Canada’s Privacy Watchdog Not Consulted on Bill C-8, Enabling Secret Internet & Phone Shutdowns
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | October 13, 2025
Legislation that would allow federal ministers to secretly order telecom providers to cut off a Canadian’s phone or internet access is advancing without any input from the country’s top privacy authority.
Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne told a Commons committee that his office was never asked to review Bill C-8 before it was introduced.
The bill would authorize the cabinet to compel telecom companies to block services to individuals considered a security threat, without needing a judge’s approval or any public disclosure.
“The issue never came up,” Dufresne said during testimony before the House of Commons ethics committee. He confirmed, “We are not consulted on specific pieces of legislation before they are tabled.”
Bill C-8 would allow the federal cabinet to direct a telecom provider to deny all services to a specific person, based solely on the government’s assessment of a threat. No warrant would be required. No independent body would be tasked with reviewing the decision.
Conservative MP Michael Barrett raised an alarm over what he described as a dangerous overreach. He said the bill would allow the government to quietly seize control of individuals’ communications, with no transparency and no legal checks.
“Without meaningful limits, bills like C-8 can hand the government secret powers over Canadians’ communications,” said Barrett. “It’s a serious setback for privacy and for democracy.”
He pressed Dufresne on whether Parliament should be required to conduct privacy assessments before passing legislation with such broad surveillance potential.
“Isn’t Parliament simply being asked to grant sweeping powers of surveillance to the government without a formal review?” Barrett asked.
Dufresne responded, “It’s not a legal obligation under the Privacy Act.”
While acknowledging the importance of national security, Dufresne warned that such measures must not override core privacy protections. “We need to make sure that by protecting national security, we are not doing so at the expense of privacy,” he said.
A previous version of the idea, Bill C-26, failed in an earlier Parliament after concerns over its civil liberties implications.
Who is Larry Ellison? And how does he tie digital ID, Trump, Blair and genocide in Levant?
By David Miller | Al Mayadeen | October 13, 2025
Larry Ellison is a tech billionaire who is the world’s second richest man. He is behind the takeover of TikTok, the purchase of Paramount which ownsCBS News and is bidding to take over Warner Bros. which owns CNN.
He runs a firm called Oracle which was started with funds from the CIA. The CIA effectively made Ellison a Billionaire.
Today, Oracle is the cloud provider for the British Home Office, the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office, storing national security data, as well as the National Health Service. The NHS is of particular note since it holds an incredible amount of population data going back to its formation in 1948. No wonder Ellison is desperate to get his hands on it: “The NHS in the UK has an incredible amount of population data,” though, he noted, it remains too “fragmented.”
Ellison is the largest recorded donor to the Friends of the Israel Occupation Forces and previously, reportedly, offered Benjamin Netanyahu directorship of the firm. Its longtime CEO is “Israel” born Safra Catz, who has also donated millions to the Friends of the IOF either directly or via Oracle itself.
In late 2024, she told an Israeli business news outlet, “For employees, it’s clear: if you’re not for America or Israel, don’t work here, this is a free country.”
A year ago, Ellison described a future where everyone will face regular surveillance. He predicted artificial intelligence would help process the vast amounts of footage recorded by cameras placed on everything from car dashboards and front doors to security systems and the police.
Ellison is the man behind the latest push for digital ID cards in the UK and has said that citizens “will be on their best behaviour” once they are introduced. “We’re going to have supervision,” Ellison said. “If there’s a problem, AI will report that problem… we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.”
An anonymous US official told reporters TikTok’s algorithm will be “fully inspected and retrained” by Ellison’s consortium.
The purchase of TikTok is certainly about winning the propaganda battle for the Zionist genocide, but it’s also about surveillance, monitoring and control.
Oracle had already, in February, taken control of some of TikTok’s day-to-day operations, had taken a firm pro-“Israel” stance and reportedly, clamped down on pro-Palestine activism inside the company.
Collaborations between the company and Zionist regime agencies have been wide-ranging, from direct technology work with the military to software intended to help “Israel” with public relations, including, according to internal company messages, on social media platforms like TikTok. Catz, herself, notes that “We were the first company to build a data centre in Israel serving the region.”
Netanyahu has said, “We have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefields on which we are engaged. And the most important ones are on social media.” And the most important, he said, is “TikTok, number one. Number one.”
One of President Trump’s advisers described Ellison, earlier this year, as a literal “shadow president of the United States,” if not necessarily the shadow president.
Larry Ellison and Tony Blair
Two elements of the Trump peace plan, which are clearly linked, are on the one hand, a plan for governing Gaza after the putative “defeat” of Hamas and, on the other, a plan for manipulating the media and social media in order to defeat Hamas in the propaganda war.
These two elements of the strategy have clearly been co-ordinated closely with Netanyahu, who has more or less taken up residence in the US. But they have also been closely co-ordinated with a man referred to as the shadow president – the tech billionaire Larry Ellison – and with the former Prime Minister of the UK, Tony Blair.
Blair has recently emerged as “a potential Gaza interim consul and member of Donald Trump’s ‘board of peace.'”
Given that Ellison and Blair are both central to the Trump/Zionist plan, we might ask if they are also aware of each other? In fact, they are very closely intertwined.
According to Lighthouse Reports: Ellison invested $130 million in the Tony Blair Institute between 2021 and 2023, with a further $218 million pledged since then. The scale of funding took the TBI from a headcount of 200 to approaching 1,000. Blair himself takes no salary from TBI, but over this time, the institute has been able to recruit from bluechip firms like McKinsey and Silicon Valley giants Meta. In 2018, before the Oracle founder’s funding surge, TBI’s best-paid director earned $400,000. In 2023, the last year where accounts are available, the top earner took home $1.26 million.
Oracle has earned £1.1 billion in public sector revenue since the start of 2022, according to data collected by procurement analysts Tussell.
Here is Blair introducing Ellison in the UAE asking him about the use of data, including in Digital IDs. Note what he says about unifying data.
“The first thing a country needs to do is to unify all of their data so that it can be consumed and used by the AI model.”
Ellison and Blair are working together to open up huge data-mines for profit-making. The British NHS is a key prize since there are virtually no other population level data sources that go back so far. The NHS was created in 1948.
It’s obvious that the unification of data will enhance the ability of both Oracle and the Zionist entity to surveil and kill the Palestinians and to suppress all attempts to oppose genocide. This is how the control of TikTok and the Trump “board of peace” are connected.
‘Anything They Don’t Like Is Russian Interference’ — Clare Daly Lifts the Lid on EU Propaganda
APT | October 9, 2025
In this eye-opening session, Irish MEP and activist Clare Daly exposes the harsh reality of Europe’s so-called “defense of democracy” policies. Labeled a “Russian propagandist” simply for speaking the truth, Daly takes aim at the European Union’s disinformation framework, hybrid sanctions, and systematic crackdown on dissent.
From pro-Palestinian journalists facing travel bans and asset freezes to citizens being punished for questioning COVID measures or NATO policies, Daly reveals how words and ideas are treated as weapons and how the EU is increasingly silencing voices that challenge its narrative.
“If it’s them today, it’s you tomorrow,” warns Daly, emphasizing the urgency for citizens to organize, protect free speech, and hold European leadership accountable.
Watch as she explains how hybrid sanctions, political repression, and media control are reshaping democracy in Europe — and why everyone should pay attention before it’s too late.
‘Persecute’ Russian speakers – ex-Ukrainian deputy speaker
RT | October 11, 2025
Kiev should launch a full-blown crackdown on Russian speakers, threatening them with financial and criminal penalties if they are reluctant to use Ukrainian, a former deputy parliamentary speaker said on Friday.
Koshulinsky, who held his post from 2012 to 2014 and remains a senior figure in the far-right Svoboda party, told local media that “discomfort for people who use the language of the occupiers” must be imposed.
”Deny education, deny work, punish with money, remove from positions … Only in this way will we oblige those people who do not honor or respect Ukrainians… These people do not understand other measures besides discomfort and financial or criminal persecution,” Koshulinsky said. He added that what he calls “the Moscow language” helps Russia “spread its narratives” among Ukrainians.
Last month, language ombudsman Elena Ivanovskaya warned that harsh or coercive methods to impose Ukrainian on the country’s large Russian-speaking community could backfire on the government. She said proposals for “language patrols” are both unrealistic and potentially destabilizing, calling instead for slower but steadier measures to promote Ukrainian among children.
Ivanovskaya also sounded the alarm over the fact that the use of Russian is on the rise in daily life, particularly among younger Ukrainians, adding that it was caused by the population growing accustomed to the conflict with Russia.
Following the Western-backed coup in 2014, Kiev has adopted a series of policies aimed at curbing the use of Russian in public life – making Ukrainian mandatory in schools and state institutions, significantly tightening quotas on Russian-language media and cultural products, and restricting Russian books and music.
Russia has condemned Ukraine’s language policies, accusing it of pursuing “a violent change of the linguistic identity” of its population.
West turning internet into ‘tool of control’ – Telegram founder
RT | October 10, 2025
Western surveillance and censorship is eroding digital freedom and is turning the internet into a “tool of control,” Telegram founder Pavel Durov has warned.
The Russian-born billionaire has long portrayed Telegram as an outpost for free speech and privacy, contrasting it with what he describes as authoritarian censorship efforts by Western governments.
“Our generation is running out of time to save the free Internet built for us by our fathers,” Durov said in a statement on Telegram on Friday, marking his 41st birthday.
“What was once the promise of the free exchange of information is being turned into the ultimate tool of control,” he added, noting that nations once considered free are adopting authoritarian digital practices. He cited measures such as digital IDs in the UK, compulsory online age verification in Australia, and the mass scanning of private messages in the EU.
Durov said people have been misled by the West into believing that their mission is to dismantle traditional values – privacy, sovereignty, free markets, and free speech – and by doing so, society has embarked on a path of “self-destruction.”
“A dark, dystopian world is approaching fast – while we’re asleep. Our generation risks going down in history as the last one that had freedoms – and allowed them to be taken away… We are running out of time,” he said.
Durov has long clashed with Western governments over Telegram’s policies, facing fines in Germany for not removing ‘illegal’ content and criticism in the US for allegedly enabling extremist groups.
Last year, he was arrested in Paris and charged with complicity in crimes linked to Telegram users, but was released on bail. He called the case politically motivated. He later accused French intelligence of pressuring him to censor conservative content during elections in Romania and Moldova, and condemned France for waging “a crusade” against free speech.
Durov has also warned that EU laws such as the Digital Services Act and the AI Act are paving the way for the centralized control of information.
UK universities spied on students for arms firms supplying Israel: Report
Press TV – October 8, 2025
Leaked emails have revealed that UK universities spied on students’ social media and chat groups at the request of arms companies supplying weapons to Israel.
According to internal correspondence obtained by The Guardian and Liberty Investigates, several universities assured these weapons manufacturers that they would keep watch over students’ online activity to detect and preempt potential protests.
Over the past two years, large-scale pro-Palestinian demonstrations have taken place across UK campuses, with students demanding an end to arms sales to the Israeli regime.
In one case, a university responding to a weapon manufacturer’s “security questionnaire” said it would conduct “active monitoring of social media” to detect any planned protests against Rolls-Royce during a careers fair.
Rolls-Royce, the UK’s second-largest arms manufacturer, directly supplies key components for Israeli military vehicles. Its German subsidiary, MTU, also produces engines used in Israel’s battle tanks, armored personnel carriers, and warships.
Loughborough University told a recruitment firm running a “Rolls-Royce roadshow” that its security team was conducting “active monitoring of social media … to provide early intelligence about protests.”
Emails from Heriot-Watt University suggest that Raytheon UK requested the university to “monitor university chat groups” on its behalf before a careers fair — and the university agreed to “implement the measures you have suggested.”
Similarly, Glasgow and Cardiff universities faced pressure from major UK aerospace firms — BAE Systems and Leonardo — to track online activity before career events. Some events were later moved online after potential protests were identified.
The UK also supplies BAE-made components to a global pool of F-35 fighter jets that Israel can access.
The surveillance of students’ social media has sparked outrage among advocacy groups, who argue that universities should support peaceful protest, not criminalize it.
Jo Grady, general secretary of the University and College Union, called the universities’ actions “utterly shameful,” adding that “so many universities have spent time and resources surveilling students who are engaged in peaceful protest against genocide.”
Data compiled by Liberty Investigates shows that one in four UK universities — 37 out of 154 — launched disciplinary investigations into pro-Gaza student and staff activists between October 2023 and March 2025, affecting up to 200 people.
The United Kingdom maintains close political and military ties with Israel, including arms sales, intelligence sharing, and military partnerships.
British arms companies continue to provide key components for Israeli military vehicles, fighter jets, and naval vessels — a relationship that human rights groups say makes the UK complicit in the regime’s war crimes in Gaza.
Are You On a Secret TSA Watchlist?
By Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | October 7, 2025
In 1999, the Supreme Court recognized that the “‘constitutional right to travel from one State to another’ is firmly embedded in our jurisprudence.” Unless, of course, federal agents secretly disapprove of you, your beliefs, or your suspected connections.
The Transportation Security Administration has vexed Americans for more than twenty years. Last week, three separate idiotic TSA surveillance programs were exposed by Congress and the Trump administration.
In 2021, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) created a secret watchlist of individuals who publicly opposed President Joe Biden’s COVID mask mandate. Operation Freedom to Breathe resulted in dozens of individuals being either banned from flying or hit with additional groping or patdowns. As journalist Matt Taibbi reported, “12 were placed on a watch list for removing their masks in-flight,” which a TSA memo characterized as “an act of extreme recklessness in carrying out an act that represents a threat to the life of passengers and crew.” That covert crackdown only ended when a federal judge struck down Biden’s mask mandate in April 2022. Only in Washington would an edict to banish all dissidents be labeled Operation Freedom to Breathe.
The Biden’s TSA secretly condemned hundreds of people allegedly linked to the January 6, 2021 Capitol protests. TSA approved “enhanced screening” and watchlists for anyone “suspected of traveling to the National Capital Region” for that protest, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) revealed. TSA bloated the list of January 6 suspects by tapping a George Washington University database of alleged extremists—which was as credible as randomly selecting names of Trump donors. A TSA privacy officer protested, “TSA is punishing people for the expression of their ideas when they haven’t been charged, let alone convicted of incitement or sedition.”
New dirt also came to the surface about the Quiet Skies program, which sent TSA air marshals to covertly surveil travelers on the flimsiest pretexts. If you fell asleep or used the bathroom or glared at noisy kids during a flight, those incriminating facts might have been added to your federal dossier. Air marshals noted whether suspects gained weight or were balding or were paranoid about the undercover federal agents who followed them into the parking lot to their cars. If you fidgeted, sweat, or had “strong body odor”—BOOM! the feds were onto you. Air marshals also zeroed in on “facial flushing,” “gripping/white knuckling bags,” “face touching,” or “wide open, staring eyes,” and “rapid eye blinking.”
Quiet Skies, which cost $200 million a year, was scandalized last year after it targeted former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (currently the Director of National Intelligence) after she criticized Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. Turns out Quiet Skies was also tracking three Republican congressmen prior to the program being abolished in June. TSA has not yet revealed the names of those congressmen.
Legions of women bitterly complain on social media about TSA screeners molesting them. But if a woman pushes a TSA screeners hands away from her breasts, then she can placed on the TSA secret “95 list” of potentially troublesome travelers. TSA’s official watchlist defines troublemaker to include someone who merely “loiters” near a TSA checkpoint or demonstrates any “concerning behavior.” Any behavior which is “offensive [to the TSA] and without legal justification” can get a person secretly listed, according to a confidential TSA memo. TSA assistant administrator Darby LaJoye told Congress that any traveler who demonstrated “concerning” behavior can be secretly placed on the list. “Concerning behavior” is vague enough to add 10,000 chumps a day to the watchlist. The TSA would have been more honest if it announced that anyone who fails to instantly and unquestioningly submit to all TSA demands is guilty of insubordination.
TSA can also place someone on the watchlist simply because they are “publicly notorious.” Did getting denounced by TSA chief John Pistole in 2014 for “maligning” and “disparaging” TSA agents in an op-ed qualify me for the list and endless TSA supplemental patdowns when I travel? The Brennan Center for Justice warned that TSA could add “pretty much anyone with even a modest public profile, such as journalists or activists,” to the “95 list.” ACLU attorney Hugh Handeyside warns that the new watchlist “permits TSA officials to blacklist people for conduct that could be wholly innocuous. This is conduct that’s so completely subjective, and in many cases likely completely innocent, it just gives officers too much latitude to blacklist people arbitrarily and to essentially punish them for asserting their rights and in doing anything other than complying with officers’ demands.”
There are other TSA surveillance programs and watchlists that desperately need sunshine if not legal de-lousing. A 2023 report by the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee noted that “U.S. travelers may be screened for at least 22 different reasons.” An Iron Curtain of secrecy covers the operation:
“The executive branch has revealed hardly any information about what watchlists it maintains, who is included, and why or how those lists are used.”
DHS receives requests from almost 20,000 people a year complaining about being banned from flying or subjected to enhanced screening, and 98% of those people are not on terrorist watchlists, according to TSA.
The Senate report revealed the existence of TSA’s Security Notification List which “includes individuals who may pose a threat to aviation security, but who do not warrant additional screening.” So if they pose a threat to airline safety, why are they permitted to fly? The report noted:
“These individuals may seek to intentionally evade or defeat security measures or may attempt to disrupt the safe and effective completion of screening…Individuals on this list may not be referred for additional screening solely by virtue of their placement on this list, but TSA personnel may be given forewarning of their travel.”
Is this simply the “Bad Attitude List” or the “Give Hell to Anyone Who Complained Since 9/11 List”?
The Senate report warned, “A watchlist that is not properly maintained… breaks the trust with innocent Americans who get caught up in this net with no way out.” TSA watchlists are perilous to freedom because TSA proudly hires many employees who failed every intelligence test they ever took. “Senator Ted Kennedy and former U.S. Representative John Lewis, and even babies, have been stopped at airports because they shared biographical information with individuals on the [No Fly] terrorist watchlist,” the Senate report noted.
How many other secret watchlists has TSA or DHS not yet revealed? We have no idea how many Americans’ rights and liberties continue to vanish into TSA black holes.
Endless false alarms at TSA checkpoints are a clue that the agency is still on par with a drunk blindfolded person swinging at a pinata. Airport security seems like a perpetual psycho-pathological experiment to determine how much degradation Americans will tolerate. Despite squeezing millions of butts and boobs, TSA has never caught a real terrorist. After pointlessly groping millions of Americans, TSA has no excuse for groping millions more.
Free Speech After Charlie Kirk: an American Lesson for Pam Bondi, Donald Trump & Netanyahu
By Ilana Mercer | LewRockwell.com | October 4, 2025
Let us be clear about what freedom of speech à la America truly means:
The words people speak, chant, write and tweet; the beliefs they are known to hold, the flags they fly or burn, the symbolic, non-violent ceremonies and rituals they enact, the insignia, paraphernalia; the goose-stepping, Hitler salutes they muck around with—provided no physical aggression is involved (violence against animals included), all this counts as protected speech, licit in natural law.
So long as oddities and idiosyncrasies, whether performed alone or in groups, thoughts harbored privately or shared in public—so long as no violence accompanies such speech or behavior; so long as your mitts stop at the next man’s face (or at the next mutt’s fury face, Kristi Noem): SPEECH. It’s all speech. It should be free, unfettered and as wild and as wanton as can be.
At their worst, expressions of ostensible antisemitism, Naziism, racisms or other antipathies amount to thought crimes, nothing more, if expressed as a belief system severally or collectively, rather than in palpably violent actions. Whether your thoughts are spoken, chanted, written or preached; be they impolite or impolitic: they are, at worst, no more than thought crimes.
Thought crimes are nobody’s business in a free society. Thought crimes ought to be ferociously protected by a free people. By logical extension, any accusations of antisemitism, Naziism or other antipathies and racisms, are especially suspect when emitted as a meme from American institutionalized power structures.
One such obscenely wealthy and worthless power structure is the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), or Defamation League—a more apt moniker once suggested by Elon Musk, before he joined the ADL in severely censoring some speech on the X platform. The ADL is a meddlesome shakedown operation, in the mold of the Southern Poverty Law Center (“Smear Artists for the Total State,” wrote Tom DiLorenzo). It has taken it upon itself to decide who lives and who dies socially and financially on the basis of the unfortunate individual’s ideas, spoken and written.
In the American tradition, thoughts and words spoken or written that are politically impolite—again, racism; Naziism, antisemitism—retain protected status as speech beyond the adjudication of law-makers, bureaucrats, mediacrats, educrats and technocrats.
Sniffing out racists or anti-Semites is an absolute no-no for any and all self-respecting, libertarian-minded Americans, or any American, for that matter. Like creedal libertarians, Americans don’t, or should not, prosecute thought crimes or persecute thought “criminals.”
Ours should be The Skokie Standard of free speech and thinking (which I articulated in August 2022). What is The Skokie Standard of free speech? In 1978, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) took a stand for free speech by defending a neo-Nazi group that wanted to march through the Chicago suburb of Skokie, where many Holocaust survivors lived. The Skokie Standard of free speech is one that champions unpopular expression, and vigorously defends all marginalized speakers and thinkers, rather than purveying and protecting state and corporate ideology du jour.
Let me repeat what the Skokie Standard of free speech stands for here: However which way they are grouped, the words people individually or collectively speak, chant, write and tweet; the beliefs they are known to hold, the flags they fly or stomp, the symbolic, non-violent ceremonies, rituals and protests they perform; the insignia, paraphernalia, the goose-stepping, Hitler salutes they dick around with—provided no physical aggression is involved, all that counts as protected speech.
Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk, RIP, got it. On May 2, 2024, Kirk wrote the following: “Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free.”
Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi doesn’t get it. No wonder even Glenn Greenwald, once a practicing constitutional attorney—and a man of manners and decorum—regularly appends “dumb” and “lacking any grasp of constitutional law” to any mention of Bondi, who said this after Kirk’s murder:
The Justice Department would “absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech… There’s free speech, and then there’s hate speech. And there is no place—especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie — [for that] in our society,” Bondi told a podcaster likewise cerebrally compromised.
If you thought the nation’s chief law enforcement officer had blurted out on an impulse such promises of unconstitutional hate-speech prosecutions; I’m sorry to say that Bondi only doubled down. In scant regard for the letter and spirit of American constitutional law, she advised employers, on September 15, of their “obligation to get rid of people who are saying horrible things.”
While “The First Amendment doesn’t stop private employers from choosing to fire people for speech; it can be illegal for the government to use its power to pressure a private company into firing a staff member.” In America, not even do celebrations of Kirk’s assassination count as threats of violence or incitement to violence. In fact, “government retribution for speech,” lambasted U.S. District Judge William Young, a Reagan appointee, “is directly forbidden by the First Amendment.”
For our libertarian purposes, moreover, speech should never be defended by deploying a contents-driven defense, such as that a book, an utterance or their author must be spared on account that the person is good and his words are not racist and are against bigotry.
The Argument from Freedom means arguing process, not content. Racism, (alleged) antisemitism or Naziism in targeted literature or in protests should always and everywhere be a peripheral issue. Or, preferably, no issue at all.
The Argument from Freedom means arguing not over the contents of publications like Mein Kampf or the merit of protests for Palestine, but for their publication and practice irrespective of their contents. Which is why I say freedom’s argument is an argument from process, not content.
Freedom makes the case for an unfettered free market in ideas, good and bad. Freedom argues for politically impolite books to be published and read freely. It demands that all offensive literature be available to the free men and women who inhabit the free society. And not because of history; so that we don’t forget it or repeat it. Rather, freedom needs no justification. It is an end unto itself. You are deficient in American solidarity if you don’t stand up for non-violent protest and all speech.
Liberty is a simple thing. It’s the unassailable right to shout, flail your arms, and verbally provoke people in power, unmolested. Tyranny is when those small things can get you assaulted, incarcerated, injured, deported, even killed.
Ultimately banning books or proscribing speech and speakers as the kangaroo courts of Britain, Europe and Canada do legally, assumes a lack of choice and agency among ostensibly “free” human beings. It’s also predicated on the acceptance of a higher authority which decides for the rest of us which cultural products are fit for our consumption.
I thus put it to you, dear reader, left and right, that speech restrictions stateside in the form of the Antisemitism Awareness Act mirror the worst of British and western Europe’s anti-speech tribunals. Tabled by a Republican and a Democrat, S. 4127, which mercifully is still in committee, would embed state agitprop throughout American education. For posterity. Aside being in violation of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, the Antisemitism Awareness Act would utterly enervate discourse in our country and criminalize vast tracts of speech as well as proscribe actions that are licit in constitutional and natural law.
Left, Right and libertarian; we can and must, then, join in unapologetically rejecting the very idea of policing, purging, persecuting or prosecuting people for holding and expressing politically unpopular ideas in action or in speech.
Mexico Bill Proposes Prison for AI Memes Mocking Public Figures
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | October 6, 2025
Mexico’s Congress is once again at the center of a free speech storm.
This time, Deputy Armando Corona Arvizu from the ruling Morena party is proposing to make it a crime to create or share AI-generated memes or digital images that make fun of someone without their consent.
His initiative, filed in the Chamber of Deputies, sets out prison terms of three to six years and fines for anyone who “create, manipulate, transform, reproduce or disseminate images, videos, audios or digital representations” made with artificial intelligence for the purpose of “ridiculing, harassing, impersonating or damaging” a person’s “reputation or dignity.”
Read the bill here.
The punishment would increase by half if the person targeted is a public official, minor, or person with a disability, or if the content spreads widely online or causes personal, psychological, or professional harm.
The bill presents itself as protection against digital abuse but is, as always, a new attempt at censorship.
The initiative would insert Articles 211 Bis 8 and 211 Bis 9 into the Federal Penal Code, written in vague and sweeping terms that could cover almost any form of online expression.
It makes no distinction between a malicious deepfake and a harmless meme.
By criminalizing content intended to “ridicule,” the bill allows courts or public figures to decide what counts as ridicule. That opens the door to arbitrary enforcement.
There are no explicit protections for parody, satire, or public-interest criticism, all of which are essential to a free society.
Even more troubling, the law increases penalties when the alleged victim is a public servant.
That provision could turn the law into a tool for politicians to insulate themselves from criticism, since any joke, meme, or cartoon could be claimed to harm their “dignity.”
Mexico has long relied on humor as a form of political expression.
Memes, cartoons, and viral jokes often serve as the public’s way of questioning authority. Turning that humor into a potential crime would be a serious step backward.
Instead of making the internet safer, this measure could create a chilling effect that discourages users from speaking or joking freely for fear of prison time.
This is not the first time Morena has tried to police online humor. Former Puebla governor Alejandro Armenta introduced what became known as the Censorship Law, which sought to punish people for “insulting or offending” others online.
The watchdog group Article 19 warned that its broad language could easily be used against journalists or ordinary citizens.
Earlier this year, Ricardo Monreal suggested an Anti-Memes Law that would have required humorous posts to be labeled as “memes” to avoid penalties. Public outrage forced him to abandon the idea.
Corona’s proposal follows the same path under a new label. While it claims to address the dangers of AI manipulation, its vague wording threatens free expression instead of safeguarding it.
Oracle execs: Love Israel or maybe this isn’t the job for you
Employees who disagreed were reportedly referred to company mental health services
By Eli Clifton | Responsible Statecraft | October 3, 2025
TikTok’s impending sale to a group of U.S. investors led by Oracle was supposed to alleviate concerns about foreign influence over the popular social media platform. But a series of statements in Israeli media outlets by company executives including Executive Vice Board Chair and former CEO Safra Catz, reveal the company’s commitment to Israel is “unequivocal” and is not shy about squelching criticism of Israel internally.
These statements raise questions about how Oracle might exercise its impending ownership role at TikTok, a platform popular with young adults who are often critical of U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza and Israel’s killing of Palestinian civilians, which a U.N. commission recently characterized as a “genocide.”
In 2021, Catz visited Israel as her first trip outside the U.S. after the COVID-19 pandemic. Calcalist, an Israeli publication, reported on remarks by the Oracle CEO:
When asked about the protests against Israel organized by employees at Google and Apple, Catz said that “when you connect with Oracle you understand that we are committed to the U.S. and Israel. We are not flexible regarding our mission, and our commitment to Israel is second to none. This is a free world and I love my employees, and if they don’t agree with our mission to support the State of Israel then maybe we aren’t the right company for them. Larry (Ellison, co-founder of Oracle) and I are publicly committed to Israel and devote personal time to the country and no one should be surprised by that.”
In a 2024 interview with Calcalist, Catz emphasized that one of her first actions after the October 7th 2023 Hamas attack was to send the message to Oracle’s clients around the world – including, presumably, in many countries where Oracle holds government contracts – that the technology company prioritizes Israel. She said:
“So what we did was first sort of hug our employees, hug my Oracle employees by doing everything we could think of and put on our website ‘We stand with Israel’, not only on our Israeli website or even on our American website, but on our websites around the world in the local language. And as you know, we operate in a lot of countries. And it was very important for us to make sure we made a powerful message about how important Israel is and what the difference is between good and evil.”
Head of Oracle Israel Eran Feigenbaum reinforced the messages delivered by Catz in a 2023 interview with the Israeli publication Ynet. Feigenbaum said:
“I couldn’t fathom a global company offering more support to Israel than Oracle. It’s an incredible opportunity to lead the Israeli branch with the backing of a global powerhouse. Oracle’s leadership, including the fact that Larry himself has an Israeli origin, has consistently demonstrated unequivocal support for Israel. So much so, that employees not aligning with support for Israel may find Oracle isn’t the right fit.”
The message from higher ups at Oracle that anything less than total prioritization of Israeli interests is unwelcome behavior appears to be reinforced through the company’s human resources department. An anonymous Substack, Oracle For Palestine, written by a group of Oracle employees, claims that “our leadership’s unquestioning public support for Israel” has led to a failure of the company to address the one-sided political positions taken by top management and the discrimination faced by employees who don’t share the political views of management.
“In response to legitimate concerns, many of us have been referred to internal mental health resources rather than having those concerns addressed appropriately,” said the group in a post last year.
Catz’s comments as well as the anecdote about Oracle staff being referred to mental health resources were all celebrated in a Times of Israel blog post by Oracle employee Ivan Bassov.
“Oracle has been refreshingly clear and consistent under the leadership of our CEO, Safra Catz,” wrote Bassov. “She has repeatedly articulated both her personal commitment and Oracle’s commitment to Israel.”
Bassov appeared to corroborate the anonymous Substack’s claims and endorsed Oracle’s treatment of his “anti-Israel” colleagues, writing, “Well, if sending these ‘activists’ to therapy instead of resetting the company’s moral compass counts as ‘repression,’ then maybe the company’s judgment was sounder than they think.”
Earlier this week, Responsible Statecraft reported on a leaked email from the hacked email account of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. “We have all been horrified by the growth of the BDS movement in college campuses and have concluded that we have to fight this battle before the kids even get to college,” said an email appearing to originate from Catz to Barak in 2015. “We believe that we have to embed the love and respect for Israel in the American culture.”
Sources familiar with the matter “could not confirm the authenticity of the email” and Oracle declined to comment about Catz’s statements. However, review of Catz’s public statements, as well as those from another executive at Oracle, reveal similar biases in favor of Israel and even clearer expressions of Oracle’s prioritization of Israel over any other countries or corporate interests.The track record of Oracle executives demanding commitment to Israel from staff around the world raises a number of questions:
How does Oracle address situations in which U.S. interests, or the interests of any other country in which the company operates, are in conflict with Israel’s interests?
Will these statements of unequivocal support for Israel translate into restrictions on speech critical of Israel on TikTok under Oracle’s ownership?
An Oracle spokesperson did not respond to these questions.
Eli Clifton is a senior advisor at the Quincy Institute and Investigative Journalist at Large at Responsible Statecraft. He reports on money in politics and U.S. foreign policy.
FBI Breakup Ends SPLC and ADL Direct Influence
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | October 5, 2025
The FBI has officially ended its partnership with both the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), following years of mounting concern over the influence of partisan organizations in shaping federal intelligence and domestic “extremism” policy, which has resulted in online censorship.
FBI Director Kash Patel condemned the SPLC’s direction, describing it as a “partisan smear machine” and calling its involvement in federal intelligence work unacceptable.
He pointed specifically to the group’s so-called “hate map,” which has long been used to label mainstream conservative and Christian organizations as equivalent to violent hate groups.
“Their so-called hate map has been used to defame mainstream Americans and even inspired violence,” Patel stated. “That disgraceful record makes them unfit for any FBI partnership.”
The bureau confirmed it no longer shares information or maintains any intelligence products from the SPLC.
It has also cut off contact with the ADL, a group that, while ostensibly focused on combating antisemitism, has frequently advocated for censorship of speech it deems problematic, particularly online.
Both organizations were previously consulted by the FBI in identifying and monitoring alleged extremist threats.
That practice came under fire after the bureau’s Richmond office cited the SPLC in a controversial 2023 memo suggesting that traditional Catholics could be tied to radical activity.
The document called for agents to cultivate informants within Catholic churches.
The backlash led Patel to publicly reject the use of ideologically driven outside groups in FBI operations.
“I made it clear that the FBI will never rely on politicized or agenda-driven intelligence from outside groups—and certainly not from the SPLC,” Patel said. “All ties with the SPLC have officially been terminated.”
Originally known for battling white supremacist groups through litigation, the SPLC has since shifted its focus toward labeling conservative advocacy organizations as dangerous.
Over time, its “hate map” has become a blacklist used by corporations, financial services, and online platforms to restrict access and support for those groups.
More recently, the group listed Turning Point USA shortly before the assassination of its founder, free speech advocate Charlie Kirk.
The SPLC has maintained that not all Christian groups are included in its listings. For years, it pointed to Focus on the Family as an example of one that was not. That changed in 2024 when Focus was added to the map.
The ADL supported the STOP HATE Act, which seeks to pressure online platforms to remove “disinformation” and what it calls “hate speech.” The bill’s language raises obvious concerns about vague definitions and potential abuse.
Both organizations have held sway not just over federal agencies, but also over powerful private institutions.
Amazon, Eventbrite, Hyatt Hotels, and PayPal have all relied on the SPLC’s hate designations to determine which groups can use their services.
The now-discontinued AmazonSmile program excluded organizations listed by the SPLC, while major charitable foundations have blocked funding to those targeted by the group.
Federal agencies under the Biden administration have also shown a willingness to coordinate with the SPLC.
In a 2021 donor meeting, the group’s then-president said that many agencies had proactively reached out to solicit its input on shaping domestic terrorism policy.
That cooperation continued even after the SPLC labeled the parental rights group Moms for Liberty a hate group in 2023, followed by a briefing with the Department of Justice.
Ukraine’s SBU Abducted Kharkov Residents Who Criticized Regime Online
Sputnik – 05.10.2025
People who made critical posts related to the Ukraine’s authorities are being abducted, Anastasiya Bykova, the administrator of a closed chat for the city’s residents, told Sputnik. These people had posted photos in the chat that could reveal their location, she added.
The chat admin also described an incident in which the SBU contacted her and asked her to pass along a “hello” to one of the chat members, who was being held in a pretrial detention facility.
Besides, she revealed that the SBU spent about an hour and a half exhibiting her father’s beating on a video call and demanded that she hand over her Telegram account, which had admin access to the Kharkov chat, and collect information on the movement of Russian military equipment.
Bykova, who lives in Russia’s Shebekino, claims her Telegram account was repeatedly accessed from devices in Kiev and Odessa.

