Glen Greenwald on Brazil's descent into Fascism

🚨 Brazil's Censorship Regime Becomes Even More Despotic

Monark, "Brazil's Joe Rogan," is now being criminally investigated and fined ~$75,000 for online conduct—fully silencing the once mega-popular podcaster without any due process.

This is what's coming for everyone.

The… pic.twitter.com/tHUAv8pDgP

— System Update (@SystemUpdate_) August 3, 2023

Glenn Greenwald on censorship via "Fake news or misinformation" laws

 A major escalation in official online censorship regimes is progressing rapidly in Brazil, with implications for everyone in the democratic world. Under Brazil's new government headed by President Lula da Silva, the country is poised to become the first in the democratic world to implement a law censoring and banning "fake news and disinformation" online, and then punishing those deemed guilty of authoring and spreading it. Such laws already exist throughout the non-democratic world, adopted years ago by the planet's most tyrannical regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey. 

If one wishes to be generous with the phrase "the democratic world" and include Malaysia and Singapore – at best hybrid "democracies" – then one could argue that a couple other "democratic" governments have already seized the power to decree Absolute Truth and then ban any deviation from it. But absent unexpected opposition, Brazil will soon become the first country unambiguously included in the democratic world to outlaw "fake news" and vest government officials with the power to banish it and punish its authors. 

Brazil’s Top Election Court Catches Google Manipulating Search Results to Point to Negative Entries on Bolsonaro …Just Like They Do with Conservatives in America

If you thought that Google was manipulating search results for political purposes and they told you that you were crazy, they were gaslighting you.

The Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSA), Brazil’s top election court, fined Fernando Haddad (President Jair Bolsonaro’s leftist opponent) for having a contract with Google to manipulate search results during the election.

Luiz Edson Fachin, of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), ruled that the PT candidate for the presidency, Fernando Haddad, paid Google to highlight negative content and manipulated searches to point to a website with negative coverage of Bolsonaro.

Google wasn’t fined because they claimed that as soon as they were notified by the court of the irregularities they dishonored the contract.

This is a common practice by Google in the United States.

Google manipulates search results for conservatives and conservative publishers to point to negative articles and hit pieces.

So does Google allow people or companies to pay them in order to manipulate search results or only if they are far left/socialist/communist websites?

Google claims their search results are driven by some sacred algorithm. Then how is it possible that they offered such a service to Socialists?

In the U.S. Google does it for free.

Protesters storm Brazilian capital after bugged phone call goes public which reveals President gave senior government position to her predecessor so he could avoid arrest over corruption

It seems other corrupt administrations are also having problems.

Protests have erupted in Brazil's capital after a recorded phone call between President Dilma Rousseff and her once-popular predecessor was released, suggesting that she appointed him to her cabinet to spare him from arrest for corruption.

Rousseff appointed Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as her chief of staff on Wednesday hoping that his political prowess can save her administration.

The president is battling an impeachment attempt, a deep recession, and the fallout of an explosive corruption scandal at state oil giant Petrobras.

Where Obama's Dreams are in Full Flower

Ace of Spades:

Remember the story about a Yale professor, embarrassed because Tea Partiers aren't as stupid as he thought? Read this comment on that Yale professor's blog, by a self-identified Brazilian named, Rodrigo Del Cistia Andrade:

Let me add an international twist:

I am a Brazilian self-taught Software Engineer. I also taught myself English, to the point where I managed to hold a Cambridge CPE, despite the fact that I've never stepped on anglophonic soil and zero formal training. So my analytic and reasoning faculties seem to be in working order.

Now, with that out of the way, here's why I strongly identify with the Tea Party: in my view, they are right, and they are the US's lifeline. They represent the virtues that led to American Exceptionalism (and YES, this does exist).

I find caricaturing Tea Partiers extremely ironic, and it would be hilarious, weren't it so revolting. In my experience, being a lefty liberal is EASY. It is the default stance of the intellectually lazy. All you have to do is feel (specially "good about myself" kind of feel), and never solve anything. Here's, in my view, why:

I live in the logical endpoint of Fabian socialism. Born to and raised in a culture where the concepts of "right" and "left" are non-existent (I take that back, actually "right" is a language stand-in for "evil"). We have over 30 political parties, and they are all some variant of the left. From Social Democrat parties to "Trotsky-ish" parties. Our *current* constitution, which dates back all the way to the Guns 'n' Roses era ( 1988 ), is pretty much a Soviet Constitution (1936) copy/paste job. Culturally, the population is in pretty much a state of "1984 meets Brave New World" in terms of ideology.

Brazil is also a country where:

- the utter government control of the private sector trough bureaucracy managed to destroy entrepreneurship. To the point that it exists, it has to deal with the accepted fact of life that the bribes which feed the corrupt bureaucrats demand to allow business to exist have to be factored in business plans.

- a crushing tax burden that sustain a permanent dependent underclass of favelados in welfare ensures the populists remain eternally in power and that any semblance upward mobility is quickly "corrected". For an employer to put 10.000 in the pocket of an employee, with will costs him nearly 18.000, so jobs market are always tepid at best so informal work and tax dodging schemes are commonplace.

- The relentless attack on Catholicism (the historical prevalent brand of Christianity practiced here) over the past decades eroded any semblance of morality form a large chunk of the country, and that coupled with utter corruption and/or incompetence of law enforcement made way for drug cartels to take over. Violence and crime spiraled to such inhuman degrees that between the 50K murders in average a year, this year we saw a soccer referee stab a player to death and then be beheaded and quartered in the field by the spectators for his trouble. His head was placed in a spike in the middle of the field, as an added dramatic bonus.

This act barely caused a murmur.

I could go on for ages with more evidence of social rot, but you probably already got the gist of it.

Now, remember, being immersed in this cultural cesspool since birth I, like most Brazilians, never even *knew* that this wasn't actually just "the way things are". I mean, we get a gut feeling that something is off, but like Plato's cave dwellers, light is something really frightening and instinctively avoided. And the *obvious* solutions by all the *smart people* are always the same: more government "compassion". More "social programs". More "awareness". Less "greediness".

Imagine my shock when by a quirk of fate a Mark Levin book ended in my hands. That led me to Burke, Locke, Smith, Mises, Friedman, Hayek and many others. Conservative philosophy is what gave me a glimpse of the shinning city in the hill and a will to fight, along with a battle plan, to improve my lot in life, and of those I can reach.

So, Dan, I understand you are surprised that your results showed Tea Partiers not the raging buffoons the media portrays them as being. The most obvious things are often the easiest to miss. But never doubt that being conservative is quite the intellectual effort, if only to overcome the moroseness of the mind that liberalism creates imposes with all its group-think and easy answers.

Best wishes,

Rodrigo