The latest installment of the Twitter Files reveals that the censorship-loving leftists running the show before Elon Musk took over the platform used tech tools to suppress content posted by Breitbart News after adding a “bot” to the official Breitbart News Twitter account. As journalist Matt Taibbi explains, “The bot ends up becoming an automated tool invisibly watching both Trump and, apparently, Breitbart.”

Part three of the Twitter Files, released through journalist Matt Taibbi on Friday night, focused on the company’s unprecedented decision to blacklist former President Donald Trump’s account on January 8, 2021.

READ MORE:

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2022/12/09/twitter-files-censor-happy-executives-used-tools-to-suppress-breitbart-news/

THE ESTABLISHMENT — THE EMPIRE WITHIN THE EMPIRE: THE PENTAGON AND ITS LACKEYS THE CIA AND THE FBI — HATED TRUMP AND STILL DO. THE EMPIRE WITHIN THE EMPIRE HATES THE THOUGHT THAT TRUMP MIGHT COME BACK IN CHARGE OF THE EMPIRE — THEIR EMPIRE. SO AT EVERY OCCASION THEY SHUT HIM UP — THROUGH TWITTER OF COURSE, THE COURTS, VARIOUS RAIDS ON HIS HOUSE — OR RIDICULE HIM SAY THROUGH SHOW LIKE STEPHEN COLBERT'S, THE MAN WITH THE VOICE OF A PACKET OF CHIPS BEING RUSTLED BY THE PATRON SITTING NEXT YOU AT THE MOVIES, AND AS FUNNY AS AN UNDERTAKER ON CRACK.

NOW ELON MUSK HAS TO BE CAREFUL... HE HAS SEEN HOW EXPLAINING THE REALITY OF THE DONBASS REFERENDUM GOT HIM INTO HELL-WATER. TRYING TO SHOW THE WAY THE EMPIRE HAS SHUT DOWN TRUMP AND OPENLY SUPPRESSED THE CROCKERIES OF THE BIDENS DEMANDS GUTS AND HE DOES IT UNDER THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS WHICH 99 PER CENT OF JOURNALISTS ARE AFRAID OF.

WE SHALL SEE. THE MEDIA AT LARGE IS NOW SUPPORTING DE SANTIS AGAINST TRUMP. THIS IS NOT BY ACCIDENT. THE MEDIA HATES TRUMP AS WELL, THOUGH AT LEAST 49 PER CENT OF AMERICANS LOVED HIM....

WHETHER TRUMP IS A FOOL OR NOT, HE HAS THE CAPACITY TO RUFFLE THE EMPIRE WITHIN AND READ THIS AGAIN:

It turned out that the generals had rules, standards, and expertise, not blind loyalty. The President’s loud complaint to John Kelly one day was typical: “You fucking generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?”

“Which generals?” Kelly asked.

“The German generals in World War II,” Trump responded.

“You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?” Kelly said.

But, of course, Trump did not know that. “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,” the President replied. In his version of history, the generals of the Third Reich had been completely subservient to Hitler; this was the model he wanted for his military. Kelly told Trump that there were no such American generals, but the President was determined to test the proposition.

THE POINT IS NOT ALL THE GENERALS TRIED TO TOP HITLER....

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

By Sam Husseini / Substack

Two years after he lost the presidency, Trump continues to dominate much discussion in the US, yet the meaning of Trump’s time as president is still poorly understood by many across the political spectrum.

There are several layers to it, but at his core, Trump was the opposable thumb of the establishment. He pretended to be against it, effectively logrolling with CNN, but effectively helped it grab more. Trump, a creation of Big Media, posed as a great critic of it.

This took place during his presidency, see below, but it is taking place now in a different form. His railing against Big Tech likely makes many more trusting of Big Tech. He can raise a legitimate concern, but in a manner and with a background that is ironically functional.

The Hunter Biden laptop story is small compared to other major stories, but its suppression just before the election seems a reasonable concern. And it should be a real issue that Big Tech can skew information just before the public votes. To not deal with this seriously is to ask for perpetual October Surprise scandals and Wag the Dog scenarios. Trump talking about overriding the Constitution seems at best a counter-productive way of dealing with the issue — effectively securing the position of the establishment. Thus, even when legitimate issues are raised, Trump’s problematic manner actually facilitates the establishment narrative.

During his administration, Trump’s utility for the establishment was clear in terms of personnel. While Trump promised “America First” — he elevated some of the most notorious interventionists including Mike Pompeo, John Bolton and Elliott Abrams.

He posed as critical of NATO, calling it “obsolete” and “as bad as NAFTA” — but all the noise around that had the net effect not of the US leaving NATO and ending it, but quite the opposite. It resulted in getting European countries to spend more money on NATO, effectively making the military alliance more powerful.

Trump did things for the US establishment that no conventional president could have. He got out of various treaties the establishment wanted to get out of, but how? Trump, that’s how. He ditched the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and other arms control treaties; the Iran Deal — Biden seems in no rush to get back into. Trump actually facilitates maximalist US establishment designs as position of negotiating leverage; a sort of variation on Nixon’s “Madman” theory. The establishment long wanted to move the US embassy to Jerusalem and recognize Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights. It seemed an untenable thing for a president to do — until Trump. Presto.

And Trump benefited the establishment by effectively “Trumpwashing” a host of former Bush administration and other officials. And institutions such as the CIA and policies and laws like the Espionage Act and Continuity of Government — an actual plan to suspend the Constitution. If Trump isn’t a psyop, he should be.

When he ran in 2015-2016, he was wildly contradictory but posed as a critic of endless wars, a critic of Wall Street hedge fund managers, a defender of Wikileaks, as someone who recognized that US policy had been pro-Israel.

Trump may be a leader in this, but he’s not alone. Now, Elon Musk is playing a similar role. He’s a virtual Donald Trump — promising Free Speech but delivering more shadowbanning and explicit controls.

Trump took disgust with the establishment, largely from the right, and then worked to actually incorporate that base into the establishment.

This should seem familiar. It’s pretty much what Obama did to the left. He took the antiestablishment left and incorporated it back into the establishment by promising “Hope and Change” and delivering for war and Wall Street.

Figures like Trump and Obama promise they will help you but invariably, it’s you who ends up helping them. It gives new meaning to commodifying dissent. They commodify your dissent.

Of course their tactics were different: While Obama was like jello, even slicker than Bill Clinton and lawyerly, difficult to pin down; Trump was like an electron, capable of taking position X and not X in a matter of seconds.

The current characterization of Trump as a fringe figure may be useful for the establishment as they can help characterize him as well outside of it, to memoryhole the many ways that he served the establishment when he had actual power. This may simply be the latest chapter in his service to it. 

READ MORE:

https://scheerpost.com/2022/12/08/trump-is-the-opposable-thumb-of-the-establishment/

READ FROM TOP.

I AGREE WITH THE AUTHOR, Sam Husseini. BUT WITH A CAVEAT: I don't think TRUMP WAS CLEVER ENOUGH TO KNOW HE WAS BEING MANIPULATED BY THE ESTABLISHMENT BOFFINS IN DOING THEIR DIRTY DEEDS..... HE'S TOO MUCH OF HANDFUL FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT TO COPE WITH FOUR MORE YEARS OF STRAIT-JACKETING TRUMP..... ALL THE WARMONGERING BUMS HAVE BEEN BURNT BY TRUMP, THE NEW ONES, SAY BLINKEN AND LLOYD HAVE TO BE MORE SUBTLE......

READ FROM TOP.

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW •••••••••••••••

By Lee Camp / MintPressNews

The Pentagon – the U.S. “Defense” Department – was just audited for the fifth time. And they just announced they failed for the fifth time. If that’s not accountability, I don’t know what is!

When I say they “failed” their audit, I don’t mean they put a 9 instead of a 7 on one of the balance sheets, causing two soldiers to get accidentally left in Antarctica freezing their asses off. I mean, they really failed their audit. As The Hill put it, “The Defense Department has failed its fifth-ever audit, unable to account for more than half of its assets, but the—” Hold up. Hold up. Did ya catch that? They can’t account for over half their assets! This is the largest murder machine on the planet – nearly a trillion dollars spent every year – and they don’t know where half their shit is?! How is this not criminal?

If you worked at a shoe store, or a hardware store, or a daycare, and you couldn’t locate half your inventory, you’d be locked up right now! But apparently, if you’re simply responsible for more killing on the planet earth than any other modern organization, no one’s held accountable for anything.

Let’s get back to that quote, “The Defense Department has failed its fifth-ever audit, unable to account for more than half of its assets, but the effort is being viewed as a ‘teachable moment,’ according to its chief financial officer.” A teachable moment? It’s not like they left the gate open and their new puppy ran over to the neighbor’s yard and got all muddy. That’s a teachable moment! The U.S. military can’t account for trillions of dollars worth of killing devices.

But let me back up for a second. Federal law has required mandatory audits of all government agencies since 1990. The Pentagon simply ignored that requirement until 5 years ago. Why did no one in Congress demand they abide by federal law before that? Because it turns out – the Pentagon has all the things that go “bang-bang.” So they pretty much do whatever they want.

But even without that audit, the American people eventually found out that from 1998 to 2015, there were $21 Trillion of unaccounted-for financial adjustments on the Pentagon’s books. Believe it or not, I’m one of the few people who actually covered that story when it broke. (I would link to that video right now, except that YouTube has banned all my old videos around the world. Yay freedom of speech!) There was, however, one story in Forbes in which they asked if the government is hiding $21 Trillion in spending. And there was a great article about it in The Nation magazine by Dave Lindorff titled, “The Pentagon’s Massive Accounting Fraud Exposed.”

To put the number 21 trillion into perspective, if you made $100,000 after taxes every year of your 70-year working life, you would have made $7 Million. In order to get $21 trillion, you’d have to live that same life 3 million times – which might not be too bad if your job is masseuse trainee test subject, but it would seem quite long if your job is cattle ranch diseased bull inseminator. (And then after the first million lifetimes, they finally reveal to you that bulls are male – so you haven’t been inseminating. You’ve been… Never mind.)

But the government and some of the mainstream media defended this mysterious $21 trillion by saying, “It’s not what you think. It doesn’t mean anything’s missing. It’s just financial discrepancies.” Yet Forbes, which is no lefty commie pinko rag, would disagree. They say, “…this is not simply a matter of boring accounting. Trillions in unaccounted outlays, if that’s what’s involved here, is trillions of our tax dollars being spent without our knowledge. If that’s the case, we’re talking about the biggest government financial deception in the history of the country. …Why is our government now systematically hiding these adjustments from public sight?”

Ah, you see, when something isn’t horrible, nasty, criminal corruption, you don’t take great pains to hide it, do you? If you’re collecting carrots from your neighbor’s garden in broad daylight, then it’s likely you have permission. If you’re doing it in the dead of night with a ski mask on and your smell cloaked in high-grade wolf piss, then it’s more likely you don’t have permission. (Also it was a dead giveaway that you were giggling and going, “Carrots! Carrots just for me!”)

As The Nation magazine put it:

“For decades, the DoD’s leaders and accountants have been perpetrating a gigantic, unconstitutional accounting fraud, deliberately cooking the books to mislead the Congress and drive the DoD’s budgets ever higher… DoD has literally been making up numbers in its annual financial reports to Congress – representing trillions of dollars’ worth of seemingly nonexistent transactions… according to government records and interviews with current and former DoD officials, congressional sources, and independent experts.”

Deliberately cooking the books. Any chance we could make that the military’s slogan going forward? (I mean, “Army of one” has really been played out. Let’s switch to “Deliberately cookin’ the books and killin’ some folks.”)

Of the $21 trillion over 15 years, there was actually one year alone that had $6.5 Trillion unaccounted-for financial adjustments. In one year! If that’s not an enormous fraud, I don’t know what it is. We need to start using the word “fraud!” We can tell it’s fraud because people have tried to cover up the goddamn paper trail. Back to The Nation’s investigation — “Indeed, more than 16,000 records that might reveal either the source or the destination of some of that $6.5 Trillion, had been ‘removed’…” Sure, that sounds not great, but think of it this way — That’s actually only 2,600 missing records per trillion dollars unaccounted for. So that’s not that bad. I mean, you try to make $6.5 trillion disappear without at least a few thousand documents thrown in your fireplace. It’s not easy. Plus, this shows how hardworking our Pentagon is. Fraud of this size takes a real “can do” attitude, burning the candle at both ends, barely seein’ your family, not even callin’ your mistress back. Impressive stuff.

Our military also covers up this gigantic fraud with gibberish and nonsense. For example, because the Pentagon doesn’t want every news outlet quoting them as saying, “We failed our audit for the 5th time,” they use the word “disclaimer” to mean they don’t know what the fuck is going on. So rather than saying, “We couldn’t find out how much money the Navy spent,” they say, “That area had a disclaimer instead of a clean opinion.” See how much nicer that sounds? Here’s an actual quote from the press conference a few weeks ago by the Undersecretary of Defense Michael McCord: “So even if you haven’t yet got to the point where you’ve got — turned a disclaimer into a clean opinion. If you are going faster, that is still progress.”

Let me translate: “If one Pentagon department doesn’t know where the fuck the money’s going, and they haven’t been able to turn that into knowin’ where the fuck the money’s going, some of them are able to more quickly tell us they have no idea where the fuck the money’s going than they used to be. And that is called progress.” No it’s not! It’s not progress! Sucking quicker is not progress unless you’re on a porn set and lunch break is fast approaching.

One report described it this way: “What they found were several new weaknesses in how DOD accounted for its assets, which include nearly 2.9 million military personnel; equipment and weapons including 19,700 aircraft and more than 290 ships; and physical items including buildings, roads and fences on 4,860 sites worldwide.” Again, let me translate: “Weaknesses in how DOD accounts for assets” means they literally don’t know where a lot of this stuff is. And by “this stuff” I mean equipment, weapons, aircraft, ships and yes, even buildings! How do you idiots lose buildings?! 

“Well, sir, it was just here a minute ago. It was about 7 stories high, had windows and doors and the whole thing. …Do you happen to have a copy somewhere you can use instead?”

So, the Pentagon apparently has an $800-Billion Real Estate Problem. The Government Accountability Office euphemized this problem with a report titled, “DOD Needs to Improve Its Efforts to Identify Unutilized and Underutilized Facilities.” But it’s not just that they’re underutilized. The Pentagon has no idea what it owns, and when it does, it doesn’t know if those buildings are being used. Maybe that’s what happens when you have 30 Million acres spanning the globe in a disastrous global empire.

But it gets worse. How could it get worse than not knowing which buildings you own? How about not knowing what years you’re living in. “The Army also provided the GAO access to the Army’s own internal real estate database. Investigators noted that the Army’s database claimed that service officials reviewed facilities in the years 0012, 1776, 2201 and 3013.” Man, that is one advanced Pentagon inspection department. They’re already looking over facilities in the year 3000! Good for them. At least something at the DOD is advanced! Meanwhile, the trillion-dollar F-35 fighter jet catches on fire whenever someone turns the seat warmers on.

But despite all of this dumpster fire, the Undersecretary of Defense sounded downright chipper in his briefing. For example, he noted that “Ukraine’s ongoing war with Russia has offered DOD personnel ‘a very teachable moment for us on the audit,’ as it allows them to picture the critical nature of precise tracking of weapons and equipment in the event of a conflict.” Oh, so he’s saying sending weapons to the proxy war in Ukraine — trying to keep that war going as long as possible even as thousands of Ukrainians die — is a teachable moment because the DOD auditors can see in real-time where the weapons end up. Interesting.

Only one problem — they totally can’t. Even the mainstream media reported on it — before they were told to stop reporting on it. In August, CBS did an investigation on “Why military aid in Ukraine may not always get to the front lines.” According to the article, some responsible for delivering aid in Ukraine “…estimated that just ‘30-40%’ of the supplies coming across the border reached its final destination.” That’s right, even CBS and CNN reported that up to 70% of U.S. weaponry is not actually getting to the front lines.

After being pressured by the U.S. government, CBS and CNN have changed their reporting. But similarly, a Ukrainian veteran told The Grayzone, “The weapons are stolen, the humanitarian aid is stolen, and we have no idea where the billions sent to this country have gone.” A lot of the weaponry is simply being sold on the black market. (But there’s also the possibility that much of the U.S.-made arms were sent to the year 3000 — so the re-re-reanimated corpse of President Joe Biden can send it to the proxy war we’ll be fighting then in the Helix Nebula against an alien creature that looks a lot like a flying jellyfish but enjoys eating humans way more than our current jellyfish.)

So, let’s sum this horror show up — as The Nation magazine said “…the Pentagon’s accounting fraud amounts to theft on a grand scale—theft not only from America’s taxpayers, but also from the nation’s well-being and its future.” And that is why the Pentagon just flunked their fifth-ever audit. They will never have a legit audit. Because if they did, the American people would realize we’ve been saluting and celebrating and glorifying the largest money-laundering operation in the history of humanity. Killing thousands of innocent people is almost an afterthought to our ruling elite. That’s just what they do when they’re bored. Their real love, their true passion, is theft and fraud.

READ MORE:

https://scheerpost.com/2022/12/16/pentagon-admits-they-cant-account-for-half-their-assets/

READ FROM TOP.

SEE ALSO:

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW………………..

https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/45958

By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com

The U.S. military has been showering CNN’s retiring Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr with effusive thanks and praise for her lifetime of service, giving some insight into the cozy working relationship between the media and the war machine inside the U.S. empire.

“Today closes a remarkable career for CNN’s Barbara Starr, a leader in the Pentagon Press Corps,” reads a post by the Twitter account for U.S. Central Command. “Her aggressive reporting and tireless commitment to the truth brought this Nation closer to its military. She will forever be missed.”

Starr received a standing ovation at a Pentagon press briefing on Tuesday after Pentagon Press Secretary Pat Ryder sang her praises and thanked her for two decades on the job.

“I’d like to take this opportunity to say farewell to our media colleague, Miss Barbara Starr,” Ryder said. “Barbara has reported for CNN for over 20 years, and has been a fixture in the Pentagon Press Corps, and today marks her final day with CNN after a storied and fully-impressive — excuse me — truly impressive career.”

“So, Barbara, on behalf of Secretary of Defense Austin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Milley and the entire Department of Defense, I would like to extend a special congratulations and thank you for your many years of timely, insightful and important reporting on our nation’s most pressing defense issues,” Ryder continued.

“And as someone who has worked with you for many of those last 20 years and someone who has had to take your late-night phone calls and emails and answer your tough, but fair questions, I can say from personal experience that the U.S. public and audiences worldwide have been well served by your in-depth reporting from the Pentagon, your journalistic integrity and your determination to tell the stories of service members worldwide, and to ensure the government and DOD remain transparent and accountable to the taxpayers and the American public they serve. Congratulations again, and we wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.”

“You know Department of Defense better then [sic] most. We will miss you ! Thanks for your service to our Democracy! Free Independent Press !”, retired lieutenant general Russel L. Honoré told Starr on Twitter.

It’s hard to imagine a clearer sign that the U.S. does not have a “free independent press” than for the U.S. military to be gushing affectionately about the career of a longtime CNN Pentagon correspondent, myself. And I can’t think of a more disgraceful way for a journalist to retire than with a standing ovation at the Pentagon.

Surely there can be no clearer a mark of journalistic failure than being thanked by the U.S. military for your lifetime of service. If your journalistic relationship with the corrupt and murderous U.S. military was ever anything other than oppositional, and their feelings toward you anything but hostile, it’s because you were never a journalist. You were their PR agent.

Watch Starr uncritically parroting U.S. government claims about chemical weapons in Syria. Watch the infomercial-like way she reports on U.S. “war on terror” activity in the Middle East. Watch her enthusing about what a “win” the capture of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi was for the United States. 

Watch her finger-wagging at the president of the Philippines after he verbally insulted the president of the United States. Compare the way she talks about allegations of Russian war crimes and U.S. war crimes.

“I’ve been listening to her for years, and I can’t recall a single time she wasn’t just reading a Pentagon press release,” tweeted activist Steve Patt.

“You are so well-respected, not only here at CNN but in the broader community of journalists — I know how well-respected you are at the Pentagon,” anchor Erica Hill told Starr on CNN.

“CNN and our viewers have benefited greatly from her truly extraordinary reporting skills and her deep knowledge of the U.S. military, that I truly appreciate as a former CNN correspondent myself,” said CNN’s Wolf Blitzer during his farewell to Starr.

“So well deserved. Barbara was one of the best journalists I worked with at CNN. A Pentagon legend,” tweeted Murdoch pundit Piers Morgan.

This is everything that is wrong with news media in the Western world. Journalists are supposed to hold power to account with the light of truth, and that cannot happen if they are building warm, affectionate relationships with the people they’re meant to be aggressively scrutinizing.

If the public is getting their information about the workings of the most powerful military force ever assembled by people who are friendly with and sympathetic to that military force, then they cannot possibly be getting accurate information about it. The press cannot possibly be ensuring that “the government and DOD remain transparent and accountable to the taxpayers and the American public they serve.”

And that is of course the point. The mass media of the Western world do not exist to inform, they exist to create a compliant and obedient populace who doesn’t interfere with the mechanisms of empire or the violence necessary for upholding it. To, as CENTCOM so aptly put it, “bring the nation closer to its military.”

Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes.  For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she’s trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.

This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com and re-published with permission.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

READ MORE:

https://consortiumnews.com/2022/12/23/caitlin-johnstone-us-militarys-tribute-to-cnn-reporter/

READ FROM TOP.

SEE ALSO:

https://johnmenadue.com/a-moral-and-political-disgrace-just-11-senators-vote-no-on-858-billion-military-budget/

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....