Vigilant News

Eternal Vigilance is the price of liberty.

Ryan Delarme

The Men Behind the Curtain: The Council on Foreign Relations

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Authors note: This is part one in a series of deep dives into various influential clandestine organizations from the 20th and 21st centuries. This post was originally written for Badlands Media.

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Never before in American history has it been so obvious that the individuals pulling the strings in this country are not our elected leaders.

Joe Biden’s presidency is possibly the best supporting evidence we’ll ever get that American presidents are little more than vestigial figureheads of an international deep-state establishment.

The idea that powerful men conspire behind the scenes is a concept as old as time, and far more than only “fringe conspiracy theorists” have warned about clandestine powers.

Our nation’s founder, George Washington, shortly before he died, read John Robison’s book Proofs of a Conspiracy and immediately opined:

“It was not my intention to doubt that the doctrines of the Illuminati and principles of Jacobinism had not spread in the United States. On the contrary, no one is more truly satisfied of this fact than I am …”

John Robison, among many contemporary and future researchers, was adequately convinced that the machinations of a hidden group of Freemasons known as the Bavarian Illuminati had infiltrated the new world.

Proofs of a conspiracy against all the religions and governments of Europe (1798 edition) | Open Library

British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, as far back as 1856, told the House of Commons:

 “It is useless to deny, because it is impossible to conceal, that a great part of Europe—the whole of Italy and France and a great portion of [then fragmented] Germany, to say nothing of other countries—is covered with a network of these secret societies … And what are their objects? They do not attempt to conceal them. They do not want constitutional government … they want to change the tenure of land, to drive out the present owners of the soil, and to put an end to ecclesiastical establishments [churches.]”

President Woodrow Wilson, who was intimately connected to conspiratorial power, once wrote:

“Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the fields of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”

Former New York mayor John F. Hylan stated in 1922:

“The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over our city, state, and nation … At the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller—Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as the international bankers [who] virtually run the U.S. government for their own selfish purposes.”

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was no stranger to secret societies, once said:

 “In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”

Important figures from our history knew secret societies were secretly shaping world events. Did these clandestine groups simply vanish, or are their traditions carried on to this day?

For many, the term ‘secret society’ conjures up images of apron-wearing Freemasons or cloaked figures practicing ceremonial magick, but the clandestine fraternities of today have taken on a more modern appearance. This is exemplified by groups such as the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR,) the elusive Bilderberg Group, and, of course, Klaus Schwab’s very public World Economic Forum.

For our purposes, we’ll be focusing specifically on the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Council on Foreign Relations

The council began as an outgrowth of a series of meetings conducted during World War I. Woodrow Wilson’s confidential advisor, Edward Mandell House had gathered roughly 100 of the most prominent men in the country at the time to discuss the postwar world. This group of foreign policy elite originally dubbed themselves “the Inquiry.” These men helped concoct Wilson’s famous ‘fourteen points,’ which he presented to Congress in January of 1918. The points could be seen as a globalist wish list, calling for the removal of “all economic barriers” between nations, “equality of trade conditions,” and the formation of “a general association of nations.”

The Inquiry

House described himself as a Marxist socialist, yet his actions reflected the more subversive Fabian socialism.

He penned a novel several years prior called Philip Dru: Administrator. It’s claimed that he gave a copy of this work to Woodrow Wilson to read on a trip to Bermuda. In it, House describes a clandestine effort in the United States to establish the central bank, the graduated income tax, and the control of both political parties. Within two years of publication, two of these objectives, if not all three, had already been accomplished.

By late 1918, the stalemate on the Western Front, in addition to the entry of America into the war, forced Germany and the Central Powers to accept terms for peace, paving the way for the subsequent Paris Peace Conference of 1919, which led to the Treaty of Versailles.

Attending the Paris peace conferences were President Woodrow Wilson and his closest advisors, Colonel House, international bankers Paul Warburg and Bernard Baruch and almost two dozen members of ‘the Inquiry.’

The attendees embraced Wilson’s plan for peace, including the formation of a League of Nations. However, under American law, the covenant had to be ratified by the U.S. Senate, which failed to do so, many senators being distrustful of a supranational organization.

Despite this setback, House met with both British and American peace conference delegates in Paris’s Majestic Hotel on May 30th and resolved to form an ‘Institute of International Affairs,’ with branches in both America and England. If they were to be denied their globalist League of Nations, then they would carry on their goals behind the scenes, away from public scrutiny.

The English branch became known as ‘the Royal Institute for International Affairs,’ known today as Chatham House. The US branch was incorporated on July 21st of that year as the Council on Foreign Relations, the name it still goes by today.

The Council’s primary funders included some of the world’s most powerful individuals of the early 1900s.

Oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, who is arguably one of the most recognized men in American history, is alleged to have helped fund the organization. Other international bankers and financiers Paul Warburg, Jacob Schiff, Otto Kahn, and representatives of the family of J.P. Morgan rounded out the group’s backers.

Interestingly enough, these same funders all happened to have been intimately involved with both the panic of 1907 and the ensuing creation of the Federal Reserve.

The CFR’s founding president was J.P. Morgan Jr’s personal attorney, John W. Davis. Vice President Paul Cravath also represented Morgan properties. The council’s first chairman was Russell Leffingwell, one of Morgan’s partners and trustee of the Carnegie Corporation. Since most of the early CFR members had connections to Morgan, it’s been said that the council was heavily influenced by Morgan’s interests.

The CFR played a key role in American policy during World War II and beyond. Journalist J. Anthony Lucas noted, “From 1945 well into the sixties, Council members were in the forefront of America’s globalist activism.”

According to the CFR’s own mission statement:

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher dedicated to being a resource for its members, government officials, business executives, journalists, educators and students, civic and religious leaders, and other interested citizens in order to help them better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries.

But critics dispute this goal, noting that the CFR has had its hand in every major twentieth-century conflict. Some researchers believe the CFR is set on world domination through multinational business, international treaties and world government. Admiral Chester Ward, retired judge advocate general of the U.S. Navy and a longtime CFR member, was quoted as saying,

“The main purpose of the Council on Foreign Relations is promoting the disarmament of U.S. sovereignty and national independence and submergence into an all-powerful, one-world government.” 

He also went on to warn,

“The most powerful clique in these elitist groups have one objective in common—they want to bring about the surrender of the sovereignty and the national independence of the United States. A second clique of international members in the CFR … comprises the Wall Street international bankers and their key agents. Primarily, they want the world banking monopoly from whatever power ends up in the control of global government”

He detailed the CFR’s methods in a 1975 book coauthored with Phyllis Schlafly titled Kissinger on the Couch:

 “Once the ruling members of the CFR have decided that the U.S. Government should adopt a particular policy, the very substantial research facilities of CFR are put to work to develop arguments, intellectual and emotional, to support the new policy, and to confound and discredit, intellectually and politically, any opposition …”

The inner workings of the CFR may be obscured from the public, but they produce a publication called ‘Foreign Affairs,’ which some believe is used to signal desired policies and future direction to those in power.

Even the Encyclopaedia Britannica admitted,

“Ideas put forward tentatively in this journal often, if well received by the Foreign Affairs community, appear later as U.S. government policy or legislation; prospective policies that fail this test usually disappear.” 

In effect, laws and government policies are not written by the people, but by the CFR for the benefit of the ruling class.

It is worth noting that every US Government administration since the Council’s inception has been packed with CFR members; the Clinton administration had over 100 Council members serving.

(Even Donald Trump’s administration wasn’t free of CFR influence.)

Gary Allen, whose book None Dare Call It Conspiracy sold more than five million copies despite being ignored by the establishment media, commented just before the 1972 national elections,

“There really was not a dime’s worth of difference [between presidential candidates]. Voters were given the choice between CFR world government advocate Nixon and CFR world government advocate Humphrey. Only the rhetoric was changed to fool the public.”

Allen echoed the dismay of many independent researchers of the time, who were suspicious of the CFR’s influence on our elections when he wrote,

“Democrats and Republicans must break the Insider control of their respective parties. The CFR-types and their flunkies and social climbing opportunist supporters must be invited to leave or else the Patriots must leave.”

The CFR’s tentacles are not limited only to presidential cabinets, but reach deep into the intelligence community as well. Almost every CIA director since Allen Dulles has been a CFR member. Researchers have alleged that the CIA, in fact, serves as a security force, not just for corporate America, but for friends, relatives and fraternity brothers of the CFR.

This arrangement seems to serve as a two-way street. According to some researchers, the CFR has long been the CIA’s principal constituency in the American public.

Article II of the CFR’s bylaws states that anyone revealing details of CFR meetings can be dropped from membership, thus qualifying the CFR as a secret society. This has caused the CFR to be the subject of a slew of conspiracies.

The CFR’s invitation-only membership, which was originally capped at 1,600 participants today numbers more than 5,000 of the most influential leaders in finance, commerce, communications and academia.

CFR Admission is an extremely discriminating and grueling process: candidates must be proposed by a current member, seconded by another member, approved by a committee, screened by a professional staff, and then, finally, must be approved by the Board of Directors.

The organization’s secrecy has been thoroughly protected by the western media. Journalist J. Anthony Lucas noted in 1971,

“Analysts of the Soviet press say the Council crops up more regularly in Pravda and Izvestia than it does in the New York Times …” 

The CFR’s Board of Directors has historically been a who’s who of globalist financiers, establishment politicians, representatives of the military-industrial complex and heads of the world’s largest corporations.

Current board members include BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, Emerson Collective founder and Ghislaine Maxwell confidant Laurene Powell Jobs and senior vice president and CFO of Alphabet and Google Ruth Porat, to name a few. The general CFR membership is composed of Wall Street types, international bankers, executives of powerful foundations, members of various think tanks and other tax-exempt foundations. There are also ambassadors, past and present presidents of the United States, secretaries of state, lobbyists, media conglomerate owners, university presidents and professors. Even federal and Supreme Court judges have joined the ranks, along with members of the military from both NATO and the Pentagon.

The running theme is power.

In addition to individual membership, the CFR also offers a corporate membership program, through which subscribing companies are provided a twice-a-year dinner briefing by government officials like the Treasury Secretary or the CIA director.

Some of the major corporate members include Apple, Bank of America, BlackRock, Chevron, Citi, ExxonMobil, Goldman Sachs, Google, Meta, PepsiCo, Nasdaq, and Morgan Stanley. This list is by no means comprehensive; in fact, it barely scratches the surface.

Though it is impossible to know the inner workings of the CFR, it is safe to say that the group’s influence is palpable.

Maybe the CFR is exactly what it claims to be, maybe it’s not.

Are these prestigious individuals merely part of some fancy club? Or are they the archetypal ‘men behind the curtain?’

When it comes to modern secret societies, our enduring uncertainty seems to be the only constant.

Why Madness Rules

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By guest writer Peter van Els

For centuries absolute power and the associated privileges were in the hands of aristocrats, the nobility and the ecclesiastical authorities. Their will was truth and law. That changed when the French Revolution broke out. (1789–1799) Old ideas of absolutism, aristocracy and the power of the church were replaced by ideals, in the following words; ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.’

The individual was central, people had the right to individuality, the right to freedom and choice. The right to be, the ‘I’ became the center. Rene Descrates, French Philosopher (1596-1650) had already given a pass, because he made the following statement: “I think, therefore I am”, in 2023 it is: “I consume, therefore I am.”

‘Freedom’ is a relative concept, because there is no real autonomy, independence. The only true freedom is the freedom within yourself. The freedom and choice to do the right thing.(Lea Ipy) In 2023, ‘equality’ is far from it, the richest are getting richer and inequality is increasing every year. ‘Brotherhood’ is a forgotten concept in these times, where individualization, egoism, narcissism, the ‘I’ and economics, capitalism, neoliberalism are central.

In the past, the nobility and the church ruled – although the church still had a lot of influence until the end of the fifties. My generation still went to church every Sunday – with a strong hand and had absolutism, there were no boundaries for them. Borders were only for the bourgeoisie. Now those walls have been broken down and there is more freedom for the individual, fewer boundaries and boundlessness has increased.

Note: It is mainly about the Western world, but the Western world has largely been world-determining and economy, money, power is still the first priority, because a well-known phenomenon is that power always corrupts.

Man took over from the ecclesiastical institutions and became the universe of his own ‘happiness’, his own individual, his own identity, but that ‘freedom’ also created emptiness, meaninglessness and loneliness, one had to reinvent oneself. And doesn’t this new age create new Psychiatric disorders, new suffering?

The dominant ideology to this day is liberalism (origin: the Enlightenment), politically and socially. The ‘freedom’ of the individual was reflected, among other things, in the pursuit of a market in which the government should adopt a restrained attitude. Postmodernism entered an individualized, neoliberal society, where everyone is alone in the world, with their own responsibility, their own success and where you can buy ‘happiness’ and ‘freedom’.

After the demise of old powers, including the church and especially traditional upbringing (both parents, families and the community were involved in this), norms, values, ethical awareness, morality and boundaries have shifted and become blurred, there are hardly any boundaries anymore, there is no limit. Our new religion has become to consume and consume ‘enlightened’ (to fill the spiritual emptiness within us?), where greed has become a virtue (Greed is Good) and our capitalist society preaches ‘happiness’. Another new commandment is; ‘Thou shalt enjoy’.

Margaret Thatcher; “There is no such thing as society. There are only individuals.”

However, that individual ‘freedom’ also has its downside, namely the increasing degree of loneliness, fear of abandonment, identity problems, emptiness and the loss of meaning. Loneliness, both physical and psychological, is one of the biggest problems of the western world in modern times. In addition, since the 1960s, divorces have increased sharply and people are getting married less. People, children and young people become displaced and detached and search for new forms of meaning.

This puts enormous pressure on people, especially young people, who are brought up under completely different educational, living and environmental conditions. The time of self-development, of self-realization is not an easy road and besides, if you don’t make it, if you are not ‘successful’, it is your own fault, in a world full of lonely souls. However, most of them are not ‘successful’ and thus one creates more losers, more people who drop out, than winners. Fate is often less kind and is also partly determined by their background. Some people are born under good circumstances (familial), but most are born under much more difficult circumstances. (e.g. poverty, divorced parents)

Our young people grow up with the idea that they are at the center of the world and more often grow up without a father figure. When they are raised by both parents, they regularly have to meet high standards and are often spoiled, they always get and want their way, they are spoiled without limits. Attachment has become detachment. It is therefore not surprising that many children, young people and the elderly suffer from separation anxiety, unstable interpersonal relationships, identity problems, mood swings and often a negative self-image. They are impulsive and have suicidal tendencies and self-mutilation. In addition, there is a chronic feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness and a certain intense anger. And there is a high degree of stress/(performance drive) pressure, which affects many. These are all symptoms of borderline disorder, where we’ve gone too far, of “freedom” for everyone. – for one more than for the other of course – to a pretty diseased society. So many damaged children, so many damaged lives. We pay a heavy price for our torn, lonely lives. But it can always get worse, from bad to worse.

From Borderline Times (Dirk de Wachter 2011) to Psychopathic Times

Our primal instinct includes among other things hunting and maternal instinct. The primitive man and today’s modern man are unfortunately not that different, they were hunters then and they are still hunters now and the biggest predator, those at the top of our food chain are psychopaths in leadership positions. It’s eat or be eaten.

Perverse Incentives

A rotten system attracts rotten people. Capitalism, power, greed, ego, stimulate perversity, insanity in man. Looking for successful managers, who are also amply rewarded, creates/nourishes psychopathy and narcissism in man. We ourselves have paved/created the way for this kind of sick behavior, because we are fed with it on a daily basis. In applications for a managerial position, people ask, among other things; Do you dare to take risks? Are you willing to make tough decisions? Are you stress resistant? These are important skills for a managerial position, but is there a sane or a psychopathic manager in front of you? That is a crucial distinction, but is so hard to discern. Debates are held in universities and debate is seen as a true art, whether it is based on truth/facts or not, it doesn’t matter. It is about the debate and when one defends one’s position best and with convincing argumentation, wins. He is rewarded, he gets good grades. Talk for the sake of talking, endless chatter. How do you feed the psychopath? There are also neuropsychologists who guide stock market traders and hedge fund managers in making risky decisions.

The Psychopathic Leader (PL)

They are sellers of confidence, masters of deception, and social chameleons of subterfuge. They are psychopathic ruthless predators and know how to find the defenseless, lonely, vulnerable and naive people and leave them exploited, hurt, bewildered, and drained. These people are the food for such hyenas. As malleable as the liberal man thought he was, he can end up completely dehumanized.

A lot of research has been done into the criminal, ‘unsuccessful’ psychopath and is now well understood, but the ‘successful’ psychopathic leader remains almost under the radar, because of their high intelligence and high degree of self-control. They are snakes in suits, (Snakes in Suits, Babiak & Hare 2006), the man behind the mask and they are almost elusive, making madness more and more sneaky. Psychopathic leaders can be very skilled at hiding their antisocial behavior behind their attractive leadership facade because of their high self-control and their technique of impressing. Therefore, the PL is specifically highlighted here.

Robert D. Hare (Canada, 1934, philosopher and researcher) general description is as follows. “They are charming, manipulative and intimidatingly charismatic. A lot of (verbal) violence is used to control others and to satisfy their own needs. They are unscrupulous and do what they want. They do not obey rules or laws because they do not apply to them. They know no regret or guilt”.

“If you are smart, you will quickly try to express your pathological tendencies in a legitimate way: By seeking positions of power and control. Organizations, multinationals, banks, wall street, systems and politics are ideally suited for that. When it revolves around money, power, prestige, you will find them.” (Manfred Kets de Vries, Psychoanalyst). Important addition: a) Power corrupts. b) Power attracts corrupt people. c) We put corrupt people at the top ourselves. d) The corrupt system they work in makes them corrupt. Behind this sympathetic facade of the PL, a lot of damage is often done.

Dissertation Désiré Palmen on Psychopathic Leaders (PL)

There are two types of psychopathy, primary and secondary psychopathy, with the controlled primary psychopathic type being the most ‘successful’ type. This type is defined as a combination of innate fearlessness and emotional shallowness with a high level of social competence and good to excellent executive functioning. Well-controlled, purposeful, intelligent and charming.

Secondary psychopathy, (the criminal psychopath) is more strongly defined by destructive social experiences. Intense feelings. High level of subconscious fear and negative, unstable emotional nervousness and are often more impulsive and hostile as a result. They lack “the mask of sanity” and the charm, charisma, intelligence, and self-control of the primary type.

A PL exhibits immoral behavior, is narcissistic, loyal to himself, lacks conscience and empathy, and has a great desire to control his environment. Characteristics of psychopathic and narcissistic personalities: Are extremely ambitious, obsessed with increasing power and demand admiration. They are convinced that they are entitled to privileges and extra benefits. They surround themselves with people they can dominate. Brilliant at manipulation. Charming and charismatic, ruthlessly humiliate others, lie, intimidate, verbally attack, feign empathy and concern.

The “successful” psychopath uses indirect forms of aggression. They lie, cheat, manipulate and, if necessary, bring others into disrepute. They have the urge to predominate, to dominate. Gaining/having power can lead to anti-social behaviour, such as cheating, fraud, manipulations, workplace harassment and white-collar crime. The consequences are dramatic for companies and in politics. Well-being suffers from PL. Studies show that many PL are not competent for important positions. Often negative outcomes, are related to finances, employee well-being (high turnover and low engagement) and ethics.

Take a look at the senate, the lower house, the second chamber and our government, don’t you see and hear them? There are so many psychopaths in important positions and there is a lack of knowledge and understanding of PL. In reality, there are many more PL than are currently known, due to lack of research, these people are difficult to classify (the face behind the mask), precisely because they are so intelligent (in playing people) and have high self-control. They don’t like to participate in investigations, of course, and are likely to out-compete the investigators and easily pass a lie detector as well. They are brilliant chameleons.

In a democratic government, politicians with a high level of integrity and moral values are absolutely necessary. When there is more equality, prosperity, well-being, there is less violence, more contentment and mental, physical health. If we want to heal the world, we must put plasters on the stinking wound. Not feeding insanity, but feeding common sense, wisdom and love. The way forward is that of the heart.

Nothing has been written here yet about the differences between men and women, nor about the role of testosterone, neurotransmitters, pills, drugs and alcohol. (maybe in another piece) That neurotransmitters, drugs, medicines, alcohol play a very important role is a fact and that is also an indication why we are NOW living in times of De-lusion.

“Our main task is to pursue virtue in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only virtuous action can make life beautiful and dignified.” (Albert Einstein)

Big thanks go to: Désiré Palmen, Dirk de Wachter, Paul Verhaeghe, Robert Hare, Lien Decorte, Wikipedia, Google, many other philosophers, psychiatrists, writers. journalists and thanks also to my brother, daughters, friend Joris and my American friend Ethan Indigo Smith.

New Twitter Files: How Twitter Rigged the COVID Debate

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THE TWITTER FILES: HOW TWITTER RIGGED THE COVID DEBATE

– By censoring info that was true but inconvenient to U.S. govt. policy
– By discrediting doctors and other experts who disagreed
– By suppressing ordinary users, including some sharing the CDC’s *own data*
– By censoring info that was true but inconvenient to U.S. govt. policy
– By discrediting doctors and other experts who disagreed
– By suppressing ordinary users, including some sharing the CDC’s *own data*

2. So far the Twitter Files have focused on evidence of Twitter’s secret blacklists; how the company functioned as a kind of subsidiary of the FBI; and how execs rewrote the platform’s rules to accommodate their own political desires. 
3. What we have yet to cover is Covid. This reporting, for The Free Press, @TheFP, is one piece of that important story. 
4. The United States government pressured Twitter and other social media platforms to elevate certain content and suppress other content about Covid-19. 
5. Internal files at Twitter that I viewed while on assignment for @TheFP showed that both the Trump and Biden administrations directly pressed Twitter executives to moderate the platform’s pandemic content according to their wishes. 
6. At the onset of the pandemic, according to meeting notes, the Trump admin was especially concerned about panic buying. They came looking for “help from the tech companies to combat misinformation” about “runs on grocery stores.” But . . . there were runs on grocery stores.Image
7. It wasn’t just Twitter. The meetings with the Trump White House were also attended by Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others.Image
8. When the Biden admin took over, one of their first meeting requests with Twitter executives was on Covid. The focus was on “anti-vaxxer accounts.” Especially Alex Berenson:Image
9. In the summer of 2021, president Biden said social media companies were “killing people” for allowing vaccine misinformation. Berenson was suspended hours after Biden’s comments, and kicked off the platform the following month. 
10. Berenson sued (and then settled with) Twitter. In the legal process Twitter was compelled to release certain internal communications, which showed direct White House pressure on the company to take action on Berenson.

​​alexberenson.substack.com/p/jesse-jackso…Image

11. A December 2022 summary of meetings with the White House by Lauren Culbertson, Twitter’s Head of U.S. Public Policy, adds new evidence of the White House’s pressure campaign, and cements that it repeatedly attempted to directly influence the platform. 
12. Culbertson wrote that the Biden team was “very angry” that Twitter had not been more aggressive in deplatforming multiple accounts. They wanted Twitter to do more.Image
13. Twitter executives did not fully capitulate to the Biden team’s wishes. An extensive review of internal communications at the company revealed employees often debating moderation cases in great detail, and with more care than was shown by the government toward free speech. 
14. But Twitter did suppress views—many from doctors and scientific experts—that conflicted with the official positions of the White House. As a result, legitimate findings and questions that would have expanded the public debate went missing. 
15. There were three serious problems with Twitter’s process:

First, much of the content moderation was conducted by bots, trained on machine learning and AI – impressive in their engineering, yet still too crude for such nuanced work. 

16. Second, contractors, in places like the Philippines, also moderated content. They were given decision trees to aid in the process, but tasking non experts to adjudicate tweets on complex topics like myocarditis and mask efficacy data was destined for a significant error rateexample template—deactivate...
17 Third, most importantly, the buck stopped with higher level employees at Twitter who chose the inputs for the bots and decision trees, and subjectively decided escalated cases and suspensions. As it is with all people and institutions, there was individual and collective bias 
18. With Covid, this bias bent heavily toward establishment dogmas. 
19. Inevitably, dissident yet legitimate content was labeled as misinformation, and the accounts of doctors and others were suspended both for tweeting opinions and demonstrably true information. 
20. Exhibit A: Dr. Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, tweeted views at odds with US public health authorities and the American left, the political affiliation of nearly the entire staff at Twitter.Image
21. Internal emails show an “intent to action” by a moderator, saying Kulldorff’s tweet violated the company’s Covid-19 misinformation policy and claimed he shared “false information.”Image
22. But Kulldorff’s statement was an expert’s opinion—one which also happened to be in line with vaccine policies in numerous other countries. Yet it was deemed “false information” by Twitter moderators merely because it differed from CDC guidelines. 
23. After Twitter took action, Kulldorff’s tweet was slapped with a “Misleading” label and all replies and likes were shut off, throttling the tweet’s ability to be seen and shared by many people, the ostensible core function of the platform:Image
24. In my review of internal files, I found countless instances of tweets labeled as “misleading” or taken down entirely, sometimes triggering account suspensions, simply because they veered from CDC guidance or differed from establishment views. 
25. A tweet by @KelleyKga, a self-proclaimed public health fact checker, with 18K followers, was flagged as “Misleading,” and replies and likes disabled, even though it displayed the CDC’s *own data.*Image
26. Internal records showed that a bot had flagged the tweet, and that it received many “tattles” (what the system amusingly called reports from users). That triggered a manual review by a human who– despite the tweet showing actual CDC data–nevertheless labeled it “Misleading” 
27. Tellingly, the tweet by @KelleyKga that was labeled “Misleading” was a reply to a tweet that contained actual misinformation.

Covid has never been the leading cause of death from disease in children. Yet that tweet remains on the platform, and without a “misleading” label.Image

28. Whether by humans or algorithms, content that was contrarian but true was still subject to getting flagged or suppressed

This tweet was labeled “Misleading,” even though the owner of this account, @_euzebiusz_, a physician, was referring to the results of a published studyImage

29. Andrew Bostom, a Rhode Island physician, was permanently suspended from Twitter after receiving multiple strikes for misinformation. One of his strikes was for a tweet referring to the results from a peer reviewed study on mRNA vaccines.Image
30. A review of Twitter log files revealed that an internal audit, conducted after Bostom’s attorney contacted Twitter, found that only 1 of Bostom’s 5 violations were valid.Image
31. The one Bostom tweet found to still be in violation cited data that was legitimate but inconvenient to the public health establishment’s narrative about the risks of flu versus Covid in children.Image
32. That this tweet was not only flagged by a bot, but its violation manually affirmed by a staff member is telling of both the algorithmic and human bias at play. Bostom’s account was suspended for months and was finally restored on Christmas Day. 
33. Another example of human bias run amok was the reaction to this tweet by Trump. Many Trump tweets led to extensive internal debates, and this one was no different.Image
34. In a surreal exchange, Jim Baker, at the time Twitter’s Deputy General Counsel, asks why telling people to not be afraid wasn’t a violation of Twitter’s Covid-19 misinformation policy.Image
35. Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of Trust & Safety, had to explain that optimism wasn’t misinformation.Image
36. Remember @KelleyKga with the CDC data tweet? Twitter’s response to her is clarifying: “we will prioritize review and labeling of content that could lead to increased exposure or transmission.”Image
37. Twitter made a decision, via the political leanings of senior staff, and govt pressure, that the public health authorities’ approach to the pandemic – prioritizing mitigation over other concerns – was “The Science” . . . 
38. Information that challenged that view, such as showing harms of vaccines, or that could be perceived as downplaying the risks of Covid, especially to children, was subject to moderation, and even suppression. No matter whether such views were correct or adopted abroad. 
39. What might this pandemic and its aftermath have looked like if there had been a more open debate on Twitter and other social media platforms—not to mention the mainstream press—about the origins of Covid, about lockdowns, about the true risks of Covid in kids, and much more? 
40. Thanks to @ShellenbergerMD, @lwoodhouse, @lhfang and the team @TheFP for their help reporting this story. 

The First Batch of “Twitter Files” and the Ensuing Brouhaha

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Elon Musk, Twitter’s controversial new owner, gave journalist Matt Taibbi and others unfettered access to Twitter’s internal documents. Taibbi released a series of internal documents on Friday suggesting that the Biden campaign and Democratic National Committee were able to manipulate speech on the platform through tools that Twitter made available.

That manipulation included but was not limited to, the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story after it was first reported by the New York Post. The emails included in the tweets appear to cite requests from “the Biden team” and “DNC” including confirmations that Twitter “handled” their requests to delete posts.

Taibbi has claimed that the censorship machine impacted both “celebrities and unknowns alike” and that while both Republicans and Democrats both had access to it, the censorship was skewed by a leftist bias among the Twitter workforce. 

Here are the tweets:

 

One tweet showed that Democratic operatives could submit requests to the platform to remove tweets and that these requests were honored. “By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine,” Taibbi wrote. “One executive would write to another:  ‘More to review from the Biden team.’ The reply would come back: ‘Handled.'”

A second post showed screenshots with takedown requests from the Democratic National Committee.

The thread went on to address the Hunter Biden laptop story, with Taibbi saying he saw “”no evidence… of any government involvement in the laptop story.” He further asserted that the company’s decision to throttle the story was made at the highest levels, but was done without the knowledge of then-CEO Jack Dorsey.

Among those who questioned these measures was a lone Democrat.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) was the only Democrat lawmaker who expressed concerns with Twitter over the social media company’s censorship of Hunter Biden’s laptop just before the 2020 presidential election, according to internal discussions released by new Twitter CEO Elon Musk.

In an email to Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s former head of Trust & Safety, Khanna told her Twitter’s decision to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story was “Generating huge backlash on [Capitol] hill.”

Gadde “quickly” replied to Khanna, explaining the Twitter rules and discussing former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany’s suspension from Twitter for sharing the Biden laptop story on their platform.

“We put out a clarifying thread of Tweets earlier this evening to explain our policy around the posting of private information and linking directly to hacked materials,” Gadde said.

Still, Khanna seemed more concerned with constitutional violations than violations of the Twitter rules.

“Hope you’re well Vijaya! But this seems a violation of the 1st Amendment principles,” Khanna responded before highlighting New York Times v. Sullivan, a landmark Supreme Court decision on the first amendment that has implications for members of the press.

Khanna continued:

If there is a hack of classified information or other information that could expose a serious war crime and the NYT was to publish it, I think the NYT should have that right. A journalist should not be held accountable for the illegal actions of the source unless they actively aided the hack. So to restrict the distribution of that material, especially regarding a Presidential candidate, seems not in the keeping of the principles of NYT v Sullivan.

Khanna expressed his concerns to Gadde even though he is a self-described “total Biden partisan,” convinced the Biden family “didn’t do anything wrong.”

Khanna also said Twitter’s decision to censor the story brought more attention to Biden’s laptop than the “relatively innocuous emails” found on the laptop’s hard drive. He cautioned that Twitter’s censorship “is now leading to serious efforts to curtail section 230.”

One of many questions that remain is whether or not this was a natural occurrence, or something more nefarious. Are we going to find the intelligence communities’ fingerprints all over this situation? Have we already? Certainly, the FBI was involved, to the surprise of absolutely no one.

FBI Involvement?

It’s come out that  James Baker, a former top attorney for the FBI, went to work for Twitter and was one of the people who approved suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story on the platform.

As per the Emails:

“I support the conclusion that we need more facts to assess whether the materials were hacked. At this stage, however, it is reasonable for us to assume that they may have been and that caution is warranted,” he said to other Twitter employees in an email discussing how to handle the matter.

“There are some facts that indicate the materials may have been hacked, while there are others indicating that the computer was either abandoned and-or the owner consented to allow the repair shop to access it for at least some purposes,” he said. “We simply need more information.”

Media Reaction

The blue checks of the world were chiming in as Taibbi released his tweets.

Predictably, establishment simps came out of the woodwork to tell you how you should think/feel about him now that he’s done what any journalist worth their salt would have done: reporting one of the biggest exclusive scoops of the year.

Naturally, The New York Times, Washington Post, CBS News, and ABC News ignored the story over the weekend.

Radio host Clay Travis tweeted, “there is not one single article about @elonmusk or the @twitter email release last night on @nytimes app this morning.”

“The @washingtonpost , which literally has ‘Democracy dies in darkness’ at the top of its paper: not one single article about @elonmusk or @twitter ’s email release last night,” Travis continued. “How is this possible @JeffBezos ? Do you own a newspaper or a propaganda rag?”

In response, Musk tweeted, “That is because The New York Times has become, for all intents and purposes, an unregistered lobbying firm for far left politicians.”

Viva Frei also chimed in:

 

GOP Summons

The Incoming House GOP chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky) plans to summon Twitter execs over the suppression of the Hunter Biden censorship during the critical 2020 election cycle.

‘I can promise you this: Every employee at Twitter who was involved in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story will have an opportunity to come before Congress and explain their actions to the American people,” Comer told Fox News.

“This story’s just beginning … because we’re going to have every single person at Twitter that was involved in this in front of the House Oversight Committee as soon as possible.”

 

Brazil Election Interference?

On the same day that Taibbi released the ‘Twitter Files’, Elon Musk admitted that Twitter may have interfered in the recent Brazilian election as well.

Left-wing candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva beat incumbent Jair Bolsonaro by a narrow margin of just 1.8% in late October to become Brazil’s next President.

Many have alleged that Twitter banned accounts that supported Bolsonaro and boosted accounts and stories that were favorable to left-wing candidates in Brazil.

After the ‘Twitter Files’ were released that showed that the US government colluded with Twitter to interfere in the 2020 election, Twitter users asked Musk to look into what other elections Twitter may have interfered with.

Musk said that he was currently looking into claims that Twitter interfered in the Brazilian election.

In the past, Twitter removed an earlier post from Jair Bolsonaro praising Hydroxychloroquine as an optional treatment for COVID-19.

As reported earlier, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has celebrated the sale of Twitter to Tesla CEO Elon Musk. About an hour after the confirmation of the change of command of the social network, Bolsonaro retweeted a message from Musk in which he defends freedom of speech on Twitter.

Martin Armstrong on the Dutch Farming Crisis

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The following article was originally posted at Armstrong Economics


This is one of those unbelievable stories of how Climate Change is being taken to such an extreme, we will unleash a serious wave of deaths from both starvation and coming freezing temperatures without fuel. The Dutch government actually is planning to buy out and close as many as 3,000 farms in the country, which set off a major protest with growers stood against their insane leaders’ attempt to now cut the country’s nitrogen emissions by 50% according to the EU deadline of 2030. This is all in the face of a total lack of ANY scientific evidence that any of this has ever changed the climate which has historically always changed.

Nobody will address how all the so-called scientists swore we were headed into an ice age during the 1970s. Then Al Gore singled handedly turned it around and said no – it’s global warming. Then to cope with bouts of cold weather, they called it Climate Change so if it was hot or cold they would NEVER be wrong.

These Dutch politicians have now said that they plan to allocate some $25 billion to buy out farmers stripping them of their farms and livelihood. They want to now purchase between 2,000 and 3,000 Dutch farms stripping them of their property rights and the very freedom that is the distinction between a free society and an authoritarian dream of relentless and endless power.

Where the Great Depression was made really “great” because there was also an environmental crisis known as the Dust Bowl, this time politicians want to create the same crisis all over again. Agriculture accounted for 40% of the Civil Workforce at the time in the USA. This is what drove unemployment to 25%. This time, we have politicians deliberately seeking to create a major food crisis all in the name of Climate Change.

It took the Dow Jones Industrials 26 years to ever retest the 1929 high. The Great Depression upended the civil workforce. It took World War II to create employment and to reduce the world population to enable everything to restart from square one. Ironically, it took the combustion engine to replace the labor in agriculture just to prevent massive starvation. Now that is what they want to destroy in addition to crops.

The Dutch plan to halve its nitrogen emissions by 2030 in accordance with European Union conservation rules, looks to be far more drastic. To meet that target, the government estimates that 11,200 farms will have to close, and 17,600 others will have to reduce their livestock numbers significantly.

What we must understand is that just back in the 1980s, the Netherlands was deeply concerned that they would be unable to feed its 17 million people. They were on a mission to produce twice as much food using half as many resources in a country that is just a bit bigger than the state of Maryland.

Netherlands’ policies to expand food production were accomplished and they became the world’s second-largest exporter of agricultural products by value behind the United States. Therefore, this sudden attack on farming is more than just a U-Turn. With the Netherlands as a major food producer is among the largest exporters of agricultural and food technology, this threatens food shortages spreading as a contagion.

The Netherlands produces 4 million cows, 13 million pigs, and 104 million chickens annually and is Europe’s biggest meat exporter. The EU is out to upend the economy of the Netherlands all for this fictional Climate Change theory. The Netherlands also provides vegetables to much of Western Europe. They have nearly 24,000 acres — almost twice the size of Manhattan — of crops grown in greenhouses that require less fertilizer and water. Dutch farms use only a half-gallon of water to grow about a pound of tomatoes, while the global average is more than 28 gallons.

What is taking place in the Netherlands is a very dark omen for humanity. The most efficient nation on earth for producing food is to be destroyed all for CO2. These people will not be satisfied until the death rate rises and civil unrest explodes as people turn hungry. As they say – even an honest man will become a thief when starving.