Brazil Threatens To Block Access to X Within 24 Hours After the Platform Refused To Censor

Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has set a stringent deadline for Elon Musk, the owner of the social network X, and its CEO Linda Yaccarino, to appoint a local legal representative for the platform in Brazil. The ultimatum was clear: do so within 24 hours or see the social network suspended in the nation. This directive came to light following a court ruling on Wednesday.

Moraes ordered X to block certain accounts critical of the government and remove specific posts it accused of spreading “misinformation” related to Brazil’s electronic voting system and promoting “hate speech.” The targeted accounts were often associated with supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro and were linked to investigations into what the court described as “digital militias” accused of disseminating false information.

Additionally, some profiles were connected to the January 8, 2023 riot, where Bolsonaro supporters stormed key government buildings in protest.

The confrontation between Brazilian authorities and X has intensified this month, with the platform announcing that it would shutter its Brazilian operations and lay off local staff after Moraes threatened to arrest X staff in the country if the platform didn’t cave to its censorship demands.

Despite X shutting down its operations in the region, X said that it would continue to allow Brazilian citizens to access the website.

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Biden-Harris Administration Defends Big Tech Censorship Pressure Following Zuckerberg’s Admission

The Biden-Harris White House looks determined to justify and normalize the practice of the government colluding with private companies, in this instance Big Tech, to censor speech.

After Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, admitting that his company came under pressure from the current administration to conduct censorship and that he “believes” that was wrong – the White House doubled down on the controversial, and quite possibly, unconstitutional, policy.

In his letter, Zuckerberg chose to focus on Meta censoring content related to COVID-19, and in response, a White House spokesman revealed the government does not share Zuckerberg’s stance that the policy of pressure was wrong.

“Encouragement” is how that’s phrased. “When confronted with a deadly pandemic, this administration encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety,” stated the White House spokesman to media requests.

He further justified the actions described by Zuckerberg as needed because the White House believes private companies, including those from the tech industry, “should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people.”

And with the stage set in this way – the spokesman concluded that these companies are then free to make “independent choices about the information they present.”

But Zuckerberg’s letter to the Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan does a pretty good job of explaining how these “independent choices” get made. Senior figures from the Biden administration, Zuckerberg stated, in 2021 “repeatedly pressured our (Facebook, Instagram) teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire.”

The decision on content removal, and introduction of new rules into platform policies to facilitate censorship, Zuckerberg concedes, was “ultimately ours” –  but made under pressure.

If Meta tried to defy these “suggestions” – the administration showed “a lot of frustration.”

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UK Knife & Sex Offenders Escaping Prosecution If They “Say Sorry”

A shocking article published by the Telegraph on Monday describes how UK criminals accused of knife and sex offenses are avoiding criminal prosecution if they say they’re “sorry” to the victims.

Mocking the absurd notion that apologizing is allowing violent individuals to avoid criminal sentences, UK activist Tommy Robinson joked that Brits recently prosecuted for their social media posts should “just say sorry.”

According to the Telegraph, almost 150,000 people were let go by police in the first three months of 2024.

Some of the individuals set free were suspected of violent crimes, sex crimes and illegally possessing weapons.

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French Newspaper Claims Macron Tricked Durov With Dinner Invite to Facilitate His Arrest

French newspaper Le Canard Enchaine published a report claiming that Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was invited for a dinner by President Emmanuel Macron in order to trick him into being arrested.

Durov was arrested on Saturday at Le Bourget airport near Paris and faces up to 20 years in prison for his alleged complicity in the sale of child sexual abuse material, drug trafficking, fraud, and involvement in organized crime.

Durov is essentially being charged with these crimes because criminals used his platform to facilitate them, which would set a ludicrous legal precedent making social media owners personally responsible for literally everything anyone posts on their platforms.

Macron gave a speech on Monday insisting that the arrest was not politically motivated and, laughably, that France supports freedom of speech.

However, according to French investigative newspaper Le Canard Enchaine, Durov told Paris police that he was scheduled to meet Macron for a dinner on the day of his arrest.

This has prompted allegations that the French government tricked Durov into flying in to France merely as a pretext to arrest him.

Florian Philippot, leader of the Les Patriots Party, suggested that the dinner invite was a deliberate act of deception.

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Garland Makes An Example Of J6 Protesters To Shut Up Anyone Else Who Might Question Elections

Attorney General Merrick Garland boasted on Friday how his office has prosecuted nearly 1,500 Americans for protesting the 2020 election, warning others they may face similar lawfare should they raise any concerns about the administration of the upcoming November election. 

Speaking at a press briefing, Garland essentially said the Jan. 6 prosecutions should serve to remind Americans what happens if they raise questions about an election. 

“I think our prosecutions have made clear what we think about people who try to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power, which is [an] essential and fundamental element of our democracy. A quibble about whether we have 1,500 or slightly less than 1,500 — but we have way more than 1400 now — prosecutions. We have a substantial number of convictions,” Garland boasted.

“I think that’s shown to everybody how seriously we take an effort to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power the last January 6, the coming January 6, and every January 6 after that,” he continued. “I want to make clear to anybody who is thinking about interfering with that: They can see what we’ve done with respect to the January 6 prosecutions, and [the] Justice Department will continue to protect our democracy.”

Director at Big Data Poll Richard Baris explained in a post on X why Garland’s comments are so alarming.

“This is what 50% of the country heard from Garland. ‘We’re gonna steal this election and if you try to fight us, we’ll put you in prison.’ God this country is totally corrupt,” he wrote.

“DOJ prosecutors and DC judges are warning that the hammer will come down on any American who protests the 2024 election results,” echoed independent journalist Julie Kelly on X after Garland made his press conference statement. “They treat J6ers like mass murderers,” she continued, citing comments from Obama-appointed District Judge Tanya Chutkan “lecturing a J6 protestor convicted of a misdemeanor.”

The DOJ brought the “hammer” down in the wake of the 2020 election, as Garland made clear. The DOJ charged hundreds of protesters — including a “praying grandma” in her 70s — under a federal statute that the Supreme Court later ruled was used in an over-broad capacity. 

But American skepticism about our electoral processes, in part, stems from the actions the DOJ has taken, starting with their attempt to criminalize election-related speech.

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How Will the Techno Elite Get Us To Vote for Mass Surveillance? The Bad-Cop/Good Cop Scheme

George Orwell once stated: ‘to see what is in front of one’s nose requires a constant struggle.”

What we are being led to turn a blind eye to today is a bizarre choreographed media drama of a presidential election race between an incumbent, but perhaps fake senile president Joe Biden, who is incoherent during debate but verbally skillful at a follow up speech the next day, and his replacement on the ballot by Kamela Harris, a hand-picked incompetent female vice president who had gained no primary election votes; and in Trump an opponent who has been portrayed as a victim of a series of kangaroo courts and a seemingly real assassination attempt which has garnered public sympathy, but who is competent and coherent.  We have been led to believe Trump willingly bankrupted his billion-dollar real estate fortune by fighting court judgments for tax evasion.

The ongoing election spectacle is an old trick called the Bad Cop-Good Cop routine, the Mutt and Jeff technique, or the forced choice between a Carrot and a Stick. We should not fall for the script or plot of opposing political parties and candidates as a contest between “hostility versus indifference” to working class values or the lesser of two evils currently being piped into our TV’s and cell phones. The election is being framed as a referendum on for adoption of mass AI surveillance and information integration, including medical records, that the technocrats have been unable to get from congress or the courts.

At the experiential level, where this will lead is the TSA will be able to bounce you from an airplane flight if you do not have the requisite vaccinations, regardless of what both candidates and their apparatchiks say otherwise. AI would mark the end of a pluralistic economy of public and private sectors, the gig job subeconomy and independent contractors.

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Destroying Villages in Order To Save Them

A salient feature of the last decade or so has been the steady rise of bizarre cults with legions of fervent true believers, even though we have virtually zero rational grounds for believing in the central tenets of these secular religions. The weirdest thing about these cults is the way in which their true believers ardently sacrifice the very things they claim they wish to save. Consider the following:

1). COVID-19 illness presents close to ZERO risk to healthy children, but this hasn’t stopped the Vaccine Cult from demanding that children receive the dangerous, experimental shots that are neither effective nor safe. The most spectacular irrational outcome is the high incidence of vaccine-induced myocarditis among young athletes for whom COVID-19 posed zero risk.

2). Wind turbines are extremely inefficient producers of electricity that kill hundreds of thousands of migratory birds, wreak havoc in the marine environment when they are placed offshore, and ruin the physical beauty of the landscape. Nevertheless, the bizarre Climate Cult insists that wind turbines are a key weapon in our arsenal for reducing carbon emissions, which the Climate Cult fervently believes to be causing a rise in the earth’s temperature. Destroy nature in order to save it!

3). A human male will obviously have an unfair advantage over a female in almost all competitive sports. And yet, in their fervent proselytization of the bizarre Transgender Cult, votaries have largely succeeded in destroying women’s sports and the dreams of the girls and women who train for them.

4). Importing legions of young men from Arab countries into European countries in which these young men struggle to integrate and find gainful employment has resulted in a marked reduction of public safety in European cities, especially for young women. Yesterday here in Vienna, I had lunch with the former chief of police, who told me that stabbings are indeed much higher in certain districts of Vienna than they ever were in the past. The perpetrators are almost always young males who came to Vienna during the 2015 European migrant crisis.

And yet, the Diversity Cult persists in its bizarre, fetishistic belief that racial diversity per se is necessarily a good thing. Yesterday evening, while pondering the irrationality of the Diversity Cult, I saw the news that a young, foreign-born man stabbed 11 people and killed three at the “Festival of Diversity” that was underway in Solingen, Germany. Diversity will purportedly strengthen and revitalize Germany in the 21st century, even when it results in mass homicide.

5). Already in the year 2015, I began to perceive that the oligarchs who run Ukraine were making a huge mistake by getting into bed with the oligarchs who run the U.S. intelligence agencies, military-industrial complex, and Biden Crime Family. Cozying up with the U.S. military and intel establishment would certainly frighten the Russian Bear and make him aggressive. Far better for the poor people of Ukraine to tone down the nationalism and seek friendly and cooperative relations with Russia.

Note that the exact same reasoning has applied to every country in the Western Hemisphere in their relations with the United States government since President Monroe announced his Monroe Doctrine. As the former Mexican President, Porfirio Diaz once lamented: “Poor Mexico—so far from God, and so close to the United States.”

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Everyone Hates Fascism Except the Government

One of the few interesting things about America’s highly choreographed political conventions is the gathering of people outside these events.  Supporters and protesters show up to yell at the top of their lungs for days.  What kinds of taunts do these opposing groups scream at each other?  Remarkably, they accuse each other of similar transgressions.  Probably the most common insults being lobbed from each side of the political spectrum are accusations that the other side is full of “fascists,” “Nazis,” and “racists.”

It’s enough to make an observer wonder whether an awkward kumbaya truce could spontaneously break out, in which antagonistic foes raise a curious eyebrow and timidly ask, “You mean, you’re against fascism and racism, too?” before taking off their masks, throwing down their cardboard signs, and apprehensively shaking hands.  Of course, that never happens, so very angry Americans continue to denounce one another in nearly identical terms.

The whole thing would be funny if it were not so serious.  And it’s serious because the resulting confusion leaves Americans who might otherwise agree about an awful lot instead reaching for one another’s throats.  The more time they waste fighting, the easier it is for their real enemies to get away with all kinds of mischief without anyone noticing.  Who are their “real enemies”?  Well, regardless of any American’s particular ideological beliefs, those who most affect their lives (outside their families and friends) are almost certainly people with wealth and power — and not the vast majority of their working-class neighbors just trying to earn a living.  Because wealth and power remain in the hands of a small collection of political and financial “elites,” they benefit when citizens with neither wealth nor power choose to attack one another.

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Does the Government Classification System Need Reform?

For decades, presidents and their appointees have misused the classification system to conceal waste, fraud, abuse, and even criminal conduct, failing to properly manage classified federal records generally.

That is why a new bipartisan effort to deal with this major executive branch misuse of power is both remarkable and welcome.

The solution offered by Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Chairman Gary Peters (D-MI) and senior Senate Judiciary Committee and Select Intelligence Committee member John Cornyn (R-TX) is the Classification Reform for Transparency Act of 2024 (S. 4648). If enacted the bill would, for the first time in U.S. history, prohibit an executive branch official from misusing the federal government’s document classification system to hide various forms of misconduct.

When I testified before Chairman Peters’ committee in March 2023, this was among my top three reform recommendations, and I’m deeply grateful Senators Peters and Cornyn have embraced the overarching idea because it’s been badly needed for literally decades. While there are literally dozens of examples to justify such a change in law, just two from the post-9/11 era should suffice to make the point.

As I’ve testified elsewhere, in the days immediately following Al Qaeda’s terrorist attacks on America, then-National Security Agency (NSA) Director General Michael Hayden authorized NSA personnel to intercept all communications between the U.S. and Afghanistan for a 30-day period. There was just one very big problem: under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), Hayden had no lawful, unilateral authority to take such action.

Hayden needed to go to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) and get approval for such electronic eavesdropping since it clearly implicated the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans. Instead, he ordered the surveillance anyway and used the classification system to keep his decision from becoming public – a tactic that worked for over four years until the New York Times exposed it in December 2005. That revelation sparked an over two-year battle to make Hayden’s illegal mass surveillance program nominally constitutional (at least in the view of federal courts), which is how we got the controversial and still serially-violated 2008 FISA Amendments Act.

The second example involves Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.

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Suspect was across the street from Capitol Police squad car while walking to Jan. 5 bomb drop, video shows

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story said it appeared the bombing suspect interacted with police. After publication, a congressional investigator with access to a camera angle that has not been made public reached out and told Blaze News a person similarly attired to the bomber who comes out of the alley and crosses the street toward the two Capitol Police vehicles is not the same person as the hoodie-clad pipe-bomb suspect seen walking down the alley just minutes earlier.

A Capitol Police squad car with its emergency lights on was parked directly across the street at the time a hoodie-clad suspect allegedly carrying a pipe bomb walked down the alley toward the rear of the Republican National Committee building, Blaze News has learned.

Video never before disclosed or made public shows the pipe-bomb suspect bathed in the red and blue squad-car lights on Jan. 5, 2021, just as he or she walked to place the explosive device. The footage was discovered by social media user “Armitas” (@accabbat on X),who provided it exclusively to Blaze News.

An individual with similar dress to the suspected pipe bomber who emerged from the same alley minutes later was unrelated to the bombing case, according to congressional investigators who have access to a camera angle that has not been made public.

A previous version of this story said an individual dressed like the bomb suspect crossed the street and interacted with Capitol Police parked along C Street. Congressional investigators said camera footage they have seen shows that person did not speak to officers and his or her presence was unrelated to the bomb case. Blaze News has requested access to footage from the camera, located in front of the Library of Congress near the alley entrance.

Discovery of the new video raises questions about why the footage has not been disclosed to the public in the nearly 44 months since Jan. 6, and why yet more cameras with clues to the pipe bomb mystery are being withheld by federal authorities.

The video from Armitas and subsequent investigation by Blaze News showed the alleged bomber emerged onto First Street Southeast from an alley between the Capitol Hill Club and the Republican National Committee at 8:14 p.m. on Jan. 5.The video from Armitas and subsequent investigation by Blaze News showed the alleged bomber emerged onto First Street Southeast from an alley between the Capitol Hill Club and the Republican National Committee at 8:14 p.m. Jan. 5.

The suspect walked north past the Capitol Hill Club. As the individual passed under the restaurant’s green awning at 8:14:30 p.m., a Capitol Police SUV turned the corner onto First Street. The alleged bomber waved at the squad car and then pointed — it appeared — at the driver as the vehicle passed by.

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