Migrant Gangs Taking Control of US Cities
Aurora, Colorado, is just the beginning.
https://gregreese.substack.com/
We are now living in a time when foreign gangs can cross over our border and seize people’s property at gunpoint with no fear of the law.
The First Amendment Cannot Stop Pavel Durov’s Arrest in America
The arrest of Pavel Durov in France last week offered yet another distressing sign for the dire state of free speech in the West.
As we’ve repeatedly seen in the United States, parties that once dedicated themselves to free expression are now the leading proponents of “content moderation.” The largest newspaper in France – Le Monde – celebrated Durov’s arrest as a “defense of the rule of law rather than an attack on freedom of expression.” The Washington Post reported that “authorities detained Durov as part of a preliminary investigation that focused on the lack of content moderation on Telegram.”
But the French prosecutor’s charges against Durov show that his persecution is not just for freedom of expression; it is for enabling any activity beyond the reach of bureaucratic tyranny. Durov has been charged with twelve crimes, including “providing cryptology services aiming to ensure confidentiality without certified declaration” and five counts of “complicity” for what users posted on Telegram.
Defenders of Durov, including Elon Musk and David Sacks on X, cited the paramount importance of the First Amendment in the United States, suggesting our Bill of Rights will serve as a bulwark against this looming global tyranny. Implicitly, they argue that the Framers’ guarantees will safeguard our liberties from the encroachment of the state.
But the recent examples of Steve Bannon, Julian Assange, Douglass Mackey, VDARE, Roger Ver, and their brazen persecutions debunk this theory at the outset. Mere words can do little to stifle the ambitions of the self-assured. The separation of powers, and its resulting checks and balances, is far more critical to preserve the liberties of the West.
Even Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, possibly in advance of a court judgment against the Biden administration, has admitted to acquiescing to censorship demands. “In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree…I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it. I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.”
The Framers understood this, but our modern myths surrounding the Constitution abscond their concerns. Since World War II, Americans have elevated the Bill of Rights to a status of secular scripture, but most citizens would have had no familiarity with the term just a century ago.
The following is not a pedantic history lesson. Enemies of liberty understand that the struggle is one of realpolitik and ascension to power. They are organized, monolithic, and increasingly global in scale. We cannot delude ourselves into believing that words – no matter how honorable their principles may be – can save us from our enemies’ tyrannical ambition. Rather, it is imperative that we develop alternative sources of strength, whether they be financial, informational, or militaristic, to preserve the liberties that our forefathers bestowed upon us.
For one hundred and fifty years, liberty in the United States featured very little reference to the first ten amendments to our Constitution.
The term “Bill of Rights” did not become popular until the 1930s, when the FDR Administration overhauled the American systems of federalism by arguing that it had the right to take any action that the “Bill of Rights” did not prohibit.
The “Bill of Rights” was paid so little attention that the original document was housed in the basement of the State Department until 1938 and did not go on public display until 1952 (163 years after its drafting).
Following World War II, the newly renowned Bill of Rights became cited as a source of American exceptionalism, a claim that a brief survey of international law could quickly debunk.
The Chinese Constitution promises “freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, procession, and demonstration” and assures that “all areas inhabited by ethnic minorities shall practice regional autonomy.” The Soviet Union’s Constitution guaranteed rights to “freedom of speech,” “freedom of the press,” and “freedom of assembly.” The Iranian Constitution professes to ensure “political and social freedoms.”
The Framers would have understood these rights, as well as our Bill of Rights, to be mere “parchment guarantees.” Justice Antonin Scalia explained:
They were not worth the paper they were printed on, as are the human rights guarantees of a large number of still-extant countries governed by Presidents-for-life. They are what the Framers of our Constitution called ‘parchment guarantees,’ because the real constitutions of those countries—the provisions that establish the institutions of government—do not prevent the centralization of power in one man or one party, thus enabling the guarantees to be ignored. Structure is everything.
Liberty Versus the Consolidation of Power
Now, in France, we learn that lesson again. The Declaration of Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which describes “the free communication of thoughts and opinions” as “one of the most precious rights of man” offers no safety for Durov. He is a political prisoner, in jail for disobedience to the regime.
From government to industry to public health, the enemies of liberty are increasingly global in scale. The Canadian truckers’ protest was a demonstration of the consolidation of their power.
Three of the charges against Durov concern use of “cryptology,” meaning securing private communications in the digital sphere, which presents a direct affront to his enemies’ consolidation of power. It is nothing but math, a series of numbers in a configuration that foils the surveillance state. Nothing more.
Musk, Sacks, and others dedicated to the preservation of liberty cannot afford to rest on the laurels of our First Amendment. Instead, we must act to create the cultural, social, and intellectual infrastructure that will allow us to maintain those freedoms.
Math cannot be against the law. Science cannot be controlled from the center. Power should never be permitted to override the speculations and experiments of entrepreneurs and intellectuals. And yet that is precisely what is happening in today’s world. There is nothing more alarming to the powers-that-be than an individual with an emancipatory idea that can and should disrupt prevailing regime habits and ideas.
All forms of centralized compulsion and control today stem from a revanchist ethos, whether from the right, left, or center. The efforts to prosecute freedom of speech are doomed to fail eventually.
POWERFUL MUST-WATCH INTERVIEW: Dr. David Martin Drops The Biggest COVID Bombshells Yet & Lays Out A Path To Victory Against The Biological Terrorists
Judge Bans X In Brazil For Refusing To Comply With Demands
As we previewed overnight, Elon Musk’s X has been ordered ‘immediately suspended’ by Brazilian Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes, citing the company’s refusal to comply with a legal order to censor the judge’s political opponents, Bloomberg reports.
Officially, the ruling was due to Musk’s refusal to name a legal representative for the social network (after the judge froze his last attorney’s bank accounts).
On Thursday, X’s global government affairs account said that it would “not comply in secret with illegal orders,” and said that it would publish Moraes’ demands and related court documents for transparency.
More:
When we attempted to defend ourselves in court, Judge de Moraes threatened our Brazilian legal representative with imprisonment. Even after she resigned, he froze all of her bank accounts. Our challenges against his manifestly illegal actions were either dismissed or ignored. Judge de Moraes’ colleagues on the Supreme Court are either unwilling or unable to stand up to him.
We are absolutely not insisting that other countries have the same free speech laws as the United States. The fundamental issue at stake here is that Judge de Moraes demands we break Brazil’s own laws. We simply won’t do that.
In the days to come, we will publish all of Judge de Moraes’ illegal demands and all related court filings in the interest of transparency.
Unlike other social media and technology platforms, we will not comply in secret with illegal orders.
To our users in Brazil and around the world, X remains committed to protecting your freedom of speech.
On August 18, Moraes sanctioned X’s bank accounts in order to guarantee the payment of fines imposed by the Brazilian justice for refusing to censor content, Metropoles reports.
According to information published by the G1 and confirmed by the Metropolis, advisors to the office of Minister Alexandre de Moraes said that another company under Musk in the country, Starlink Holding, responsible for the sale of satellite internet services, also had the finances blocked.
All Starlink managers in Brazil received notifications and were subpoenaed to answer for the values due to the Brazilian Justice by the network X. -Metropoles (translated)
In response, Musk called Moraes a dictator, and said “this picture of you in prison will be real. Mark my words.”
The tyrant, @Alexandre, is dictator of Brazil. Lula is his lapdog. https://t.co/svONz3iv5S
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 29, 2024
Developing…
BREAKING: Brazil’s Top Tyrant Threatens To Charge Elon Musk With Obstruction Of Justice & Ban X
Zuckerberg Can’t Run From What Is Coming
Mark Zuckerberg can’t run or hide. When the law catches up with him for aiding and abetting the Biden Administration’s censorship, he’ll be begging to keep his mega yacht.
Despite gaslighting Congress and Trump, Zuckerberg’s role in election interference and Covid tyranny won’t go unpunished when the Republic is restored.
A “New Deal” With Iran? US Officials Say It’s Unlikely
There’s “no harm” in talking with the West, Iran’s supreme leader said in a recent speech, sparking hopes among some of the country’s adversaries that a nuclear treaty could be on the horizon.
But verbal assurances aren’t good enough, according to twice-shy U.S. officials. From the State Department: “We are far away from anything like [a deal] right now.”
Last month, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that Iran could produce enough enriched uranium fuel for a nuclear weapon given less than two weeks’ notice.
“Where we are now is not in a good place,” Blinken said. “[Iran hasn’t] produced a weapon itself, but that’s something of course that we track very, very carefully.”
A previous deal between Iran and the U.S., brokered in 2015 under Obama, came to a heated end during Trump’s presidency with the then-U.S. president calling it “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.” Under that deal, Iran agreed to limit its uranium stockpile and nuclear facilities in exchange for relief from crippling sanctions. But the fragile agreement was swiftly broken, as Iran expanded its nuclear capacity far beyond the negotiated limits.
“This disastrous deal gave this regime … many billions of dollars, some of it in actual cash,” Trump said of his decision to terminate the arrangement. “At the heart of the Iran deal was a giant fiction that a murderous regime desired only a peaceful nuclear energy program.”
Biden, in turn, spent more than a year of his presidency negotiating a fresh compromise. These efforts led nowhere as both sides complained of each other’s “unreasonable” demands. Meanwhile, U.S. sanctions on Iran seem to be doing little harm to the country’s economy, despite National Security Council claims that no sanctions have been lifted.
“Iran is deriving significant economic benefits from pervasive sanctions evasion,” more than a dozen senators warned in a bipartisan letter earlier this year. “Iran’s economy [is] growing by four percent annually.”
That’s a more rapid GDP growth than the U.S. has seen in decades, except immediately post-COVID when the economy began to recoup its losses.
Any conflicts with Iran–including the ongoing Israel-Palestine crisis–have obvious ramifications for global oil and gasoline markets. Shortages, sanctions, and retaliations could lead to price spikes that will eventually trickle down to consumers at the pump. These markets, in turn, drive green energy policy as officials seek alternatives to gasoline-powered vehicles. Any shortage of fuel suggests EV production will steadily increase, and more inflationary regulations will be imposed in an attempt to force consumer compliance.
That’s the best-case scenario. If the U.S. becomes actively involved in any such crisis, the economy could pay the price for the leaders’ failure to broker a peaceful solution. From Peter Schiff: “[Middle Eastern conflict] is going to be increasing our deficits, more fiscal stimulus which is inflationary, and that is going to result in bigger deficits and more money printing.”
While the U.S. government has pledged to use “all elements of national power” to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, the absence of a clear diplomatic path raises serious questions about the potential economic fallout. Investors are left in a precarious position, trying to hedge against the risks of both a diplomatic failure and the possibility of military conflict. The stakes are high, and the financial markets are keenly aware that the consequences of missteps in this arena could ripple across the global economy, impacting everything from energy prices to interest rates and beyond.
WATCH LIVE: Trump Calls Out Kamala’s Disastrous CNN Interview at PA Rally
Former President Donald Trump campaigns in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, hours after Kamala Harris’ bombed in her first television interview in nearly forty days.