Caitlin Johnstone

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Twitter IS “State-Affiliated Media”

Listen to a reading of this article: ❖ British politician and broadcaster George Galloway has made headlines in the UK with his threat to press legal action against Twitter for designating his account “Russia state-affiliated media”, a label which will now show up under his name every time he posts anything on the platform. “Dear…

Caitlin Johnstone
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Listen to a reading of this article:

❖

British politician and broadcaster George Galloway has made headlines in the UK with his threat to press legal action against Twitter for designating his account “Russia state-affiliated media”, a label which will now show up under his name every time he posts anything on the platform.

“Dear @TwitterSupport I am not ‘Russian State Affiliated media’,” reads a viral tweet by Galloway. “I work for NO Russian media. I have 400,000 followers. I’m the leader of a British political party and spent nearly 30 years in the British parliament. If you do not remove this designation I will take legal action.”

Galloway argues that while his broadcasts have previously been aired by Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik, because those outlets have been shut down in the UK by Ofcom and by European Union sanctions he can no longer be platformed by them even if he wants to. If you accept this argument, then it looks like Twitter is essentially using the “state-affiliated media” designation as a marker of who Galloway is as a person, rather than as a marker of what he actually does.

Regardless of whether you agree with Galloway’s argument or not, this all overlooks the innate absurdity of a government-tied social media corporation like Twitter labeling other people “state-affiliated media”. Twitter is state-affiliated media. It has been working in steadily increasing intimacy with the United States government since the US empire began pressuring Silicon Valley platforms to regulate content in support of establishment power structures following the 2016 election.

In 2020 Twitter was one of the many Silicon Valley corporations who coordinated directly with US government agencies to determine what content should be censored in order to “secure” the presidential election. In 2021 Twitter announced that it was orchestrating mass purges of foreign accounts on the advice of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), which receives funding from many government institutions including the US State Department.

“ASPI is the propaganda arm of the CIA and the U.S. government,” veteran Australian diplomat Bruce Haigh told Mintpress News earlier this year. “It is a mouthpiece for the Americans. It is funded by the American government and American arms manufacturers. Why it is allowed to sit at the center of the Australian government when it has so much foreign funding, I don’t know. If it were funded by anybody else, it would not be where it is at.”

Twitter has also coordinated its mass purges of accounts with a cybersecurity firm called FireEye, which this 2019 Sputnik article by journalist Morgan Artyukhina explains was “founded in 2004 with money from the CIA’s venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel.”

It has been an established pattern for years that whenever Twitter reports that it has purged thousands of accounts which it suspects of inauthentic behavior on behalf of foreign governments, you know it’s never going to be accounts from US-aligned countries like the UK, Israel or Australia, but consistently from US-targeted nations like Russia, China, Venezuela or Iran. You can choose to believe that’s because the US only aligns with saintly governments who would never dream of engaging in unethical online behavior, but that would be an infantile position which defies all known evidence.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Twitter has been aggressively boosting US narratives about the war by frequently showing users a Twitter Topic without their having subscribed to it which is full of imperial spinmeisters, including The Kyiv Independent with all its shady CIA–affiliated origins.

Twitter also promotes US narratives about the war by keeping a “War in Ukraine” section perpetually on the right-hand side of the screen for desktop users, which runs stories that are wildly biased toward the US/NATO/Ukraine alliance. There was a full day last month where any time I checked Twitter on my laptop I was informed that “Russia continues to strike civilian targets in Kyiv and across Ukraine.” The claim that Russia had been “targeting” civilians during that time was dismissed as nonsense shortly thereafter by US military experts speaking to Newsweek.

When the invasion began Twitter also started actively minimizing the number of people who see Russian media content, saying that it is “reducing the content’s visibility” and “taking steps to significantly reduce the circulation of this content on Twitter”. It also began placing warning labels on all Russia-backed media and delivering a pop-up message informing you that you are committing wrongthink if you try to share or even ‘like’ a post linking to such outlets on the platform.

Twitter also began placing the label “Russia state-affiliated media” on every tweet made by the personal accounts of employees of Russian media platforms, baselessly giving the impression that the dissident opinions tweeted by those accounts are paid Kremlin content and not simply their own legitimate perspectives. This labeling has led to complaints of online harassment as propaganda-addled dupes seek out targets to act out their media-instilled hatred of all things Russian.

As more and more people find themselves branded with the “Russia state-affiliated media” label, Twitter has concurrently announced that it will be hiding the visibility of any account that wears it, announcing on Tuesday that the platform “will not amplify or recommend government accounts belonging to states that limit access to free information and are engaged in armed interstate conflict.” Which is a bit rich, considering the fact that the US does both of those things.

“This means these accounts won’t be amplified or recommended to people on Twitter, including across the Home Timeline, Explore, Search, and other places on the service. We will first apply this policy to government accounts belonging to Russia,” Twitter said.

This diminished visibility has been verified by people who’ve been slapped with the “Russia state-affiliated media” label. So you can understand why imperial narrative managers whose job is to quash dissent want that designation applied to as many critics of the US empire as possible.

If you are curious why the “state-affiliated media” label has not been applied to Twitter accounts associated with government-funded outlets of the US and its allies like NPR and the BBC, it’s because Twitter has explicitly created a loophole to exclude those outlets from such a designation.

“State-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK or NPR in the US for example, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the purposes of this policy,” Twitter’s rules say.

Which is of course an absurd and arbitrary distinction. Whether you like George Galloway or not, I think anyone who’s familiar with his personality would agree that if anyone ever tried to take away his editorial independence and tell him what he is or isn’t permitted to say, it would take an entire team of surgeons to remove Galloway’s footwear from their personal anatomy. Many people who’ve worked with Russian media have said they’ve never been told what to say, and Galloway is surely one of them.

The audacity of a social media company which works hand-in-glove with the most powerful government on earth to go around branding people “state-affiliated media” is appalling. Twitter is state-affiliated media. It is an instrument of imperial narrative control, just like all the other billionaire Silicon Valley megacorporations of immense influence. Putin could only dream of having state media that effective.

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65 responses to “Twitter IS “State-Affiliated Media””

  1. Em Avatar
    Em

    And now the taint of Musk makes things reek that much worse!?

  2. thorsjackhammer Avatar
    thorsjackhammer

    I got blocked from commenting on the ABC News facebook pages after I posted “ABC – Australian state controlled media”. Facebook marks Tass and China Xinhua News as – Russia state-controlled media and China state-controlled media. Twitter has a very poor user interface (likely deliberately so), so I avoid it. Musk is the largest part owner of twitter, as if he wasn’t obvious enough as a ‘state controlled’ stooge. US/UK control all the important western MSM, big or small, or eventually hijack it.

  3. David Revill Avatar
    David Revill

    I had a question which emerges from this, and I don’t ask with any hostility, just genuine interest: your excellent article makes it clear how skewed towards state power Twitter is, and we all know by now how Twitter (and Facebook and Google, obviously) is a “surveillance capitalism”, “people farming” medium. So how do you reconcile your knowledge of this with continuing to use them? Isn’t the only consistent thing to cut them out altogether? (“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”, and all that.) I know the argument that non-tracking alternatives such as Mastodon don’t attract a large readership, but how will that change unless we start to use them? Like I said, I mean no hostility in bringing this up — I’m just interested because I’ve never seen a way to square this other than cutting them all out without exception.

    1. Caitlin Johnstone Avatar
      Caitlin Johnstone

      I kinda think you answered your own question: it’s where the audience is. Sure there’s free speech on Mastodon; there’s free speech on a desert island too, and for the same reason. A few fringe dissidents leaving for those sites isn’t going to bring the billions of global mainstream social media users with them, it’s just going to marginalize us even further and thereby do the empire managers’ job for them. By all means use those fringe platforms *also*, but never do the empire managers’ work for them.

    2. thorsjackhammer Avatar
      thorsjackhammer

      Personally, I doubt any discussion that is genuinely damaging to the ’empire’ gets out very far. Particularly on the big platforms. Lots of selective blocking of information can easily be done online. The ’empire’ can select the audience that receives the ‘damaging’ stuff, whilst blocking it from the view of other folk. All of us have IP addresses that can be manipulated online. Even what we post here will be seen by some but not others, depending on the content. Automated algorithms do much of the work. There are likely millions of Facebook pages for example, that are very damaging to the establishment, but are selectively blocked. I remember the early days of search engines (late 90s) when you could find infinitely more investigative journalist and alt news sites, you could even find personal home webpages, now the search engines are severely selective in their what they are allowed find.

  4. Susan Siens Avatar
    Susan Siens

    Here’s a little gem about Twitter:

    https://thegrayzone.com/2021/08/04/twitter-uk-cia-reuters-censorship/

    Twitter routinely allows violent speech to be directed at women and censors women for thinking men cannot be women. Twitter is just doing the work they are paid to do by the Evil Empire.

    I never signed one of the many petitions I got to ban Trump from Twitter. The latest Democratic Party effort: censorship, coming hot on the heels of the DP’s support for fascism and pedophilia.

  5. VF Avatar
    VF

    There are many people, like me and lots of us on this site, whether commenting or not, who have never and never will use Twitter, who’ve used FB in the past, maybe, but found how resistant it is to any serious political discussion that directly confronts establishment narratives on literally every issue, and those of us who’ve never used Instagram or any other (anti-) social media.
    ~~~
    Then there are at least as many others here and everywhere else who constantly go on Twitter, FB, I-gram and the rest of anti-social media compulsively, can’t help themselves, addicted to them all like 99% of the population is addicted to cell phones every waking moment of the day. Neither of these demographics, those of us who don’t do Twitter or anything like it, and those who spend all their cognitive energy at those places, are doing anything substantive to bring down the system that has originated and perpetuates all this insanity. We’re all sitting at keyboards. Nothing of any lasting significance is going to occur from keyboards, and I’m as guilty of this as anyone.
    ~~~
    That’s a warning that has been announced online at millions of sites for over 20 years, and no one listens. We just keep reading and typing our responses, raging at one another over trivia (flaming, it used to be called), and wondering why nothing ever changes, except that the fascists and totalitarians keep gaining ground, solidifying their control over us in every conceivable way, corralling us into yet another mystifying techno-fix we can become addicted to, and leaving us to our bewilderment as to what the fuck is happening.
    ~~~
    Klaus Schwab tells the world exactly what he plans to do with and to all of us, and he knows that such open transparency to The Great Reset’s agenda in no way threatens its full implementation. The billionaires and militarists, their propaganda machine, the entire capitalist class, isn’t worried about us. They’ve had us essentially hypnotized for decades, and the only real fight we seem to have in us now is against each other. Because they know we can’t touch them.

  6. ariel Avatar
    ariel

    I don’t use ANY of this shit and I don’t have a ‘smart’ or should that be ‘smert’ phone to use it on. SIMPLE. I understood what this shit was. Decades ago.

    1. Susan Siens Avatar
      Susan Siens

      I call them IDIOTphones.

  7. Aleksandar Avatar
    Aleksandar

    Eh, only Twitter? ALL “social media” from any of the Five Eyes is “State Affiliated Media”. Kingdom of Genocides and Caliphate of Chaos are the only two criminal organizations with global outreach. Other three “eyes” are remotely controlled zombies (at the best).

  8. WCH Avatar
    WCH

    We should all stop complaining and boycott Twitter.

  9. WCH Avatar
    WCH

    If adults stop using Twitter it would become irrelevant. I have never used Twitter. It is no different than a bad product, just don’t use it. There are great alternatives such as this site.

    1. Eddy Avatar
      Eddy

      L.O.L. Incredible. For the life of me, I cannot understand, why folks who should know better, even sign on and use these sites such as Twitter and Facebook, KNOWING the whole time, their data is being mined and SOLD, as well as censored by the owners. WHY would any sane person, allow that to be done to them willingly ?????? CRAZY !

      1. Pascal Avatar
        Pascal

        Some of them want to use you
        Some of them want to get used by you
        Some of them want to abuse you
        Some of them want to be abused.

  10. Max424 Avatar
    Max424

    Is the state controlling the media or is the media controlling the state?
    Jen Psaki wants to know. Personally, I think she’s quitting her job and joining MSNBC because she wants to be on the winning team.
    Is Joe Biden a puppet? Is Kamala Harris smart enough to be a puppet? Is Barrack Obama the one pulling the the chief executive’s strings behind the scenes? If this is the case, could it be that he is just a hired puppeteer, making a minimum wage (allowed to rake in 10 of millions) to make the puppets walk and talk in ways acceptable to Mr. Obama’s employers?
    I for one, do not know. I do know this though, any American citizen who remains unaware that the Beltway Complex is now occupied territory, has made a conscious decision to sleepwalk their way through life.
    If you can’t beat Russia, then the neo-liberal cause is lost, because compared to China, the undisputed heavyweight champ, Russia is no more than a battle scarred middle-weight with a killer right cross.
    http://thesaker.is/the-dollar-devours-the-euro/
    Michael Hudson will see what I’m seeing soon, I believe, mainly because it was Mr. Hudson who most tuned me in to the fact that the privatized Western neo-liberal powers are completely helpless vis a vis sovereign China. They can only remain viable by a launching a nuclear first strike, or more accurately, convince the 4 star folks at the Pentagon that it is necessary to lauch one for their mutual survival, and hoping it succeeds.
    Whatever the hell that means.
    So again, as I’ve pointing out almost my entire life, it’s all coming to Pentagon. They’ve always wanted this war, the Super Bowl of Wars, because they thought they could win it, and by doing so, become the greatest warriors in history. But something is telling me they no longer think they can.’
    Because they needed Ukraine. Without it, without the “boost phase intercept” advantage Ukraine would’ve given, the first strke victory math doesn’t add up. And they are not getting Ukraine, that much is clear, not without commiting to an “escalating” – aka ad hoc – nuclear war that no one can win. Or survive.
    So what are the Pentagon’s options? I would suggest it’s either perform a coup, or become the last whore-house standing in a neo-liberal wasteland of fallen whore-houses. .
    What I find interesting, is what you’ve seen recently in Russia is tantamount to a coup. Vladimir Putin was as an Atlanticist, a neo-liberal, the Foremost Oligarch Amongst Oligarchs, a sell-out, a Western stooge, a puppet, a traitor, and now he is, the gritty and patriotic (or evil, depending on viewpoint) leader of the Russian Federation.
    The Russian coup d’etat took place predominantly in Vladimr Putin’s tiny heart apparently, and as a result, Russia almost in an instant went from pleading for neo-liberal wannabe status, to being a fierce and independent sovereign entity.
    The Pentagon, the US military, has to be looking at this “development” over there with a lot of envy, I suspect. Yes, Operation Z might not might be the finest military operation since Alexander invaded Persia, but a nation with the economy the size of Italy, with yearly expenditures on defense less than that of Saudia Arabia, is going toe to toe with the entire Western world, and is not only surviving, it seems in many ways, to be thriving, because the Russian Federation made the hard decision to function as a nation-state, a concept long ago thought ridiculous in the West.
    And the Russian people seem to think this is right approach. What do we have now, and 83% approval rating for Mr. Putin? I would submit that the main reason for this near unanimous approval, is for the simple reason that former puppet Vladimir Putin has made it clear he is cutting all the neo-liberal puppet strings, and he will now do his best, as a unlimbered man, to provide for the citizens he governs.

    1. Max424 Avatar
      Max424

      Russel Brand on the neo-liberal world order, or whatever you want to call it.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8gauWZpIsQ
      I’m all for localized power, tight knit communities being allowed to do their thing in a democratic way, but if you can’t get it right at the nation-state level, when your government’s basic function is to provide muscle for powers much greater than itself, then you can forget about all that local shit.
      Government’s main purpose should be to protect its citizens from destructive forces, both natural and unnatural, not aid and abet them, but when your elected Representatives become the best hedge fund managers this side of Goldman Sachs, I would suggest they are doing precisely that.

      1. Max424 Avatar
        Max424

        Caleb Maupin believes that it is “utter insanity” that our government is informing its citizens that it is lying to us, and that our media is reporting this as a fantastic new development, how openly and aggressively our government is going about this lying process.
        youtube.com/watch?v=JSoAYOxinUc
        Again, lmao … I mean, what else can you do but laugh.
        Still, the question remains, what is the strategy here? My government is telling me straight to my face not to believe a goddamn thing they say.
        I can’t for the life of me figure this one out. Is this some kind of Wile E. Coyote super genius thing that’s well beyond my ken?

        1. Pascal Avatar
          Pascal

          Laughter is what remains when all the rest has disappeared. They didn’t notice it in Pandora’s box because it was hidden behind hope :o)

        2. thorsjackhammer Avatar
          thorsjackhammer

          “I can’t for the life of me figure this one out. Is this some kind of Wile E. Coyote super genius thing that’s well beyond my ken?”

          Possibly, because part of the end game is to destroy all ‘sovereign’ governments in order to justify a single central government (NWO). That’s why you get these total clowns like Trump and Johnson, to make what’s coming (NWO?) seem a far better option. A controlled demolition of ‘sovereign’ nations transitioning into a ‘one world government’.

        3. thorsjackhammer Avatar
          thorsjackhammer

          …. to destroy all credibility of ‘sovereign’ governments/leaders….and… wallah! NWO seems a better option after all. Hegelian Dialectics political illusions – Create the Problem- get the desired Reaction – then provide the ready to roll out Solution.

  11. Ted Christian Avatar
    Ted Christian

    Write about Bucha.

    The Bucha killings were perpetrated by Ukrainians. You can’t murder four hundred people without hard evidence. And occupying forces don’t go for over a month with no atrocities and then suddenly go on a mass killing spree, after they’ve left in fact. That’s not the historical norm, and the timeline refutes it. The historical norm is that local Azov type forces murder collaborators, supposed or otherwise, when an occupying force withdraws, indeed this is the standard and openly voiced expectation when US forces withdraw from an occupation. And it’s what happened this time. The opposite claim is being rammed home by every MSM outlet and US dominated government in the world. They are in league with monsters, and the more their false narrative goes unchallenged the more killing there will be. Which is the objective. All that can be done is to shine as much light as possible on what is happening. And you have a spotlight. Use it.

    1. moonraccoon Avatar
      moonraccoon

      I agree that four hundred people probably cannot be murdered without hard evidence. You support your opposing view with conjecture, which is fine, but should you not support it with the hard evidence you demand of the official claims?

      1. Ted Christian Avatar
        Ted Christian

        The evidence is the lack of it. It certainly exists. In heaps.

        1. moonraccoon Avatar
          moonraccoon

          But a lack of evidence only throws the official narrative into doubt. It does not support the factuality of your assertion of the true cause.

          1. Ted Christian Avatar
            Ted Christian

            I feel like I’m not reaching you, MOONRACCOON.

            1. moonraccoon Avatar
              moonraccoon

              The best way to do so is with substance. It’s easy to poke holes, and easy to fill those holes with assumption. That’s never as fulfilling—or as convincing—as filling those holes with substance.

            2. Martin Avatar
              Martin

              it’s probably difficult to get hard evidence when the alleged perpetrators are in control of the crime scene. and i agree, he’s playing ‘lawyerly dumb’.

        2. Ted Christian Avatar
          Ted Christian

          ‘lawyerly dumb’?

          1. Martin Avatar
            Martin

            pretending

            1. moonraccoon Avatar
              moonraccoon

              I like Caitlin b/c she lays out coherent ideas… with citations.
              The government is lying, yes. What happened instead, and who did it? No one knows. For a commenter here to declare they know for certain? It’s fine if they believe it, it’s fine if you believe it. But the idea that I’m being “lawyerly dumb” or feigning ignorance is just you trying to cultivate a thoughtspace as artificial as the government’s.
              I get why it’s alluring to fantasize what really happened, to talk about it and find likeminded people. But your accusation is weird. Yes, it’s hard to gather evidence when the enemy controls the scene. I agree. But without evidence, you can’t possibly know the details.

              1. Martin Avatar
                Martin

                no you can’t know the details.

      2. Susan Siens Avatar
        Susan Siens

        There is plenty of evidence. Go to a news website such as The Grayzone, Covert Action Magazine, the Unz Review, etc, etc, etc, and look at the photos and videos of Bucha the day after the Russians left, two days after the Russians left. No bodies in the streets. What was it? Four days or so after the last Russian left? The bodies were wearing white armbands — either neutral or Russia-sympathetic.

        1. moonraccoon Avatar
          moonraccoon

          That doesn’t tell us who did it.

      3. Ted Christian Avatar
        Ted Christian

        Mkay, without looking up ‘lawyerly dumb’ let me just say I resent the insinuation I’m a lawyer, or as I like to call them, fucking lawyer, but so anyway I can see terse isn’t going to work here so what I’m saying is that 400 murders leave behind a great deal of hard evidence, the sheer volume of which would quickly and conclusively ID the perpetrators, and since the Ukrainians haven’t produced and won’t be producing any evidence the only logical conclusion is that the evidence establishes the murders were committed by Ukrainians and not Russians. Don’t wait for evidence confirming this because you won’t be getting any, certainly not from the Ukrainians. You can also forget about any Ukrainians giving honest testimony, because they don’t want to be tied up and shot through the head. And even if you could dismiss all these facts, reprisal killings are the historic norm in such circumstances, and match the known timeline. The victims in Bucha were killed by Ukrainians, not Russians.

        1. moonraccoon Avatar
          moonraccoon

          Your eagerness to believe not what you can prove, but only what you “logically conclude” without hard evidence, just shows us how well you live up to your surname. (I have no problem making ridiculous cheap shots like that in the face of ridiculous conjecture.)
          .
          Also, I called no one “lawyerly”. Martin called me “lawyerly dumb”. Unlike you, I don’t resent the pseudo-lawyer equivalence, but that’s b/c it’d give the namecaller power over my emotional state. I think we agree Martin’s insult was stupid.

        2. Ted Christian Avatar
          Ted Christian

          Christians are known for drawing logical conclusions? And that you would dismiss fact driven logic as “ridiculous conjecture” just shows how well you live up to your screen name. But yeah, let’s just wait for the Ukrainians to produce all that evidence you’re demanding to see before you think they murdered anybody, and in the absence of which you won’t. Speaking of which, why haven’t they released a single scrap of evidence from 400+ murders indicating who committed them? When do you think that might happen? I guess if the perpetrators aren’t going to prosecute we might as well just move on and let the victims rest in peace. Are you with the MIC?

          1. moonraccoon Avatar
            moonraccoon

            “But yeah, let’s just wait for the Ukrainians to produce all that evidence you’re demanding”
            Not waiting for evidence is an idea worthy of Cheney and Dubya.
            *applause*

        3. Ted Christian Avatar
          Ted Christian

          GWjr and his boss made up facts around Iraq’s failure to prove a negative, a logical impossibility. I’m talking about dispositive evidence the Ukrainians certainly possess and will not produce. Are you an MIC troll?

          1. moonraccoon Avatar
            moonraccoon

            Dispositive evidences are facts that resolve a legal dispute altogether after they are proven with necessary certainty. You have not done so, Mr Christian, except in your own mind. Who didn’t do it (the invading enemy Russia, in your opinion) has zero bearing on who did (if you’re right).
            .
            If your Occam’s Razor excludes invading murderous bomb-and-tank-laden forces, how does that possibly convert into “Ukrainians did it to themselves”?

        4. Ted Christian Avatar
          Ted Christian

          If anybody can understand all that then grant her the argument.

          MIC troll? Either that or off the meds. I think Bucha might be something of a BFD and if the public ever catches a whiff of what it wasn’t, which I don’t expect them to but if they did it might significantly alter the dynamic, perhaps like Katyn might have had the truth been known.

  12. John Knox Avatar
    John Knox

    I think it’s less about silencing Galloway than reminding us who is in charge. Same with the Assange case.

    1. Pascal Avatar
      Pascal

      More likely the algorithms found his name in the list of RT contributors and Bob’s your uncle.

  13. Pascal Avatar
    Pascal

    Twitter and the president of the United States lost all credibility simultaneously when the former banned the latter’

    For two reasons. #1 Since the end of WWII, the president of the United States had been considered the most powerful man on Earth and everybody respected him for that reason. Not necessarily liked him but respected him. And now we learnt that a bunch of nobodies with no accountability in a basement had cut the president of the United States from his Twitter feed?

    What kind of shit was that? Next thing you know, AT&T will cut his phone and Electric Power will slap a curfew on the White House.

    It was instantly made clear that the sitting president of the United States had less power than a motherless child. He’s tolerated, that’s all.

    If Putin had been able to cut the Twitter feed of the POTUS, we would be in the middle of WWIII as we speak! But Twitter…

    Ain’t nuffin’ we can do pal… Is that sound? It’s certainly unheard of and the deep state left a couple of cards showing here even for the folks who claim its existence is a conspiracy theory.

    It confirmed what the corporrupt media had hammered several times a day for four years: the president of the United States is a joke. The reason he doesn’t have a dog is now clear: the dog would tell him to fuck off when he called.

    Reason #2: What kind of credibility has a firm which bans the president of the United States? It is clear that their woke employees, at which the right-wing media point the finger, can’t do it by themselves! The picture we get is that thousands of LGBT and other minorities’ skinned alive freaks squeal at anything out of their line and demand with pitchforks that it gets banned.

    Unrealistic… The truth is that the deep state (ultimately international bankers and corporations driving the alphabet agencies) is in a position to make Twitter offers they can’t refuse. Which is reminiscent of a quote in Chase Manhattan chairman David Rockefeller’s memoirs: “Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”

    We’ll see how it goes now that Elon Musk, who’s bound to be aware of all that and is in bed with the deep state for Space X, has taken a majority stake in Twitter and threatens to buy the whole shebang. He’s made several announcements over the years, including lately about the Canadian truckers, tending to show that he’s a die-hard First Amendment activist. Then again, he’s not bulletproof or immune to the diseases we now know the deep state secretly brews in various locations round the world like Wuhan and Ukraine.

    1. moonraccoon Avatar
      moonraccoon

      Is it wise to trust the opinion of someone who can’t tell the difference between the broadcast of a Twitter account and a personal phone line?

      1. Pascal Avatar
        Pascal

        You’re wasting our time pal.
        Anyway, here’s more food for thoughts about the above matter:
        https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2022/04/08/the-rise-of-the-meta-criminal-more-relevant-than-ever/

        1. moonraccoon Avatar
          moonraccoon

          Are you the author of the linked material?

          1. Pascal Avatar
            Pascal

            Are you FBI?

            1. moonraccoon Avatar
              moonraccoon

              Yes, I am fundamentally bard-inclusive. You?

  14. pasha Avatar
    pasha

    Wow! Almost worth signing up for a Twitter account just to get the PROUD designation “Russia state-affiliated media”.
    On second thought, nothing’s worth besmirching my good name* by associating myself with the epitome of evil and its monstrous juggernaut empire.
    *If I had one.

  15. John Moffett Avatar
    John Moffett

    I was managing editor at an online progressive news outlet for 7 years, and it happened to be at the time that Twitter started. The site’s owner immediately told everyone working at the site to sign up to use it, because it would become the main way that people got the news out to the public. I declined, and have never had a Twitter account. I predicted at the time that it would quickly become a source of both distraction and mis-information. I could not have imagined it would become this bad so quickly. If people stopped using it, Twitter would fade away. But just like Facebook and other online narrative management tools, people feel compelled to use them. They can only work as long as people keep using them. But I fear everyone who does use them now can’t get on without them. There is an addiction factor that won’t let up. Check to see if you are addicted. Stop using Twitter completely. In fact, see if you can bring yourself to delete your account. I really doubt anyone would even consider doing such a thing. And there’s the rub.

    1. moonraccoon Avatar
      moonraccoon

      FWIW every time I read a well-reasoned argument like yours, I do indeed consider it. Whether I ultimately will or not, I don’t know. But when Facebook locked me out for being too active in groups, and therefore an attractive target for account theft, they locked me out (none of their three 2FA methods worked). I haven’t returned. So, for me, it’s one down, one to go. Keep up the messaging.

      1. Carolyn L Zaremba Avatar
        Carolyn L Zaremba

        FB did that to me, too. But I will continue to use it to bring independent media reporting to everyone I know.

        1. moonraccoon Avatar
          moonraccoon

          I was just using FB to make dumb jokes about pop culture. Fun while it lasted.

  16. Bill Avatar
    Bill

    Is Australia’s ABC affiliated with the US intelligence apparatus? They seem to air whatever offering the US gives them on Ukraine. Some of the stories need a good ‘fact checking’.
    Hint to the ABC… Ukraine is much, much more than a Russia/Ukraine punch up. Broaden your horizons, do a decent analysis – without Stan Grant. Do your homework and put the story into its place in the global sphere.
    Caitlin’s articles would be a good starting point.

    1. Susan Siens Avatar
      Susan Siens

      Of course, Australia’s ABC, just like the BBC — and I’m guessing the Canadian and New Zealand media — are wholly owned subsidiaries of the U.S. These meat puppets do no work, just mouth the press releases from the U.S. government. Don’t expect anything better or different.

  17. Harry S Nydick Avatar
    Harry S Nydick

    Of course, it was considerably prior to the conflict in the Ukraine. Still, this type of censorship and control is why I once had a Twitter and, after checking it out for ten (10) minutes, permanently deleted the account.

    1. Carolyn L Zaremba Avatar
      Carolyn L Zaremba

      I did the same thing.

      1. Deschutes Avatar
        Deschutes

        Twitter is absolute shit. Never liked it from the get go when it first started. I remember their stupid marketing slogan when they first started: “what are you doing?” as they were trying to promote the app as a way to talk to friends, as if the phone had been made obsolete because there was now Twitter. Just don’t use it. Would also add it appears to be a big time wasting distraction of one sentence bloviating, insults, etc. Twitter-shitter, Twitter sucks!

  18. BB Benderhaus Avatar
    BB Benderhaus

    Never used twitter. Never read twitter. Ignore everything ever written on twitter as social media trash. My life has been better for it.

    1. Newton Finn Avatar
      Newton Finn

      Mine, too. I look forward to the day when Caitlin and her readers–indeed, when all of us–begin to focus more on reality than unreality, by which I mean focusing more on what’s happening in the arena than on the kibitzing in the stands. Talk (apart from prophetic speech) is cheap.

      1. Pascal Avatar
        Pascal

        Prophetic speech is a lay word for schizophrenic egomania, from Ezekiel to Nostradamus via John of Patmos. And now they’re in the State Department.

  19. Martin Avatar
    Martin

    ‘Communication, internet equipment excluded from US sanctions.’
    https://tass.com/economy/1434455
    why would they do that?

    1. KP Avatar
      KP

      More backdoors than front doors, they will leave the USA in charge of com equipment in Russia. Probably a more secure way to spy on every bit that goes though it too.

  20. John Day Avatar
    John Day

    https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/
    Moon of Alabama: The Bucha Provocation
    The Bucha ‘Russian’ atrocities propaganda onslaught may have worked well in the ‘west’ but it lacks evidence that Russia had anything to do with it.
    The former Indian ambassador M.K. Bhadrakumar calls it an outright fake…
    ..Even more surprising is that within minutes of the “breaking news”, western leaders — heads of state, foreign ministers, former politicians — popped up with statements duly kept ready and only based on the videos, seconds-long videos and a clutch of photos, ready to pour accusations. No expert opinion was sought, no forensic work was done, no opportunity given to the accused to be heard…
    (Detailed Bucha timeline with links is included in this article.)
    Gonzalo Lira, who is in Karkiv, has previously directed a professionally made movie. In this video he asserts that the main ‘Russian’ atrocity video, which shows cars driving down a street strewn with dead bodies, is of a professional high production quality that can only be achieved with high end equipment. He also remarks on additional evidence from the scenes that points to a false flag operation.Lira comes to the conclusion that the Azov Nazis have killed some people in Bucha that had been too friendly with the Russian ‘occupiers’ and are now blaming Russia for it.
    Azov gangs are known for such atrocities. Based on the above timeline I concur with Lira’s conclusion.
    https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/04/the-bucha-provocation.html#more

    Founder and former CEO, Jack Dorsey is happy about Musk becoming the largest shareholder, board-member and looks forward to less censorship on the platform.
    Elon Musk Appointed To Twitter Board Of Directors; Vows To Make “Significant Improvements”
    ​https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/twitter-appoints-elon-musk-board-directors-stock-jumps-hopes-more-unwokeness

    Gonzalo Lira: “YouTube bans any open discussion about the Bucha false flag”​ (Maybe Twitter will allow these discussions?)
    https://thesaker.is/gonzalo-lira-youtube-bans-any-open-discussion-about-the-bucha-false-flag/

    1. Carolyn L Zaremba Avatar
      Carolyn L Zaremba

      Thank you. I agree.

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