Tag: eu

EU Veterans Rally to Recast the Digital Services Act as Accountability Not Control

It’s not every day that a collection of retired European grandees emerges from Brussels’ revolving doors to tell everyone how misunderstood the European Union is.

Yet here we are, with Bertrand Badré, Margrethe Vestager, Mariya Gabriel, Nicolas Schmit, and Guillaume Klossa linking arms to pen a sentimental defense of the bloc’s new digital commandments.

Their essay, “The Truth About Europe’s Regulation of Digital Platforms,” aims to assure us that Europe’s online rulebook, the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA), does not constitute censorship. It is “accountability,” they say.

In their telling, the DSA is less a blunt legal instrument than a moral document, a kind of digital Magna Carta designed to civilize Silicon Valley’s chaotic playground.

“There is no content regulation at the EU level,” they wrote, invoking the phrase like a magic spell meant to ward off skeptics.

The laws, they explained, simply make big tech companies “evaluate and mitigate systemic risks” and “act against illegal content.” Nothing to see here, just a little transparency, a dash of democracy protection, and the occasional removal of whatever a member state happens to call “illegal.”

It is the sort of language that can only come from officials who have spent decades describing regulation as liberation.

The letter was a response to a growing chorus of critics, including former US officials, who say Europe’s digital regime gives bureaucrats indirect control over what billions of people can see or say online.

Under the DSA, platforms must scan for “harmful or misleading” content, report their mitigation efforts, and warn users when something gets zapped.

Free speech groups have pointed out that when the law tells companies to “evaluate risks to democracy,” those companies tend to err on the side of deleting anything remotely controversial.

To them, “mitigation” often means mass deletion.

Badré and company brushed this off. “When we require platforms to be transparent about their algorithms, to assess risks to democracy and mental health, to remove clearly illegal content while notifying those affected, we are not censoring,” they wrote.

“We are insisting that companies with unprecedented power over public discourse operate with some measure of public accountability.”

When Europe does it, it is not censorship, it is civic hygiene.

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EU says it is ‘seriously looking’ into Musk’s Grok AI over sexual deepfakes of minors

The European Commission said on Jan 5 it is “very seriously looking” into complaints that Mr Elon Musk’s AI tool Grok is being used to generate and disseminate sexually explicit child-like images.

“Grok is now offering a ‘spicy mode’ showing explicit sexual content with some output generated with child-like images. This is not spicy. This is illegal. This is appalling,” EU digital affairs spokesman Thomas Regnier told reporters.

He added: “This has no place in Europe.”

Complaints of abuse began hitting Mr Musk’s X social media platform, where Grok is available, after an “edit image” button for the generative artificial intelligence tool was rolled out in late December.

But Grok maker xAI, run by Mr Musk, said earlier in January it was scrambling to fix flaws in its AI tool.

The public prosecutor’s office in Paris has also expanded an investigation into X to include new accusations that Grok was being used for generating and disseminating child pornography.

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American Legal Sovereignty Threatened By Greenpeace’s Retaliatory EU Lawsuit

The strength of the American civil legal system rests on a simple principle: those who break the law on U.S. soil answer to U.S. plaintiffs in U.S. courts. Our constitutional order depends on juries empowered to weigh evidence, judges and plaintiffs entrusted to enforce verdicts, and a system insulated from foreign interference. However, that foundation is now being tested by an activist organization determined to escape domestic accountability for domestic acts, by turning abroad and using a foreign country’s laws and courts to take another bite at the legal apple, so to speak.

In March 2025, a North Dakota jury delivered a decisive $670 million verdict against Greenpeace and its affiliates, finding them liable for extreme torts against Energy Transfer LP in the form of defamation, trespass, and conspiracy. The jurors rejected the claim that the Greenpeace activity—supporting violent demonstrations that disrupted construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 and 2017—was protected speech, finding instead that Greenpeace orchestrated a campaign of unlawful disruption and reputational harm against Energy Transfer.

While the award has since been reduced to $345 million, the fact remains: the jury verdict was well founded.

During the trial, Energy Transfer’s lawyers presented compelling evidence showing Greenpeace’s role in orchestrating the protests. The group spent $55,000 training activists in direct action and violent protest tactics, supplied them with power tools, tents, propane, cold-weather gear, and lockboxes to chain themselves to heavy equipment, and encouraged confrontations with law enforcement. Meanwhile, its former executive director was found to have used an official Greenpeace email account to raise another $90,000 to fuel the effort.

On top of that, the jury found that Greenpeace knowingly defamed Energy Transfer by falsely accusing the company of knowingly desecrating Native American burial grounds during pipeline construction. In reality, Energy Transfer took extensive precautions to protect cultural and historical sites. Such fabricated and highly incendiary claims were found to have inflicted serious harm on Energy Transfer’s public reputation and its standing with financial institutions.

But rather than accept the ruling of the court, Greenpeace is attempting an end-run around it. Just weeks before the trial concluded, Greenpeace and Greenpeace International filed a retaliatory lawsuit against Energy Transfer in the Netherlands, invoking the European Union’s new anti-Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation (anti-SLAPP) directive. Importantly, the EU directive allows EU-based entities, such as Greenpeace International, to pursue damages against non-EU actors for cases originally brought outside the EU—expanding its reach far beyond Europe’s borders.

The Dutch lawsuit marks the first test of the new EU directive, and it appears that Greenpeace’s goal is to reframe its adjudicated misconduct as “free speech,” sprinkle in its own claims, which could and should have been raised and litigated in the North Dakota forum, and ask a foreign tribunal to essentially re-litigate, where a North Dakota court had already ruled following a full jury trial. Such tactics are abusive, costly, extra-jurisdictional, and very concerning for any company dealing with EU-based entities as no U.S. company could anticipate being hauled into an EU Court by or through its activities in the United States.

Fortunately, at least for now, Recital 29 of the directive only applies to untruthful allegations, meaning that if the claims in the original suit are proven true, anti-SLAPP protections do not apply. On that basis alone, the Dutch court should dismiss the case.

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No Theft of Russian Sovereign Assets: Belgium & Orbán Stop the EU’s Legal Madness

While Brussels was preparing yet another moralistic coup against reality, Belgium pulled the emergency brake.

Against the will of Berlin, against the ideological intoxication of the European Commission, and against the growing temptation to trample international law in the name of “virtue,” the European Union has abandoned the outright seizure of Russian sovereign assets. Instead, it has opted for a €90 billion “joint loan” for Ukraine—a loan in name only, a gift in substance.

This is not a technical adjustment.
It is a political defeat for Germany, a strategic victory for Belgium, and a rare moment of lucidity in a Union drifting toward legal nihilism.

The German Plan Collapses

For months, Berlin pushed a dangerous idea: confiscate Russian sovereign assets frozen in Europe and rebrand the theft as “reparations.” The logic was crude, emotional, and legally suicidal. No court ruling. No peace treaty. No settlement. Just brute force dressed up as righteousness.

Germany wanted to force this plan through—on the back of others.

Why? Because Belgium holds the bomb.

The bulk of Russian assets are immobilized at Euroclear in Brussels. Which means that if Russia—or any future claimant—wins in court, Belgium alone would face catastrophic financial liability.

Belgium’s Moment of Truth

Prime Minister Bart De Wever asked a simple, devastating question:

If you want us to confiscate these assets, will you guarantee Belgium against all legal and financial consequences—without limit?

Silence.

The so-called “partners” demanded unlimited risk from Belgium, while refusing any unlimited guarantee in return.

That was the end of the fantasy.

No sovereign state—especially a small one—can accept infinite liability to satisfy Berlin’s moral exhibitionism. At that moment, the German plan collapsed.

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‘We are the free world now’ — Europe declares war on free speech in the US

“We are the free world now.” Those words from Raphael Glucksmann, a French socialist member of the European Parliament, captured the pearl-clutching outrage of Europeans after the Trump administration did what no prior administration has ever done — stand up to Europe to defend the freedom of speech.

This week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio barred five figures closely associated with European censorship efforts from traveling to the U.S. This includes Thierry Breton, the former European Union commissioner responsible for digital policy.

In a post on X, Rubio declared that the U.S. “will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship” and will target “leading figures of the global censorship-industrial complex from entering the United States.”

Breton achieved infamy as one of the architects of the massive EU censorship system, which is now being globalized. Armed with the notorious Digital Service Act, Breton and others threatened American companies and officials that they would have to yield to European standards of free speech. After Breton learned that Musk was planning to interview Trump before the last presidential election, he even warned the X owner that he would be “monitored” and potentially subject to EU fines.

Socialist Glucksmann is now irate at “this scandalous sanction against Thierry Breton.”

“We are Europeans,” he declared. “We must defend our laws, our principles, our interests.” In other words, this is a war over whether Europe or the U.S. Constitution will dictate the scope of free speech for American companies and citizens.

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The EU imposes a €3 fee per package: more control, more revenue, and more bureaucracy at the consumer’s expense

The European Union has decided to impose a flat fee of 3 euros on small packages sent within the bloc, a measure that will come into force next year and will directly affect millions of consumers and small businesses. Under the pretext of strengthening tax collection and ensuring resources for Member States, Brussels is taking yet another step in its policy of growing control over trade and the daily lives of citizens.

According to European lawmakers, the measure aims to curb the boom in low-value online commerce, especially frequent purchases of inexpensive products. However, in practice, the fee punishes everyday consumption, makes basic goods more expensive, and reinforces the European bureaucratic apparatus, which needs to justify its constant expansion with new sources of revenue.

The fee will apply to shipments whose value does not exceed a threshold set by each country, affecting both domestic and imported products. Brussels insists that the goal is to ensure “tax fairness,” but the outcome is clear: every package will be registered, monitored, and taxed, expanding state oversight and the administrative burden on citizens and businesses.

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Western intelligence lawfare op plotted illegal sting on EU fraud office, leaks reveal

After The Grayzone exposed CIJA – the Western gov’t-funded regime change outfit – for collaborating with al-Qaeda and its allies in Syria, files show the group sought to penetrate and “intimidate” European financial regulators who charged them with corruption.

Leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone reveal the intelligence-linked Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) launched a malicious effort to infiltrate and subvert the European Commission and EU anti-fraud office after it accused them of corruption. In order to carry out these attacks, its director solicited the services of at least one longtime MI6 operative, Ian Baharie.

The group, which came to prominence in the early stages of the Western-backed dirty war on Syria, describes itself as a “non-governmental organisation dedicated to collecting evidence… for the express purpose of furthering criminal justice efforts” across the world.” CIJA’s work in gathering supposed evidence of the abuses of the Syrian government of deposed President Bashar Al-Assad earned it gushing praise from Hillary Clinton and puff profiles from The New Yorker, New York Times and The Guardian.

As The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal revealed in a 2019 profile on CIJA – one of the first critical investigative reports on a group touted by mainstream media as “independent” – one of the NGO’s top funders was the US State Department, which granted it over $500,000 in a short period. Today, CIJA boasts that it “currently works to support prosecutions in 16 countries” and is “assisting 52 law enforcement and counter-terrorism agencies and 14 prosecutorial offices globally.” 

Unmentioned there, and entirely ignored by English-language legacy media outlets, is the fact that the European Union’s Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) placed CIJA on an EU blacklist as punishment for unethical activities including cooking accounting books, forging documents, and graft. The group has been on EU regulators’ radar since at least 2015, when OLAF conducted a raid of CIJA’s registered headquarters only to find no trace of the organization actually operating there.

Now, leaked documents and emails reviewed by The Grayzone indicate CIJA’s founder and executive director William “Bill” Wiley undertook a retaliatory campaign of dirty tricks aimed at removing his organization from the EU blacklist. His grand scheme included a ruthless sting operation on a former staffer he accused of whistleblowing, as well as plans to gather dirt on OLAF officials which European Commission officials would be “intimidated by.” 

With a career skirting the line between the world of NGOs, multinational corporations and Western intelligence, Wiley sought out a veteran British MI6 operative to assist his dirty tricks campaign. Though CIJA promotes universal jurisdiction for purported crimes committed by rogue foreign governments, the leaked files show the group is more than willing to circumvent the law to advance its own objectives.

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Soviet Europe? Trump BANS Euro Officials From U.S. in Free-speech War

My, how the worm has turned. It was in 2009 that talk-show giant Michael Savage, along with others, was banned from Britain for exercising speech. Now, 16 years later, certain European officials are being banned from the United States for banning people for exercising speech. It’s just the latest in an unprecedented development: a war over liberty between an increasingly authoritarian Europe and a U.S. that under Donald Trump’s administration is championing Americanism.

At issue, too, isn’t merely certain European countries closing their borders to a few Americans. Nor is the problem just that European Union (EU) nations suppress their own citizens’ tongues via tendentious “hate speech”-law application. It’s also that, reflecting China’s efforts to censor the U.S.’s movies, the EU’s online restrictions could suppress Americans’ online expression. This is because Big Tech companies often apply EU-compliant changes worldwide.

Not Your Father’s Europe

Interestingly, shortly before this story broke I published the article “Should We Be Defending Left-wing Europe From Right-wing Russia?” In it, I explained how Western Europe is becoming a sort of woke, morally weak USSR. Others are noticing this as well, too. As Tampa Free Press writes, reporting on the current story:

A simmering diplomatic feud between Washington and Brussels over online speech regulations boiled over on Wednesday after the Trump administration barred five prominent European figures from entering the United States. The State Department accused the group — which includes a former top EU official and several NGO leaders — of leading efforts to censor American viewpoints.

The move marks a significant escalation in the administration’s campaign against what it views as “extraterritorial censorship” by foreign entities.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the restrictions on Tuesday, citing a policy unveiled in May that targets foreign nationals believed to be coercing U.S. technology companies into suppressing protected speech. Rubio framed the decision as a necessary defense of American sovereignty against ideological pressure from abroad.

“For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints,” Rubio stated.

The banned individuals are:

  • Thierry Breton — ex-EU commissioner for internal markets. He helped devise the EU’s “Digital Services Act” (DSA), which censors social media. He also publicly warned social-media platforms about content.
  • Imran Ahmed — CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a misnamed propaganda outfit.
  • Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg — co-founders and leaders of German organization HateAid, another misnamed propaganda outfit.
  • Clare Melford — CEO of the misnamed Global Disinformation Index, a U.K.-based nonprofit that rates media sites, unfairly. It seeks to alienate advertisers from, among others, Truth-oriented outlets. For instance, all of its 10 “riskiest” U.S. sites are conservative/libertarian.

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Europe’s Elites Pay For The Privilege Of Losing Conflict

When in doubt, Europeans should always re-read Tacitus. As a true Roman, he considered that sacrifice was only worthy if conducted at the service of the motherland. In his time, the Roman Empire. In our time, that would be civilization-state Italy.

Tacitus was a keen student of Resistance – reflecting on the worthiness of the heroic deaths of those condemned to suicide by Nero and Domitian. He followed all the legal battles, the condemnation of lay martyrs such as Seneca. He talks about them with veneration; but branded their sacrifice as sterile.

Tacitus refused the temptation of heroism – and asked himself if between the ardor of disdain and vile obsequiousness a path could be found exempt from vaingloriousness.

He certainly didn’t see this path in the future of Rome. He experienced life under absolute power – today that would be under the yoke of the European Union (EU) and European Commission (EC) – and noted that to exercise it or be submitted by it was equally degrading.

The questions he could not answer are eternal. Whether a people protagonist of History and enjoying domination is able to be worthy of it; whether it’s possible for those who govern to remain wise; and for those who are subjects, what to do to not humiliate themselves.

To History and politics, Tacitus posed only moral questions. For him, the only possible salvation will come via moral healing.

He quoted some verses of brilliant poet Lucan, who was also a victim of Nero – who wrote that considering “the most serious calamities” one “had proof that not towards our security are the gods solicitous, but of our punishment”.

All these questions apply now to Europeans being subjugated by appallingly mediocre warmongering elites – who are only speeding up a negative vortex way more serious than the decadence of Rome. While “the Gods” are Olympically oblivious of the punishment inflicted on mere – taxpaying – mortals.

Throwing Money Into a Black Void

Enter the latest European elite scam: the decision to hand over to the “criminal organization” in Kiev – President Putin’s terminology – a cool 90 billion euros joint loan for 2026-2027, at 0% interest rate. Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic officially refused to be part of the scam.

This joint EU borrowing – funds that they don’t have in the first place – automatically turns into EU debt. The onus will be on EU-wide taxpayers. Not only they will be stripped of 90 billion euros of their hard earned income coupled with high taxes; they will pay European banks for the “privilege”. Everyone in the corridors of the EC in Brussels knows that only in interest, EU member-states will have to pay over 3 billion euros a year.

The imperative corollary: funds for health services, education and social rights will go even more down the drain than at present.

It’s key to be reminded that this sweet loan will only cover two years to keep the Kiev gang on life support. Afterwards, it will be yet another scam. And even the sweet loan won’t be enough for 2026-2027 – covering only two-thirds of the black hole in Kiev.

The conditions for the loan are mind-boggling. Kiev will repay it if – and the operative word is an impossible “if” – receives “full reparations” from Russia. The EC in Brussels has stipulated the total amount at over half a trillion euros.

It gets even juicier. Before the loan, the EC had previously declared Ukraine insolvent; and announced that it could not provide loans to Kiev. Still, they forced themselves to come up with this latest sweet loan: direct financing, a de facto grant.

According to Ukraine’s lead negotiator Rustem Umerov:

“there are two scenarios: 1 – if the conflict ends, the funds will go toward rebuilding the country; 2 – if aggression continues, Ukraine expects €40–45 billion annually for defense and security.”

Both scenarios are absurd. First: Moscow – as the victor in the conflict – will never agree to finance the rebuilding of Ukraine via its own sovereing wealth fund stolen by Europeans. Second: the Kiev gang is already positioning itself to be showered with more free money, as in “if aggression continues…”

This whole circus is in progress because the EU failed to steal the Russian sovereign wealth funds for good – no matter the tsunami of spin speculating on who finally “betrayed” who (arguably France’s Le Petit Roi dumped the German BlackRock chancellor at the final stage of the negotiations).

What matters in the end is that a few economists with an IQ above a Brussels room temperature warned their “leaders” that if the “robbery” (Putin’s terminology) of Russia would go on, nations holding sovereign wealth funds – from Asia to the Persian Gulf – would always regard them not as savings but as high risk investments, with catastrophic consequences.

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EU Threatens Retaliation Against U.S. After Ex-Censorship Tsar Breton Sanctioned

The unelected European Commission and French President Emmanuel Macron expressed indignation and vowed retaliation on Wednesday over the Trump administration’s sanctions on “leading figures of the global censorship-industrial complex”, including former EU censorship tsar Thierry Breton.

On Tuesday evening, the U.S. State Department said that it would sanction five Europeans and bar them from travelling to the United States for their role in censoring Americans and American firms.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement: “For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose. The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship.”

Among those listed in the first round of sanctions was British citizen Imran Ahmed, the founder and CEO of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which has waged Sleeping Giants-style censorship campaigns against American news outlets, including Breitbart News. The State Department also listed Global Disinformation Index (GDI) chief Clare Melford, Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon of Germany’s HateAid, and former EU censorship tsar Thierry Breton.

U.S. Undersecretary of State Sarah B. Rogers described Breton as the “mastermind” behind the European Union’s Digital Services Act, which demands that social media firms censor so-called “hate speech” or “disinformation” or face fines of up to six per cent of their global revenue or even a suspension from being able to operate within the 27-nation bloc.

Breton infamously intervened during the 2024 U.S. presidential election, demanding that X boss Elon Musk abide by the EU’s speech restrictions during a live interview with then-candidate Donald Trump. The French politician said that the interview must include “mitigation measures” to prevent the “amplification of harmful content” that may “generate detrimental effects on civic discourse and public security” in the EU.

While Breton resigned months later over a dispute with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, the censorship rules he spearheaded remain a major force in punishing American companies, most recently fining X €120 million earlier this month for alleged violations of transparency regulations.

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