When you see Russia get into existential war over Ukraine, or Israel bomb Syria or India battle with Pakistan or Bangladesh, it is not because of some whim. It has a historical and geographical context. That is critical to understand for analyzing geopolitics.
Dive into the shadowy world of the Deep State—its hidden structures, powerful networks, and the far-reaching impact on global events and control.
The scale, the ferocity and the disinformation to help the genocidal administration and its jihadi allies is mind-boggling. We go through the history and its links to the present on the greatest Genocide in modern human history. The Hindu Genocide in Bangladesh!
Censorship Industrial Complex as a tool of PsyOps and a global tool of control is very potent. Action is happening against it in the US now.
Disinformation is a tool of sabotage. It is done best when used by someone who is hiding one's identity. That practice is called sockpuppetry. It is used extensively in the world of narrative-building. Some of the popular uses are:
When a country's administration creates different organizations and identities and uses private groups to bring into effect something illegal, then that is sockpuppetry at an institutional level. That is what is going on in the US and around the world!
We need to understand the current events very seriously and carefully.
At Drishtikone, I would like to address some other topics as well but these things are so deeply impacting the consciousness and the geopolitics of our world that it would be irresponsible to not discuss them from every angle I can!
Benjamin Franklin signed the US Constitution as a Pennsylvania delegate. As Benjamin Franklin.
He did not always use that name, however. Without others knowing it of course. He went by at least 5 pseudonyms - Silence Dogood, Harry Meanwell, Alice Addertongue, Richard Saunders, and Timothy Turnstone.
The practice that was merely known as a pseudonym - used to influence others' views - has taken on a much larger role today. An avatar called Sock-puppet.
Over the last few years, the science of sock-puppetry has been used to create a behemoth for geopolitical control. For every narrative war, platforms are created and those platforms are subverted using sock-puppets.
Let us look at Wikipedia as an example of a platform where anonymous identities have been used to run political agendas. Some forces, we will find out which ones, have been using Wikipedia to subvert some groups and people and play up their own narratives. It is a PsyOps exercise in full flow disguised as an "information application".
Wikipedia pages, for example, of Sanjeev Sanyal, Sadhguru, and Opindia have been subverted (I don't call it vandalized because this exercise has a certain intention and objective to it) by certain editors.
Opindia fought a protracted battle with Wikipedia when it saw the tremendous bias in the whole business that was being run by its "editors". Here is their modus operandi. As we said, and the Opindia team confirmed in this article and with their investigations - Wikipedia editors had a visceral hatred for Hinduism.
Wait, this conclusion by Opindia may have been anecdotal given its own experience and analysis of the many pages it looked at.
But is there a more scientific way to prove it?
Feng Zhu, an assistant professor in the Technology and Operations Management unit at Harvard Business School and Shane Greenstein of Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management did a rigorous investigation into the biases at Wikipedia Vs Encyclopædia Britannica. They found that Wikipedia had a very strong leftist bias across the board in all topics. In India, leftist bias translates into the "visceral hatred for Hinduism" that the Opindia team talked about.
Of course, Elon Musk weighs in on the situation at Wikipedia as well. He first discussed the "non-trivial" left-wing bias of Wikipedia.
And then later offered to give a billion dollars for changing the name of the site to appropriately reflect what its actions exhibit.
Why are we talking about this?
Because the world around us is not as benign as it seems to be. Whatever we peruse and consume should be done with some sense of skepticism and self-analysis.
We will come to this concept of sock-puppetry and its role in disinformation in a much larger context than what was happening in Wikipedia.
When Elon Musk took over at Twitter (now X), he opened up internal communications for the public. The Twitter Files, therefore, refer to a collection of internal documents from Twitter, Inc. that were made public between December 2022 and March 2023. These leaked documents disclosed Twitter's content moderation policies and procedures.
A group of journalists released these documents. They were granted limited access to Twitter's historical archives by Elon Musk. The information in the documents is based on reports provided by these journalists.
Here is the complete set of Twitter Files with a summary of all of them and a link for them. (Source: Steve Murch and Racket News)
Btw, you see Twitter Files #17? At Drishtikone we have already discussed the interplay between The Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), The University of Washington Center for an Informed Public (CIP), and Graphika. Please read it there.
Desh Kapoor
The Twitter Files had more such content.
One of the things that came out very clearly was the Information Cartel and the Censorship Industrial Complex.
Michael Shellenberger is one of the Twitter Files journalists and founder of Public. He has been agitating against what he calls the Censorship Industrial Complex.
This is very important to understand. The battle is on in the US and its ramifications will be felt across the world.
The Twitter Files were not just for show. They are now being followed up. The explosive content from Twitter Files is being actioned.
In Courts and the Congress.
A Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government held a hearing on Thursday, November 30, 2023. The folks who were part of this hearing were (Source: Judiciary Committee):
Michael Shellenberger shared in his testimony how "US and UK military contractors" deployed "sophisticated psychological operations and disinformation tactics... against the American people."
During his testimony in front of a House Judiciary subcommittee, Michael Shellenberger made some startling claims about the actions of military contractors from the United States and the United Kingdom. According to Shellenberger, these contractors have been using disinformation tactics to manipulate and deceive the American public. What's even more concerning is that Shellenberger stated that the tactics and the silencing of those who disagreed with a certain point of view were even worse than he had predicted during his previous testimony before Congress in March.
One form of silencing that was highlighted by Shellenberger was the censorship of individuals and content on major social media platforms during the 2020 presidential election. This alleged censorship raises questions about the role of these platforms in shaping public opinion and limiting the free expression of ideas.
Shellenberger's testimony sheds light on the potential influence and power wielded by military contractors in shaping public discourse and manipulating information. It underscores the need for transparency and accountability in the actions of these contractors, as well as the responsibility of social media platforms to ensure a fair and open exchange of ideas.
He wasn't the only one. Rupa Subramanya, Canada-based journalist for The Free Press, also shared her opening statement at the House Weaponization of the Federal Government Committee. She warned about the 'Creepy Authoritarianism' in Canada, which by the way is a replica of what had happened in the US as well.
But the battle has also started in the courts.
The attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana brought a lawsuit against the Biden administration claiming that the government had illegally colluded with social media companies to suppress protected free speech, by urging platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to take action on posts contributing to vaccine hesitancy and other hot-button issues.
The US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit has determined that the White House, the Surgeon General's office, and the FBI probably violated the First Amendment. The court concluded that these entities exerted pressure on social media platforms to moderate content on their websites. Additionally, the ruling stated that these entities had an improper influence on social media companies' choices to remove or restrict posts related to the coronavirus and elections.
Just as the Twitter Files generated awareness and information is instrumental in the battles unfolding in the courts and the Congress, new information is coming out.
Now a new set of explosive content has come out. The CTILFiles!
In a joint exposé with the Public, Michael Shellenberger, Alexandra Gutentag and Matt Taibi shared a new cache of whistleblower documents last week.
They shared a piece on this account on Substack/Public about this document cache about a group called CTI League (CTIL) - a group that posed as one dedicated to fighting Covid-19 misinformation.
Michael Shellenberger
The stuff that came out from independent whistleblowers was mind-boggling!
I was initially dismissive of the #CTIFiles as a news story, as were a few industry experts I consulted. The key figures behind the group — a British data scientist and former defense researcher named Sara-Jayne “SJ” Terp and a Navy/SOCOM “technologist” named Pablo Breuer — were not roundly considered by my sources to be heavy hitters in the anti-disinformation world. However, once we got into the documents, we all realized they had tremendous significance. It wasn’t just that CTIL’s virtual meetings and training sessions were routinely attended by DHS and FBI officials, or that Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) head Chris Krebs announced that the DHS sub-unit was partnering with the group, or even that CTIL tactics were ultimately adopted at least in part by CISA.
Here is a timeline the team has built of the various actions that took place along the way in this disinformation racket.
They show how the US and UK military contractors had created an extensive plan for Global censorship in 2018!
A whistleblower has come forward with an explosive new trove of documents, rivaling or exceeding the Twitter Files and Facebook Files in scale and importance. They describe the activities of an “anti-disinformation” group called the Cyber Threat Intelligence League, or CTIL, that officially began as the volunteer project of data scientists and defense and intelligence veterans but whose tactics over time appear to have been absorbed into multiple official projects, including those of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The CTI League documents offer the missing link answers to key questions not addressed in the Twitter Files and Facebook Files. Combined, they offer a comprehensive picture of the birth of the “anti-disinformation” sector, or what we have called the Censorship Industrial Complex. (Source: CTIL Files #1: US And UK Military Contractors Created Sweeping Plan For Global Censorship In 2018, New Documents Show / Public)
The plans were detailed.
They went into:
It was all brought together via the Election Integrity Partnership.
Emails from CISA’s NGO and social media partners show that CISA created the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) in 2020, which involved the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) and other US government contractors. EIP and its successor, the Virality Project (VP), urged Twitter, Facebook and other platforms to censor social media posts by ordinary citizens and elected officials alike. (Source: CTIL Files #1: US And UK Military Contractors Created Sweeping Plan For Global Censorship In 2018, New Documents Show / Public)
We will follow these in the coming days.
Please make sure you get to know this closely because it will decide the history of the world in many ways.
Here is an interview with the Australian tunnelling expert Arnold Dix who travelled from Melbourne to help rescue 41 trapped workers. On November 12th, an early morning landslide caused a portion of the 4.5-kilometer (2.8-mile) Silkyara Tunnel. The collapse occurred about 200 meters (650 feet) from the entrance. Btw, the tunnel has collapsed 20 times in the past five years due to the region's geology and rock deformation. The workers were rescued through an escape pipe. Dix's statements are very insightful in what went on there in the rescue and how he puts it in context of such efforts globally.
When you see Russia get into existential war over Ukraine, or Israel bomb Syria or India battle with Pakistan or Bangladesh, it is not because of some whim. It has a historical and geographical context. That is critical to understand for analyzing geopolitics.
Dive into the shadowy world of the Deep State—its hidden structures, powerful networks, and the far-reaching impact on global events and control.
While game-playing the future, one of the main flashpoints we came across, where the global conflict can start, was the Arctic. We look at it in complete detail.
North Korea launched its most advanced monster missile yet. China is readying its 'mysterious' amphibious ship. Russia is advancing in Ukraine while losing men. America goes to poll and civil uncertainty. Global economy is on the brink. What is coming? Let's game plan it.
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