwig of Facebook, or the 2008 Nobel Prize winner in Medicine for the isolation of the HIV virus, Dr. Luc Montagnier, but they don’t know me.

Most recently, I collaborated with Dr. Paul Alexander, who is the former Senior Pandemic Advisor to the COVID-19 Task Force. Together, we wrote PRESIDENTIAL TAKEDOWN: How Anthony Fauci, the CDC, NIH, and the WHO Conspired to Overthrow President Trump. 

It is a stunning condemnation........... To Read More

 

The Media Undertakers Must be Getting Exhausted

December 4, 2022 By Clarice Feldman

The media worked hard to bury the FTX scandal. There a young (but well-connected to leftist politicos and media) tech slob Sam Bankman-Fried “lost” eight billion dollars, shelled out at least $40 million to Democrats, is suspected of laundering a lot of taxpayer money through Ukraine, and cloaked his outrageously criminal conduct in the garb of promoting social justice once he realized he could no longer disguise his Ponzi scheme.

The gravediggers hardly had begun to return their shovels to the cemetery shed when there appeared a new story that needed burying. Elon Musk and Matt Taibbi just opened up another crack in the door revealing how outsiders along with the DNC manipulated Twitter in the runup to the election.............

 Of course, if Twitter had merely determined on its own not to allow certain views, there would be no justiciable claim of a constitutional violation. But here’s the problem -- it appears that the censorship was being done on orders from the government to suppress speech..............Blocking, banning, and shadow banning social media posters does not appear the end of it.  As Julie Kelly reports in the context of the January 6 sound and light shows on the Hill and in the D.C. courtrooms, Attorney General Garland’s minions in D.C. are now criminalizing speech with which they disagree..........To Read More....

Liberal Reporter Has a Spot-on Take About How the Media Will React to the 'Twitter Files'

Matt Vespa December 03, 2022

Spencer wrote about Twitter revealing what they did internally to squash the Hunter Biden laptop story. We’ve known it was probably happening behind closed doors for years, but now we have the evidence, thanks to Elon Musk’s purchasing of the social media platform. The ‘Twitter Files’ exposed an extensive censorship operation at the company, where employees deleted tweets that their Democratic Party overlords found problematic. The critics would point out that Donald Trump’s staffers made similar requests to Twitter concerning the removal of tweets they found disreputable, but as with anything within liberal media institutions, it wasn’t balanced..............To Read More...

Elon Musk release: 'Biden team' had direct line to Twitter to censor Hunter laptop story

  By Art Moore  December 2, 2022

Social media giant complied with demands to remove information campaign didn't like.   As promised, Elon Musk released information about Twitter's suppression of the New York Post's blockbuster stories before the 2020 election presenting evidence from a laptop abandoned by Hunter Biden that the Democratic Party's presidential candidate was covering up his family's sale of access to the White House to the likes of Chinese Communist Party companies, and Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs.  Musk began releasing the information Friday evening tweet by tweet through independent journalist Matt Taibbi.    So far, it shows the Biden White House had a direct line to Twitter to remove information it didn’t like. Taibbi posted a screen shot of a message between Twitter employees showing that by 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive wrote to another: "More to review from the Biden team." The reply came back, "Handled."...............To Read More....

Elon Musk Should Tell EU Censors to Bugger Off

David Harsanyi  |  Dec 02, 2022 

If Elon Musk truly believes that Twitter is a front in the "battle for the future of civilization," he has a chance to prove it.

The Biden administration has already threatened to investigate Musk on multiple occasions, which isn't surprising considering its unprecedented antagonizing toward free expression. Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren have promised to create new "rules" governing discourse on the private platform. (Remember when leftists were pretending to be fans of free-association rights?) Hillary Clinton's approach has been more sweeping, calling for the European Union to create a technocratic speech regime to govern American companies to "bolster global democracy before it's too late."

And Europe has answered the call. Thierry Breton, the EU's commissar of "internal market," says that "Twitter will have to implement transparent user policies, significantly reinforce content moderation and protect freedom of speech, tackle disinformation with resolve, and limit targeted advertising." Reuters notes, "Breton told Musk he must adhere to a checklist of rules, including ditching an 'arbitrary' approach to reinstating banned users and agreeing to an 'extensive independent audit' of the platform by next year."

Must he?...........To Read More.....

My Take - So, what happens to Musk and Twitter if he ignores these EU demands?  They get hissy and censor Twitter?  In this internet day and age is that really possible?  Can they fine him?  Can they prosecute him?  I would love to see this become a battle.  However, the EU is doomed and in a few years will become just another ember on the ash heap of history, so .....who cares what they think? 

Oh No! Celebrities Are Leaving Twitter. We're Doomed, Doomed I Tell You!!!!

By Rich Kozlovich

 

This past week I was at the vitamin store run by some really nice young people, as a result I've had friendly chats with them, and did so this time.  I don't remember why but old time movies stars came up in conversation, and guess what?  They had no idea who the old time stars were, including, Clark Gable or Errol Flynn, among others.  The were among the biggest movie stars of all time, and they had no idea who they were.  Why? 

While it's true they were just actors, and they never did anything that really impacted humanity so as to come up often, but that's not the answer.  Ask 100 people who Norman Borlaug was and I'm willing to bet depending on the audience, 100 people wouldn't know.  One year I asked that question at our local trade association's annual award banquet in a room of about 60 people, and less than ten knew, and these were people who are more exposed to this kind of information than society in general.  

was probably the greatest man to have lived in the 20th century and since he didn't die until 2009, he will probably be the greatest man to have lived in the 21st century.  Why? Because of his work in agriculture with what's called the Green Revolution he probably saved the lives of a billion people from starvation. Now that was a life filled with having done something, and yet darn few people will know who he was.  Why?   Because time moves in one direction, and unfortunately I find most people are uninterested in the past.  But the past is the solid pathway that leads to the stepping stones of the future. 

That brings me to Twitter. Here was a comment from Walter Kirn regarding his view of Twitter before the sale to Elon Musk:

The end of this period of Twitter—with its creepy secret agents, sponsored mob attacks, whipped-up propaganda drives, and canned applause tracks for approved ideas—could not have come fast enough for me. I’m a cynic by nature, but I see no good reason—for now, at least—to question Musk’s proclaimed intention to turn Twitter’s claustrophobic dungeon back into an airy public square. I expect the transition will not go smoothly, though it does seem to be going quickly. Musk has already fired the company’s C-suite and dissolved its board. Users, however, may need time to adjust to the less inhibited new platform. Emerging from the dimness of Plato’s Cave into the dazzle of daytime may take a while—we grew sleepier than perhaps we even knew. I say let the wild rumpus begin.

Apparently there were a lot of people who liked Twitter's "creepy secret agents, sponsored mob attacks, whipped-up propaganda drives, and canned applause tracks for approved ideas".  How do we know that?  We have celebrities informing the world they're abandoning Twitter because they're outraged it was sold to Elon Musk who may allow .....watch out now, here it comes.....Donald Trump to start tweeting again.  

Ohhhhhh noooooo, not that, anything but that, we're doomed, dooooomed I tell you.

Some really big time stars like Shonda Rimes and Sara Bareilles are jumping ship entirely, and that really bothers me because, their tweets were my primary source of news.  Nah....just kidding, I absolutely have no idea who they are and didn't look them up because I really don't care who they are.   I just read that in recent piece and thought it worth repeating, after all, if people don't remember people who actually did something big in their lives, and who were the biggest names in their fields of endeavor, how many are going to remember these nitwits ten years from now?  And will probably be forgotten in a lot less than ten years. 

It occurs to me many of these "stars" who are has-beens and wannabes, many of whom have had issues stuffing white powder up their noses, are screaming their outrage over having to potentially read the views of sane people. People the "twitterati" on the left have managed to censor, diminish and block, with trolls attacking any opinion different and unacceptable to these echo chamber sitting head nodders.  

And woe be unto any professional with the facts that show their views are nothing short of insanity, they would twitter unendingly to get them fired.  And it happened.  And now these leftist misfits have convinced major advertisers to cancel their advertising with Twitter.  At least until their monopoly is restored or Twitter ceases to exist, which would be acceptable to them either way as both options thwart free speech, which is their real goal.

In response it appears Musk is being encouraged to publicize which advertisers are against free speech, and as BlackRock investments has learned, if you go woke, you go broke.

And who knows, maybe they'll become so saddened and so outraged over the audacity of allowing all this free speech stuff to go on they'll go the next step and warn us .....warn us mind you...... if this openness isn't stopped and their monopoly restored, these "celebrities" will leave the country, like they said they would do if Trump was elected in 2016. 

Promises, promises.

Musk Was Right: Bombshell Leak Reveals Fired Twitter Exec Met with Biden Admin to Discuss Censorship Plans

By Mike Landry November 1, 2022 

Here is a disturbing story. It demonstrates intrigue, corruption and disdain for American principles at the highest level.  Perhaps the saddest thing about this story is that you probably won’t be surprised. Especially if you’ve been paying attention for the past few years.  The story is this: Twitter and other social media platforms have been cozy with the Department of Homeland Security to squelch what DHS calls “misinformation,” “disinformation” and “malinformation,” or “MDM,” according to an investigative report published Monday by The Intercept...........To Read More....

• It's official! Google is powerful arm of 'evil' Democratic Party
• 8 Times the Fake News Media Was Forced to Admit They Lied 
• Tucker Carlson Discusses Leaked Documents Reflecting Direct DHS Portals to Social Media Companies

My Take - Recently it was reported that Musk fired all the top executives, and did it before November 1, 2022, which means he doesn't  have to payout tens of millions in golden parachutes to these leftist misfits, if they were fired for cause.  I think qualifies as "cause". 

Twitter Will Survive Longer Than the Washed-Up Celebrities Who Are Quitting It

It’s difficult for many on the Left who have been sheltered in their own tiny worlds to realize that they’ve been led to believe lies.

 

By Tim Young November 1, 2022

I have never considered that my patronage of a business, or the lack thereof, would make or break the enterprise. So, I find it amusing that D-list celebrities believe their threats to leave Twitter could make any difference when it comes to the company’s bottom line.

This week, stars who haven’t been relevant in years, such as Toni Braxton and Sara Bareilles, announced that they would leave Twitter in the wake of its purchase by SpaceX founder Elon Musk. Braxton, who last had a Billboard 100 hit in the 1990s, said she was leaving because she saw “hate speech” on the platform since the acquisition late last week. Bareilles, who I think had a hit with “Love Song” in the early 2000s, claims the platform is “just not for me” anymore. 

Apparently, free speech and open banter about political issues are difficult for denizens of the 99-cent bargain CD bin at Walmart to process—and they cannot help but virtue signal about it. Nevertheless, Braxton and Bareilles both still have open and active Twitter accounts.

Another celebrity who has problems with opposing viewpoints is Rob Reiner. The washed-up television star, best known as “Meathead” and who recently admitted to Bill Maher that he gets his news exclusively from leftist propaganda channels like CNN and MSNBC, screeched that he was leaving the platform, too. Yet he has tweeted about a dozen times since that announcement........Ultimately, they can’t quit. It would be the final nail in the coffins of their careers...........And what is it that is so offensive to these people that they would make a stink about wanting to leave a social media platform? The answer, simply put, is the terrifying possibility of reading words with which they disagree............... To Read More....

My Take - First, just because these people are famous and rich doesn't make them "somebodies", because, to quote that famous Hollywood philosopher, Forest Gump, "Stupid is as stupid does".  Cher and a host of other stupid celebrity "nobodies" were leaving America if Trump was elected.  And as far as I can tell, each and every one of those nitwits are still here contaminating America's air with their presence.   What's really fascinating is the idea they actually believe their thoughts mean anything to sane people.  Joe Piscopo said it best, "Nobody cares what entertainers think". 

Update: Oh, no!!!!! Not this, we're doomed, doomed I tell you.  Debra Messing Says ‘Goodbye’ to Twitter Following Elon Musk Acquisition.   Who is Debra Messing exactly?

Surprise! The Biden Administration And Deep State Are Behind Massive Systematic Suppression Of Disfavored Speech On Social Media

September 01, 2022/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

 One after another, people who spread information unfavorable to the Biden family, or to Biden Administration policies, get banned or suppressed on social media. It actually started even before Biden got elected, with Twitter in October 2020 banning any re-tweet of the New York Post’s reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop, and Facebook suppressing dissemination of the same story. But after Biden took office the examples are legion. 

To name just a few: James O’Keefe of Project Veritas (pursuing the Ashley Biden diary story) was banned by Twitter in April 2021; noted climate and Covid vaccine skeptic Tony Heller got repeatedly suspended from Twitter in 2021; Covid vaccine skeptic Alex Berenson was banned by Twitter in August 2021; in April 2022 Twitter banned ads that it deemed “climate change propaganda,” which it identified based on their “contradicting” the “scientific consensus”; in July 2022 Gregory Wrightstone — Executive Director of the CO2 Coalition — got permanently banned from LinkedIn for disseminating charts that were based on data used by the IPCC. There are many, many more such examples.

Your first reaction might be, this isn’t right, but these social media companies are private actors, not subject to the First Amendment, so they are allowed to do this. And that would be true if they were acting on their own. But gradually it has been coming out that they are not acting on their own. There is a pervasive pressure campaign from the government to get the social media giants to ban the disfavored speech of critics of the Biden family and Biden Administration, or maybe of Democratic Party positions more generally.

In a previous post on August 27 I reported on the interview by Joe Rogan of Mark Zuckerberg on August 25. In that interview, Zuckerberg revealed to Rogan that, just before the Hunter Biden laptop story surfaced, the FBI had approached Facebook and said, in Zuckerberg’s words: “[Y]ou should be on high alert, there was, we thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election, and we have it on notice that basically there is about to be some kind of dump of, that’s similar to that, so just be vigilant.”

And then there is the story of the ban of Alex Berenson from Twitter, that took effect in August 2021. Berenson sued Twitter after getting banned, and has recently settled and been re-instated. But in the meantime Berenson got substantial discovery from Twitter, including on the subject of the pressure the government brought to bear to get Berenson suspended. Berenson has written a full account at his Substack site, dated August 12. Excerpts:

Biden Administration officials asked Twitter to ban me because of my tweets questioning the Covid vaccines, even as company employees believed I had followed Twitter’s rules, internal Twitter communications reveal. In a White House meeting in April 2021, four months before Twitter suspended my account, the company faced “one really tough question about why Alex Berenson hasn’t been kicked off from the platform,” a Twitter employee wrote. . . .

[T]he pressure on Twitter to take action against me and other mRNA vaccine skeptics steadily increased after that April meeting, and especially in July and August, as the government began to consider the unprecedented step of mandating Covid vaccines for adults. On July 16, 2021, President Biden complained publicly that social media companies were “killing people” by encouraging vaccine hesitancy. A few hours after Biden’s comment, Twitter suspended my account for the first time. On August 28, 2021, barely four months after the meeting, Twitter banned me.

It turns out that those were the tip of the iceberg. Today, the invaluable New Civil Liberties Alliance issued a press release reporting on a filing relating to discovery disputes in an ongoing matter titled State of Missouri v. Biden. The plaintiffs in the case are the states of Missouri and Louisiana (represented by their respective Attorneys General) and a group of professors who are the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, represented by the NCLA. The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction prohibiting the federal government from co-ordinating with the social media giants to suppress disfavored political speech. Although the government has resisted discovery, the evidence of massive co-ordination between the government and social media companies to suppress disfavored speech is gradually coming out. From the press release:

Multiple agencies’ communications demonstrate that the federal government has exerted tremendous pressure on social-media companies—pressure to which companies have repeatedly bowed. Discovery has unveiled an army of federal censorship bureaucrats, including officials arrayed at the White House, HHS, DHS, CISA, the CDC, NIAID, the Office of the Surgeon General, the Census Bureau, the FDA, the FBI, the State Department, the Treasury Department, and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Communications show these federal officials are fully aware that the pressure they exert is an effective and necessary way to induce social-media platforms to increase censorship. The head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency even griped about the need to overcome social-media companies’ “hesitation” to work with the government. These actions have precipitated an unprecedented rise in censorship and suppression of free speech—including core political speech—on social-media platforms.

In the discovery filing with the court, the NCLA and its co-counsel refer to the massive federal effort under Biden to suppress disfavored speech as the “Censorship Enterprise.”

The limited discovery produced so far provides a tantalizing snapshot into a massive, sprawling federal “Censorship Enterprise,” which includes dozens of federal officials across at least eleven federal agencies and components identified so far, who communicate with social-media platforms about misinformation, disinformation, and the suppression of private speech on social media—all with the intent and effect of pressuring social-media platforms to censor and suppress private speech that federal officials disfavor. The discovery provided so far demonstrates that this Censorship Enterprise is extremely broad, including officials in the White House, HHS, DHS, CISA, the CDC, NIAID, and the Office of the Surgeon General; and evidently other agencies as well, such as the Census Bureau, the FDA, the FBI, the State Department, the Treasury Department, and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. And it rises to the highest levels of the U.S. Government, including numerous White House officials. More discovery is needed to uncover the full scope of this “Censorship Enterprise,” and thus allow Plaintiffs the opportunity to achieve fully effective injunctive relief. Defendants have objected to producing some of the most relevant and probative information in their possession—i.e., the identities, and nature and content of communications, of White House officials and officials at other federal agencies who are not yet Defendants in this case because they were unknown when Plaintiffs served their discovery six weeks ago.

Many dozens of already-produced documents are attached to the discovery filing, consisting of communications back and forth between government bureaucrats and social media companies co-ordinating the responses to what they deem “misinformation” or the like. The subject matter of the communications that I have reviewed attached to this filing all seem to relate to the Covid-19 matter; but I would have little doubt that co-ordination very similar in type occurs on plenty of other subjects, most notably climate change and anything deemed sensitive to the Biden family (e.g., Hunter Biden laptop, Ashley Biden diary).

I’ll leave it to you to decide which you think is a greater threat to the Republic: the systematic government-wide effort to suppress free speech on social media and resist discovery about that when challenged in court; or former President Trump’s resistance to returning to the government some documents that they say are classified and he says he de-classified.

Commentary: Twitter Is Not a Business, It’s a Political Operation

April 19, 2022 by George Rasley

Here’s your first clue Twitter is not really a business with a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value – when Elon Musk made a public offer to buy the company for $54.20 a share (roughly $40 billion) the company’s management not only turned down the offer, but began to work on a poison pill defense aimed solely at Mr. Musk, who is already Twitter’s largest shareholder.

According to reporting by the New York Times, some investors and Wall Street analysts said that Mr. Musk’s offer of $54.20 a share was too low, and that he would need to go to at least $60 a share to appeal to shareholders. That would be 25 percent higher than the share price when Mr. Musk announced this month that he had acquired a 9 percent stake in Twitter................To Read More....

 

Elon Musk tricks the progressives into protesting free speech

April 19, 2022 By Blaine L. Pardoe

Two weeks ago, Elon Musk initiated the biggest Leeroy Jenkins move against a social media giant we have ever witnessed.  Granted, that is a gaming reference, but this is a game that is being played out.  With his bid to take Twitter private and restore free speech; he provided a stage for the mainstream media and the progressive pundits to expose themselves as not only being in favor of censorship, but demanding that there be more of it. 

Musk’s stunning gambit rumbled through the halls of Twitter and the newsrooms of CNN and MSNBC. Their fear was palatable. After years of saying, “If you don’t like what we are doing to you, go build your own social media platform,” they suddenly were faced with someone calling their bluff.

The progressives found themselves wallowing in their own hypocrisy on the matter.  When Facebook purchased Instagram, there was no outcry of 'foul.'  When Jeff Bezos purchased the Washington Post, there were cheers from the left.  But when Musk put his money where his mouth was and purchased 9% of Twitter, they immediately tried to toss a flag on the play. They screamed warnings of dire consequences of people being able to express themselves.............To Read More... 

 Elon Musk and Free Speech - Cal Thomas Apr 19, 2022 - Americans who subscribe to "traditional values" have had to put up with a lot from the left in the name of the First Amendment. From vulgarities on TV (self-described First Amendment defenders said things like, "If you don't like, it change the channel"), to sexual scenes in movies ("If you don't like it, don't go"), to the ready availability of pornography on the internet ("use blockers if you don't want to view it"), to books that offend parental values in public schools, to flag burning during protests, cries of "censorship" have been hurled at defenders of deportment and tradition..............

 

What Elon Musk Could Do to Buy Twitter Despite Its 'Poison Pill'

April 19, 2022 By Jonathon Moseley

 

Elon Musk sought to buy Twitter for $43 billion but was met with a “poison pill” plan from Twitter's board of directors, which looks dire for his prospects, but is really just some mildly spicy hot sauce.  Their “Shareholder’s Rights” plan might give Elon Musk heartburn, but Musk can probably pop a few antacids and bulldoze over the opposition. 

No, really.

Twitter is trying to stop the SpaceX and Tesla founder from making Twitter more useful for society through free speech and more profitable for its shareholders.   How could he do it? Well, much of his wealth is in shares of SpaceX and Tesla.  So he would have to obtain financing (loans) to conduct a “leveraged buy-out” of Twitter.............To Read More.... 

Jack Dorsey rips Twitter board in Elon Musk battle - Twitter’s founder and former top boss Jack Dorsey slammed the company’s board of directors on Sunday – even as the embattled executives are locked in a dispute over whether to accept billionaire Elon Musk’s $43 billion offer to buy the social media platform. Dorsey criticized the board in response to a post in which a user quipped that the company’s “early beginning” was “mired in plots and coups” among its founding executives.

“It’s consistently been the dysfunction of the company,” Dorsey said.

Later, when asked by another user if he was “allowed to say this” about Twitter’s board, Dorsey replied “no.” In another tweet, Dorsey responded to a user who quoted venture capitalist Fred Destin as praising a “Silicon Valley proverb” that holds “Good boards don’t create good companies, but a bad board will kill a company every time...........

 Who Really Owns Twitter? - By Adam Mill April 18, 2022 - Twitter’s CEO is abusing investors’ positions to maintain his lock on compensation and further his social justice crusade. Last week I purchased approximately $4,500 in Twitter common stock. Public reports indicated Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk might soon use his own money either to buy Twitter outright or to gain a controlling stake in the company so he might stop Twitter’s censorship. I bought at approximately $45, well below the $54.20 per share Musk offered. Twitter doesn’t pay a dividend and it loses $0.29 per share. If shareholders are to see any return on investment from Twitter’s $1.5 billion in annual ..................

 

Swamp Steps In? DOJ, SEC Launch “Joint Investigation” Targeting Elon Musk as He Attempts His ‘Hostile Takeover’ of Twitter: Reports

By Julian Conradson April 17, 2022 1052 Comments

Elon Musk isn’t one to back down from a challenge, and he is proving that fact yet again in his ongoing attempt to purchase Twitter outright in a bid to restore freedom of speech to the internet. However, his bold move caused the establishment to put a target on his back. As of this week, both Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have reportedly opened new investigations into the billionaire Tesla founder, according to reports.

Curious timing..........To Read More...

My Take - If anyone doubts there's a leftist conspiracy here meriting a RICO investigation, this should remove all doubt.