Telegram Will Now Share Users’ IP Addresses and Phone Numbers With Governments in Response to Legal Requests
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | September 23, 2024
Telegram, the messaging app that once positioned itself as the rebel’s answer to Big Tech surveillance, has made a sharp U-turn on the “we protect your data at all costs” highway. On Monday, the company quietly updated its privacy policy to allow for the disclosure of user information—like those precious IP addresses and phone numbers—to law enforcement, but only, of course, if they present a valid legal request.
As we all know, no one has ever stretched the definition of “valid” to fit their agenda, right?
This revelation comes hot on the heels of a little incident back in August, when Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov found himself in handcuffs, detained by French authorities. What was the crime? Well, it appears Telegram was accused of playing hardball with French law enforcement, refusing to hand over data, leading to Durov’s arrest. It seems law enforcement didn’t take kindly to that level of noncompliance, especially after making 2,460 unanswered requests for information.
The Policy Flip-Flop
The new policy revision is a complete about-face from the one Telegram’s loyal fans were sold on. The old rules were crystal clear. Telegram might give up your details—your IP address and phone number—but only if you were a suspect in a terror case. The policy even reassured everyone that this kind of handover had never happened.
Not anymore.
Now, Telegram has widened the net. According to the newly revised policy, if you violate Telegram’s Terms of Service—you know, the thing no one ever reads—they may hand over your info if they get a “valid” order. The language is dripping with corporate hedging: “If Telegram receives a valid order from the relevant judicial authorities that confirms you’re a suspect in a case involving criminal activities that violate the Telegram Terms of Service, we will perform a legal analysis of the request and may disclose your IP address and phone number to the relevant authorities.”
Of course, Telegram is still committed to transparency—at least on paper. The company promises to disclose all such incidents in its quarterly transparency reports, which, conveniently, can be accessed via a dedicated bot.
Durov’s Declaration: Aimed at Who, Exactly?
Durov took to Telegram to tell users, “We have updated our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, ensuring they are consistent across the world.”
He continued, “We’ve made it clear that the IP addresses and phone numbers of those who violate our rules can be disclosed to relevant authorities in response to valid legal requests.”
Durov further added, “These measures should discourage criminals. Telegram Search is meant for finding friends and discovering news, not for promoting illegal goods. We won’t let bad actors jeopardize the integrity of our platform for almost a billion users.”
The French Connection
But what really forced Telegram’s hand? Let’s rewind to Durov’s August airport arrest, where things started to get clearer.
After allegedly over 2,400 ignored requests for data, French authorities had had enough. They brought in the National Gendarmerie to get to the bottom of Telegram’s refusal to cooperate.
Apparently, turning over data wasn’t an option until they started detaining CEOs.
Hillary Clinton’s Sordid History of Secrecy and Censorship
By Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | September 23, 2024
“You could drop Hillary into any trouble spot, come back in a month and… she will have made it better,” former President Bill Clinton declared in a 2016 speech championing his wife’s presidential candidacy. But Hillary’s entry into the brawls surrounding the 2024 presidential election will leave many Americans wishing to drop her elsewhere.
As the race enters the home stretch, Hillary Clinton is riding in like Joan of Arc to rescue truth—or at least to call for hammering government critics. But Hillary has been a triple threat to American democracy for fifteen years.
Last Monday evening, Hillary declared on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC talk show that the federal government should criminally prosecute Americans who share “propaganda”—which she made no effort to define.
Hillary has long been one of America’s foremost censorship advocates. In 2021, she announced that there must be “a global reckoning with the disinformation, with the monopolistic power and control, with the lack of accountability that the [social media] platforms currently enjoy.” Hillary made her utterance at a time when freedom in much of the world had been obliterated by governments responding to a pandemic that occurred as a result of U.S. government funding reckless experiments in Chinese government labs. The U.S. denial of its role in the lab leak was perhaps the biggest deceit of the decade but Hillary never kvetched about that scam regarding a program that contributed to millions of deaths. But that wasn’t disinformation—that was public service.
In 2022, Hillary wailed that “tech platforms have amplified disinformation and extremism with no accountability” and endorsed European Union legislation to obliterate free speech. But “disinformation” is often simply the lag time between the pronouncement and the debunking of government falsehoods.
That awkward fact didn’t deter Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz from declaring last month, “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy.” Who knew the Minnesota version of the First Amendment has a loophole bigger than Duluth?
After the New York Post shot down Joe Biden’s Disinformation Governance Board in 2022, Biden appointed Vice President Kamala Harris as chief of a White House disinformation task force to find ways to protect women and LGBTQI+ politicians and journalists from vigorous criticism on the Internet (“online harassment and abuse”). Harris declared that such criticism could “preclude women from political decision-making about their own lives and communities, undermine the functioning of democracy.” To save democracy, the government must suppress criticism of women.
Five years ago, at an NAACP Detroit “Freedom Fund” dinner, Harris proclaimed, “We will hold social media platforms accountable for the hate infiltrating their platforms because they have a responsibility to help fight against this threat to our democracy.” She did not specify the precise degree of alleged rancor required to nullify a speaker’s constitutional rights. Based on Harris’s prior comments, she will likely sharply increase repression of her critics on social media if she wins in November.
Biden administration censorship schemes have been denounced by federal courts and Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), chair of the House Cybersecurity Subcommittee, sent the White House a letter last week noting that the Biden administration always “advertised its willingness to manipulate the content of social media sites” and called for a cessation of all federal censorship tainting the 2024 election. Mace requested copies of all official “communications with social media companies…concerning the concealment or suppression of information on their sites.” At last report, nobody on Capitol Hill was sitting on the edge of their chair waiting for an informative White House response.
Hillary’s own career exemplifies a political elitist righteously blindfolding all other Americans.
When she was secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, Clinton exempted herself from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), setting up a private server in her New York mansion to handle her official email. The State Department ignored seventeen FOIA requests for her emails and said it needed seventy-five years to comply with a FOIA request for Hillary’s aides’ emails. The Federal Bureau of Investigation shrugged off Hillary’s aides using a program called BleachBit to destroy 30,000 of her emails under subpoena by a congressional committee. Federal Judge Royce Lamberth labeled the Clinton email coverup “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.” An Inspector General report slammed FBI investigators for relying on “rapport building” with Team Hillary instead of using subpoenas to compel the discovery of key evidence. The IG report “questioned whether the use of a subpoena or search warrant might have encouraged Clinton, her lawyers… or others to search harder for the missing devices (containing email), or ensured that they were being honest that they could not find them.” The FBI’s treatment of Hillary Clinton vivified how far federal law enforcement will twist the law to absolve the nation’s political elite, or at least those tied to the Democratic Party.
During Clinton’s tenure, the State Department gave grants to promote investigative journalism in numerous developing nations as part of its “good governance” programs. But exposing abuses was only a virtue outside U.S. territorial limits. Clinton vigorously covered up debacles in the $200 billion in foreign aid she shoveled out. From 2011 onward, AID’s acting inspector general massively deleted information on foreign aid debacles in audit reports, as The Washington Post reported in 2014. Clinton’s machinations helped delude Washington policymakers and Congress about the profound failures of U.S. intervention in Afghanistan.
Pirouetting as a champion of candor is a novel role for the former secretary of State. Shortly before the 2016 election, a Gallup poll found that only 33% of voters believed Hillary was honest and trustworthy, and only 35% trusted Donald Trump. The Clinton-Trump tag team made “post-truth” the Oxford English Dictionary’s 2016 word of the year.
Hillary believes that the lesson of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is that good citizens should shut up and grovel. In her 2017 memoir, Hillary claimed that Nineteen Eighty-Four revealed the peril of critics who “sow mistrust toward exactly the people we need to rely on: our leaders, the press, experts who seek to guide public policy based on evidence, ourselves.” Did Hillary think Orwell dedicated the novel to Stalin? Hillary’s book noted that the regime in Orwell’s novel had physically tortured its victims to delude them. Hillary is comparatively humane, since she only wants to leave people forever in the dark—well, except for the scumbags who undermine the official storyline.
Hillary was a key player in the Barack Obama administration that believed that Americans had no right to learn the facts of the torture committed by the CIA after 9/11. When she was secretary of State in 2012, she declared, “Lack of transparency eats away like a cancer at the trust people should have in their government.” But the more secrets politicians keep, the less trust they deserve.
Hillary’s vision of democracy permits only token interference by underlings. She believes that poohbahs like her have the right to rig elections to sanctify their power. In 2015, when she was running for the presidency, she condemned voter identification requirements as part of a “sweeping effort to disempower and disenfranchise people of color, poor people and young people.” A Washington Post headline aptly summarized her message: “Hillary Clinton Declares War on Voter ID.” This is the bargain Hillary offered; voters didn’t have to identify themselves and she didn’t disclose what she did in office. Subsequent Democratic Party attacks on Voter ID were more successful, leading to sixty million ballots for Biden, millions of which were counted but not verified.
To sanctify censorship, Hillary is again invoking the Russian peril. A 316-page report last year by Special Counsel John Durham noted that in mid-2016, after the shellacking she suffered from her email scandal, “Clinton allegedly approved a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to tie Trump to Russia as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” President Barack Obama was briefed on the Clinton proposal “to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.” FBI officials relied on the “Clinton Plan” to target the Trump campaign even though no FBI personnel apparently took “any action to vet the Clinton Plan intelligence.”
The first three years of Trump’s presidency were haunted by constant accusations that he colluded with Russians to win the 2016 election. In 2019, an Inspector General report confirmed that the FBI made “fundamental errors” and persistently deceived the FISA Court to authorize surveilling the Trump campaign.
Hillary’s scams were even too much for federal scorekeepers. The Federal Election Commission last year levied a $113,000 fine on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee for their deceptive funding to cover up their role in the Steele dossier, which spurred the FBI’s illegal surveillance of Trump campaign officials.
In Hillary’s new improved version of the Constitution, there is no free speech for “deplorables”—the vast swath of Americans she openly condemned in 2016. But this is the same mindset being shown by the Kamala Harris presidential campaign. Harris has scorned almost every opportunity to explain how she would use the power she is seeking to capture over American citizens. Instead, she is entitled to the Oval Office by acclamation of the mainstream media and all decent folks—or at least those who drive electric vehicles and donate to her campaign.
Is “disinformation” becoming simply another stick for rulers to use to flog uppity citizens? Denouncing disinformation sounds better than “shut up, peasants!” But if politicians have no obligation to disclose how they use their power and can persecute citizen who expose their abuses, how in Hades can American freedom survive? How can we permit our rulers to selectively squelch citizens based on alleged hateful comments when, as historian Henry Adams pointed out a century ago, politics “has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.”
Ambitious politicians never lack pious pretenses for destroying freedom. But will censorship by the Biden administration steal the 2024 election for Harris? Unfortunately, according to Hillary Clinton, you are not worthy of knowing the answer.
Czech opposition populist party wins in regional municipal elections, first-round senate vote
Reports are calling this a “wake-up call” for the ruling coalition
By Liz Heflin | Remix News | September 23, 2024
The opposition ANO party led by former Prime Minister Andrej Babiš won the weekend regional general assembly and first-round senate elections in the Czech Republic, the Czech Statistical Office announced on Sunday.
ANO won in 10 of the 13 regions, with 292 of the 685 regional self-government mandates, 114 more than in the last election four years ago. The governing coalition Civil Democratic Party (ODS) came in second with 106 mandates, an increase of seven.
The Mayors and Independents (STAN) party, also in the coalition government, came third with 73 representatives, plus another 20 for the Liberec Region movement within STAN. The government coalition Christian Democrat KDU-CSL finished in fourth place with 49 mandates, the opposition Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) came fifth with 32, followed by TOP 09 with 16 mandates.
The fifth member of the government coalition, the Pirate Party, on the other hand, will have only three representatives in the regional assembly, a loss of 94 seats versus the last election. The party leadership offered his resignation, and there are reports that the party will leave the government coalition as a result.
Babiš’ ANO movement also won in the first round of the Senate election, with 19 candidates advancing to the second round. Five seats were won outright, including two ANO candidates, while the remaining 22 seats at stake in Czechia’s 81-seat Senate will be decided in a second round of voting next week.
Babiš founded the Patriots for Europe grouping in the European Parliament last June with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) president, Herbert Kickl, with it fast becoming the third-largest group in the EP.
Orbán took to X to celebrate Babiš’ victory, with the two known as close allies when Babiš served as prime minister.
Babiš is known for his opposition to mass immigration and EU centralization. He is also skeptical about Czechia’s continued support for Ukraine.
Scramble to Tighten Europe’s Borders Shows Politicians are Playing ‘Catch Up’ With Public Concern
By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 22.09.2024
After Germany instituted new checks at its borders to try and clamp down on the influx of refugees, the Dutch government and Hungary followed suit with announcements that they would seek an opt-out from the European Union’s migration policies.
The scramble to tighten border policies in some EU countries is a sign that politicians are desperately “trying to play catch up” with public concern, Dr. George Szamuely, a senior research fellow at the Global Policy Institute, told Sputnik.
Europe’s migrant crisis was imposed by the elites on their own population, he stressed. It was part of a “fateful alliance among the big corporations that want cheap labor and the kind of multicultural advocates who think that that’s a good thing for Europe to be more diverse,” Szamuely noted, stressing that this is “what’s causing this intense political feeling because people don’t really want it. This is something that the elites had desired.”
After Germany instituted sweeping checks at its borders and stronger deportation laws, the new Dutch government announced it was aiming to set in place “the strictest admission rules in the EU.” Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof said on Friday that the government would officially ask the European Commission for an opt-out on EU asylum and migration policies.
“We cannot continue to bear the large influx of migrants to our country. People are experiencing an asylum crisis,” Schoof said.
post by Hungarian Minister for EU Affairs János Bóka.
Echoing the same sentiments, Hungary is also going to request an opt-out from the European Union’s migration policies, Hungarian Minister for EU Affairs Janos Boka said in a post on X. As it is, Hungary has traditionally opted for a tougher migration policy than the rest of the bloc. During the 2015 European migrant crisis, Prime Minister Viktor Orban rejected the resettlement of hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees coming from Syria, Afghanistan and other countries torn apart by NATO warmongering.
Geert Wilders, the right-wing leader of the PVV (PfE) – the party that came out on top in the last national elections in the Netherlands – described the Dutch official request to opt out of EU migration policy as a ‘mini-Nexit’ in a nod to Brexit.
“Tens of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers come into Europe and then make their way into the most prosperous parts of Europe, becoming an additional huge burden on countries,” underscored George Szamuely.
Europe is witnessing “complete abuse of the asylum seeker scheme,” said the researcher, adding: “it’s a combination of these anxieties, and the rise of anti-immigrant populist parties that is leading to the stricter measures or, at least, demands for stricter measures throughout Europe.”
Regarding the opt-out of EU rules, the expert noted that such an outcome is very difficult to achieve, as it requires renegotiating the treaty and “that’s not something that’s easily doable, and could take a long time […] because EU rules are supposed to be binding on all member states.”
The issue of immigration is besetting one country after another, and results of elections in European countries are starkly reflecting this. The issue of unrestrained immigration helped Wilders and his populist right Freedom Party win a plurality of seats in the Netherlands’ House of Representatives last November. In Germany, the success of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in regional elections piled pressure on the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz to tackle the migrant issue and close its borders, temporarily ending the Schengen-Visiting Zone.
TikTok Likely Coerced Into Scrubbing Sputnik Ahead of Pivotal US Vote to ‘Get Feds Off Their Back’
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 21.09.2024
Hugely popular video-sharing platform TikTak removed Sputnik International’s account without warning on Saturday, providing no explanation for its decision. Sputnik asked a leading US military and intelligence analyst and former Washington insider about the likely motive of the move.
While it has no legal leg to stand on and an utter lack of domestic support for a ban on TikTok, what the US State Department does have is “unlimited resources with which to prosecute TikTok as a company,” and the latter may have chosen to cooperate with the state by scrubbing Sputnik’s channel to try to “get the feds off their backs,” retired Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski told Sputnik.
“Of course, the better choice for Americans would be for TikTok to refuse to cooperate, forcing the federal government’s hand. If the incredibly popular and useful TikTok were to be banned in response to their refusal to remove selected overseas media, it would wake up the masses to the diminished state of their liberty,” she suggested.
Citing the ability of alternative news sources to break through establishment narratives using social media, including to provide an alternative, outsider’s take on US politics and candidates’ respective foreign policy positions, Kwiatkowski predicted that “any reversal of this unwarranted ban” on Sputnik will happen only after the vote, with the restrictions thus serving as “a direct example of the DoJ interfering with the election, and undermining the concept of an informed citizenry prior to an election.”
The deep state needs total “hegemony in the information arena, just as with financial and military power,” Kwiatkowski explained. “The US leadership team believes they can manage all narratives, and limit the flow of evidence that contradicts the current narrative. Domestically, this has worked well, as we saw with the instant domestic media reversal on the health and performance of Joe Biden. Internationally, this control is more of a challenge.”
Furthermore, the state actually has little choice but to continue its attempts to control the narrative and suppress the harmful impacts of its actions both at home and abroad, according to the observer, since the United States today is more and more coming to resemble a “failed state” – suffering from ballooning debt, an electoral system and government lacking transparency, and a leadership taking huge risks with the economy and Americans’ security through their foreign and domestic policies.
“Lastly, the CIA and the surveillance sector of government, which has long specialized in the manipulation of information abroad, and to a significant extent domestically, is more powerful than ever. Its world very much requires the suppression of information and the shaping of ‘truth’ in order to ‘succeed’,” Kwiatkowski stressed.
The federal government and the Justice Department operate using a legally dubious, unwritten code of conduct, Kwiatkowski said, pointing out there’s no legal requirement to ban foreign news sources, and that virtually all of the executive branch’s various bans, boycotts, embargos and other restrictions are unlawful under the Constitution.
“Likewise, the modern US surveillance state uses IT, telecommunications and social media companies as their extra-constitutional tool to directly violate the 1st and 4th Amendments that do not allow federal interference in the conduct of speech, movement, beliefs, assembly, redress of government, and security of body, property and communications. This is the world that TikTok and all social media companies operate in – do what the government tells you or face market losses, and criminal prosecution that while ultimately winnable, can bankrupt most businesses,” Kwiatkowski summed up.
Could Bird Flu Be the October Surprise?
By Clayton J. Baker, MD | Brownstone Institute | September 21, 2024
Bird flu was the hot topic in pandemic fear-mongering until very recently. Just a few months ago, former CDC director Robert Redfield publicly described Bird flu (also known as H5N1 Influenza A or Avian Influenza virus) as the likely next pandemic – predicting a laboratory-leaked virus as the cause. Meanwhile, Deborah Birx, aka the “Scarf Lady” of Covid infamy, was making the TV news, promoting an unrealistic and excessive program of testing farm animals and humans for Bird flu.
At present, bird flu seems to have been put on the back burner by the authorities. Monkeypox has since taken center stage, with the World Health Organization declaring a state of emergency over that virus. Furthermore, the “experts” have trotted out numerous other viruses with which to terrify the public. Examples include West Nile virus – who no less than Anthony Fauci himself supposedly contracted – and even the exotic “Sloth virus” (also known as Oropouche virus).
The first step in dealing with these continual reports of horrific pathogens is recognizing the vital importance of living in knowledge rather than in fear. “Fear porn” is a real psychological weapon and one that is being used against us on a daily basis. As we painfully learned during Covid, a terrified population is easily manipulated, controlled, and exploited. As free citizens, we must remain mindful and knowledgeable, rather than fearful, about the flood of information and propaganda that is hurled at us.
Regarding bird flu, we should remain mindful of the following. In its current iteration, bird flu has caused no widespread human illness, no human deaths, and sporadic outbreaks in farm animal populations. However, there is much evidence that bird flu could be used as a bioweapon. Furthermore, it could also be applied to disrupt the November 5 US Presidential election.
Here are 3 reasons why bird flu may still be weaponized to alter the election:
- Multiple bio labs in the United States and abroad – such as the lab run by Yoshihiro Kawaoka, PhD at the University of Wisconsin – perform alarming Gain-of-Function research on the H5N1 virus, making variants of the virus that are much more dangerous to humans than variants that occur in nature. These labs have had leaks with alarming frequency. The current strains of bird flu in the US show strong genetic evidence of having originated in a laboratory. A laboratory leak of a new strain of the virus, manipulated to be highly transmissible and/or pathogenic in humans, remains a real possibility.
- The “International Bird Flu Summit” will be held on October 2-4, 2024 at the Hilton Fairfax in Fairfax, VA – just outside Washington, DC – exactly one month prior to the election. Listed topics include “Command, Control and Management,” “Emergency Response Management,” and “Surveillance and Data Management.” If this sounds eerily reminiscent to you of the Covid lockdowns – which were also closely preceded by government-based planning exercises – your memory serves you well.
- The infrastructure is already in place for a “pandemic” of bird flu, much more than it is for other potential pathogens. Already, widespread testing of farms is underway. The development of bird flu vaccines has increased dramatically. The FDA has already approved vaccines made by Sanofi, GSK subsidiary ID Biomedical Corporation of Quebec, and CSL Seqirus, while Moderna recently received a $176 million government grant for its mRNA-based bird flu injection, which is in development.
In the bigger picture, a number of viruses could potentially be employed as an “October Surprise” to disrupt the election. Bird flu appears to be a leading candidate (pun intended), but it is not the only one.
We, as citizens, must remain vigilant to this threat to our electoral process. We should contact our local and state officials now, before anything is attempted, and express our absolute insistence on fair, legal, and regular elections. We should share this information widely with others so that all are aware of what might be attempted. Over the longer term, we must work to end Gain-of-Function research.
With Covid, we experienced first-hand what can be done to our civil rights and to our Constitutionally guaranteed electoral and governmental processes when a fear-driven, emergency-based takeover of society occurs. As free citizens, we must never allow this to happen again. From now on, we must live in knowledge, not in fear.
C.J. Baker, M.D. is an internal medicine physician with a quarter century in clinical practice. He has held numerous academic medical appointments, and his work has appeared in many journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine. From 2012 to 2018 he was Clinical Associate Professor of Medical Humanities and Bioethics at the University of Rochester.
How US Deep State Co-Opted TikTok
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 21.09.2024
TikTok wiped Sputnik’s account on Saturday, days after Washington announced draconian new restrictions on Russian media. The company offered no explanation.
The newest round of censorship comes amid the US establishment’s long war against TikTok amid much-touted (but never substantiated) claims by authorities that China uses the app for espionage and influence operations against American users.
The crux of US government claims is that the app sends US customer data to the Asian nation, where it can be seen by Chinese authorities or intelligence services. TikTok says its US data is firewalled from leaving the country via an agreement with American tech giant Oracle.
Joe Biden signed a law in April threatening to completely ban TikTok within 270 days unless its Chinese parent company ByteDance divests from US operations, setting the stage for a legal battle. The measure, packaged in alongside fresh appropriations for US-funded hot spots in Ukraine, Gaza and Taiwan, was rejected by a handful of progressive Democrats and MAGA Republicans, who deemed it a blatant assault on constitutionally afforded free speech.
Senator Rand Paul warned that “once you start objecting to content, what you’re objecting to is speech… The bottom line is, the more information, the better. If you don’t like it, don’t use it. That’s what happens in a free country.”
Congressman Thomas Massie characterized the ban threat as a “trojan horse,” giving the president expansive powers to crack down speech. “Some of us just don’t want the president picking which apps we can put on our phones, or which websites we can visit… We also think it’s dangerous to give the president that kind of power,” Massie said.
TikTok is already banned from use from devices owned by the US federal government, and by numerous state and city governments and universities.
It’s also been banned or restricted in multiple US-allied countries, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, at least eight EU countries.
Former president Donald Trump kicked off the TikTok censorship saga in 2020 after deeming it a “national security threat,” prompting the company to file a preliminary injunction to prevent such an eventuality. Trump reversed course this past spring, saying banning TikTok would only make Mark Zuckerberg’s “enemy of the people” Facebook “bigger.”
Elon Musk and Brazil: The conflict is more complex than it seems
By Raphael Machado | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 19, 2024
The suspension of services of X (formerly Twitter) in Brazil, as well as the threat of an $8,000 fine for anyone using a VPN to continue using the social network, has made global headlines. Although there had been previous reports of friction between X and the Brazilian political-legal system, the news of the suspension surprised many people, in Brazil and abroad.
For foreigners, especially those who consider themselves “anti-imperialist”, it is very difficult to construct a consistent interpretation of this conflict between Musk and Brazil because of the expectations critics of unipolarity have developed regarding Brazil under Lula’s return.
These are the same people who were shocked by Brazil’s hostility toward Nicolás Maduro and a series of other inconsistent positions taken by the Brazilian government on the international stage.
But while investigating how committed the current Brazilian government is to the idea of a multipolar order is relevant, the fact is that Lula has only marginal involvement in the suspension of X in Brazil.
First of all, how is this issue being framed by both sides of the dispute? Generally, the issue of “X” in Brazil is being treated as a conflict between “respect for the law” versus “freedom of expression.” It is difficult to take this framing seriously for a number of reasons.
X, under Elon Musk, has consistently censored or reduced the reach of pro-Palestinian accounts since Musk’s visit to Israel. If X is not like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or the newer BlueSky, it clearly cannot be seen as a bastion of free speech.
On the other side, however, the situation is also a bit more complex than simply the duty of X to comply with Brazilian laws. Elon Musk has indeed raised some concerning points regarding Judge Alexandre de Moraes, who made decisions contrary to Brazilian internet norms and tried to force X to comply with them.
Even setting aside these decisions about social media account censorship, the handling of the X case itself has drawn criticism in Brazil.
The root of this conflict is the fact that Moraes has been leading a criminal inquiry for over five years, now known as the “fake news inquiry,” where he goes beyond the usual role of a passive and impartial judge and actively investigates and judges cases of “disinformation” that allegedly threaten “democracy” and Brazil’s electoral process. The rhetoric is very reminiscent of Orwellian narratives produced in Washington and Brussels.
As the political-legal establishment and its international partners are quite satisfied with the Brazilian government’s current stance on most issues, the main targets of these investigations are figures linked to the opposition.
Thus, in the context of this inquiry, Judge Moraes has ordered the suspension of social media accounts of those under investigation. Such decisions are legally questionable under Brazilian law. First, because the inquiry has far exceeded a reasonable time frame for conclusion and doesn’t appear to have a clear objective. Second, because suspending social media accounts of individuals without a conviction, in an inquiry that seems “endless,” is inappropriate. Third, because the Brazilian Internet Civil Framework, the country’s legislation on internet-related obligations for companies, stipulates that a social media account can only be blocked for specific violations of norms – and Judge Moraes, in his orders to X, never specified the reasons for the suspensions.
These are some of the main arguments, including those raised by Elon Musk, to challenge these judicial decisions.
The situation worsened when Moraes allegedly threatened X’s office employees in Brazil with imprisonment if they failed to comply with his decisions. Amidst this confusion, the Judiciary claims that X’s representative in Brazil has been evading court summonses. On the other hand, there are indications that Moraes’ staff sent the summons to the wrong email address when attempting to notify X.
Nonetheless, these threats explain why X decided to shut down its office in Brazil. Immediately afterward, Moraes ordered X to appoint a new legal representative in Brazil, which is mandatory for companies operating in the country.
Since X did not establish a new representation in Brazil, Moraes ordered the company’s suspension.
The situation would seem more reasonable if Moraes hadn’t also imposed a daily fine of $8,000 on any Brazilians using VPNs to continue accessing the social network. Needless to say, the order was immediately disobeyed by most Brazilian X users, and the Brazilian Bar Association filed an appeal to annul the fine.
The problem with the fine is that it casts doubt on the claim that this is merely a natural consequence of X not having legal representation in the country in accordance with the law. Why, then, impose fines on ordinary users who are not part of the inquiry and were not even notified of the decision (which, again, is unconstitutional under Brazilian law)?
Next, Moraes ordered the blocking of Starlink’s accounts, a company with different shareholders, to collect the fine imposed on X – once again, a decision that violates Brazil’s entire legal framework.
However, the issue transcends the legal debate and refers back to the fact that X is a space successfully used by sectors of Brazilian politics that oppose the “Juristocracy,” as well as the influence of foreign NGOs in Brazil and the current government.
Platforms like Meta, for example, are absolutely controlled by the U.S. Deep State and impose draconian restrictions on anyone who deviates from globalist ideological orthodoxy. Moreover, this may seem incomprehensible and unbelievable to our partners in other BRICS countries, but Brazil does not have an anti-Atlanticist, counter-hegemonic mass media. The Brazilian mass media belongs to an oligopoly that is deeply tied to U.S. media conglomerates.
In this sense, spaces like X represent an “oasis” used by both the right-wing opposition and the anti-imperialist left.
To understand what Moraes and other judges think of this, one only needs to recall a statement he made a few weeks ago: “At the turn of the century, there were no social networks; and we were happier,” said to loud applause from representatives of Brazil’s major TV networks and newspapers.
Naturally – we insist – Elon Musk is not exactly a victim here. He is far from it. For example, it is also true that his Tesla lost contracts to Chinese rivals in Brazil in recent years, which greatly irritated him. It is also true that he believes he can gain greater business penetration in the Brazilian market if Bolsonaro returns to power – and he openly uses his large presence on X to occasionally boost posts from opponents of the Lula government.
Therefore, the case transcends the superficial duality presented as “sovereignty vs. freedom of expression,” and is more accurately an expression of a dispute between different sectors of the Brazilian elite, both with international ties (let us remember that Moraes was part of the international scheme of Operation Car Wash, whose objective was to destroy Brazilian companies, imprison Lula, and overthrow Dilma Rousseff under the guidance of the U.S. Department of Justice), and both clearly hostile to the project of a new multipolar order.
Silence Speaks Volumes: Biden-Harris Admin Refuses To Comment on EU Censorship Threats
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | September 20, 2024
The Biden-Harris administration has reportedly sided with the EU against a major US social media company, X, and decided not to (at least publicly) contest the censorship threats against the platform.
This incident involves the now former EU Internal Markets Commissioner Thierry Breton’s scandalous letter threatening X and owner Elon Musk ahead of his interview with President Trump.
Yet another emerging actor here is the US State Department, which, according to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, refused to publicly condemn those threats.
Breton, who was known as a strong proponent of censorship and clampdowns within the EU’s top bureaucracy, referred to the Digital Services Act (DSA) in his letter to Musk in early August, mere hours before Musk’s interview with Trump. Under the (opponents say, censorship) rules, X could have faced anything from big fines to the EU blocking the platform.
According to a report from Breitbart, Jordan revealed the State Department’s stance in this matter in a letter to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, where he also claims that Bliken’s department has internal documents revealing communications relevant to Breton’s conduct on that occasion – but it has not submitted them to the Committee.
To remedy that situation, Jordan is now asking that Blinken makes sure “all documents and communications between or among State Department personnel referring or relating to Mr. Breton’s August 12, 2024 letter to Mr. Musk” are made available to the Committee by October 1.
Breton chose to, in a manner clearly biased against Trump, “anticipate” that there may be “incitement to violence, hate, and racism” during the conversation between Musk and the former president, now presidential candidate. And so X was asked to act “preemptively” in order to prevent such – hypothetical – content from spreading in the EU.
Breton’s behavior in this instance can be viewed as a case of “prebunking” – but it was done at a very high level and basically turned into an attempt to meddle in another country’s affairs by muzzling a US presidential candidate, and a US social platform.
However, this instance of meddling from abroad was ignored by the Biden-Harris White House. Jordan points out in his letter to Blinken that the State Department not only had not yet condemned Breton’s actions but also apparently had no intention to do so.
“The Biden-Harris Administration’s silence in the face of Mr. Breton’s threats against free speech in the United States signals to the world that it does not support free speech online and is unwilling to protect American companies from foreign actors who seek to punish their adherence to First Amendment principles at home,” reads Jordan’s letter.
Washington’s new plan to control the Global South
By Anna Belkina | RT | September 20, 2024
When US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced a new “joint diplomatic campaign” to be implemented in concert with Canada and the UK last week, he clearly set out the initiative’s goal – “to rally allies and partners around the world to join us in addressing the threat posed by RT and other machinery of Russian disinformation and covert influence.”
Make no mistake: there is nothing diplomatic in this latest US effort to silence any voice that does not adhere to the Washington- and London-dictated narratives about the world.
The point of all news media is to inform. Any information has the potential to influence people. Thus, the collective West has set out to curtail all potential influence that is not theirs.
Helping hand
James Rubin, the coordinator for the US State Department’s Global Engagement Center, elaborated on how this plan would work in an interview with his ex-wife, Christiane Amanpour, on CNN.
“Other countries will make decisions for themselves,” of course, but the charitable, the always-benevolent, the never self-interested American hand will be “helping other governments come to their own decisions about how to treat” RT.
Ah, all those poor, hapless “other governments” that clearly cannot read, watch, think, and decide for themselves. They were just waiting for Big Brother to help them.
What Rubin was really doing was scapegoating RT – and by extension, all other independent voices in what is supposed to be a free and diverse global information space, reflecting a diverse, very complicated, multipolar world – for the increasingly diminishing buy-in of much of the world into Washington’s foreign policies, and propaganda campaigns that accompany them.
As Rubin admitted during his press conference, “one of the reasons […] why so much of the world has not been as fully supportive of Ukraine as you would think they would be […] is because of the broad scope and reach of RT – where propaganda, disinformation, and lies are spread to millions if not billions of people around the world.”
Which countries refused to jump on board with the US and NATO support of the Kiev regime and the continuous escalation of the conflict? In reality, it is most of the world, including such geopolitical giants as India and China, who preferred to leave regional issues to the region in question.
Where official positions are concerned, it’s mostly NATO and its cohorts’ one billion vs our planet’s other seven. And while in those seven not everyone in the general population is of the same mind, neither is everyone in the US and other NATO countries.
Yet, due to the decades-long domination of the international information space by American and European mainstream news media (can you believe the BBC is over 100 years old?), many have been conditioned to think of the world – in the sense of who defines the global order, its rights and its wrongs – as the US and its vassal-state allies.
Notably, Mr Rubin specifically referred to Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa as regions where RT must be stopped. In other words, the so-called Global South. What’s got the US State Department so worried there?
RT’s success is Western media’s loss
Western military, political, and media establishments have been panicked over their loss of monopoly on global information in general, and about RT’s growing reach and influence in particular, for a while now. The self-proclaimed champions of free press, speech and thought cannot handle any of that free-thinkin’ they campaigned for.
To wit, have a scroll:
THE FOUNDATION FOR DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES, US: “Washington is struggling in the battle for hearts and minds in the ‘Global South’, where Russian propaganda outlets are often more popular than Western media.”
NEWSWEEK : “… it’s in the Global South that Russia has reaped the most significant rewards. The popularity of the Kremlin-controlled TV station Russia Today is high…”
POLITICO : “… many of the Kremlin-backed accounts – especially those from sanctioned media outlets like RT and Sputnik – have an oversized digital reach. Collectively, these companies boast millions of followers in Europe, Latin America and Africa…”
ROYAL UNITED SERVICES INSTITUTE, UK: “Latin America has witnessed a growth in Russian information efforts. Just like in the Middle East, Russia is operating a number of popular media channels, such as RT en Espanol, Sputnik Mundo and Sputnik Brasil, with substantial followings.”
CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, US: “Russia’s […] media presence and influence [in Latin America] are unmatched… The reach of Russia’s technique has proven to be effective … Actualidad RT and Sputnik Mundo have become so mainstream in LAC, that in December 2022, RT Spanish won three prestigious Mexican journalism awards for their coverage of the war in Ukraine.”
WILSON CENTER, US: “Russia has successfully implemented long-term strategies to capture and influence intellectual elites in Latin America.”
ATLANTIC COUNCIL: “Russia has established a significant media and information footprint throughout the [Latin American] region with Russia Today and Sputnik News.”
EL MUNDO, SPAIN: “In addition to hybrid channels, [Russia] uses public companies such as Russia Today, whose propaganda is triumphing in Latin America – the Spanish-speaking version of RT […] is integrated into family daily life from Venezuela to Bolivia.”
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES, UK: “Egyptian media ran headlines and reports verbatim from RT Arabic, […] EU Reporter, an independent media outlet, reported that ‘Russian media outlets like RT Arabic and Sputnik are extremely popular, with RT Arabic becoming one of the most trafficked news websites in the country.’”
FOREIGN POLICY : “RT Arabic and Sputnik Arabic emerged as major sources of legitimate regional news in the Middle East.”
JOSEP BORRELL, HIGH REPRESENTATIVE OF THE EU FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND SECURITY POLICY: “When you go to some African countries and you see people supporting Putin, supporting what Putin is doing in Donbass, saying Putin has saved Donbass, now he will come to Africa and save us.”
ABC, SPAIN: “The Kremlin has tried to increase its influence in the media using Russia Today and Sputnik News. And there have also been collaboration agreements with local media, hiring African journalists and African activists, and at the same time generating news in Arabic, English or French to gain the support of the African population.”
Thank you, thank you very much.
Exporting censorship
Since RT’s launch in 2005, our journalists have brought to light countless stories and points of view disallowed in the Western mainstream. We have built a massive global audience and won the trust of viewers and readers worldwide.
But, despite Western elites’ declarations to the contrary, any voice that fails to fit into the rather cramped echo-chamber they have set up to accommodate supposedly free discourse, is inherently seen as illegitimate. Therefore, it must be silenced.
Which is why, having pushed out official RT channels from Western airwaves and digital platforms, they now want – nay, need and ought – to export their particular brand of censorship globally. They pledge to wage a coordinated campaign to force other nations into following their example, all so that the West can recover its information monopoly. They must “disrupt [RT] activities” everywhere. It is not enough for them to silo off their own people from inconvenient facts and alternative viewpoints. They have the megalomania and the audacity to say that no one in the world should hear them either.
This is especially so in the Global South countries – the ones that the US has gotten accustomed to patronizing, manipulating, dominating, undermining and overthrowing unsuitable-to-them regimes, and outright controlling in any way they could, over the last century.
Welcome to neocolonialism, Taylor’s 2024 Version.
Government folks have also already lined up Silicon Valley wunderkinds – the tech giants that are ever so eager to curry political favor in order to stay on the lax side of corporate regulation – in this endeavor. Meta, which blocked access to RT’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the EU in 2022, has overnight removed RT from its platforms – entirely and worldwide.
YouTube removed RT’s record-breaking channels everywhere that same year, but Google’s parent company, Alphabet, had already worked to “de-rank” RT and Sputnik in Google searches back in 2017.
After all, “RT is the top recommended source for news concerning Douma’s chemical weapons attack, Skripal poisoning and the Syrian White Helmets,” wrote the Atlantic Council in 2018. In 2019, “Bild conducted a test and entered the query ‘Ukraine’ into Google News. Again, among the top ten articles were three from RT Deutsch and Contra Magazin.” When people looked for news, they came to RT.
This could not stand.
A quick aside: despite all the claims by the Americans and the Brits about RT’s supposed attempts to “sow discord” in their societies, the network really should be lauded for bringing people together instead. In the US, where political bipartisanship is a near-extinct species, the Biden administration’s present-day efforts are fully endorsed by Fiona Hill, of Donald Trump’s National Security Council, who argued that “there has to be concerted action against RT.” In the UK, the recently elected Labor leadership has fully adopted their Tory predecessors’ anti-RT playbook.
Not going away
Let me be clear: RT is not going anywhere, in the West nor in the Global South. Our journalists will continue to do their jobs. We will continue to find ways to have our voice heard. Our audiences “of millions if not billions of people around the world” expect nothing less of us. This is our duty to the global community.
As for the global community, where does it stand, in the face of this new US-led campaign?
The Hindu, one of India’s newspapers of record, reported that already “US officials have spoken to [India’s] Ministry of External Affairs about joining their actions against what they call ‘Russian disinformation’, by revoking accreditations and designating [RT] journalists under the ‘Foreign Missions Act’. However, while the ministry has been silent on the issue, government officials said that the debate on sanctions is not relevant to India, while a former diplomat said that banning media organizations showed ‘double standards’ by Western countries… An official said that the matter ‘does not pertain’ to India and pointed out that India does not follow unilateral sanctions that are not approved by the United Nations.”
We are confident that the rest of the truly independent world will follow suit.
Anna Belkina is RT’s deputy editor in chief and head of communications, marketing and strategic development.
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NATO Sanctions and the Coming Global Diesel Fuel Disaster
By F. William Engdahl – New Eastern Outlook – 11.04.2022
Amid the ongoing global inflation crisis, NATO heads of state and mainstream media repeat a mantra that high energy prices are a direct result of Putin’s actions in Ukraine since end of February. The reality is that it is the western sanctions that are responsible. Those sanctions including cutting SWIFT interbank access for key Russian banks and some of the most severe sanctions ever imposed, are hardly having an impact on the military actions in Ukraine. What many overlook is the fact that they are increasingly impacting the economies of the West, especially the EU and USA. A closer look at the state of the global supply of diesel fuel is alarming. But Western sanctions planners at the US Treasury and the EU know fully well what they are doing. And it bodes ill for the world economy.
While most of us rarely think about diesel fuel as anything other than a pollutant, in fact it is essential to the entire world economy in a way few energy sources are. The director general of Fuels Europe, part of the European Petroleum Refiners Association, stated recently, “… there is a clear link between diesel and GDP, because almost everything that goes into and out of a factory goes using diesel.” … continue
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- Climate Extremists Target, Attack Large-Scale Power Grid Infrastructure In Germany!
- New Study: Antarctic Ice Melt Has Contributed Less Than 1 Centimeter To Sea Level Rise In The Last 30 Years
