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There were two interesting bits of news today. The first was a frontal assault on X's office in France. From the related BBC story:
The French offices of Elon Musk's X have been raided by the Paris prosecutor's cyber-crime unit, as part of an investigation into suspected offences including unlawful data extraction and complicity in the possession of child pornography.
The prosecutor's office also said both Musk and former X chief executive Linda Yaccarino had been summoned to appear at hearings in April.
In a separate development, the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) announced a probe into Musk's AI tool, Grok, over its "potential to produce harmful sexualised image and video content."
Writing on X, Musk said the raid was a "political attack".
The company said in a statement that it was "disappointed" but "not surprised," and accused the Paris Public Prosecutor's office of an "abusive act."
X also denied any wrongdoing and said the raid "endangers free speech."
I have no truck with child porn, one of the issues the French are raising. It's an issue which, I am told, is as much or more of a concern on platforms that have abjectly surrendered to the EU's demands for "data transparency" and the rest (Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, etc.) The Europeans (and our own Democrats) want the power to track any artifact to the originating party and hold that party accountable. The EU and the UK both apply a standard of offensive speech, judged on the grounds of offense taken by another party. (SPOILER: Not all offenses are treated equally.) The frogs and the limeys and the rest have become increasingly thin-skinned as their leadership squanders skill and popularity. Funny that. And offenders, in some fortunately rare cases, are jailed for years.
Pavel Durov's response to the X raid is included in the BBC coverage:
Pavel Durov - founder of the messaging app Telegram - criticised the French authorities on Tuesday, accusing France of being "the only country in the world that is criminally persecuting all social networks that give people some degree of freedom".
"Don't be mistaken: this is not a free country," he added in a post on X.
Durov was arrested and detained in France in August 2024 over alleged moderation lapses on his messaging app, which the Paris prosecutor's office said had failed to curb criminal activity.
He was permitted to leave the country last March after the platform made some changes to the way it operates following the arrest.
And there is another development in the EU's machinations surrounding social platforms. The EU forced the cancellation of Romania's 2024 elections when their disfavored candidate, Călin Georgescu, was poised to win and saddle them with another "nationalist" leader in their nest—like Hungary's Orban, who is a thorn in the side of the Globalist anti-Populists. The claim at the time was that it was Russian propaganda on the internet, infusing Romanian voters with disinformation. It has just been announced that the disinformation in question has been traced to another Romanian party.
The EU says they have free speech, they say they have fair elections in "their" democracy. And they will take offense at anyone, even Elon Musk, who notices otherwise.
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Discussion (24)
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And I just ran across this:
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Those people are just plain nuts. I like your comment about how their protests increase as their reputations decline. Gotta get those headlines, ya know.
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Americans are free speech absolutists (except possibly for speech in other people's churches - we'll see). Other countries, even in the West, not so much.
They'll walk the walk but they won't let you talk the talk.
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This is true. In the Founding, the United States recognized that a democratic republic could not survive without free speech. It is not a coincidence that the fake pandemic and the Steal occasioned the biggest attack on free speech in our history. The outcome has been a reaffirmation of free speech to the consternation of the dysfunctional Globalists that rely on it. Starmer, various London authorities, and, of course, elected and unelected leaders in the EU have claimed jurisdiction over American speech and demanded, and on some platforms received, dictatorial control over what may or may not be said.
It must be pointed out that, on January 15th, 81 House Republicans joined arms with the whole "Democratic" caucus to reinstate funding for the National Endowment for Democracy, America's own censorship apparatus, once DOGEd, now unDOGEd as part of the continued unmasking of America's many Republican foes. Our Representatives have voted to return us to censored slavery with nary a word from that Orange fellow who bragged on its defunding. At least so far,
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The Europeans are doubtless feeling a sense of whiplash over speech issues given the hard push from the Bidenistas last administration. The amazing Mike Benz has assembled some of the Bidenista disinformation campaign, including correspondence from the Bidenista US to Spain in the X thread below:
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