Tag: brazil

Illegal Deported by Trump Now Accused of Planning Satanic ‘Execution of Children’ at Lady Gaga Concert

American citizens should continue to thank their lucky stars that President Donald Trump won last November.

Everyone knows one of the top accomplishments of his administration to date has been securing the border and beginning the mass deportation of criminal illegal aliens.

As border czar Tom Homan has said, the president’s direction is for “the worst to go first.”

Apparently, one of those worst was 44-year-old Brazilian national Luis da Silva, who was deported from the U.S. back to his home nation last month, the New York Post reported.

According to Brazilian officials, he was planning to commit mass murder at a Lady Gaga concert Saturday that was attended by over 2 million people at Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach.

Da Silva “wanted to livestream the execution of children and set up bombs close to the stage during Gaga’s performance,” investigators said, according to the Post.

“He said that the singer was a Satanist and that he was going to perform a Satanist ritual too, killing a child during the show,” officer Felipe Curi, a Rio de Janeiro Civil Police secretary, told reporters Monday.

Police took da Silva and an alleged accomplice  — a 17-year-old boy — into custody just hours before the concert began.

A police complaint stated that the two “planned to use Molotov cocktails and explosive backpacks.”

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Lady Gaga Brazil Concert Bombing Suspect Was Deported from U.S. by Trump

A migrant deported from the United States is the suspected terrorist behind the bombing plot at a Lady Gaga concert in Brazil.

Brazilian authorities revealed this week that they arrested 44-year-old Luis da Silva after he planned to kill Lady Gaga fans at her blowout concert on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday.

The concert was attended by a record-breaking 2.5 million fans and da Silva wanted “livestream the execution of children and set up bombs close to the stage,” per the New York Post.

“He said that the singer was a Satanist and that he was going to perform a Satanist ritual too, killing a child during the show,” Rio de Janeiro Civil Police secretary, officer Felipe Curi, told reporters on Monday.

Brazilian authorities say da Silva was deported from the United States recently for unknown reasons. He was arrested along with a 17-year-old boy hours before the concert and the “pair allegedly used Discord to try and radicalize others, including teenagers, to carry out attacks against children and members of the LGBTQ+ community who were attending the concert,” according to the Post.

Sao Paulo congressman Erika Hilton wrote on X that da Silva led a group that “promoted pedophilia, misogyny and LGBTphobia through social media.”

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Meta Complies with Brazilian Court Order While Challenging Justice Alexandre de Moraes’s Demand for Journalist’s Instagram Data

Meta has launched a legal challenge against a ruling by controversial Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who compelled the tech giant to disclose data tied to the Instagram account of journalist Allan dos Santos. Though raising objections to the judge’s rationale, Meta affirmed it would still comply — at least for now.

The company confirmed it will deliver the requested data in a confidential filing, stating, “In compliance with the order and demonstrating good faith, Meta Platforms will provide the requested data, in a separate confidential procedure, within the period granted.”

Justice Alexandre de Moraes consistently stirs controversy with his heavy-handed censorship tactics, like banning social media accounts and blocking platforms such as Telegram and X when they defy him. Critics slam him for trampling free speech, overreaching his role, and acting like a one-man judge-jury-executioner, especially against Bolsonaro allies, while his clash with Elon Musk over X’s compliance has fueled accusations of authoritarianism.

The demand, issued last week, also targeted platform X, requiring both companies to provide the Federal Police with detailed information on Santos’s accounts within ten days — under threat of a R$100,000 ($17,362) daily fine for delay or refusal. The data request is broad, seeking registration details, IP addresses, and post content from mid-2024 through early 2025.

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Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Orders Arrest of US Citizen for Political Speech

Brazil’s pro-censorship Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has issued an arrest warrant for Flavia Cordeiro Magalhaes, a US citizen of Brazilian origin, who has lived in Florida for over 20 years.

According to her legal representative, what Moraes is attempting to do here is lock up a US citizen for political speech expressed on US soil – meaning that the warrant in effect “raises questions about US sovereignty.”

Moraes appears to have first ordered Magalhaes’ X account blocked in Brazil because of a post from 2022, which she made while in the US.

According to Magalhaes, she was unaware of the block at the time, since she was not notified by the Brazilian court. But because she continued posting on X, this eventually led to an order to place her in pre-trial detention, under the pretext that she was allegedly in contempt of court.

That is supposed to have occurred when she traveled to Brazil in December 2023 and was told her Brazilian passport was “under restriction” – but even though she entered and left the country legally, using her US passport, Moraes decided to treat this as the use of “a false document” – and issue the pre-trial detention order in February of last year.

All this, despite Brazil’s federal police documents stating that Magalhaes traveled to and from Brazil legally.

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Cannabis Compound Discovered Inside Totally Different Plant

Scientists have discovered cannabidiol, a compound in cannabis known as CBD, in a common Brazilian plant, opening potential new avenues to produce the increasingly popular substance.

The team found CBD in the fruits and flowers of a plant known as Trema micrantha blume, a shrub which grows across much of the South American country and is often considered a weed, molecular biologist Rodrigo Moura Neto of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro told AFP in 2023.

CBD, increasingly used by some to treat conditions including epilepsy, chronic pain and anxiety, is one of the main active compounds in cannabis, along with tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC – the substance that makes users feel high.

The compound’s effectiveness as a medical treatment is still under research.

Neto said chemical analysis had found “Trema” contains CBD but not THC, raising the possibility of an abundant new source of the former – one that would not face the legal and regulatory hurdles of cannabis, which continues to be outlawed in many places, including Brazil.

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Don’t Let the ‘Infaux Thugs’ Close Down Debate

Today’s censors wield cudgels with the word ‘information.’ Content they don’t like they call ‘misinformation’ or ‘disinformation.’ The justification is fake. The protection is faux protection. Pretending to protect people from bad information by means of censorship may be called infaux thuggery.

The cudgels are hidden, of course, but it is not hard to see through the pretence and discern the underlying message: knuckle under or we will hurt you.

The UK’s Online Safety Act exemplifies infaux thuggery, as does Brazil’s recent action against X (formerly Twitter). The Australian government is dominated by another gang of infaux thugs. The UK, sadly, not only practices infaux thuggery at home, it tutors the world in infaux thuggery.

The same goes for where I live, the United States. Kamala Harris threatens: ‘If you act as a megaphone for misinformation… we are going to hold you accountable.’ Hillary Clinton calls for criminalization of speech not to her liking. Harris’ running mate Tim Walz threatens: ‘There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation and hate speech.’

Thankfully, that’s not true, at least in the US. As Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. responded, the US Constitution ‘is exactly what prevents the government from stifling dissent by labeling something “hate speech” or “misinformation.”’ Alarmingly, former Secretary of State John Kerry recently lamented that the First Amendment ‘stands as a major block to…hammer it [“disinformation”] out of existence,’ and implied that that ‘is part of what this race, this election is all about.’

Of course, malicious actors, including enemy states, may spread lies to sow discord – especially online. So too can those who are simply ill-informed. Yet in the absence of censorship, big lies will be torn to shreds. In this battle, the infaux thugs are on the wrong side.

The infaux thugs use ‘information’ to confuse matters. The content they suppress is more aptly termed narratives, interpretations, opinions or judgments. Those terms are more capacious, befitting frank and open debate and controversy.

In their hostility to open debate, the infaux thugs are mounting an attack on modern civilisation. They evoke our crude instincts from pre-modern life, instincts for a small, simple society, in which the leader’s narrative must be believed by all and enforced upon the members of the band. If you don’t share the leader’s narrative, you are a miscreant. You are to be corrected, expelled or destroyed. At the very least, you are to shut up.

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G20 Ministers Meet in Brazil To Discuss “Disinformation” Censorship Agenda

Wrong time, wrong place, wrong group – or quite the opposite, depending on the point of view. But G20 ministers were meeting in Brazil last week, just as the country keeps putting its own democracy and laws to the serious test in an escalating “war” with Elon Musk’s X.

It took no time for G20 to show which side it’s taking in the battle between a government given to online censorship and in clear need of controlling the political and media narratives, versus a major social platform that has broken ranks with its peers as an obedient executioner of censorship, including on behalf of various governments.

G20 ministers who converged on Maceio in northern Brazil late last week didn’t quite spell all this out (does anybody speak clearly anymore? The higher, the fewer, as they say).

But, the writing is clearly on the wall: a statement issued on Friday is chock-full of words such as, “misinformation,” AI (and coming up with new regulation around this), and digital platforms’ “accountability.”

There is even talk of the need for online platforms to place themselves “in line with relevant policies and applicable legal frameworks.”

Was this written by Brazil’s government, or by G20, some might wonder, half-amused? However, the story is not amusing – one of the persistent arguments coming out of X is that the seemingly incessant flow of censorship demands is in fact breaking Brazil’s own Constitution and applicable law.

Therefore, this particular point in the G20 readout might sound not only like the organization itself falling in line with Brazil – and other autocratic-presenting governments – but also engaging in a fair amount of hypocrisy.

Not for nothing, Brazilian officials are happy with this turn of events.

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Brazil Leads Largest Free Speech Rally In History

Thousands of supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro flooded Sao Paulo’s main boulevard for an Independence Day rally Saturday, buoyed by the government’s blocking of tech billionaire Elon Musk’s X platform, a ban they say is proof of their political persecution.

A few thousand demonstrators, clad in the yellow-and-green colors of Brazil’s flag, poured onto Av. Paulista. References to the ban on X and images of Musk abounded.

“Thank you for defending our freedom,” read one banner praising the tech entrepreneur.

Saturday’s march was seen as a test of Bolsonaro’s capacity to mobilize turnout ahead of the October municipal elections, even though Brazil’s electoral court has barred him from running for office until 2030. It’s also something of a referendum on X, whose suspension has raised eyebrows even among some of Bolsonaro’s opponents all the while stoking the flames of Brazil’s deep-seated political polarization.

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Brazil’s $9,000 Fine For Accessing X Puts “Wall Of Censorship” Between Citizens And Unregulated Information

Brazil has not just banned X (formerly Twitter) from the entire country, but citizens will now be fined $9,000 a day (more than the average salary in the country) for using VPNs to access the platform. X is the main source of news for Brazilians, who will now be left with government-approved sources or face financial ruin in seeking unfettered information.

The Guardian is reporting that the confiscatory fines are part of a comprehensive crackdown on efforts to get news through X, including ordering all Apple stores to remove X from new phones.

The move puts Brazil with China in the effort to create a wall of censorship between citizens and unregulated information.

For the anti-free speech movement, Brazil is a key testing ground for where the movement is heading next. European censors are arresting CEOs like Pavel Durov while threatening Elon Musk.

However, it is Brazil that foreshadows the brave new world of censorship where entire nations will block access to sites committed to free speech values or unfettered news. If successful, the Brazilian model is likely to be replicated by other countries.

The reason is that censorship is not working. As discussed in my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” we have never seen the current alliance of government, corporate, academic, and media interest against free speech. Yet, citizens are not buying it.

Despite unrelenting attacks and demonizing media coverage, citizens are still using X and resisting censorship. That was certainly the case in Brazil where citizens preferred X to regulated news sources. The solution is now to threaten citizens with utter ruin if they seek unfettered news.

The question is whether Brazil’s leftist government can get away with this. The conflict began with demands to censor supporters of the conservative former president Jair Bolsonaro. When X refused the sweeping demands for censorship, including the demand to name of a legal representative who could be arrested for refusing to censor users, the courts moved toward this national ban.

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BRAZILIAN CONFUSION: Hefty Fines for Accessing Social Media Platform X via VPN Were NOT Rescinded – What Changed Was that VPNs Are Not Outright Banned In the Country Anymore

Brazil, thy name is confusion.

There is a saying here in the ‘tropical country’ that says: ‘Brazil is for professionals‘.

Being born and raised here, we are used to a maze of bureaucracy and a general lack of clarity in all public matters.

Following the blocking of the social platform X in Brazil, a question that was raised by freedom lovers worldwide was the usage of VPN’s by Brazilian users to bypass this spurious prohibition.

This was highly anticipated by our Supreme Court overlords, who decided in a first moment to prohibit the usage of VPN, as well as instituting a 50k reals (over $9k) fine for using VPNs to access X.

This decision was later partially reformed, and that’s where the confusion started.

Some social media users (I saw it posted by DogeDesigner/@cb_doge and also by Charlie Kirk/@Charliekirk11) are suggesting that the fines for accessing X via VPN were rescinded – which would in fact be a victory for free speech.

But that is not the case – as much as I can find.

In fact, what changed is the previous decision to make VPN forbidden in Brazil. That is no longer the case, which is good news for the 75 million VPN users in Brazil.

But it is still forbidden to use this technology to access X, and the fines are still on, although there is some level of push back from the Order of Attorneys of Brazil (OAB).

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