Posted originally on the CTH on July 3, 2023 | Sundance 

If the lessons of COVID-19 have taught us anything, it should be that each step the totalitarian dictatorships take -under the guise of protecting new democratic norms- must be viewed through the prism of future targeting. Pay attention, lest we find ourselves on the alternate side of populist uprisings under state targeting.

I sent the prior warning message around the collaboration between private industry and western government surrounding financial restrictions placed on Russia. When VISA, Mastercard and other payment mechanisms willingly and willfully supported the intentions of the Western Government coalition, few people thought about the Rubicon this new merge and partnership was establishing. {SEE HERE} In essence, private industry determining the lifestyle of Russian citizens in an effort to target their political leadership. Few people were paying attention.

With France now pledging to shut down internet communication in an effort to control organizing through social media, there is a bigger picture that must be considered.

[SOURCE – Translated from French]

Let me take you back to 2010 and 2011 when the U.S. State Department, Hillary Clinton, Samantha Power, Susan Rice, CIA Director Leon Panetta and French President Nicholas Sarkozy wanted to support the Islamist Spring uprisings in Tunis, Libya, Egypt and Yemen.

What happened then is very much related to what we are seeing right now in Europe, specifically France; only this time we are seeing the inverse of the government interests regarding social media on display.

The bad dictators were targeted for removal following the now famous Barack Obama Cairo, Egypt speech. President Barack Obama triggered the removal of the Zookeepers and released the big cats to become apex predators; the downstream consequences eventually showed up with ISIS burning people in cages.

When the leaders of Tunis, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Sudan and a multitude of other unapproved dictatorships, reacted to the collective effort of the CIA and U.S. state Dept by shutting down cell phone communication, the CIA and DoS responded by enlisting Twitter and Facebook as the messaging platforms for the rebels in each country.

Twitter became the main conduit through which the people on the ground could organize against their regimes. This was the initial merge of the U.S. government using social media to effect political change. [Side Note: this is the atom splitting moment which eventually led to the government’s ability to control, filter and ultimately censor U.S. social media content.]

Twitter, and to a lesser extent Facebook, served the interests of western government by helping the people on the ground to organize protests, violent uprisings, against the dictators in the Arab Spring. As we eventually saw in Libya and Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood (Egypt, AQIM) and al-Qaeda (Libya, AQAP) were supported by the State Dept/CIA during that effort.

The key takeaway is: the uprisings were supported by the western governments, and the social media platforms served the interests of the western government leadership.

Now fast forward to today…

We have the inverse issue for the interests of western government, specifically France and broad parts of the EU as well as the United States.

General uprisings, riots and assorted mayhem created by mostly Islamic immigrants and the subsequent cultural clash, are against the interests of France and the EU. The ability of the cultural insurgents to organize on social media is now against the interests of western government. How are they reacting? They are shutting down the utility of the platforms and shutting down the internet.

The initial takeaway from this might be perceived as good. The rioters are creating social unrest, looting, arson and crisis; they must be stopped and controlled. It seems like the government action will be a good thing.

However, as with the example of private corporations joining in alignment with WEF government to target Russia, what do you think will happen when a populist revolt of yellow vests, or anti-vaxxers, or freedom rebels take to the streets? Precedents are being set.

You might cheer France using control over communication to target the violent brown people now; but what happens when those same EU entities decide to target the communication of a different type of uprising. This is me, sending warning flares to those who might not care about this ‘beta-test’.

Oh, and don’t forget the Senate Intelligence Committee recent effort with the “Restrict Act“, total internet and domestic social media control pushed under the auspices of controlling TikTok data collection.

♦ Let me also point out that it does not seem in the least bit coincidental these French uprisings happen at the same time that Elon Musk and Twitter start limiting the ability of users to engage with the social media platform.

Musk claims that changing and restricting user access is all part of some necessary plan to stop scrapers from scouring the data of Twitter users and creating an AI system for censorship and control. That’s nonsense. Scraping and Spider Crawling happen on just about every site and platform where public comments take place. Reddit and YouTube comment systems are one example. Truth Social is another example.

Google AI has been scraping content from the entire internet for years. It is silly to say that a new censorship system using AI to scrape user information is a valid reason to shut down user engagement with the platform.

When it comes to censorship, Elon Musk would have you believe he is not in control. Again, nonsense.

All censorship starts with the actuated decision of the platform to allow or remove content. Despite Musk claiming there is some entity, some omnipotent system that can force him to censor Twitter content, there is not.

If Elon Musk does not want to censor content, he doesn’t censor content. These are his decisions.

However, Twitter and various social media platforms, but specifically Twitter, are at much heavier levels of user engagement outside the United States. It makes sense because in oppressive regimes where information from state-controlled media is tightly restricted, social media plays a larger role in the transmission and absorption of unfiltered information.

The level of user engagement, likes, retweets etc. is much higher for Twitter users outside the United States. Those users are also far less likely to pay for the service.

When Elon Musk is limiting the ability of non-paid users to engage in his platform, he is essentially assisting the dictators who control the government in those nations to limit information sharing.

Twitter’s current rules on user engagement restrict non-USA users at a much more significant level. As a result, Twitter’s rules are limiting information on a global scale. Elon Musk is well aware of this; he is not stupid.

When your world of enterprise is financially enmeshed with government to pay for it, you end up doing what those government offices tell you to do.

Is the timing of the Twitter decision related to geopolitical events like France? You decide. However, for me personally, and knowing the true operations of Twitter as a public opinion control platform (see Twitter files), I am fairly confident there is a connection of interest.

Is Elon Musk running a Twitter version of the RESTRICT ACT … again, where user data must be protected.