I was planning on publishing quite an interesting article today on Covid effects on brain synapses, but I will have to leave it for tomorrow, both so I can finish it, connect some dots that give further context, and elucidate the… hidden things =P.
Lately, I have been intrigued by how missing specific, but great papers last year (given the amount of important and significant events in science and geopolitics that took place) led me to have more answers now than I could before. Without looking into Omicron, I would have completely missed these significant connections.
But it is not for this that we are here today. I don’t get into politics very often, although my disgust and sheer hatred towards all byproducts of Communism is self-evident in some of my non-covid articles.
So why am I here ? In case you missed all the hints, or when I outright said in the comments, I am Brazilian and live in Brazil, it is the reason I am so grateful when people choose to support me, it helps a lot. And Brazil has been in a downward tyrannic spiral for years now, even before Bolsonaro, but with the election of a self-described communist government, it is going downhill, fast.
A few days ago Michael Shellenberger published the Twitter Files - Brazil edition. Each time Twitter files are published, a lot of dirt is uncovered on how governments and intelligence agencies have used and abused social media companies to control, manipulate, limit, or actively censor speech. In Brazil it is worse, they hunt down political opponents of the current regime.
All this is done by a singular judge, in one of the world’s most comical power trips in recent history, a power trip so big even Democrats in the US, and Biden allies have criticized the guy, openly, in American mainstream media. This arrogant, allegedly corrupt (his entire early career was financed by the PCC, the largest Brazilian organized crime group) blocked Telegram last year for a short while, followed by making the use of VPN to circumvent the ban illegal. Heavy fines and prison time.
After the Twitter Files were published, Elon Musk went to his social media page to spill the beans, writing how the “government” demanded he censor specific tweets, specific users, and even specific accounts from elected government officials without any explanation “Do it or else’. He not only decided he would not do it, but made it public, and baited the Darth Vader knockoff into overreaching legal action.
The current neo-communist government and their allies have been trying very hard to regulate social media so hard, that Google and Meta are seriously considering leaving the country, completely. And thus we get to the point. Twitter may end up being completely blocked from Brazil.
I will find ways to circumvent it, but I suspect at some point soon Substack may also become a target, which then I will also find a way to keep publishing. Push comes to shove, I give someone my login credentials, e-mail them my articles and that person publishes them.
But here is the catch. This belongs to a large, global trend of censorship and control of the population by multiple means, it is by no accident these are the same people who are vehemently against AI, and also want to regulate it. In Brazil, we often refer to a large swath of the population as “sindrome do vira-lata”, in English “mutt’s syndrome”, meaning the observable inferiority complex the vast majority of the population possesses.
The average Joe suffers from different forms of inferiority complex, but our elites, academic or financial all suffer from a specific form. And how better to supersede your inferiority complex, if not by mimicking what you see as your better ? And in this case, Brazilians will often attempt to poorly mimic Europeans. In specific the suicidal European progressivists.
The catch is all these drastic measures that go against any constitutional measure a democratic nation possesses were not thought out by smart minds, but were fed to the Brazilian elite by Ursula von der Leyen and the Eurocrats at the helm of the EU. To measure and test how populations respond to these constraints on freedom of speech and thought.
This is part of a global trend, in which a similar playbook will be used, over and over again. You do not enact tyranny by pushing to the limit, but inch by inch. You should be aware of these changes not because of me, but because this will be at play in many other countries. All of this is and will be done in the guise of “misinformation”, “disinformation” and other manure-styled excuses. Time to refer to this one again.
Sadly, there is a likelihood we will live with a completely fractured internet, as I wrote and forecasted in AI-centered pieces.
Thank you for your support, it goes a long way. And a message from one of my favorite books.
Well Canada, and especially Quebec elites (who run the country) have the same disease as your elites in Brazil. It is only because we share a border with the US (for good and for bad), that we are not right there with you.
Kyrie eleison
Lol, I recall very clearly you
Mentioning Brazil in a previous post recently. Yes it did fulfill some curiosity. Now we can envision the country hikes better. I follow glen grunwald and have heard him speak about the Brazil situation some. Censorship seems to be the latest power grab . Reminds me of how every group acting for freedom were called terrorists after 9/11. It seems to be pre something … war or some kind of major power grab of some kind . I think people are kind of ready for being viscous and violently ruled , considering how work tends to be more specialized. Generalists are survivors and can be dissidents . Not specialists so much , they tend to be dependent and will easily roll over because they simply have no alternative . The people have lost their leverage against the ruling class . Hopefully you find a path for yourself . I suspect things could get intense