21 Jan, 2023 19:44

Twitter Files revealed growing government control – Matt Taibbi

US federal agencies' influence over the platform was growing as the 2020 election drew nearer, the investigative reporter has told RT

During his examination of the Twitter Files, investigative reporter Matt Taibbi discovered a pattern of increasing government control over the social media platform, he told RT’s John Kiriakou on Saturday’s episode of ‘The Whistleblowers’.

Since purchasing Twitter for $44 billion in October, Elon Musk has released batches of documents shedding light on the platform’s previously opaque censorship policies, enlisting independent journalists to break each document dump. Independent journalist Matt Taibbi was the first chosen, publishing communications that revealed a company-wide effort to suppress reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop – the contents of which implicated the Biden family in numerous foreign corruption schemes.

“I wasn’t very interested in that story per se,”Taibbi told Kiriakou. “The question I was really interested in answering was what level of communication and coordination exists between…Twitter and federal law enforcement, and perhaps agencies beyond the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, or the White House.”

While researching Twitter’s decision to ban then-President Donald Trump’s account in early 2021, Taibbi said that he began noticing instant messages between Twitter executives “where you would see little indentations at the top of the messages that said ‘this is flagged by DHS, this is flagged by the FBI.’”

“And that right away told us something very significant, that Twitter was in the business of processing requests that came from federal law enforcement agencies,” he said.

Taibbi discovered that in the runup to the 2020 election, Twitter would receive lists of thousands of accounts to suspend. These lists were handed to the company by the FBI, CIA, NSA, Pentagon, State Department, Treasury and others, and sometimes came in the form of excel spreadsheets, which employees were expected to ban without question.

“There were so many requests, they got one batch one day and when they completed it there was a round of applause in the chat,”Taibbi told Kiriakou.

At one point, when Twitter employees received a list of accounts from the State Department to ban for spreading so-called Russian “disinformation,” they argued that they should take no action, as the department had provided no evidence. However, a Twitter executive who previously worked for the CIA told them to flag the accounts anyway, as the site’s “government partners are becoming more aggressive” with their censorship demands.

“That decision was significant, because it was one of the moments when Twitter basically realized ‘We can’t say no any more,’” Taibbi explained.

In the time since Taibbi released his first story on the Hunter Biden laptop, further reporting has revealed that Twitter assisted the US military’s online influence campaigns, censored “anti-Ukraine narratives” on behalf of multiple US intelligence agencies, suppressed “legitimate content” on Covid-19 on behalf of the White House, and participatedin the “Russiagate” hoax.

https://www.rt.com/news/570272-twitter-files-matt-taibbi/

>>18198299

Kiriakou Is a whistle blower and treated as all real whistle blowers with severe punishment under the US gov, I think it was Obama but might have been under Bush Jr

21 Jan, 2023 21:26

RT France to close after accounts frozen

The decision followed “five years of harassment” by the authorities, network head Xenia Fedorova said in a statement

RT’s French subsidiary will cease broadcasting after its accounts were frozen by the French treasury, its director, Xenia Fedorova, announced on Saturday. Paris claimed that it froze the funds in line with EU sanctions, which targeted RT’s parent company.

"After five years of harassment, the authorities in power have achieved their goal: the closure of RT France," Fedorova said in a statement shared on Twitter. Earlier this week, Fedorova said that she had received a letter from RT France’s bank indicating that the network’s funds had been frozen at the request of the French treasury, rendering it impossible for the outlet to pay its staff.

"Although RT France is not on the sanctions list and has the right to operate in France, such a decision practically paralyzes our activities,” she said at the time.

The French Finance Ministry told AFP that RT France’s assets had been frozen in compliance with the most recent EU sanctions package, and not on the government’s initiative.

The sanctions package – the ninth imposed on Moscow following the launch of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine last February – was announced by the EU last month. It blacklisted RT’s parent company, TV-Novosti, as well as a number of domestic Russian TV networks.

RT France had been forbidden from broadcasting in the EU since July, after the European Court of Justice upheld a ban imposed by EU authorities in March. However, it continued broadcasting online until its accounts were targeted. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the ban as “concerning and regrettable,” telling reporters that “the Europeans are stamping out the same ideals they’re imposing across the globe.”

A source within the Russian Foreign Ministry told the RIA Novosti and TASS news agencies on Saturday that Moscow would respond in kind to the treasury’s decision. “The blocking of RT France’s accounts will lead to retaliatory measures against French media in Russia,”the source said, adding: “The measures will be such that they will never forget them.”

RT has attracted controversy in the EU since before the conflict in Ukraine, with German regulators banning its German-language channel at the beginning of February 2022. Russia’s Foreign Ministry responded by withdrawing the press accreditation of German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle, and listing the network as a foreign agent.

https://www.rt.com/news/570273-rt-france-accounts-frozen/

21 Jan, 2023 17:47

World moving closer to ‘irreversible’ disaster – Chomsky

Humanity is facing a growing threat of nuclear war and destruction of climate, the American philosopher told RT

The world is teetering on the brink of the abyss due to an increased risk of nuclear war, failure to address environmental challenges, and diminished ability to tackle problems rationally, world-renowned philosopher and linguist Noam Chomsky told RT's Going Underground on Saturday.

During the interview, Chomsky, who is Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona, was asked to expand on his remark that humanity could be pathologically dedicated to self-destruction.

The philosopher recalled that in recent years the Doomsday Clock, which reflects how close humanity is to Armageddon, has moved closer to midnight, which symbolizes the extinction of humanity. He suggested that in several days it could be set even closer to this mark.

According to the philosopher, humanity’s main concerns are “an increasing threat of nuclear war” and “a very severe and growing threat of destruction of climate.” The latter problem persists because “states are not doing what they know they must do to solve this crisis,” he said.

The third issue, Chomsky continued, is “the deterioration of an arena of rational serious debate and deliberation” combined with “the collapse of democratic forces” around the world. The professor admitted that while it might seem that this point has nothing to do with the threat of nuclear war and climate change, rational debate is “the only hope for dealing with the first two.”

“All three have gotten considerably worse during the past year, and unless there's a sharp reversal, we'll simply be heading for a precipice, falling over, irreversible, and not in the long distant future,” he warned.

His comments come after earlier this week, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said that those who want to see Moscow defeated in Ukraine, ignore the fact that “a loss by a nuclear power in a conventional war may trigger the start of a nuclear war.” Moscow believes the Ukraine conflict to be a proxy war waged against it by the US and its allies.

However, Russia has repeatedly said that a nuclear war should never be fought, with its military doctrine allowing the use of atomic weapons only if the very existence of the state is threatened.

https://www.rt.com/news/570269-chomsky-irreversible-nuclear-war/

(It’s beyond time for Bidan to go, now)

>>18198382

Forget the bullshit of climate change, focus on the absolute evil of leaders, that want mankind to be destroyed

22 Jan, 2023 00:16

Whistleblowers expose scale of UK migrant child trafficking – Guardian

Dozens of young asylum-seekers have allegedly been kidnapped from hotels run by Home Office

The UK Home Office has turned a blind eye to the disappearance of dozens of unaccompanied migrant children from a Sussex hotel it operates as a children’s home, according to an investigation by The Guardian published on Saturday.

Of the 600 unaccompanied minors who have passed through the Home Office’s hotel in Brighton over the last 18 months, some 136 have been reported missing, and 79 of those are still unaccounted for, the news outlet found. A whistleblower for Home Office security contractor Mitie claimed the alleged kidnappings are bold, frequent, and not limited to the Brighton facility.

“Children are literally being picked up from outside the building, disappearing and not being found,” the security guard told The Guardian, suggesting “traffickers” are responsible. A similar facility in Hythe, Kent allegedly lost 10% of its young charges every week.

Police had been warning the Home Office for over a year that criminal networks would likely target the young asylum-seekers being put up in the hotel, and the location was known to be problematic – a “hotspot of exploitation,” in the words of another source from child protection services – due to the operation of county lines gangs in the area.

The security guard even admitted to have witnessed the kidnappings by county lines gangs firsthand, but claimed feeling helpless to do anything about it. “Albanian and Eritrean gangs pick them up in their BMWs and Audis and then they just vanish,” the source said.

In May, two men were actually caught in possession of three children – who were returned to the Home Office. In most cases, however, police investigations were merely “cursory,” and children were almost never returned, according to the Mitie worker.

While the whistleblowers have repeatedly warned the Home Office about the situation, “nothing much has changed,” the Guardian reported. A Brighton councillor allegedly described the lack of government action as child neglect on an “industrial scale.”

Asked what was being done to protect unaccompanied migrant children amid this kidnapping spree, the Home Office suggested it was a police problem, while the police referred questions to the Home Office. Even after it was revealed in October that 220 child asylum-seekers had gone missing from facilities funded by the agency, which housed them in hotels alongside adults whose backgrounds had not been checked, no policy changes appear to have been made – even though officials have admitted in internal communications that they are effectively running unregistered and therefore illegal children's homes.

https://www.rt.com/news/570276-home-office-migrant-children-kidnapping/

21 Jul, 2022 21:15

British pedophiles target Ukrainian refugee children

The sex offenders claimed they were providing “humanitarian assistance”

A number of known British pedophiles have been told to leave Poland after British authorities discovered they traveled there to target Ukrainian children in refugee camps, the National Crime Agency said on Thursday.

The ten men were interviewed by Polish immigration authorities before being sent home, the National Crime Agency (NCA) told the Independent. According to an NCA spokesperson, the men failed to declare their convictions upon arriving in Poland, which they were required to do by law.

The convicted predators reportedly claimed they were offering “humanitarian assistance”to refugees fleeing the conflict in Ukraine, of which at least 5,000 in Poland are unaccompanied children, the spokesperson continued.

“For us, it’s about making partners aware that these convicted child sex offenders are on their turf, for obvious reasons,” the NCA official said. “Making sure [the children are] safe is absolutely paramount.”

It is unclear whether the pedophiles came in contact with any Ukrainian children before they were deported.

In addition to child refugees, women fleeing Ukraine have also been threatened by abusers. Ukrainian authorities arrested the leader of a criminal gang earlier this month, claiming that his group offered jobs abroad to women looking to leave the country, only to traffic them into prostitution in Turkey.

A surge in interest in Ukrainian prostitutes has created “a strong incentive for traffickers to recruit and exploit Ukrainian women at scale,”Valiant Richey, the OSCE Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking, told a conference in Ireland in May.

Human trafficking has long been a problem within Ukraine too. A US State Department report last year noted that while authorities had made “significant efforts” in clamping down on trafficking, the country downplayed the number of victims, and government officials were found to be complicit in some cases.

Children in state-run orphanages were singled out by the report as “especially vulnerable to human trafficking,” and carers in these facilities were described in some cases as “complicit or willfully negligent in the sex and labor trafficking of girls and boys under their care.”

(How many fucking perves are allowed in the UK? It seems like a dynasty in the worst decline ever. Have they always been this way?)

https://www.rt.com/news/559423-british-pedophiles-poland-ukraine/

https://twitter.com/BrandonStraka/status/1616835746089865216?s=20&t=zrsW13ItV5i1DMT8pvTpHA

>>18198443

The video

>>18198458

Anons we are in Nazi territory!

>>18198203

Sounds like complete bullshit plant, is she a real person? Who posted this? Don’t think people use soul mate anymore. A set up!

>>18198471

How do you know this? Are you following his entire life? Your opinion doesnt matter, only what can proven. A lot of you guys Gary, make very poor choices.

>>18198501

Oh good!

>>18198499

I have no opinion, I thought I’d just state that to make you feel better. Did it work?