Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger Call Out the Weaponization of Government, By Charles Taylor (Florida)

The truth, like water, has a tendency to leak out. At present this is occurring with aspects of the Covid plandemic, but it is also occurring with the US  House Judiciary Committee, over the “Twitter files,” and Big Tech censorship, and the way the government weaponised this. Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger testified to Congress. By way of summary. According to Shellenberger: “Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other companies developed a formal system for taking in moderation requests from every corner of government, from the FBI, DHS, HHS, DOD, the Global Engagement Center at State, even the CIA. For every government agency scanning Twitter, there were perhaps twenty quasi-private entities doing the same thing.”

There has been something of a small break in this, with Elon Musk giving Twitter more free speech, but as far as the evidence indicates, nothing has changed with the rest of Big Tech. This was a major issue during the Covid plandemic, where criticism of the vaxxes, and mandates, which all turned out to be true, were censored, and critics found themselves removed. This still goes on, so it is early days yet in the struggle to regain a level of free speech, that existed even a few years back.

https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1633858996523405314?s=20&utm_

https://vigilantfox.substack.com/p/so-called-journalists-send-shockwaves

“The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing Thursday on the alleged weaponization of the Federal government, as reported in the “Twitter Files.”

Two authors of such files, Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger, were invited to testify in front of Congress — and were attacked by Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D - Virgin Islands) as “so-called journalists.”

However, Rep. Plaskett’s defamatory statements are inaccurate. Mr. Taibbi and Mr. Shellenberger hold quite impressive resumes.

Matt Taibbi began his career as a journalist in Russia in the 1990s, working as a correspondent for the English-language newspaper The Moscow Times. In the 2000s, Taibbi worked as a contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine, where he gained national attention for his coverage of the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent government bailout of Wall Street. He has written ten books, including four New York Times bestsellers.

Michael Shellenberger is an American environmentalist, author, and policy analyst. Mr. Schellenberger has written several books on environmental issues, including Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, which argues against what he sees as excessive fearmongering about climate change and other environmental issues. He has also written numerous articles, essays, and opinion pieces for various publications.

Mr. Schellenberger was the first of the two invited guests to give an opening statement. Here’s a brief excerpt of what he had to say:

“Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other companies developed a formal system for taking in moderation requests from every corner of government, from the FBI, DHS, HHS, DOD, the Global Engagement Center at State, even the CIA. For every government agency scanning Twitter, there were perhaps twenty quasi-private entities doing the same thing.”

Mr. Taibbi followed with a powerful testimony. But before doing so, he clarified that he’s “not a so-called journalist.”

“Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other companies developed a formal system for taking in moderation requests from every corner of government, from the FBI, DHS, HHS, DOD, the Global Engagement Center at State, even the CIA. For every government agency scanning Twitter, there were perhaps twenty quasi-private entities doing the same thing.”

Representative Mike Johnson (R-LA) weighed in and attested that the Federal government used Twitter to censor the speech of Americans.

“Twitter was basically an FBI subsidiary before Elon Musk took it over ... The Twitter files should be a matter of bipartisan concern for every member of Congress and every American citizen because it is a bedrock principle of our Constitution that the government does not get to decide what speech is acceptable or true.”

Michael Shellenberger warned of the “Censorship Industrial Complex” — which he avouched — the Department of Homeland Security is building.

“It’s not a slippery slope. It’s an immediate leap into a terrifying mechanism that we only see in totalitarian societies.”

And when Twitter and other platforms would act as the arbiters of truth, labeling posts such as the protective benefits of natural immunity as “misinformation,” Mr. Schellengerber called that a disinformation campaign. 

“We went from a situation where we were fighting ISIS recruiting, and then it was Russian disinformation. And now they’re in a situation where they’re wanting to censor true information – accurate facts – because they’re worried that people might behave in ways that they don’t want them to? That involves mind reading at a level that is grossly inappropriate.””