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EU state jails journalist for working with Russian media

RT | June 11, 2025

An Estonian court has sentenced journalist Svetlana Burtseva to six years in prison for treason and breaching Western sanctions over her work with Russian media, state broadcaster ERR reported on Wednesday.

Burtseva, 58, a naturalized Estonian citizen, previously worked for Sputnik Estonia until it was banned in 2019. The authorities say she continued writing under a pseudonym for Baltnews, a portal operated by the EU-sanctioned Russian media group Rossiya Segodnya.

The Harju District Court ruled that by writing articles and providing photographs to Baltnews, Burtseva had effectively made “economic resources available” to Rossiya Segodnya, whose chief executive, Dmitry Kiselyov, is also under Western financial sanctions, according to the court spokesperson.

“[The defendant’s] collaboration with media outlets linked to Kiselyov can be considered a considerable contribution,” the court stated. “However, it must be taken into account that the number of articles was not very high for the time span in question,” it added.

Prosecutors also cited her alleged contact with Roman Romachev, whom they described as an operative engaged in “information warfare and psychological operations” on behalf of Russia.

Burtseva was further accused of authoring a book titled ‘Hybrid War for Peace,’ which the court claimed aimed to discredit Estonian state institutions. It concluded that she had “committed treason intentionally,” but noted that her level of guilt was minor and she had no prior convictions.

Burtseva became a naturalized Estonian citizen in 1994. The authorities allege she continued publishing content for Baltnews under the name Alan Torm between 2020 and 2023 and studied at Sevastopol State University in Russia from 2019 to 2021. She was arrested in February 2024.

Russia has condemned the case as politically motivated. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Burtseva was being punished for her journalism and critical views of the Estonian government.

Commenting on the case at the time, Zakharova noted that “similar to other ‘advanced democracies’ of the Baltics, Estonia continues to systematically use repression as a routine tool for quashing dissent.”

Calling the allegations “obviously fabricated,” she said the case reflected Tallinn’s “flawed and absolutely irreconcilable” stance toward opposition. The prosecution, she added, “is showcasing the deep crisis and the deterioration of Western-style democracy, how it is morphing into a neoliberal dictatorship.”

The court ruling can be appealed within 30 days.

June 11, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Britain Launches Cross-Border Censorship Hunt Against 4chan

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | June 11, 2025

The UK government has taken another aggressive step in its campaign to regulate online speech, launching formal investigations into the message board 4chan and seven file-sharing sites under its far-reaching Online Safety Act.

But this is more than a domestic crackdown; it is a clear attempt to assert British speech laws far beyond its borders, targeting platforms that have no meaningful presence in the UK.

The law, which came into full force in April, gives sweeping powers to Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, to demand that websites and apps proactively remove undefined categories of “illegal content.”

Failure to comply can trigger massive fines of up to £18 million ($24M) or 10 percent of global revenue, criminal penalties for company executives, and site-wide bans within the UK.

Now, Ofcom has set its sights on 4chan, a US-hosted imageboard owned by a Japanese national. The site operates under US law and has no physical infrastructure, employees, or legal registration in Britain. Nonetheless, UK regulators have declared it fair game.

“Wherever in the world a service is based if it has ‘links to the UK’, it now has duties to protect UK users,” Ofcom insists.

That phrase, “links to the UK,” is intentionally vague and extraordinarily expansive, allowing British authorities to demand compliance from virtually any website.

This kind of extraterritorial overreach marks a direct threat to the principle of national sovereignty in internet governance. The UK is attempting to dictate the rules of online speech to foreign companies, hosted on foreign servers, and serving users in other countries, all because someone in Britain might visit their site.

According to Ofcom, 4chan failed to respond to its “statutory information requests,” making it one of nine services now under formal investigation.

What this law actually does is push platforms, especially smaller or independent ones, out of the UK entirely.

Already, popular free speech platforms like Gab, BitChute, and Kiwi Farms have blocked UK access, citing the chilling effects of the Online Safety Act.

Rather than making the internet safer, the law is creating a digital iron curtain around the UK, where only government-approved content and services remain accessible.

4chan, long a lightning rod for unfiltered speech and internet culture, has no shortage of detractors. But the platform’s commitment to anonymity and free expression has also made it one of the last places online where users can post without algorithmic throttling or corporate moderation.

It is routinely blamed for hosting “offensive” memes, and conspiracies, yet in nearly every case, the speech in question would be protected under US First Amendment standards.

Rather than respecting these legal differences, the UK is attempting to export its more restrictive model of speech regulation to the rest of the world. The aim is clear: if a platform cannot or will not bend to Ofcom’s demands, it will be blacklisted from the UK internet.

June 11, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Rossiya Segodnya Head Calls Actions of Berlin Toward Agency’s Office ‘Policy of War’

Sputnik – 10.06.2025

The actions of the German authorities toward the Rossiya Segodnya international media group’s office in Berlin are slipping into the policy of war with Russia, Director General of Rossiya Segodnya (Sputnik’s parent company) Dmitry Kiselev said on Tuesday.

“Germany is sliding back into its usual path toward war with Russia — it started two world wars, and the question is: what does it hope to achieve in a third one? It is clearly preparing public sentiment in that direction,” Kiselev said.

German police came to the Berlin apartment of the family of the head of the office of Russia’s Rossiya Segodnya international media group in Germany, Sergey Feoktistov, and seized the passports of his wife and seven-year-old daughter, the head of the office told Sputnik on Tuesday.

Last week, German authorities refused to extend Feoktistov’s residence permit and ordered him to leave the country by August 19. He arrived from Moscow to Berlin to help his family move, but German authorities did not let him leave the airport.

“The police came to the apartment where I lived with my family and where my wife and seven-year-old daughter still live and seized their passports. Under the pretext that they could allegedly hide and fail to comply with orders to leave Germany by August 19,” Feoktistov said.

In response to Berlin’s actions, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Moscow has made a decision to take reciprocal measures against German reporters in the country.

In March, the Greek Foreign Ministry refused to renew the accreditation of RIA Novosti chief correspondent in Greece Gennady Melnik for 2025 without giving any explanation, forcing the agency’s office to close after more than 20 years of operation. RIA Novosti is part of the Rossiya Segodnya media group.

June 10, 2025 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Durov reveals to Carlson whether he was ‘ever arrested by Putin’

RT | June 10, 2025

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has told American journalist Tucker Carlson that he had never been arrested by authorities in Russia.

The tech mogul was detained by French police last year on suspicion of committing a flurry of cybercrimes.

In an interview released on Monday, Carlson noted that the Russian-born tech entrepreneur left the country more than a decade ago for political reasons. He asked him if he had ever faced arrest in Russia, to which Durov replied that he had not.

Durov was arrested in August 2024 at Paris–Le Bourget Airport, charged with 12 offenses linked to Telegram’s handling of illegal content, including child exploitation material and narcotics trafficking, and prevented from leaving France for seven months. He was released in March having posted €5 million ($5.4 million) bail.

Asked if he sees any irony in only being arrested in France, a country that is viewed as “part of the free West,” Durov said Paris “was the most unexpected place to get arrested for me.”

Durov said that he had visited several countries before arriving in France, some of which “are considered in the West to be autocratic or authoritarian.” He added that in many such nations, Telegram is popular because it provides “100% privacy.”

Carlson pointed to a possible contrast in public reaction someone else of a similar profile had been arrested. “If Mark Zuckerberg or Elon [Musk] got grabbed… you’d be like ‘Stop—what? The world is ending.’ But they grabbed you and people are like, ‘Oh, he’s got a Russian last name, it’s fine. I’m sure there’s a good reason.’”

“I hope it had nothing to do with my ethnicity,” Durov replied. “Because that would be very alarming.”

Durov has denied the French charges, calling them absurd. His arrest sparked an outpouring of sympathy worldwide, as well as accusations that France is infringing on freedom of speech.

In late May, Durov claimed that the French government had sought to make Telegram block conservative voices in Romania ahead of the country’s presidential runoff, but he refused. French officials have in-turn, denied the claim.

June 10, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Science Under Attack

The myths and realities

By John Ridgway | Cimate Scepticism | June 3, 2025

During the recent Covid-19 pandemic, Peter J. Hotez, professor of paediatrics and molecular virology at Baylor College of Medicine, wrote a Scientific American opinion piece that spoke of an emerging threat that he believed should concern us all:

Antiscience has emerged as a dominant and highly lethal force, and one that threatens global security, as much as do terrorism and nuclear proliferation. We must mount a counteroffensive and build new infrastructure to combat antiscience, just as we have for these other more widely recognized and established threats.

He paints a picture of a political right-wing engaging in a disinformation campaign, and of an interference with an otherwise scientifically sound programme – actions that he maintained would result in many dying unnecessarily:

Despite my best efforts to sound the alarm and call it out, the antiscience disinformation created mass havoc in the red states. During the summer of 2020, COVID-19 accelerated in states of the South as governors prematurely lifted restrictions to create a second and unnecessary wave of COVID-19 cases and deaths.

Given his strong views, and the bellicose manner in which he chose to express them, it is not surprising that Hotez recently teamed up with Professor Michael Mann to write of the triple threat of global warming, a “cadence of pandemic threats” and, most importantly:

… a well-organized, financed, politically motivated, and steadily globalizing campaign of disinformation and attacks against mainstream science that makes it extremely difficult to mount an effective global response to the climate and pandemic threats.

Of course, Hotez and Mann are not alone in promoting this narrative of a burgeoning threat to humanity. For example, in a recent PNAS article, Phillipp-Muller et al wrote:

From vaccination refusal to climate change denial, antiscience views are threatening humanity.

So confident are the authors in the reality of the phenomenon that they dedicate the whole paper to analysing causes and suggesting countermeasures:

Building on various emerging data and models that have explored the psychology of being antiscience, we specify four core bases of key principles driving antiscience attitudes. These principles are grounded in decades of research on attitudes, persuasion, social influence, social identity, and information processing. They apply across diverse domains of antiscience phenomena… Politics triggers or amplifies many principles across all four bases, making it a particularly potent force in antiscience attitudes.

But what exactly is antiscience? Is it well-organized? Does it primarily emanate from the right-wing? And is it an attitude that represents an existential threat to humanity on a par with nuclear war?

The authors of the PNAS paper seem to have no doubts regarding the basis for antiscience — it’s simply a case of pathological psychology:

Distinct clusters of basic mental processes can explain when and why people ignore, trivialize, deny, reject, or even hate scientific information—a variety of responses that might collectively be labeled as “being antiscience”.

Once one starts out with such a premise, it becomes remarkably easy to formulate ‘frameworks’ and ‘models’ to give the whole thing a scientific veneer. And since science is upheld as the epitome of the rational venture, any resistance to scientific findings can be readily dismissed as a retreat from reason.

Indeed, in their book, Science and the Retreat from Reason, John Gillot and Manjit Kumar present a thoughtful treatise explaining why, despite the obvious benefits of the scientific method and its resulting successes, society has nevertheless grown wary of the technocratic future that it offers. Yet nowhere within its 250 pages does the book use the term ‘antiscience’, or speak of it as a phenomenon resulting from politically inspired disinformation. Furthermore, perhaps because it was written back in 1995, it doesn’t see the retreat from reason as an existential threat requiring ‘new infrastructures’ to ‘mount a counteroffensive’. Instead, a lack of faith in science is seen as stemming from a post-war disillusionment. Basically, science had gained the reputation of being the handmaiden of a belligerent military, and it became very difficult to maintain high levels of trust in a sector of society that delivered the threat of atomic annihilation. Furthermore, developments such as genetically modified food and the various attempts to control and exploit the environment did little to endear those who buy in to the idea of a purity of nature. As such, it was the liberal left-wing that led the movement against science in its practical realities. The idea that antiscientific attitudes are the reserve of the right wing is a relatively modern invention.

Of course, none of this should be used as a reason to question the potency and integrity of the scientific method. However, I sincerely doubt that this is why anyone would come to ‘ignore, trivialize, deny, reject, or even hate scientific information’. It isn’t the scientific mind that some people distrust – it is the scientific community. It is the recognition that science is a social enterprise and, as such, is not immune to the problems that can emerge when humans interact and compete. Seen in this light, antiscience is not a pathology of thinking but the label invented by those who are comfortable with such issues in order to stigmatize those who are not.

It is easy to see where the comfortable position would come from. Scientists do know about phenomena such as groupthink. They are well aware that the structuring of academia is such that scientific enquiry is marshalled both by sources of funding and by influential figureheads (not to mention a growing tendency for prosocial censorship). And yet they can look around them and see a broadly uncorrupted society of individuals who are personally motivated only by the desire to understand how the world works and how best to further the interests of humanity. They are ideally placed to understand just how much effort has gone into validating a particular finding, and so must find it highly frustrating to see vociferous and vehement rejection emanating from those who enjoy no such advantage. When the challenge has a political foundation, their disquiet is bound to be all the more profound. They are the scientists and practitioners of the scientific method, so this challenge is, by definition, antiscientific to them. And if you have an ego like Michael Mann’s, combined as it is with a victim complex, you are going to imagine you are surrounded by an orc army.

There are certainly plenty of science communicators on the internet who are only too willing and eager to defend the comfortable position and to cruelly mock the ‘antiscientist’. See, for example, some of the output from Professor David James Farina, aka Professor Dave. As is often the case, he specialises in debunking easy targets such as Flat Earthers and proponents of Intelligent Design, but along with that comes a regrettably condescending and arrogantly dismissive attitude towards anyone who isn’t fully on board with the idea that only credentialed scientists are qualified to criticise other scientists. But this isn’t a debate that is going to be settled by lampooning your local crackpot. The issues are far too nuanced for that.

For example, let us return to the Covid-19 pandemic and reflect upon its use as an example of an explosion of the antiscience movement. There was indeed no shortage of opinion expressed on subjects such as the safety and efficacy of vaccines, the importance of masks, lockdown strategies, mobile phone masts, etc. Some of the advice given wasn’t particularly well thought through and there was no shortage of downright conspiracy and pseudoscience in the air. But throughout it all, politicians were anxious to maintain the mantra that they were only following the science, no matter how many twists and turns that entailed. The reality, however, was that there was never any single science but a plurality of sciences offering different perspectives. As Dr Elisabeth Paul et al point out:

“Anti-science” accusations are common in medicine and public health, sometimes to discredit scientists who hold opposing views. However, there is no such thing as “one science”. Epistemology recognizes that any “science” is sociologically embedded, and therefore contextual and intersubjective.

The paper illustrates the point by tracing the history of claims made on behalf of the various vaccines employed, pointing out many inconsistencies and contradictions in the various narratives as the crisis unfolded. The paper finishes with some very wise words:

Rather than uncritically continuing to perpetuate the “follow the science” vs “anti-science” dichotomy, let us all look in the mirror and reflect what really constitutes science. If nothing else, this involves the curiosity of deliberating the multiple perspectives arising from the different lenses of inquiry. Being open-minded and critical does not immediately equate to being “anti-science”, as some medical and political thought leaders want us to believe.

The message given is that scientists are themselves very often to blame for the lack of trust they encounter within the public, and this is basically due to them adopting an overly dogmatic attitude:

To regain public trust in science, it is high time scientists acknowledge the limitations of their methods and of their results, and to provide decision-makers, populations and healthcare providers with appropriate tools to judge how to best apply particular research results to individuals and communities.

None of this is to accuse scientists of corruption or of engaging in a hoax. They are simply dealing with complexities that have to be honestly portrayed as such. As Dr Paul et al put it:

Here, understanding the dynamics of how knowledge is socially constructed and used is crucial. This is because health interventions, and what is determined to be science, can often be captured by combinations of favoured scientific practice, pathway-dependency, vested interests, politics, louder voices, or, regarding our immediate concern, by ideational hegemonies that prohibit wider dialogic knowledge production.

Very often, by being defensive about this, scientists become their own worst enemies. Too often, sceptics are accused of failing to understand the scientific method, but the reality is that they usually understand it all too well. They are just not that convinced that it is all that relevant when evaluating a scientist’s latest earnest statement.

There is a certain hubris to be detected within those who speak of existential threats from an organised antiscience movement, since it implies that there are those with dark motives who fear the spotlight of scientific truth being shone in their direction. No doubt there is much that is irrational in modern discourse and we would all do well to take whatever benefit there is to be had from listening to the scientific voice (that is why the Trump administration’s DOGE purge is so worrying). However, that is a long way from uncritically accepting all that has been said in the interests of ‘following the science’. I’m sure that those on both sides of the debate would argue that being legitimately open-minded and critical is not being ‘antiscience’. Unfortunately, however, we are still a long way from agreeing upon what constitutes legitimacy, and this is as true for the climate change debate as it is for any.

June 8, 2025 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Inside the EU’s Billion Euro Media Machine

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | June 6, 2025

Over the past decade, nearly €1 billion in EU taxpayer money has been poured into media campaigns designed to portray the European Union in a favorable light, according to a detailed investigation by conservative think tank MCC Brussels.

The analysis lays bare a sprawling architecture of publicly funded messaging that, rather than safeguarding media plurality, appears crafted to systematically advance EU political objectives and stifle dissenting perspectives.

Read the report here.

According to the report’s author Thomas Fazi, “this report blows the lid open on Brussels’s media machine: how the EU channels vast sums of public money into media projects across Europe and beyond, to the tune of nearly € 80 million per year (at least).” He further observes that “this is likely a conservative estimate,” as many indirect or subcontracted payments are not publicly disclosed.

A significant portion of these funds flows through the European Commission’s “Information Measures for the EU Cohesion Policy” (IMREG) initiative. Ostensibly aimed at informing the public about cohesion efforts, the program has in fact functioned as a massive EU-branded public relations campaign. “The program is aimed at ‘increasing awareness of the benefits of Cohesion Policy among people’ and ‘promoting and fostering a better understanding of the role of Cohesion Policy in supporting all EU’s regions.’”

Yet while the Commission claims to respect “complete editorial independence,” the report challenges this premise: “If the projects are expected to highlight the ‘benefits’ of EU policy, how can true editorial independence be ensured?” Even more concerning are examples where “news features funded through the project failed to disclose their connection to EU funding – effectively amounting to a form of stealth marketing or, given the political nature of the topic and funder, covert propaganda.”

Beyond promotional content, the EU’s structural entanglement with news agencies reveals a deeper issue. Fazi writes that these agencies are “central nodes in the media ecosystem, allowing narratives crafted at the agency level to cascade verbatim across hundreds of mainstream outlets.”

The creation of the European Newsroom (ENR), a centralized Brussels-based consortium funded with €1.7 million, only exacerbates this concern. ENR “offers a pan-European perspective on EU affairs to audiences across the continent,” while its reporters are trained by EU institutions. Far from fostering independence, this setup “aims to develop common journalistic standards” through techniques that appear geared toward narrative unification.

Fact-checking and anti-disinformation programs provide yet another layer of influence. The European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), with at least €27 million in EU funding, brings together media outlets and news agencies in the name of combating disinformation.

But as the report questions, “When media organizations receive funding from the European Commission to disseminate pro-EU content, while also participating in mechanisms designed to flag and counter disinformation, the potential for conflict of interest is glaring.”

Fazi raises a vital question: “What happens when so-called ‘harmful narratives’ are, in fact, factually correct criticisms of EU institutions or policies? Where is the boundary between ‘disinformation’ and legitimate political dissent?”

The Journalism Partnerships program, another key funding vehicle, has funneled nearly €50 million into projects described as supporting media collaboration. However many of these efforts exhibit a clear ideological bias.

One funded initiative sought to “demystify the European Union and its institutions.” Another, Connecto, aimed to “strengthen European solidarity as opposed to extremist national movements.” Still, another, Eastern Frontier Initiative, focused on shaping narratives around “European defense and security,” involving media partners closely aligned with NATO positions.

Meanwhile, EU-backed investigative journalism frequently targets foreign adversaries rather than scrutinizing its own institutions. “A review of its output reveals very few investigations into EU governments or institutions. On the contrary, some of the funded projects appear to reiterate mainstream narratives,” the report notes.

The broader implications are troubling. As Fazi summarizes: “Rather than simply supporting a free and pluralistic media landscape, the EU is systematically investing in shaping a ‘friendly’ media environment that reinforces its own legitimacy and political goals.”

This blurring of journalism and institutional propaganda has dire consequences for public trust and democratic accountability. “Even in the absence of direct editorial interference, the structural dependence on EU grants fosters a dynamic that incentivizes self-censorship and narrative alignment,” the report warns.

June 7, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Canada’s New Border Law Hides a Surveillance Time Bomb

By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | June 6, 2025

Canada’s new Strong Border Act tabled as Bill C-2, is being framed by the federal government as a step toward strengthening border security. But hidden within its lengthy legislative text is a familiar and troubling push for expanded surveillance powers, this time without the need for court authorization.

Nestled deep in the bill are provisions that grant law enforcement sweeping new authority to demand subscriber data from service providers, bypassing the oversight mechanisms long seen as essential to protecting Canadians’ privacy.

The bill revives the “lawful access” agenda, one that law enforcement agencies have been pursuing since the late 1990s. These digital access provisions are not new, but their inclusion in a border-focused bill appears to be a calculated effort to quietly reintroduce them under a different guise. Despite being repeatedly rebuffed by public opposition, parliamentary committees, and Canada’s highest court, the drive to erode digital privacy protections continues.

This legislative maneuver follows years of setbacks for warrantless access advocates. In 2014, the Supreme Court ruled decisively in R. v. Spencer that Canadians have a legitimate expectation of privacy when it comes to subscriber information. The Court stressed that identifying individuals based on their Internet activity could easily expose sensitive personal behavior and that police demands for such information constituted a search requiring proper legal authorization.

According to Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, law enforcement has continued to seek ways around those constraints. Past efforts to legislate access without judicial oversight have either failed to pass or been dropped due to public backlash.

A 2010 bill mandating the disclosure of customer details, including IP addresses and device identifiers, without a warrant was abandoned.

In 2014, a new bill was introduced, ostensibly to tackle “cyberbullying.” In practice, it reintroduced many of the same provisions that had been defeated under earlier proposals. While dressed in the language of protecting youth online, its underlying purpose was once again to broaden law enforcement access to digital subscriber data with limited oversight.

The Supreme Court’s Spencer ruling remained a major obstacle, reaffirming the privacy rights of Canadians. Then, in 2023, the Bykovets decision extended those protections further, affirming that IP addresses also warrant constitutional safeguards. The Court noted that if digital privacy is to mean anything in the modern age, then these basic digital identifiers must be protected under Section 8 of the Charter.

Despite this legal precedent, Bill C-2 is attempting to carve out a new space for surveillance. Among its more concerning features is a clause that would allow authorities to issue “information demands” to service providers without needing judicial approval. These demands would compel companies to confirm whether they provide services to specific users, whether they hold transmission data related to those accounts, and where the services are or were provided, both inside and outside Canada.

The threshold for triggering such a demand is alarmingly low. Law enforcement must merely suspect that a crime has occurred or may occur and that the requested information could aid an investigation. The demand doesn’t require disclosing the actual data, but it functions as a roadmap to it, alerting police to which providers hold what kind of information and where it might be found. Such indirect searches effectively sidestep the very privacy protections the courts have upheld.

Notably, none of these measures relate directly to border enforcement. Their presence in a border bill serves a strategic purpose: to avoid the scrutiny that such provisions would attract if introduced through standalone legislation. This tactic, often seen in omnibus bills or unrelated amendments, allows controversial policies to advance quietly under the cover of more palatable reforms.

Professor Geist has a full in-depth look at the history of such laws here.

June 7, 2025 Posted by | Book Review, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

The Agenda: Their Vision – Your Future

Oracle Films | June 4, 2025

The Agenda: Their Vision | Your Future is a feature-length independent documentary produced by Mark Sharman; former UK broadcasting executive at ITV and Sky (formerly BSkyB).

In fiction and fact, there have always been people and organisations with ambitions to control the world. And now the oligarchs who pull the strings of finance and power finally have the tools to achieve their global objectives; omnipresent surveillance, artificial intelligence, digital currency and ultimately digital identities. The potential for social control of our lives and minds is alarmingly real.

The plan has been decades in the making and has seen infiltration of Governments, local councils, big business, civil society, the media and, crucially, education. A ceaseless push for a new reality, echoing Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, or George Orwell’s 1984.

The Agenda: Their Vision, Your Future examines the digital prison which awaits us if we do not push back right now. How your food, energy, money, travel and even your access to the internet could be limited and controlled; how financial power is strangling democracy and how global institutions like the World Health Organisation are commandeered to champion ideological and fiscal objectives.

The centrepiece is man-made climate change and with it, the race to Net Zero. Both are encapsulated in the United Nations and its Agenda 2030. A force for good? Or “a blank cheque for totalitarian global control”?

The Agenda presents expert views from the UK, the USA and Europe.

http://www.buymeacoffee.com/oraclefilms

June 6, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Video | , | Leave a comment

Brazilian Comedian Leo Lins Sentenced to Over Eight Years in Prison for Stand-Up Routine

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | June 5, 2025

A Brazilian comedian has been handed a prison sentence of over eight years for a stand-up routine, setting off a storm over the growing use of state power to penalize speech that challenges cultural taboos.

Leo Lins, known for his provocative style, was convicted by a federal court in São Paulo for allegedly promoting intolerance through jokes delivered during a live performance and later circulated widely online.

The show in question, titled Perturbador (“Perturber”), was posted to YouTube in 2022 and had reached more than three million views before it was taken down in 2023, following a judicial order prompted by a complaint from prosecutors.

In their case, officials claimed that the material denigrated a wide swath of Brazil’s population; including Jews, people with disabilities, the elderly, gay individuals, black citizens, indigenous groups, northeastern Brazilians, those living with HIV, evangelical Christians, and others.

Citing the scale of the video’s reach and the perceived harm of its content, the court framed the ruling as a defense of “human dignity,” arguing that the right to speak freely must yield when it allegedly infringes upon this principle.

The judgment labeled Lins’s comedy as “verbal violence” and claimed it contributes to a climate of social division. A financial penalty of 300,000 reais (around €54,000) was also imposed for what the court described as damage to the collective moral fabric.

Lins’s legal team swiftly denounced the sentence and announced plans to appeal. His lawyer issued a sharp rebuke of the court’s decision: “Watching a comedian receive the same punishment as someone convicted of drug trafficking, corruption, or even murder, all because of jokes told on stage, is deeply troubling.”

Among those speaking out against the verdict were fellow performers who warned that such actions risk eroding democratic freedoms under the guise of protecting sensibilities.

June 5, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

After losing its propaganda war, Israel silencing critics over Gaza genocide: UK scholar

By David Miller | Press TV | June 5, 2025

A British scholar, who is being sued for his pro-Palestine activism on social media, says Israel is seeking to silence its critics after losing a propaganda war regarding the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip.

David Miller, a producer and co-host of Press TV’s weekly Palestine Declassified show, made the remarks in an X post  on Wednesday, after the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), a pro-Israel NGO, launched a private prosecution against him.

The CCA said it has brought three charges against Miller, alleging that he had used X to send messages of a menacing character.

Miller said the CAA acts on behalf of Israel, which is “a hostile and illegitimate genocidal Jewish supremacist” regime.

“This attempt at a private prosecution is a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP), and an act of desperation by … Israel in a propaganda war it has already lost,” he added.

“Israel, via the CAA, is attempting to buy its way into the criminal justice system to silence critics of Zionism. They will fail.”

Miller’s three messages mentioned in the case were posted from November 2024 onwards. They also concluded with the hashtag “Dismantle Zionism.”

The first hearing into the case is expected to take place at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London on July 2.

Miller previously worked as a professor of political sociology at the University of Bristol, but he was unfairly and wrongfully dismissed in October 2021 over his pro-Palestine advocacy.

Anger against Israel has increased worldwide since October 7, 2023, when the occupying regime launched a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.

Almost 20 months into its brutal aggression, Israel has failed to achieve its declared objectives in Gaza despite killing at least 54,607 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injuring 125,341 others.

June 5, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Failed Blackmailing of Glenn Greenwald

By Kym Robinson | The Libertarian Institute | June 3, 2025

It is not a new thing to try and shame or blackmail an individual into silence. Whether the evidence is real or doctored doesn’t matter; only the judgement of the public is needed to destroy a person’s credibility.

Governments and criminal organizations have deployed this tactic for a long time. The U.S. government used these methods against civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., in an attempt to discredit his message. Foreign leaders have also been the victims of honey traps, which in turn led to photos of them indulging in sex acts; the Soviet Union used attractive women wisely in their espionage and blackmail for this purpose. During the Cold War, the promiscuous and homosexual nature of key figures in the British government ensured that they spied for the Soviet Union, rather than have such evidence divulged.

Journalist and prominent antiwar voice Glenn Greenwald was recently the victim of such an attempt to sully his character, and it has had mostly the opposite effect.

Greenwald has been a consistent and heroic voice for human rights for many years. The present onslaught against the people of Gaza and the complex nature of the war in Ukraine are just some areas which Greenwald has covered factual analysis and moral clarity. His journalism has drawn denunciation from the political establishment, including online trolls that relish in personal attacks at his expense. And now, video of him performing kinky sex acts is cover for another attempt to discredit him—apparently it’s not “revenge porn” when it’s targeting a political enemy. Further, being an openly gay man has invited personal abuse far harsher than any levied at Douglas Murray or Dave Rubin, who share Greenwald’s homosexual proclivities but are staunchly Zionist in their advocacy.

Greenwald speculated on a recent appearance with Tucker Carlson that it was the Israeli government who leaked the material against him, using spyware such as Pegasus, which he has repeatedly reported on. This is technology that a government can deploy not just against terrorists or malicious criminals, but journalists and civil rights activists.

The footage that has surfaced online of Greenwald performing intimate sex acts were timed after his most recent condemnation of the Israeli government. His critical assessment on the mass murder and starvation of innocent civilians, most of them children, is too contrarian it would seem. Instead of meeting him in debate, he has been met by attempts to discredit his character. Certain consensual sex acts can still draw an ire of condemnation, even from those who consider themselves socially liberal. Drug use, alcholism, gambling, even domestic violence all seem to be rather forgivable and seemingly understood acts of vice and reckless conduct. They can be lovingly interpreted, not as slights on a person’s character, but as a quirk. Consensual conduct between adults in the extremes of normative sex, on the other hand, can ruin a person’s reputation. Is not the narrative being pushed that the killing of children is far better than sodomy or sexual role play dress ups? This is why people are pressured into the closet. But that won’t stop prying eyes, gossip hounds, and blackmailers from trying to dig it up.

With the nature of social media algorithms and the frenzy to share content that gains engagement, even those who do not seek out such imagery saw it. It was pushed in front of many eyes, either as a screenshotted meme or as the raw original video. Greenwald owned his sexuality; he re-posted and replied to the leaks immediately. He took the barb of the attackers away. In doing this, many people from across the political spectrum (including known critics) arose in support. It seems many others did not care. They are not interested in what he does behind closed doors. That’s his business. It’s only the degenerate obsessed, the sexually fixated who find glee in re-posting and attacking a person for sex acts—leaked ones at that.

When David Letterman went through a form of sexual blackmail—he had been having an affair with an employee—he announced it all live on his television show. The blackmailer then had nothing, and the bribery was meaningless. Letterman admitted to infidelity and misconduct. That was for him and those in his personal life, not for the public. It did not ruin his career (but perhaps his marriage). It did not change him as a performer; the world may have learned a little more about the real man that he was. Likewise, Greenwald as a man was stripped naked; we saw things of him that we did not need to or request to. He confronted and shamed those attempting to shame him. He did it with dignity, despite the indignity thrown upon him.

If a performer or a person becomes famous enough, the mob feels entitled to their life. Paparazzi and hackers can hunt them, ambush, and spy into their lives. Now with AI image generation it no longer matters if it’s real or fabricated. How will we know what is real, what is artificially generated? Now we are all naked.

The refreshing result is that, in the case of Greenwald, the old tactics of blackmail and public shaming no longer work. The public is either beyond that sort of attack or they simply are uninterested. What this does mean, however, is that those who would murder innocent people, spy on everyone, censor, and prohibit must themselves adapt. The means of blackmail, leverage, and shaming tactics will evolve accordingly.

The real orgy is the genocidal violence that Greenwald’s remaining critics seem to adore. It’s mature and conservative to indulge in the mayhem and bloodshed, with no disgrace or even sense of hypocrisy. Seeing a respected man like Glen Greenwald in an intimate state is not shocking or disgusting. The truly disgusting act is the killing of children. That is what should matter most. That is what should hang people, what should disgust the public.

Some of those who believe that NATO and Ukraine’s government are above criticism will see the leaks as a win. Those who believe that the Israeli government has every right to murder children and conduct a genocide may also see this as a victory. They never needed this “evidence” to discredit Glenn Greenwald; he was always discredited in their minds because he disagreed with them. The many others who see this for what it is would rather focus on the real issues: when it comes to sex and violence, violence is always far worse.

June 3, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Turkey Proposes Law to Censor and Delete Unapproved Quran Translations

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | June 2, 2025

A legislative push in Turkey is drawing sharp rebuke over what many view as a direct assault on religious freedom: a proposed law that would empower the state’s top religious institution to confiscate and destroy Quran translations it deems theologically unacceptable.

The bill, recently approved by the Turkish Parliament’s Planning and Budget Committee, would grant the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) the authority to initiate legal action against any Quran translation it considers to contradict Islam’s “core principles.” If the Diyanet-appointed board flags a translation, it could petition a court to halt its publication, remove existing copies, and in the case of online content, block or delete it entirely.

Under the proposed changes, the judicial process offers little protection to publishers. Even if an appeal is filed within the mandated 15-day window, the order to destroy or suppress the materials would go into effect immediately. If no challenge is mounted or if the appeal fails, the targeted translation would be permanently eliminated.

Independent MP Mustafa Yeneroğlu condemned the move, warning it opens the door to ideological policing of scripture. “This turns the Diyanet into a censorship body,” he stated, asserting that religious interpretation should not be filtered through a government-approved lens. “No one has the right to classify the Quran according to an official ideology as ‘acceptable’ or ‘objectionable.’”

Yeneroğlu also flagged the bill’s broad language as a threat to legal consistency, calling the criteria for banning a translation dangerously vague. He argued that the measure undercuts constitutional protections on religious practice by allowing the state to determine what constitutes correct belief.

The proposed law fits within a wider campaign by Turkish authorities to tighten control over religious narratives. Since the failed 2016 coup attempt, the government has systematically purged books and materials associated with the Gülen movement, including numerous religious texts and commentaries. Though Ankara blames the group for orchestrating the coup, its followers and Fethullah Gülen himself have denied any role in the events.

The Diyanet, with a budget exceeding that of many key ministries, is already deeply entrenched in regulating religious life, overseeing sermons in more than 80,000 mosques and issuing official religious rulings. This new legislation would allow it to silence divergent interpretations by labeling them as doctrinal violations, bypassing any real public or theological debate.

Should the bill pass the full parliament, where the ruling AKP and its allies maintain a legislative majority, it would cement the Diyanet’s power to act as a gatekeeper of permissible religious thought. Such a move risks criminalizing theological diversity under the guise of defending orthodoxy, with minimal legal safeguards to protect against misuse.

Lawmakers are expected to begin formal discussions on the bill in the near future.

June 2, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

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