Daily Briefing: WEDNESDAY’S “NEWS OF THE WEEK IN REVIEW

The ‘Twitter Files’ Is What It Claims to Expose:  Eric Levitz, MSN, Dec. 10, 2022

“In company email exchanges obtained by Taibbi, Twitter safety chief Yoel Roth and Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker explained that they had chosen to mark tweets linking to the Post story as “unsafe” on the grounds that such tweets disseminated “hacked materials,” a violation of Twitter’s terms of service. Both Roth and Baker acknowledged that they did not actually know that the Post’s piece was based on hacked materials. “Given the SEVERE risks here and lessons of 2016,” however, Roth explained, “we’re erring on the side of including a warning and preventing the content from being amplified. … Yet despite having access to virtually all of Twitter’s internal communications, Taibbi produced no actual evidence that the decision was motivated by anything beyond concern that Twitter would find itself complicit in promulgating hacked materials”  — [Levitz conveniently ignores that the FBI had the laptop in its possession for a year and knew that it wasn’t hacked or Russian misinformation, but authentic and that Jim Baker, formerly the FBI’s Chief Council knew this. Also, as legal counsel for Twitter, he reviewed the materials given to Taibbi and Weiss and could easily have eliminated compromising tweets.. — Ed.]
 
Waving the Flag of the World Cup’s Unofficial Team:  Tariq Panja, NY Times, Dec. 7, 2022
 
“The outpouring of support [for the Palestinians] in Qatar has been widely cheered in the West Bank, with many Palestinians sharing videos and photographs of the flag [displayed by different Arab teams and fans], and expressing happiness that they were still being supported throughout the world. ‘To see Palestinians cheering for Morocco, and Moroccans cheering for Palestine is one of the most significant Arab popular rejections of normalization, even if some governments have forged diplomatic agreements with Israel’, Palestinian journalist and editor Ramzy Baroud told Days of Palestine. ‘This moment will live in the minds of several generations of Arabs forever.’

WEEKLY QUOTES

“How quickly Jewish Leaders forgot that I was the best, by far, President for Israel.  They should be ashamed of themselves. This lack of loyalty to their greatest friends and allies is why large numbers in Congress, and so many others, have stopped giving support to Israel.” – former President Donald Trump on his social media platform Truth Social before making it an official statement under his campaign for the 2024 presidency. He was responding to Jews’ criticism of his dinner dates with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, and Kanye West [Ye]  whose antisemitic invectives are well known. (JTA, Dec. 9, 2022)

“… teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users,” Weiss writes.  Internally, company executives called the practice “visibility filtering,” or “VF,” Weiss reported. “Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool,” a senior Twitter employee told Weiss.” – columnist Brittney Bernstein reporting on the Twitter Files.  (National Review, Dec. 12, 2022)

“Couldn’t be prouder that @bariweiss ‘s enterprise, formally Common Sense, is now The Free Press (@thefp), a new name to cover its more vast influence. Those who hunger for truth over tribalism are still a minority, but we’re growing! Congrats to Bari and Nellie! I’ll be reading!” – liberal comedian Bill Maher.  (Twitter, Dec. 10, 2022)

“NBC, CBS and ABC devoted a total of zero minutes to the Twitter Files … NBC’s “disinformation” reporter Ben Collins’ contribution was to tweet a “yawn” emoji. Yes, it’s a big yawn that so many former FBI and CIA officials were embedded in senior management roles at Twitter and Facebook. And not just the FBI’s top lawyer and Russiagate quarterback, James Baker, who was hired by Twitter five months before the 2020 election; at least a dozen others joined after Trump won the 2016 election. Bottom of Form It’s a big yawn to see evidence that Twitter became a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party and federal government agencies, and that the FBI has been coercing social media companies to violate the First Amendment and interfere with elections.” – Investigative journalist Miranda Devine who broke the Hunter Biden laptop story two months before the 2020 presidential elections that Twitter decided to censor.  (NY Post, Dec. 11, 2022)

“In any sane world, these revelations would have the public up in arms, literally. They would be marching against the media, the FBI, and the current administration. The anger would be acrid and ubiquitous. That’s in any sane world. In our world, alas, you can hear the carpet being pulled back so that the whole dirty mess can be swept underneath it. Where’s the outrage? Nowhere to be found.” – political analyst Roger Kimball.  (American Greatness, Dec. 12, 2022)

“You don’t need a state ministry of information if the media voluntarily maintains official narratives and suppresses dissenting views. And what emerges from these files is the notion of an effective state media in America — an alliance of media, business and political figures who act, not out of government compulsion, but out of personal conviction. …  What these files suggest is an utter license to control political speech on social media platforms. Twitter executives often sound like overlords determining what the public should be allowed to read or say. This is hardly surprising, given the constant stroking by many politicians and pundits who say they are saving democracy by limiting free speech.” – attorney Jonathan Turley.  (The Hill, Dec. 10, 2022)“What if the government, through selective leaking of secret information to Twitter officials, created the conditions under which Twitter’s natural response when the New York Post story was published, a response following government guidance, would be to censor the story? If that is the case, then no, the federal government did not violate the First Amendment. Indeed, it would have caused an uproar and would have been a gross violation of the First Amendment had the FBI shut down the dissemination of a press story. So the FBI persuaded Twitter to do it. And since Twitter is a private company — Voila! — there’s no violation of the First Amendment.” – Chief political correspondent Byron York.  (Washington Examiner, Dec. 6, 2022)“Those 51 intel agents that signed a letter that said the Hunter Biden information was all wrong — was Russia collusion — many of them have a security clearance. We are going to bring them before the committee. … A Clapper, a Brennan… Why did you use the reputation that America was able to give to you, more information, but use it for a political purpose and lie to the American public?” — House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy on Fox News’ “One Nation”  (NY Post, Dec. 11, 2022) 

“Your house is glass” – Twitter owner Elon Musk to former CIA head John Brennan John Brennan.  He responded to Brennan’s tweet, “Good people in democracies need a more effective way to prevent attention-craving, emotionally immature, & highly devious individuals, esp those of means, from being socially, culturally, & politically destructive. We certainly seem to have far too many of them lately. https://t.co/tEiDgcZjon — John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan).  Musk’s tweet alludes to possible new, damaging revelations re:  Brennan. December 11, 2022(Twitter, Dec. 12, 2022)

“Congratulating POTUS on social media [American Federation of Teachers Head Randi] Weingarten trilled: “What a great relief!!! Extraordinary news, a basketball star, but also a gay, black woman is released.” I’ve heard of a two-fer offer, but for Weingarten, this was clearly a three or four-fer offer. Not only a basketball star but also a gay, black woman. What relief. What double, triple, and quadruple relief!” – columnist Douglas Murray on Weingarten’s response to President Biden’s prisoner swap with Russia.  (NY Post, Dec. 8, 2022)

“There’s a lot of noise about our strikes on the energy infrastructure of a neighboring country. Yes, we do that.” — Russian President Vladimir Putin, responding to Ukrainian leaders’ accusations of Russia using winter to target heating infrastructure and water supply to compel Kyiv to withdraw from its positions.  (WSJ, Dec. 11, 2022)

“One would imagine that dignity, selflessness and inexhaustibility can neither endure in a family nor engage a reader for nearly 900 pagers. Mr. Meier proves otherwise. And his magisterial book reminds us of the days when immigrants yearned not to preserve ancestral identity, but to live the American dream. As Henry Sr. proudly told a group of fellow Jewish elites: ‘I am the amalgam of what’s been produced by putting a little boy in that [melting] pot and mixing him with a part of yourselves.’ The same can be said of all the remarkable Morgenthaus.” — Harold Holzer, review of Andrew Meier, Morganthau (Random House), “the best glimpse since Stephen Birmingham’s Our Crowd into the gilded society of German-American Jews who forged an alternate “Four Hundred” in New York. . .” (WSJ, Dec. 9, 2022)

“‘All my Republican donations were dark,’ he said, referring to political donations that are not publicly disclosed. ‘The reason was not for regulatory reasons, it’s because reporters freak the f*** out if you donate to Republicans. They’re all super liberal, and I didn’t want to have that fight.’” — Disgraced FTX founder Sam Beckman-Fried who was the second largest donor to the Democratic Party under George Soros. It has been reported that SBF’s associate Ryan Salame, an executive at FTX Capital Markets, donated about $23 million to Republicans and GOP PACs.) – columnist Andrew C. McCarthy.  (National Review, Dec. 13, 2022)