Tag: police state

EU targets platforms that refuse to censor free speech – Telegram founder

The EU is unfairly targeting social media platforms that allow dissenting or critical speech, Telegram founder Pavel Durov has said.

He was responding to a 2024 post by Elon Musk, the owner of X, who claimed that the European Commission had offered the platform a secret deal to avoid fines in return for censoring certain statements. The EU fined X €120 million ($140 million) the day before.

According to Durov, the EU imposes strict and unrealistic rules on tech companies as a way to punish those that do not comply with quiet censorship demands.

“The EU imposes impossible rules so it can punish tech firms that refuse to silently censor free speech,” Durov wrote on X on Saturday.

He also referred to his detention in France last year, which he called politically motivated. He claimed that during that time, the head of France’s DGSE asked him to “ban conservative voices in Romania” ahead of an election, an allegation French officials denied. He also said intelligence agents offered help with his case if Telegram quietly removed channels tied to Moldova’s election.

Durov repeated both claims in his recent post, describing the case as “a baseless criminal investigation” followed by pressure to censor speech in Romania and Moldova.

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US accuses EU of ‘attack on American people’ after fine on X

The US has accused Brussels of an “attack” on Americans after the EU fined Elon Musk’s social media platform X €120 million ($140 million) for violating the bloc’s content-moderation rules.

The European Commission announced the decision on Friday, noting that it is the first time a formal non-compliance ruling has been issued under the Digital Services Act.

The move comes amid a broader wave of enforcement against major American tech companies. Brussels previously imposed multibillion-euro penalties on Google for abuses in search and advertising, fined Apple under both the Digital Markets Act and national antitrust rules, and penalized Meta for its “pay-or-consent” ad model. Such actions have sharpened disagreements between the US and the EU over digital regulation.

According to the Commission, X’s violations include the deceptive design of its blue checkmark system, which “exposes users to scams,” insufficient transparency in its advertising library, and its failure to provide required access to public data for researchers.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio slammed the decision, writing on X that it is not just an attack on the platform, but “an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments.” 

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Amid Raging Drug War Trump’s Hemp Ban Will Further Empower Cartels

During his first term, the Trump Administration’s legalization of hemp in the 2018 Farm Bill was seen as a fantastic win in the crusade to legalize cannabis across the country. Thanks to the bill, not only was hemp cultivation legalized for industrial use, but an additional loophole also paved the way for the legalization of a psychoactive cannabinoid known as Delta-8-THC, which has received high praise for its numerous medicinal uses without the accompanying intensity that comes with a typical cannabis high.

According to the National Cancer Institute, delta-8-THC can be defined as:

“An analogue of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) with antiemetic, anxiolytic, appetite-stimulating, analgesic, and neuroprotective properties. [Delta-8-THC] binds to the cannabinoid G-protein coupled receptor CB1, located in the central nervous system…This agent exhibits a lower psychotropic potency than [delta-9-THC], the primary form of THC found in cannabis.”

Hemp cultivation has a long history in the United States marred by restrictive prohibition at the behest of industrial tycoons of the early 20th century who were threatened by hemp’s capability to replace the petrochemical industry due to its potential to create more effective, cleaner, and safer alternatives for thousands of products; capable of replacing oil, plastic, lumber, paper, and cotton.

The passage of the 2018 bill presented a promising future for the cultivation of hemp in the United States to potentially revolutionize domestic infrastructure, in addition to serving as a victory for advocates of personal freedom. However, new legislation threatens to change all of that.

The recently passed federal spending bill includes a provision intended to close the aforementioned loophole, banning hemp derived THC products in a move that CNBC notes threatens a growing 28 billion dollar industry.

“What this ban is going to do is it’s going to force all those little players right now into the illegal market. Companies have got way too much money invested in this and the demand is still there and growing. They [companies] aren’t just going to go away, they’re just going to go into the illicit market and put more people at risk.” Said Boris Jordan, CEO of cannabis company Curaleaf.

The move, spearheaded by Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell, who led the charge to pass the original 2018 bill and said to be his final major act in Congress before his retirement next year has been sharply criticized by colleagues such as senator Rand Paul, who worked with McConnell on the original legislation.

“This is the most thoughtless, ignorant proposal to an industry that I’ve seen in a long, long time,” Paul said after the ban was passed. 

This move represents the latest ridiculous folly in the failed war on drugs, as Congress attempts to legislate morality over the rights of individuals self ownership, prohibition will only continue to do what it has always done and fuel the growth of illicit market industry.

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Enoch Burke: Irish School Teacher Jailed Following His Stance Against Transgender Ideology

Irish teacher Enoch Burke was arrested and jailed in November 2025. He was charged with contempt of court, and authorities insist this has nothing to do with his refusal to use a transgender student’s preferred pronouns.

Technically, they are correct that his imprisonment stems from repeated violations of a court order barring him from returning to the school during his suspension.

However, it is also true that the entire case began with his refusal to give in to transgender ideology, which led to his suspension in the first place. Burke was a teacher at Wilson’s Hospital School in County Westmeath, Ireland.

In 2022 the school instructed staff to refer to a transgender student by a new name and the “they/them” pronoun, and Burke refused to comply.

After he publicly objected at a school event and confronted school leadership, he was suspended pending disciplinary proceedings.

The school then obtained a court injunction barring him from its premises for the duration of his suspension.

Despite that order, Burke repeatedly returned to the school, prompting officials to seek court enforcement. He has since been found in contempt of court multiple times.

In late November 2025, a High Court judge ordered his committal to prison again, describing his repeated attendance as trespass and noting that fines were no longer effective.

Along with jail time, Burke is now facing fines exceeding 225,000 euros.

Historically, Ireland was one of the strongest Catholic countries in the world.

For most of the twentieth century more than 90 percent of the population identified as Catholic, and weekly Mass attendance often exceeded 90 percent.

Religious vocations were high, with thousands of priests and more than a thousand seminarians in the mid-1960s.

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US Under Secretary Warns Britain That the First Amendment Isn’t Negotiable

This week, Sarah Rogers, the US Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, touched down in the UK not to sip tea or admire the Crown Jewels, but to deliver a message as subtle as a boot in the face: stop trying to censor Americans in America.

Yes, really.

According to Rogers, the UK’s speech regulator, Ofcom, the bureaucratic enforcer behind Britain’s censorship law, the Online Safety Act (OSA), has been getting ideas. Dangerous ones. Like attempting to extend its censorship regime outside the United Kingdom and onto American soil. You know, that country across the ocean where the First Amendment exists and people can still say controversial things without a court summons landing on their doormat.

To GB News, Rogers called this attempt at international thought-policing “a deal-breaker,” “a non-starter,” and “a red line.”

In State Department speak, that is basically the equivalent of someone slamming the brakes, looking Britain in the eye, and saying, “You try that again, and there will be consequences.”

To understand how Britain got itself into this mess, you have to understand the Online Safety Act. It is a law that reads like it was drafted by a committee of alarmed Victorian schoolteachers who just discovered the internet.

The OSA is supposedly designed to “protect children online,” which sounds noble until you realize it means criminalizing large swaths of adult speech, forcing platforms to delete legal content, and requiring identity and age checks that would make a KGB officer blush.

It even threatens prosecution over “psychological harm.” And now, apparently, it wants to enforce all of that in other countries too.

Rogers was not impressed, saying Ofcom has tried to impose the OSA extraterritorially and attempted to censor Americans in America. That, she made clear, is outrageous.

It’s more than a diplomatic spat. Rogers made it painfully clear the US isn’t going to just write a sternly worded letter and move on. There is legislative retaliation on the table.

The GRANITE Act, Guaranteeing Rights Against Novel International Tyranny & Extortion, is more than a clever acronym. It is the legislative middle finger Washington can consider if the UK keeps pretending it can veto American free speech from 3,500 miles away.

The bill, already circulating in the Wyoming state legislature, would strip foreign governments of their usual protections from lawsuits in the US if they try to censor American citizens or companies.

In other words, if Ofcom wants to slap US platforms with foreign censorship rules, they had better be ready to defend themselves in an American courtroom where “freedom of expression” isn’t a slogan, it is a constitutional right.

Rogers confirmed that the US legislature will likely consider that and will certainly consider other options if the British government doesn’t back down.

Of course, the GRANITE Act didn’t come out of nowhere. Rogers’s warning didn’t either. It is a response to the increasingly unhinged state of free speech in the UK, where adults can be arrested for memes, priests investigated for praying silently, and grandmothers interrogated for criticizing gender ideology.

“When you don’t rigorously defend that right, even when it’s inconvenient, even when the speech is offensive,” Rogers said, “you end up in these absurd scenarios where you have comedians arrested for tweets.”

This is the modern UK, where “hate speech” has been stretched to include everything from telling jokes to sharing news stories about immigration. And now, under the OSA, that censorious spirit has gone global.

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‘Intellexa Leaks’ Reveal Wider Reach of Predator Spyware

Highly invasive spyware from consortium led by a former senior Israeli intelligence official and sanctioned by the US government is still being used to target people in multiple countries, a joint investigation published Thursday revealed.

Inside Story in Greece, Haaretz in Israel, Swiss-based WAV Research Collective, and Amnesty International collaborated on the investigation into Intellexa Consortium, maker of Predator commercial spyware. The “Intellexa Leaks” show that clients in Pakistan – and likely also in other countries – are using Predator to spy on people, including a featured Pakistani human rights lawyer.

“This investigation provides one of the clearest and most damning views yet into Intellexa’s internal operations and technology,” said Amnesty International Security Lab technologist Jurre van Bergen.

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WHO–Gates Unveils Blueprint For Global Digital ID, AI-Driven Surveillance, & Life-Long Vaccine Tracking For Everyone

In a document published in the October Bulletin of the World Health Organization and funded by the Gates Foundation, the World Health Organization (WHO) is proposing a globally interoperable digital-identity infrastructure that permanently tracks every individual’s vaccination status from birth.

The dystopian proposal raises far more than privacy and autonomy concerns: it establishes the architecture for government overreach, cross-domain profiling, AI-driven behavioral targeting, conditional access to services, and a globally interoperable surveillance grid tracking individuals.

It also creates unprecedented risks in data security, accountability, and mission creep, enabling a digital control system that reaches into every sector of life.

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Goodbye Jury Trials, Hello Digital ID: 10 “recommendations” from the Crime and Justice Commission

The Times Crime and Justice Commission was established last year, with its mission statement being to…

consider the future of policing and the criminal justice system, in the light of the knife crime crisis, a shoplifting epidemic, the growing threat of cybercrime, concerns about the culture of the police, court backlogs, problems with legal aid and overflowing prisons.

And today is that long-promised glorious golden day where they reveal their findings. The white smoke has gone up and we get to witness the result of their long hours of toil.

How are we going to fix everything?

Let’s take a look at the complete list, with some helpful annotations:

1. Introduce a universal digital ID system to drive down fraud, tackle illegal immigration and reduce identity theft;

Digital ID for everybody! It’s going to solve every problem! We’ve talked this to death, it was always going to be in here.

2. Target persistent offenders and crime hotspots using data to clamp down on shoplifting, robbery and antisocial behaviour;

That’s about surveillance. “Data” means your private data which they will get from social media companies.

3. Roll out live facial recognition and other artificial intelligence tools to drive the efficiency and effectiveness of the police;

Again, FRT was always going to feature. I’m not sure what “other artificial intelligence tools” means, but the vagueness is likely the point. “Efficiency” is the word doing the heavy-lifting in that sentence, intended to capture the pro-MAGA, pro-Musk UK crowd.

4. Create a licence to practise for the police, with revalidation every five years to improve culture and enhance professionalism;

That’s just throwing something out for the “other side”. So far it’s all just more powers for the police and courts, this adds some faux accountability framework into the mix to make it look fair.

5. Set up victim care hubs backed by a unified digital case file to create a seamless source of information and advice;

Same as above, with some extra seasoning for the digital identity sales pitch thrown in.

6. Introduce a new intermediate court with a judge and two magistrates to speed up justice and reduce court delays;

This is about replacing trial by jury, and that’s all it’s about. It’s something they’ve been wanting to do for years and keep making excuses to try.

7. Move to a “common sense” approach to sentencing with greater transparency about jail time, incentives for rehabilitation and expanded use of house arrest;

Not sure what this means in real terms, but any use “common sense” in this kind of document should always raise an eyebrow. As should the idea of “expanded use of house arrest”.

8. Give more autonomy and accountability to prison governors with a greater focus on rehabilitation and create a College of Prison and Probation Officers;

No idea what this means yet. Could be about more prison-based work programs (a la private prisons in the US), could just be fluff between important parts.

9. Restrict social media for under-16s to protect children from criminals and extreme violent or sexual content;

Again, very predictable. And, again, very dishonest. As we’ve said a thousand times, “restricting social media to under-16s” – in practical terms – means everyone on social media has to verify their age. So bye-bye online anonymity.

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It’s ‘Unclear’ How Feds Will Enforce Hemp THC Product Ban, Congressional Researchers Say, Citing Limited FDA And DEA Resources

Congressional researchers say it “remains unclear” how the federal government might enforce a newly enacted law that takes effect next year banning hemp THC products—flagging concerns about a potential lack of resources on the part of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

After President Donald Trump signed appropriations legislation late last month that included language that effectively “reimposes” hemp criminalization, the Congress Research Service (CRS) published an analysis about the policy change on Wednesday.

“While the change to the hemp definition will seemingly alter the legal status of many hemp products currently available on the market, it remains unclear if and how federal law enforcement will enforce the new prohibitions when the new definition goes into effect,” the researchers said.

Part of the uncertainty around hemp is related to the federal approach to marijuana, which has been legalized in some form in the vast majority of states but remains federally illegal as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).

“In marijuana’s case, the federal response has largely been to allow states to implement their own marijuana laws despite the fact that state-regulated activities may violate the [Controlled Substances Act],” CRS said. “If intoxicating hemp products persist on the market after the change to their legal status, it is possible they could be subject to the same criminal and collateral issues as marijuana.”

The analysis added, however, that it “remains to be seen” whether FDA will “pursue additional options to remove these [hemp] items from the market.

FDA and the Drug Enforcement Administration “may lack the resources to broadly enforce the laws prohibiting intoxicating hemp products on the market,” it said, adding that congressional lawmakers may also “choose to exercise oversight over federal enforcement priorities regarding state-regulated cannabis activities.”

FDA and DEA, “in coordination with the Department of Justice, have a range of civil and criminal remedies they may use in efforts to exercise control over these activities,” the report says.

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Democrats Would Like To Suppress Free Speech The Way Britain Does

It’s easy to look at a collapsing civil society in a foreign country and comfort ourselves that, despite all our problems, we’re not as bad off as those people. Americans are especially apt to do this with our cousins in Great Britain, whose country is now in a state of precipitous and probably irreversible decline, and whose political leadership is openly hostile to the native population.

But it’s a mistake to comfort ourselves this way, partly because the corruption of a place like Britain — the online censorship, the criminalization of disfavored opinions, the two-tiered system of justice — doesn’t stay confined to their shores but eventually makes its way to ours. Indeed, many Democrats here in America don’t see the tyranny of modern Britain as a cautionary tale but as a template to follow.

A startling case in point is a recent story from Drop Site News by Paul Holden, who chronicles how a secret campaign to elevate Kier Starmer to prime minister included a scheme to demonetize news outlets deemed unfriendly to the Starmer wing of the Labour Party. One of those news outlets was The Federalist.

In the middle of the 2020 presidential campaign, a shadowy UK-based group called the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) worked with NBC News and Google insiders to attempt to blacklist and demonetize The Federalist under false pretexts — an effort that was ultimately unsuccessful. The Orwellian-named NBC News Verification Unit reported in June 2020 that Google had banned the website ZeroHedge from its advertising platform and had warned The Federalist that it too might be banned.

But this wasn’t just “reporting,” it was part of a larger political op. According to the NBC News report itself, Google’s actions came only after the company had been “notified of research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a British nonprofit that combats online hate and misinformation. They found that 10 U.S-based websites have published what they say are racist articles about the protests, and projected that the websites would make millions of dollars through Google Ads.”

And who notified Google about this CCDH report? NBC News did. This was a transparent effort by left-wing activists at NBC News, together with left-wing activists at the CCDH, to demonetize and silence The Federalist for the crime of noticing the hypocrisy surrounding BLM protests and strict Covid lockdowns.

But who or what was the CCDH, and why did it target The Federalist? At the time, the CCDH’s connection to the Starmer political machine and the Labour Party was unclear. But as Holden’s reporting reveals, the CCDH was part of a larger partisan political project that targeted The Federalist, Breitbart, ZeroHedge, and others. “As Keir Starmer rose to power in Britain, the political machine responsible for his rise ran a behind-the-scenes campaign to demonetize the U.S. news outlet Breitbart,” writes Holden. “The attacks on Breitbart were part of a targeted campaign against media outlets on both the left and right considered hostile to the centrist faction of the Labour Party, according to a trove of documents that expose the operation.”

At the center of this campaign was a man named Morgan McSweeney, who is now Prime Minster Starmer’s chief of staff. Between 2018 and 2020, McSweeney served as the company secretary and managing director for an organization called Labour Together that funded a think tank called Stop Funding Fake News (SFFN). At the time, SFFN claimed to be a grassroots effort organized and run by a group of anonymous concerned citizens inspired by the demonetizing campaigns run by Sleeping Giants, which had targeted Breitbart in the U.S. during the 2016 election.

In fact, SFFN was an astroturfing operation created and run by people in positions of real power inside the Labour Party, including not just McSweeney but Steve Reed, now a senior member of Starmer’s cabinet. The original purpose of SFFN, as Holden reports, was “to defeat the left-wing of the Labour Party and the media ecosystem that supported it.” The operations of SFFN, however, expanded to include right-wing outlets like Breitbart and The Federalist, which it saw as impediments to Starmer’s rise.

Eventually, SFFN was absorbed into a new entity, CCDH, whose CEO is a man named Imran Ahmed. Ahmed worked with McSweeney in the London office of Labour Together, which first launched the SFFN project. Ahmed has said that McSweeney gave him a “shell company” called Brixton Endeavors that later became CCDH and in early 2020 absorbed the entire SFFN project. McSweeney has tried to distance himself from all this but as Holden notes, McSweeney was the sole director of Brixton Endeavors between 2018 and September 2019, and remained a director of CCDH until April 2020.

During this time, a plan was developed to target disfavored news outlets by going after their advertisers. As Ahmed himself said in an October 2020 U.S. State Department conference on antisemitism, the CCDH “put together a program called stop funding fake news” designed to undermine ad revenue of certain news sites. He boasted that the weak points of news websites is that they’re expensive to run, so eliminating their ad revenue meant that “within a couple of months, you can completely eviscerate the economic base of a website.”

What Ahmed and his underlings at CCDH needed was a willing news outlet to “report” on its targeting of certain websites for being “hateful” or “racist.” This they found in the NBC News Verification Unit, which tried to goad Google into demonetizing The Federalist and others, and then “reported” it as news.

Take a step back and realize that this is the equivalent of people like Ron Klain or Jeff Zients, who served as chiefs of staff during the Biden administration, running secretive demonetization ops against conservative news outlets in America.

But even that isn’t very far-fetched. After all, the Biden administration’s State Department used its now-defunct Global Engagement Center to fund censorship operations by groups like NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index, which targeted The Federalist and The Daily Wire, among others. We here at The Federalist joined with The Daily Wire in a lawsuit against the State Department in 2023, claiming these groups, supported by the federal government, sought to defund and suppress our reporting and commentary in violation of our First Amendment rights.

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