India’s judiciary is collapsing under delays, inconsistency, and lost trust. We explore why a bold fusion of Civil Law, Common Law, and Dharmic principles is the only path to revive justice—and save India’s democracy from slow decay.
Pakistan’s generals thrive on chaos, using endless jihad to justify power while destroying their nation. Today we uncovers how fire, ruin, and perpetual conflict define Pakistan’s strategy, and why understanding this is key to India’s security and regional stability.
China’s new Harmony OS is gearing up to challenge Apple, Microsoft, and Google. While it may not dethrone these giants immediately, its arrival signals that non-US players are entering the operating system race. It reflects China’s ambition to reduce tech dependence on the West with its own options
Brazil, Ireland, EU and the US have become the frontlines for those who want to control our voices globally. China has shown the blueprint of a dystopian state. The Deep State wants to use democracy to achieve Total Control.
In a mountain monastery, rows of silver chimes hung along the eaves, dancing gently in the breeze. Yet not a single note rang out. Each chime's clapper was bound fast with a thin cord of silk, silencing any sound. A young monk watched the quiet dance of the chimes and felt the hush drape over the courtyard like a heavy mist.
One dusk, the novice approached his Master, who was sweeping fallen leaves in the garden. "Master," the novice asked softly, "why do our chimes not sing with the wind?"
The Master paused, gazing at the wordless chimes. "Long ago," he replied, "a sudden storm raged through this valley. The wind howled, and the chimes clamored wildly. In the chaos, roof tiles flew off and fear gripped the village below. The elders believed the chimes' fevered song had angered the sky. So they bound the chimes to silence, to keep peace with the heavens."
The young monk frowned at the trembling, mute chimes. A faint breeze touched his face. "The wind still comes," he said, "but now quietly. And the chimes remain silent. Are we at peace because the sky is pleased, or simply because nothing can be heard?"
The Master handed his broom to the novice and pointed to a still pond by the path. On its surface lay the reflection of the open sky and the outline of the silent chimes. A single orange leaf fell, landing on the water. Ripples shattered the reflection into trembling fragments. The novice looked up in alarm, but the sky itself remained serene and unchanged.
After a moment the Master said only, "The sky was never broken," and resumed sweeping, leaving the novice to ponder his meaning.
That night, the restless young monk crept into the moonlit courtyard. A gentle wind was gliding through the silence with soft, invisible hands. He reached up and loosened the silk cord on one of the chimes. The next breeze stirred it into life, a single, pure note rang out into the night. The sound was small but brave, hanging in the air like a lone star. The monk's heart quickened at its beauty.
He waited, half expecting the heavens to quiver or some unseen guardian to emerge from the shadows. But the stars above merely shimmered, and the monastery walls stood quiet and still.
Then an elder monk stepped out from the darkness. With stern eyes, he gently stilled the swinging chime and retied its silencing cord. Not a word passed between elder and novice. The old monk faded back into the shadows as silently as he had come. Only the wind sighed, as if in lament, through the now motionless chime.
In the gray light of dawn, the Master found the novice sitting beneath the bound chimes, lost in thought. The Master poured two cups of tea, and together they sat without a word. A sparrow alighted on the wall and began to sing. Its chirping notes floated freely through the crisp air, unafraid. The novice listened to the bird's song beyond the gate and then to the silence within the courtyard. The chimes above swayed soundlessly on their strings.
At last, the young monk spoke softly, "The gate is open, Master, yet our voices do not pass through." He met the Master’s eyes. "Have we found peace, or merely the comfort of a quiet cage?"
The Master watched the sparrow take flight, its song growing distant. He then closed his eyes and smiled gently, saying nothing.
The wind came down from the mountains, stirring the trees and the voiceless chimes alike. In that silence, the novice heard the Master’s answer. He bowed his head in understanding.
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In the series “Black Mirror”, there is a scene from the episode “Nosedive” that showcases a world so dystopian that it sends shivers through you.
Lacie, the protagonist, is at the airport, attempting to board a flight. She has been living in a society where every interaction is rated on a 5-star scale, and your social rating determines access to services, housing, and opportunities. After a series of minor frustrations and outbursts, her rating drops below a threshold. At the airport counter, the system flags her as “below 4.2,” and the staff denies her boarding, smiling politely while explaining she no longer qualifies.
When she protests, security is called, and her rating is further docked for “public disturbance.” Each scream and desperate plea spirals her rating down further, locking her out of travel, car rentals, and even coffee shops.
This isn’t fiction anymore. Control via technology, in the name of conformity and standardization, is being pursued by numerous powers and groups worldwide.
In China a similar score is known as the Social Credit Score, where virtues such as sincerity are part of the scoring KPIs.
The whole mechanism has evolved over the past few years.
In 2014, China announced its Social Credit System, aiming to build a “culture of sincerity.”
Now, it is no longer a plan. It is reality.
Across provinces, the system actively monitors citizens’ spending, travel, online activity, and social interactions, converting these behaviors into scores that dictate access to loans, jobs, travel, and even dating opportunities.
Cameras, facial recognition, and AI systems feed into this vast evaluation network, punishing low scores with travel bans or slower internet, while high scores can fast-track government services.
Framed as a tool to “build trust,” China’s Social Credit System has become the world’s most comprehensive state-run behavior control infrastructure, normalizing total data surveillance as a pillar of governance.
In 2025, China continues to develop and refine its Social Credit System (SCS), which is designed to assess the trustworthiness of individuals and businesses. A key concept within the SCS is "Sincerity," reflecting the system's aim to foster a society based on honesty, integrity, and good behavior.
For all its dystopian imagery and future, it's origins and later revisions were for bringing a much desired change within the society, at least in its Corporate avatar.
And even though the initial target has been the companies, the system to bring the individuals within its fold of virtuous reshaping in completeness is well underway.
Overall, by the end of 2020, the “corporate” aspects of the social credit system appear to be more advanced than other strata of use, including government self-discipline and the discipline of individuals. A recent MERICS study showed that between 2003 and 2020, 73.3 percent of mentions in official documents identified “companies” as the targets of social credit, compared to just 10.3 percent for individuals. That does not mean that social credit will not grow in importance for the individual; it simply means that during its first phase, the “Corporate Social Credit System” has been the primary focus of government attention. (Source: China’s Social Credit System: Speculation vs. Reality / The Diplomat)
So just as Lacie had to see opportunities come and go based on her score, the Chinese population is also being subjected to a system that can establish their social and career trajectories based on their online and offline work and behavior. You quarrel with your neighbor, and your Social Credit rating drops.
The mechanisms of control don't often come with a stink of natural villainy, you see. They are decorated enough and based on everyday established virtues that they seem to be natural choices for the unsuspecting populace.
Terrorism? We need censorship. Pandemics? We need censorship. Elections? We need censorship.
It is never about public safety. It is always about power.
Let’s break something to you - Chinafication of Brazil is well underway. The metaphor of China here brings the specter of control with the absence of democratic accountability together.
We are primarily discussing the ability to control here. Before we discuss this further, one fact will set things in context.
Most people are unaware of what just happened in Brazil. They should. It is the world’s second-largest social media market after the United States in terms of time spent on social media.
Brazil has just implemented a censorship regime that would make the Chinese Communist Party nod in approval.
A serious battle is underway over the limits of speech and the judiciary's role in policing the digital public square. It has now pushed Brazil at the forefront of a global debate on censorship and democratic norms.
It all started with the bill called PL 2630.
Brazil’s battle over online speech centers on Bill PL 2630, the “Law on Freedom, Responsibility and Transparency on the Internet.” Pitched in 2020 to fight “fake news,” it mandated user identification, platform accountability, and the creation of a “Council for Transparency.” The bill passed the Senate but stalled in the Chamber, morphing into a sprawling regulatory framework far beyond disinformation.
The Brazilian Association of Software Companies (ABES) warned the bill’s expansion into digital advertising and copyright would smother innovation and punish small businesses reliant on personalized ads. Under the guise of controlling “fake news,” the state was building a blueprint for broader control.
In May 2023, as a vote neared, Google and Telegram openly opposed the bill, urging Brazilians to contact lawmakers. The state responded with force. Courts accused them of interference and threatened Google with million-real-per-hour fines.
Yet while the bill stalled, Brazil’s real censorship engine became its Supreme Federal Court (STF). Justice Alexandre de Moraes emerged as the face of judicial activism, declaring at GlobalFact 12 in 2025 that platform “self-regulation has failed.” He insisted regulation is not censorship but law applied to the digital sphere, framing it as a defense against “coordinated disinformation.”
The STF’s weapon of choice is the “Fake News Inquest,” launched in 2019 by Chief Justice Dias Toffoli to investigate threats against the court. Justice de Moraes, handpicked to bypass the lottery system, now drives Brazil’s censorship wave—without legislative oversight, under the banner of protecting democracy.
Those who support the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court (STF) and its president, Justice Alexandre de Moraes, frame recent actions as a defense against anti-democratic forces.
Ah, the familiar strawman of democracy to deal the most crushing blow on any dissent.
We have discussed how Democracy Promotion is the greatest tool in the hands of the most sinister authoritarian groups:
Desh Kapoor
The fact is that Brazil may be veering towards a "dikastocracy"—a state where the judiciary holds unchecked power, supplanting the democratic process.
The conflict has been simmering. Between Brazilian authorities and social media platforms. It erupted in April 2024 when Elon Musk, owner of X (formerly Twitter), publicly challenged a series of court orders compelling the platform to block accounts accused of spreading disinformation and attacking democratic institutions. These orders stemmed from the "Fake News Inquiry" (Inquérito 4781), a controversial investigation initiated by the STF in 2019 to probe threats and false news targeting its justices. This inquiry, with Justice de Moraes as its rapporteur, has granted the court broad powers to investigate, prosecute, and judge cases, blurring the traditional separation of powers.
Well, the confrontation escalated in August 2024 when the STF ordered the temporary suspension of X in Brazil. The stated reason was the platform's failure to comply with judicial orders and to appoint a legal representative in the country, a requirement under Brazilian law. During the suspension, the court also imposed heavy daily fines on the company. It even threatened penalties for individuals using VPNs to access the platform, a move that drew sharp criticism for its potential to infringe on individual liberties. X was eventually reinstated after agreeing to comply with the court's directives.
At the heart of many of these censorship orders is the case of Allan dos Santos, a pro-Bolsonaro political blogger. Accused of spreading disinformation and participating in anti-democratic acts, dos Santos, who currently resides in the United States, has been a primary target of Justice de Moraes's investigation. The STF has issued a warrant for his arrest and has aggressively pursued the removal of his content from various platforms. This pursuit led to the suspension of the video-sharing platform Rumble in Brazil in February 2025, after it refused to block dos Santos's channel, citing its commitment to free speech under U.S. law.
Rumble and Trump Media have filed a lawsuit in the US, challenging Moraes's order as "extraterritorial censorship".
Based on De Moraes’ Rumble order, Rumble and Trump Media Group filed suit. A few days later, after Rumble failed to meet De Moraes's 48-hour deadline for the company to appoint a legal representative in Brazil, the Justice decided to block access to the social media platform in Brazil. This order was followed by Brazil’s main telecom providers, including Starlink. A few days later, Rumble and Trump Media Group doubled down and filed an emergency motion against De Moraes in a US court in order to avoid complying with his requests, alleging they violated the First Amendment of the US Constitution. While the case is still ongoing, it feels like déjà vu. De Moraes is the same justice who, in August 2024, ordered the suspension of X (formerly Twitter) in Brazil after it failed to appoint a legal representative in Brazil before a court-mandated deadline. The other justices unanimously upheld the ban in early September. (Source: Why the Rumble Suit Against a Brazilian Justice is Not About Free Speech / Tech Policy)
What counts as “anti-democratic”? The term isn’t clearly defined in law, leaving it frighteningly open-ended. In practice, anything critical of powerful institutions – whether Brazil’s Supreme Court or President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva – can be labeled “anti-democratic” and ordered offline.
There is no clear legal standard or due process for such judgments: the Supreme Court explicitly decided not to set firm rules on what content is illegal, choosing to rule case-by-case
With over 18,000 judges in Brazil potentially empowered to deem online posts “anti-democratic” at will, the censorship net can be cast as wide as needed. Content opposing government narratives – even posts criticizing authorities or policies – may be framed as attacks on “democratic institutions” and swiftly erased
This crackdown was imposed by court edict, not by elected lawmakers. In fact, Brazil’s Supreme Court struck down a key internet law (the Marco Civil da Internet of 2014) that had protected online free expression by requiring a court order to remove content.
Congress had debated and explicitly refused to weaken those protections, yet the Court went ahead and “rewrote” the rules on its own in the name of protecting “fundamental rights and democracy”.
The result is a regime of para-state censorship, executed through judicial and regulatory fiat rather than democratic legislation. Brazil’s high court has essentially seized for itself the power to determine what speech is allowed online, a move with little accountability to voters.
The new system doesn’t stop at simply ordering content removals. It also weaponizes legal liability to force platforms to over-censor preemptively. If a social media platform receives an “extrajudicial notice” – essentially a demand from authorities or even a private party to remove certain content – and fails to remove it, the platform can be held jointly liable for that content if a court later finds it illegal.
In other words, companies now face massive damages or fines unless they immediately take down anything that someone flags as possibly unlawful. There is no neutral arbiter or timely judicial review involved up front.
Under this scheme, platforms have effectively been deputized as internal courts that must evaluate every complaint and err on the side of removal. An American Cato Institute analysis warns that Brazil’s 8–3 Supreme Court ruling “institutes a broad liability regime” where “anyone can report [content] to a platform, and the platform must promptly remove it or otherwise be liable.”
The Court can later decide a platform “allowed too much ‘hate speech’” or other banned material and punish them accordingly.
Facing such peril, companies will censor first and ask questions never.
That will effectively result in scrubbing anything that even remotely carries risk. Facebook, Google, and every other service must now review millions of posts for compliance with Brazil’s vaguely defined rules, an impossible task that virtually guarantees over-removal of content.
As Cato’s report notes, moderators (and AI filters) will feel pressured to “aggressively remove any content that they think might come close to violating the law”.
Source: Brazil’s Supreme Court Rewrites the Rules to Censor Online Speech / CATO
Posts about sensitive political topics, for example, could be summarily taken down out of an abundance of caution – even if they are legitimate debate or truthful reporting.
This dynamic invites abuse.
Now let's turn our gaze towards Ireland.
Ireland occupies a uniquely strategic position in the global digital ecosystem. As the European headquarters for a host of major technology platforms, including Google, Meta, and X, it has become a critical chokepoint for the regulation of online content across the European Union.
This has fueled a narrative that Ireland is being used as a "Trojan Horse" to test and implement a broader censorship agenda that can then be exported globally.
The Irish government has been advancing a new Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill – a so-called “Hate Speech” law – which is sold to the public as a way to protect vulnerable groups from hate crimes. In reality, it is a Trojan Horse aimed at breaking Big Tech’s resistance to state content controls. Buried in the bill are provisions that would hold corporations criminally liable for failing to prevent “hate speech” on their services. If a user of a platform commits a hate speech offense using the service, the company itself could be prosecuted – unless it can prove it “took all reasonable steps and exercised due diligence” to prevent the offense.
This vague standard essentially forces companies to submit to government-directed monitoring and moderation practices as a safe harbor. In plainer terms, platforms will be coerced into overzealous censorship to avoid criminal liability.
Under Section 13 of the Irish bill, a company can be found guilty of a hate speech offense if it was committed “for [the company’s] benefit” and was made possible by a failure of the company’s officers to exercise appropriate control over the platform.
Senior managers can even face personal criminal charges (including prison) if it’s shown that an offense happened with their “consent or connivance” or due to their neglect.
The only defense for the company is to demonstrate that it “took all reasonable steps and exercised due diligence” to prevent the hateful content.
The implication is clear: tech firms will need to aggressively police user speech – far beyond what the law explicitly prohibits – and likely cede oversight to government “online safety” officials in order to prove their diligence. As one Irish legal analysis noted, companies will have to put “appropriate processes and procedures in place” to avoid offenses, drawing a direct parallel to compliance programs under anti-corruption laws.
In practice, this means close cooperation with state regulators and adoption of their content moderation directives as the only sure way to avoid prosecution.
Current Status: The Bill cleared the Dáil in April 2023 and is now at the Committee Stage in the Seanad. From the July Dáil debates, it is clear the Minister plans to push the Bill through the Seanad. However, further amendments are anticipated before it is finalized.
Ireland is not acting alone. There is strong evidence that powerful figures in the Western intelligence and security establishment are orchestrating this push from behind the scenes. In June, former CIA Director John Brennan – infamous for his role in the U.S. “Russiagate” affair – flew to Dublin to meet with UK, EU, and Irish officials in a closed-door conference about “countering populism” and online disinformation.
Dublin, where tech bros go to dodge tax, is now where spooks, censors, and failed Twitter moderators gather to dodge democracy. A Friday morning conference hosted by Ireland’s ‘Centre for Justice and Law Reform” opens up a window into the intermingled and intermingling world of transatlantic intelligence, Dublin online censorship, and woke Big Tech as the former head of the CIA sat down with Irish officials to discuss combating the populist right. Attended by Ireland’s and the EU’s online censor in the form of Coimisiún na Meán, the conference was also graced by the presence of Garda representatives as well as anti-Musk grandee Sinead McSweeney, famous for being purged in the clean-up of Twitter. Focusing policy-focused strategies for defeating populists, the event was hosted by the Centre for Justice and Law Reform ,which earlier in the week hosted British securocrat Robyn Simcox. As a vocal anti-Trump voice in the US intelligence community, Brennan’s appearance begs the question why is a former CIA director involved in Irish or European debates on “populism” and disinformation? As emphasised by White House threats of travel bans, Coimisiún na Meán is increasingly seen as a backdoor for the Biden-era censorship complex, using acts such as the EU DSA, with many ousted Twitter figures like Sinead McSweeney reinventing themselves as online safety gurus in tandem, Events like this show Ireland is being used as a pilot country for EU-US elite speech control cooperation and point to a shadowy nexus of transatlantic figures weaponising Dublin’s tech and regulatory space. (Source: The CIA Comes to Dublin: Why Are US Spooks Meeting anti-Musk Twitter and Irish Censors? / The Burkean)
The meeting, hosted by the Law Society of Ireland’s Centre for Justice and Law Reform, brought together Brennan and representatives from Ireland’s new media regulator (Coimisiún na Meán, which includes the Online Safety Commissioner) along with European Commission officials and even a former Twitter safety executive.
According to reporting on the event, foreign intelligence veterans, EU “online censors,” and Big Tech figures convened to strategize about controlling the narrative and combatting the populist right.
The very fact of Brennan’s presence was extraordinary – “why is a former CIA director involved in Irish or European debates on ‘populism’ and disinformation?” one Irish outlet queried pointedly.
The answer appears to be that Ireland is being used as a pilot ground for a transatlantic censorship alliance.
“Events like this show Ireland is being used as a testing ground for EU–US elite speech control cooperation,” The Burkean reported, “pointing to a shadowy nexus of transatlantic figures weaponising Dublin’s tech and regulatory space.”
In other words, an Anglo-American censorship cartel is taking shape, leveraging Ireland’s role as Big Tech’s European jurisdiction to impose what the U.S. or U.K. governments can’t directly mandate at home.
Through this nexus, intelligence agencies and government-aligned “speech regulators” are effectively pressuring tech platforms to adopt government-approved moderation policies – all while maintaining plausible deniability that it’s really “private companies” making these decisions. The Irish Online Safety Commissioner, Niamh Hodnett, for example, is charged with enforcing new online content rules under Ireland’s Online Safety and Media Regulation Act. Hodnett’s mandate closely “mirrors EU and U.S.-backed models” that were “shaped by intelligence-linked NGOs,” according to one analysis. And it’s not just Ireland. A network of influential figures spans across the Five Eyes countries (U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) and Europe, all working toward the same goal:
These individuals – and others in their orbit – form an informal censorship consortium spanning government, law enforcement, intel agencies, media, and ostensibly “independent” fact-checking NGOs. Their fingerprints are on the policies now emerging in Ireland, Brazil, the EU and beyond. What might look on the surface like separate national initiatives (a court ruling here, a bill there, a “code of practice” somewhere else) is increasingly part of a coordinated strategy.
These people are a direct and imminent threat to free speech and democracy worldwide. They are dangerous and out of control:
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) June 28, 2025
Former CIA Director John Brennan helped initiate the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. He used foreign spies to help trigger the FBI investigation of of the… pic.twitter.com/NHFKfK0D4U
It is no coincidence that the same patterns are cropping up in Washington, Ottawa, London, Canberra and Wellington. The intelligence communities of the Five Eyes nations – the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand – have been working for years to censor dissenting voices and unpopular opinions under the pretexts of “misinformation” and “hate speech.” In the United States, for instance, senior officials have openly called for social media crackdowns in the name of public safety and democracy.
This coordinated dance between the Five Eyes Intelligence agencies to monitor their masses and those outside has been going on for awhile. This is a news article from 2018.
Now, let us recall the time in the run up to Trump 2.0 and how the Democratic Party has been at the forefront of the takeover of our voice!
Recall that in April 2022, former President Barack Obama gave a high-profile speech at Stanford University warning that online “disinformation is a threat to our democracy” and urging tech platforms to accept more regulation and oversight. “Regulation has to be part of the answer,” Obama said, comparing Big Tech to cars and vaccines as areas the government has historically regulated for the public good.
One week later, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security abruptly announced a new “Disinformation Governance Board,” an initiative that critics immediately likened to an Orwellian Ministry of Truth. The board, revealed on April 27, 2022, was tasked with coordinating the fight against online “mis- and disinformation” – focusing initially on Russian propaganda and false narratives aimed at migrants.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas defended the effort as a way to protect border security and public trust, but the backlash was swift. The idea that a government board would be monitoring speech sent a chilling signal. (DHS put the project on “pause” within weeks amid the controversy.)
Behind the scenes, agencies like the FBI and DHS were already deeply involved in social media content control – as later disclosures would prove. The Twitter Files (internal documents released in late 2022) showed that the FBI, DHS, and other officials held “constant and pervasive” contacts with Twitter, pressuring the company to remove or suppress various posts in the name of fighting election misinformation and foreign influence.
The Twitter Files show the FBI, DHS, and other federal agencies have had regular contacts with Twitter since as early as 2018 concerning alleged misinformation on the platform. Monthly meetings between Twitter and federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies apparently turned into weekly meetings ahead of the 2020 election. These agencies also teamed up with nongovernmental organizations, like the Election Integrity Partnership and the Center for Internet Security, to monitor what people were saying online and to urge Twitter to take action against certain users and content. The Twitter Files show the FBI, DHS, and other federal agencies have had regular contacts with Twitter since as early as 2018 concerning alleged misinformation on the platform. Part 6 of the Twitter Files reveals FBI communications to Twitter that flagged tweets containing purported election-related misinformation. The FBI — or its search algorithms — appeared to have a low threshold for “misinformation,” flagging even tweets from low-follower accounts that were obvious jokes, such as one user’s tongue-in-cheek get-out-the-vote effort: “I want to remind republicans to vote tomorrow, Wednesday November 9.” Twitter users on both sides of the political aisle posted versions of this gag: Another user tweeted on Election Day 2020, “Americans, Vote today. Democrats you vote Wednesday 9th.” (Source: Yes, you should be worried about the FBI’s relationship with Twitter / FIRE)
In fact, Twitter staff came to joke that the platform had become an “FBI subsidiary” given the volume of censorship requests. The FBI’s own Foreign Influence Task Force often flagged even trivial or satirical content as potential “misinformation.” For example, agents sent Twitter lists of tweets – including jokes from low-follower accounts (e.g. someone tweeting “Republicans vote Wednesday, Democrats vote Thursday” as a parody) – and asked that they be taken down for supposedly confusing voters.
No fewer than 30 meetings were held between FBI agents and tech companies in the run-up to the 2020 election, where officials repeatedly warned of “hack-and-leak” operations and primed platforms to watch out for a coming “Russian disinformation” dump.
When Elon Musk took over at Twitter (now X), he opened up internal communications for the public. The Twitter Files, therefore, refer to a collection of internal documents from Twitter, Inc. that were made public between December 2022 and March 2023. These leaked documents disclosed Twitter's content moderation policies and procedures.
A group of journalists released these documents. They were granted limited access to Twitter's historical archives by Elon Musk. The information in the documents is based on reports provided by these journalists.
Here is the complete set of Twitter Files with a summary of all of them and a link for them. (Source: Steve Murch and Racket News)
The collusion between the American Intelligence Agencies, tech companies, and the Democratic Party came out very clearly. The presence of a thriving Information Cartel and the Censorship Industrial Complex was very obvious.
So, there has been an emergence of a "Censorship-Industrial Complex"—a symbiotic ecosystem where government agencies, technology platforms, and grant-funded non-governmental organizations (NGOs) share interests and reinforce one another's roles. Governments create the demand for content moderation, platforms fund the NGOs that provide the "independent" justification for that moderation, and the NGOs receive funding and legitimacy in return. This dynamic, although does not seem at first to be centrally directed, but is synchronized enough to create a powerful momentum toward greater speech control.
The reason why standard analysis does not find a direct link of governments or government entities to the scourge of coordinated censorship effort is because it has been outsourced.
Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) was established in July 2020 supposedly as a non-partisan coalition with a professed aim of identifying and mitigating misinformation related to voting and elections during the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
The partnership included the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public, Graphika, and the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab.
Under the guise of monitoring information and promoting free speech, they created a whole system of censoring data and voices they did not like or agree with.
The plan stretched far beyond America, sweeping across boardrooms, newsrooms, and digital platforms to steer the 2020 U.S. election toward outcomes that served their interests.
They rolled out a new arsenal of words: “fake news,” “misinformation,” “disinformation.” Each term became a tool to silence critics, erase opposing voices, and dismantle those who dared to question the narrative.
The truth was ring-fenced. Speech was monitored. Entire conversations vanished without warning.
Elections turned into managed spectacles, where those in power pulled the levers behind the curtain, deciding who could speak and what could be heard.
This was how they built their authority—layer by layer, silence by silence—under the illusion of protecting democracy, while shaping it to their design. They openly discussed about their work on foreign elections - in South Africa and Latin America!
Source: Jim Jordan's X account
The EIP’s so-called “research” on dismantling “inauthentic foreign networks” is all there, in black and white. Every chart, every smug note, every flagged account. Read it yourself: EIP’s documentation.
But pause for a moment. Since when did it become a crime for foreign nationals to debate, critique, or even ridicule American politicians? American journalists and think tanks dissect other countries daily, poking at leaders, policies, and elections across the world. It’s an analysis. It’s free speech.
Or is speech only free when it flatters the powerful?
On November 6, 2023, the Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government dropped a report: Weaponization of “Disinformation.” It lays bare how bureaucrats and university gatekeepers colluded to muzzle Americans under the banner of “protecting democracy.”
Read it carefully. It shows how censorship is built, piece by piece, under the glow of righteous slogans.
The report summarizes the work of EIP very clearly.
So you see how this whole scenario worked? Let us illustrate it for you.
The most striking factor here is that the cartel responsible for Censorship was using the Federal government to weaponize its grandiose plans to control Americans and the rest of the world.
A Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government held a hearing on Thursday, November 30, 2023. The folks who were part of this hearing were (Source: Judiciary Committee):
Michael Shellenberger did not mince words.
In sworn testimony before a House Judiciary subcommittee, he revealed how US and UK military contractors turned their psychological warfare machines inward, deploying disinformation tactics against the American people.
They were not content with influencing distant battlefields. They wanted minds at home.
During his testimony in front of a House Judiciary subcommittee, Michael Shellenberger made some startling claims about the actions of military contractors from the United States and the United Kingdom. According to Shellenberger, these contractors have been using disinformation tactics to manipulate and deceive the American public. What's even more concerning is that Shellenberger stated that the tactics and the silencing of those who disagreed with a certain point of view were even worse than he had predicted during his previous testimony before Congress in March.
One form of silencing that was highlighted by Shellenberger was the censorship of individuals and content on major social media platforms during the 2020 presidential election. This alleged censorship raises questions about the role of these platforms in shaping public opinion and limiting the free expression of ideas.
Twitter Files were not the only source of such information coming out.
In a joint exposé with the Public, Michael Shellenberger, Alexandra Gutentag and Matt Taibi shared a new cache of whistleblower documents last week.
They shared a piece on this account on Substack/Public about this document cache about a group called CTI League (CTIL) - a group that posed as one dedicated to fighting Covid-19 misinformation.
Michael Shellenberger
The stuff that came out from independent whistleblowers was mind-boggling!
I was initially dismissive of the #CTIFiles as a news story, as were a few industry experts I consulted. The key figures behind the group — a British data scientist and former defense researcher named Sara-Jayne “SJ” Terp and a Navy/SOCOM “technologist” named Pablo Breuer — were not roundly considered by my sources to be heavy hitters in the anti-disinformation world. However, once we got into the documents, we all realized they had tremendous significance. It wasn’t just that CTIL’s virtual meetings and training sessions were routinely attended by DHS and FBI officials, or that Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) head Chris Krebs announced that the DHS sub-unit was partnering with the group, or even that CTIL tactics were ultimately adopted at least in part by CISA.
Here is a timeline the team has built of the various actions that took place along the way in this disinformation racket.
They show how the US and UK military contractors had created an extensive plan for Global censorship in 2018!
A whistleblower has come forward with an explosive new trove of documents, rivaling or exceeding the Twitter Files and Facebook Files in scale and importance. They describe the activities of an “anti-disinformation” group called the Cyber Threat Intelligence League, or CTIL, that officially began as the volunteer project of data scientists and defense and intelligence veterans but whose tactics over time appear to have been absorbed into multiple official projects, including those of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The CTI League documents offer the missing link answers to key questions not addressed in the Twitter Files and Facebook Files. Combined, they offer a comprehensive picture of the birth of the “anti-disinformation” sector, or what we have called the Censorship Industrial Complex. (Source: CTIL Files #1: US And UK Military Contractors Created Sweeping Plan For Global Censorship In 2018, New Documents Show / Public)
The plans were detailed.
They went into:
It was all brought together via the Election Integrity Partnership.
Emails from CISA’s NGO and social media partners show that CISA created the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) in 2020, which involved the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) and other US government contractors. EIP and its successor, the Virality Project (VP), urged Twitter, Facebook and other platforms to censor social media posts by ordinary citizens and elected officials alike. (Source: CTIL Files #1: US And UK Military Contractors Created Sweeping Plan For Global Censorship In 2018, New Documents Show / Public)
The Twitter and CTIL Files and other lawsuits (such as the Missouri v. Biden case - Memorandum Ruling) have exposed a systematic pipeline of communication whereby government agencies and “information security” NGOs regularly flag content for platforms to remove. They often cite reasons like “violating terms of service” or threatening national security, but much of the targeted speech is simply politically inconvenient.
Even sitting members of Congress and credentialed journalists ended up on secret blacklists or had their reach throttled, because their posts challenged certain narratives (on topics from COVID-19 to election integrity).
All of this is done in a way that circumvents First Amendment scrutiny. The government doesn’t directly order Twitter or Facebook to take down a specific post; instead, officials lean on the companies with warnings, meetings, and expectations of “compliance.”
The collusion is so extensive that one FIRE analysis described it as government attempting “to use its power and influence to pressure platforms to do what it constitutionally cannot: censor lawful speech.”
This pattern – using intelligence-linked task forces, “counter-extremism” units, and ostensibly private partners to police online speech – is precisely what we now see being mirrored in Europe and elsewhere. It’s a playbook of outsourcing censorship to bypass democratic accountability.
While Brazil and Ireland are enacting national measures, the European Union has rolled out a continent-wide regime that formalizes many of these censorship practices. The Digital Services Act (DSA), which fully came into effect in 2024–2025, is being hailed by EU officials as a framework for “greater democratic control” over big tech. In truth, the DSA may herald something closer to the death of free speech in Europe, by embedding censorship mechanisms into law.
Under the DSA, all large online platforms must **remove “illegal content,” including things like “hate speech,” within extremely short timeframes (often 24 hours) or face crippling fines. The penalties for non-compliance are enormous – up to 6% of a company’s global annual revenue. For a behemoth like Meta or Google, that could mean fines in the billions of euros for a single infraction. If violations persist, the EU can even ban the platform from operating in Europe. Faced with this kind of financial gun to the head, it’s obvious that platforms will comply with takedown demands immediately and proactively. They have no real incentive to carefully weigh speech rights or defend borderline content – silence is safer.
But who defines what content is “illegal” or “hateful” under EU law? Effectively, governments and unelected EU bureaucrats do. “Hate speech” in the EU is defined broadly (and vaguely) via a 2008 framework as “incitement to violence or hatred” against protected groups. In practice, this can encompass a wide range of expression, depending on each country’s laws. As one commentary noted, the DSA could “result in the lowest common denominator for censorship across the whole EU,” since anything illegal under any member state’s law might have to be zapped EU-wide.
The DSA also relies on the EU Framework Decision of 28 November 2008, which defines “hate speech” as incitement to violence or hatred against a protected group of persons or a member of such a group. This circular definition of “hate speech” as incitement to hatred is problematic because it fails to specify what “hate” entails. Due to their vague and subjective nature, “hate speech” laws lead to inconsistent interpretation and enforcement, relying more on individual perception rather than clear, objective harm. Furthermore, the lack of a uniform definition at the EU level means that what is considered “illegal” in one country might be legal in another, making the possibility of the lowest common denominator for censorship across Europe very tangible. According to the then Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, David Kaye: ‘the vagueness of hate speech and harassment policies has triggered complaints of inconsistent policy enforcement that penalizes minorities while reinforcing the status of dominant or powerful groups.’ (A/HRC/38/35) (Source: The EU Digital Services Act and Freedom of Expression: Friends or Foes? / Constitutional Discourse)
Criticizing immigration policy, for instance, can run afoul of hate speech laws in some European states (if framed as disparaging a racial or ethnic group). Dissent on culturally sensitive topics can easily be recategorized as “hate.” And under the DSA’s strict timelines, platforms must remove flagged content first, ask questions later (if ever).
The DSA not only demands rapid removal of content that someone (whether a government agency or a “trusted flagger” NGO) reports as illegal; it also forces tech firms to actively assist the government in surveillance and suppression of speech.
Platforms must “adapt their algorithms” and content curation systems to “mitigate risks” to things like “civic discourse,” “electoral processes,” and “public security.” In essence, they are required to tweak what users see – and don’t see – to align with government-defined priorities. They must also share user data with regulators and outside auditors to prove they are suppressing “disinformation” and “harmful” content effectively.
The DSA even formalizes a system of state-endorsed “trusted flaggers” – entities (often government-funded NGOs or law enforcement bodies like Europol) with special privilege to mass-report content for quick takedown. Platforms are obliged to give these flaggers’ reports priority, meaning certain actors’ censorship requests jump to the front of the queue and are presumed valid.
It’s a recipe for institutionalizing bias: organizations hand-picked by the government (and often paid by it) become the arbiters of truth online. Indeed, many so-called independent fact-checkers in Europe rely on government or EU grants, making them anything but neutral. The EU’s own “Code of Practice on Disinformation,” now integrated into the DSA regime, was developed with input (and funding) from state-aligned groups and demands platforms cooperate with fact-checking bodies on content removal and down-ranking.
All of these measures amount to censorship by proxy. European governments can claim “we’re not banning any speech” – they’re simply enforcing “platform accountability” and “safety standards.”
But the effect is the same: voices that challenge the prevailing policies – on immigration, identity, religion, public health, or anything else – can be quietly suppressed without a government bureaucrat ever needing to sign a formal takedown order. The removal happens silently, under cover of private companies’ Terms of Service, but it is driven by the ever-present threat of DSA punishment. As one free expression advocate observed, “by mandating the removal of broadly defined ‘harmful’ content, [the DSA] sets the stage for widespread censorship, curtailing lawful and truthful speech under the guise of compliance and safety.”
European officials insist that “nothing in the DSA requires removal of lawful content.” That may be technically true – the law only mandates removal of illegal material – but it’s disingenuous. The fear of those massive fines will ensure that plenty of lawful-but-controversial content does get taken down. Platforms will simply not risk leaving up edge-case material that bureaucrats or activists might later argue caused “harm.” As a result, European users are already seeing a more sanitized, tightly controlled Internet, one where only the approved narrative comfortably survives.
Recently, the DA has been criticized by the US FCC chairman as well.
The chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Monday called out European Union's content moderation law as incompatible with America's free speech tradition and warned of a risk that it will excessively restrict freedom of expression."There is some concern that I have with respect to the approach that Europe is taking with the DSA (EU Digital Services Act) in particular," Brendan Carr, a Republican appointed to the FCC helm by President Donald Trump in January, said at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. (Source: US FCC chair says EU Digital Services Act is threat to free speech / Reuters)
One thing is obvious that the world of dystopia pushing democracy enthusiasts wanted was a complete control of America. The 2024 elections denied them the opportunity.
Trump entered Washington as an outsider, promising to dismantle the Deep State, end forever wars, and expose the media cartels controlling America.
What he faced was a fortress:
Trump fought but lacked control over the DOJ, CIA, and Pentagon. His attempts at draining the swamp collided with the reality of entrenched power, forcing him into defensive compromises for survival.
The system survived. Trump survived. But the swamp remained.
Now, Trump is back in power—but the battlefield has changed.
It is quieter, selective, and cautious.
Why?
Trump has learned that direct war with entrenched structures invites sabotage and lawfare. His focus now is on:
Possibly. Washington’s power is transactional. To keep lawfare and sabotage at bay, Trump’s current governance suggests coexistence with the Deep State while extracting concessions.
So people would ask if he has abandoned his election promises. Well, partially. The fiery calls to “drain the swamp” have given way to selective maneuvers rather than systemic dismantling.
And, that should make you think a bit.
The best chance to battle against those who lead the Censorship Industrial Complex was during Trump's time. But even he has been coopted from all the circumstantial appearances.
As we vacation, I wanted to share something that remains documented for us to come back to.
Trump's America is isolating allies, backing enemies, and burning global trust. From India to the EU to South Africa — nations are walking away and charting their own paths forward.
As the fog of the war of the initial Operation Sindoor settles, it seems that the Trump administration was working behind the scenes against India in a far more profound way than we thought. What does that mean for us? Let us analyze.
The terror attack in Pahalgam was not just an assault on India — it was a global strategic move. China, Pakistan, Qatar, and Turkey are working together to bleed India and trap America. If India falls, America has no path left to contain China.
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