Love him or hate him, watching Elon Musk has proven to be very entertaining ever since he began his quest to own Twitter. Now that he’s the big boss, he has been flexing his CEO muscles far more often than some of us expected. The latest iteration came when he suspended prominent leftist journalists on Thursday, only to return their accounts late Friday night.
The details are below in an article by Tom Ozimek from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times, but I first wanted to explain why all of this happened. It seems that the vast majority of commentators (all of the ones I’ve read or heard so far) are completely missing the point of Musk’s actions. To truly understand them, we have to stipulate that Musk plays the role of whimsical billionaire when in reality he plans his moves out very carefully and well ahead of time.
For example, if you ask your average Twitter user how Musk came to the conclusion that he wanted to buy Twitter, they’ll tell you that was upset over the suspension of the Babylon Bee Twitter account. They’ll say that he Tweeted out a question to his many fans about what should be done, then based on the overwhelming number of responses calling on him to just buy Twitter, he did.
It’s a great story. The problem with it that most seem to miss is that he filed with the SEC to purchase 9% of Twitter two weeks BEFORE his famous inquiring Tweet. He already had his plan in motion before staging a whimsical move based on reactions from his fans. This is how Musk operates. By the time he starts asking questions on Twitter to get feedback from the people, his decisions had already been made.
Fast forward to the banning of journalists for doxxing and we’re seeing the exact same maneuver. Supposedly he was tired of getting doxxed so he took action against them. But in reality none of the journalists who were suspended were any more involved with doxxing him than any average joe who retweeted posts from his many stalkers.
The doxxing excuse was just a ploy. So too was the poll he posted asking when he should unsuspend the accounts, a poll that allegedly prompted their reinstatement. Here’s how he’s framing it:
The people have spoken.
Accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now. https://t.co/MFdXbEQFCe
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 17, 2022
By doing it like this, he feigned a democratic feel to his site. “The people have spoken,” he posted, sending the message that he will go against his own decisions if the majority disagrees with him on Twitter’s very unscientific and easily manipulable polls. That’s ludicrous.
In reality, his plan since long before the suspensions was to update a rule about doxxing, suspend prominent journalists temporarily, throw up a poll, then unsuspend them. As he expected, the outrage over the suspensions prompted rebukes from media outlets as well as governments across the globe. Also as he expected, it was a major topic on pretty much every corporate media outlet in the English-speaking world.
He accomplished two missions with his move. The obvious one is that he and his company are getting the type of massive free publicity we haven’t seen since the 2016 Republican primary season when every move Donald Trump made was national news every day. Between the Twitter Files FBI bombshell and this move to suspend journalists for a day, he put a huge strain on his servers because of the masses of people hitting the site. That’s important because he will demonstrate soon once enough statistics are collected that since he bought Twitter, traffic to the site and the apps skyrocketed.
The second mission is less obvious but clearly more important to him. Even though most of the accounts have been reinstated after a very short suspension (I’ve been suspended for seven days before over Tweets that DIDN’T doxx him or anyone else), the message he sent was crystal clear: Journalists do not get free rein just because they’re journalists. They will be held accountable for their Tweets.
Prior to Thursday, corporate media journalists felt they could say pretty much anything on Twitter, truth and the law be damned. Now, they’re still trying to come to grips with the new development that they aren’t going to be protected on Elon Musk’s Twitter.
Just as he had planned.
By no means am I suggesting Musk doesn’t really care about doxxing. Those who truly doxx him or anyone else will be removed from the platform. But the Rogue’s Gallery of leftist journalists didn’t really doxx anyone. They were suspended so Musk could make a few points, most notably that being a journalist in corporate media will not protect anyone on Musk’s Twitter.
Here’s the article from The Epoch Times detailing what is publicly acknowledged as how it all went down. As you read it, keep in mind that Musk manufactured the excuse to slap down journalists so he could accomplish his goals.
Elon Musk Reinstates Journalists’ Accounts Suspended for Doxxing Policy Violations
Elon Musk has reinstated journalists’ accounts that were earlier suspended for allegedly doxxing his location in real-time, with the temporary suspensions earning the Wikipedia monicker “Thursday Night Massacre” and fueling questions over press freedom on the platform.
After Twitter updated its policy prohibiting sharing people’s location in real-time—known as doxxing—due to personal safety risks, nine journalist’s accounts were suspended, according to an Epoch Times tally. As of the time of reporting, eight of those have been reactivated.
Musk announced the reinstatement in a post on Twitter after running a poll that asked users whether the suspended accounts should be restored “now” or “in 7 days.”
The majority of respondents voted for an immediate reinstatement of the suspended accounts.
“The people have spoken,” Musk said. “Accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now.”
The accounts that were suspended belonged to CNN’s politics and tech correspondent Donie O’Sullivan (@donie), New York Times technology reporter Ryan Mac (@rmac18), Washington Post technology reporter Drew Harwell (@drewharwell), Mashable tech reporter Matt Binder (@mattbinder), The Intercept tech reporter Micah Lee (@micahflee), Voice of America’s Chief National Correspondent Steve Herman (@w7voa), journalist Aaron Rupar (@atrupar), and sports and political commentator Keith Olbermann (@Keitholbermann).
As of the time of reporting, the only account that remained blocked was Olbermann’s.
Some of the journalists disputed the claim that they had exposed Musk’s location in real time in violation of Twitter’s new anti-doxxing policy.
‘Thursday Night Massacre’
Twitter’s suspension of the accounts came after Musk unsuccessfully tried to persuade the Twitter account @ElonJet to stop sharing private jet movements in real time—which he repeatedly said posed a risk to his safety—and after what he described as a “crazy stalker” climbed onto a car carrying his 2-year-old son.
The account suspensions came a day after Twitter announced changes to its Private Information policy—commonly referred to as its doxxing policy—prohibiting the sharing of real-time location information or linking to external sources that share such data, citing a “risk of physical harm.”
The doxxing policy states that any account sharing real-time location information of private individuals (with the exception of the user themselves) would receive a temporary suspension of unspecified duration. The second time they do so, their account will be permanently suspended.
In line with the new policy, the @ElonJet account was suspended, along with a number of accounts tracking the private jets of high-profile individuals, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Some of the journalists disputed Musk’s claim that they had doxxed his location.
“To be clear, there was no ‘doxing’–even if an impulsive, accountable-to-nobody oligarch said so,” Webster said in a tweet shortly after his account was restored.
Rupar wrote on Substack Thursday night that he has “no idea what rules I purportedly broke” and that he has not had contact with Twitter regarding the suspension of his account.
Rupar also noted that prior to his suspension, he had posted a tweet regarding the @ElonJet account that was suspended from Twitter, which he said was “still active on Facebook, with a link to the Facebook page.”
“Perhaps that did it, but I still don’t know what policy that could’ve possibly violated,” he wrote.
Most of the journalists had talked about the owner of the suspended @ElonJet account, Jack Sweeney, or linked to the jet-tracking account in some way.
Musk also announced that he would be taking “legal action” against Sweeney.
Sweeney did not respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.
‘Basically Assassination Coordinates’
Some critics framed the suspensions as an attempt on Musk’s part to muzzle journalists who have been critical of him, though he insisted otherwise: “Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not.”
“They posted my exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates, in (obvious) direct violation of Twitter terms of service,” Musk added.
“If anyone posted real-time locations & addresses of NYT reporters, FBI would be investigating, there’d be hearings on Capitol Hill & Biden would give speeches about end of democracy!” he continued.
The suspensions drew backlash from government officials, advocacy groups, and journalism organizations from across the globe, with some claiming Twitter was jeopardizing press freedom.
The United Nations and the European Union condemned the suspensions, and the episode even received its own Wikipedia entry, “Thursday Night Massacre.”
Vera Jourova, a European Commission vice president, wrote on Twitter that the alleged “arbitrary suspension of journalists on Twitter is worrying,” adding that an EU regulatory act “requires respect of media freedom and fundamental rights.”
“This is reinforced under our #MediaFreedomAct. @elonmusk should be aware of that,” Jourova wrote. “There are red lines. And sanctions, soon.”
Jourova did not elaborate on what sanctions she had in mind, though under the EU’s Digital Services Acted that she cited, companies can be fined 6 percent of their global annual revenues for breaches.
Twitter did not reply to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.
‘Paparazzi, Stalkers, & Fans’
Hours before Musk threatened to take legal action against Sweeney, he responded to Jim Hall, a self-described Tesla and SpaceX enthusiast and investor, who argued that Sweeney had made it easier for “nutjobs” to find Musk and his family.
Hall shared a video of “paparazzi, stalkers, & fans” waiting for Musk outside an airport.
“The more the hate being drummed up online against Elon grows the larger the threat to Elon & his family grows. Imagine all the crazies at the extreme of both political sides targeting you nonstop,” Hall wrote.
Musk responded, “Real-time posting of someone else’s location violates doxxing policy, but delayed posting of locations are ok.”
Twitter users added context to Musk’s tweet, noting that publishing flight records “is protected under the First Amendment,” citing a related Supreme Court ruling.
The contextual note added, however, that “Twitter’s TOS prohibits sharing ‘information that would reveal a person’s location, regardless if this information is publicly available.’”
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.