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If you needed proof that Trump’s “war on drugs” is pure theatrical bullshit designed to justify geopolitical adventurism and the transactional nature of how he views absolutely everything, look no further than the past two months of his foreign policy.
Two months ago, Donald Trump pardoned Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras who was convicted in a Manhattan federal court of facilitating the importation of at least 400 tons of cocaine into the United States. The conviction wasn’t based on hearsay or shaky evidence—it came after a three-week trial featuring multiple cooperating witnesses, business ledgers documenting drug transactions, undercover video recordings, and testimony detailing how Hernandez turned Honduras’ entire government apparatus into a cocaine superhighway.
As Bloomberg’s detailed investigation lays out, the evidence was quite strong. Hernandez’s brother, Tony (who was also an elected official), had been convicted earlier of basically running a massive drug smuggling campaign, and there were clear ties between Tony’s operation and his brother. And there’s this colorful story:
In 2021, during the trial of another trafficker Sandy Gonzalez had arrested, a former accountant for a Honduran agricultural company testified that he attended meetings with Hernández, who accepted bribes from the accountant’s boss and spoke openly of his connections to traffickers. Hernández, he said, bragged about fooling his American counterparts into thinking he was on their side in the drug war. “He then took a sip of drink,” the accountant said of Hernández, “and he said: ‘We are going to stuff drugs up the gringos’ noses, and they’re never even going to know it.’” At that same trial, witnesses said that in return for protection, the trafficker paid bribes to Hernández to ensure his business enjoyed military protection. Data scraped from the trafficker’s phone—which included the president’s cellphone number in the contact list—showed that on two separate days when news broke about the president’s alleged involvement in Tony’s drug-smuggling activities, the trafficker downloaded driving directions to the presidential palace.
A judge sentenced him to 45 years in prison. Trump pardoned him anyway, claiming he’d been “treated very harshly and unfairly.”
So with that conviction and evidence in mind, let’s look at what Trump claims justifies launching an illegal war. Trump (without the required permission of Congress) ordered military strikes on Venezuela this weekend, and captured President Nicolas Maduro, claiming the operation was justified by… drug trafficking charges.
The charges against Maduro appear less direct and less clear than those against Hernandez.
It also details specific actions that Maduro allegedly took as part of the conspiracy. It says, for example, that between 2006 and 2008 when he served as foreign minister that Maduro sold Venezuelan diplomatic passports to known drug traffickers “in order to assist traffickers seeking to move drug proceeds form Mexico to Venezuela under diplomatic cover.”
He also allegedly facilitated the flights of private planes under diplomatic cover to bring drug proceeds back from Mexico to Venezuela.
Prosecutors allege that Maduro and Flores worked together for years to traffic cocaine that had previously been seized by Venezuelan law enforcement. They say the Maduros had their own state-sponsored gangs to protect their operation, and that they ordered “kidnappings, beating and murders against those who owed them drug money or otherwise undermined their drug trafficking operation.”
Notice what’s missing there: actual convictions, actual evidence of tons of cocaine moved, actual documentation like the ledgers and recordings that convicted Hernandez. And indeed, as The Guardian notes, many experts are deeply skeptical that Maduro is actually the drug kingpin Trump claims:
“It just shows that the entire counter-drug effort of Donald Trump is a charade – it’s based on lies, it’s based on hypocrisy,” said Mike Vigil, the former DEA chief for international operations. “He is giving a pardon to Juan Orlando Hernández and then going after Nicolás Maduro … It’s all hypocritical.”
Contrary to Trump’s claim that Hernández, 57, had been the victim of a “Biden set up”, Vigil said there was overwhelming evidence that the Central American politician was “a big fish in the narco world”. Not only had Hernández helped turn Honduras into a major transit point for South American cocaine heading to the US, but Vigil said he had also transformed it into a cocaine-producing hub which was now home to coca plantations and makeshift labs for processing coca leaves.
[….]
Meanwhile, despite Trump’s claims that Maduro is the leader of a narco organization called the “Cartel of the Suns”, many experts doubt such a group even exists.
“Maduro is not a saint,” said Vigil, noting how he and several allies were indicted for trafficking cocaine in the US in 2020. “[But] they’re not a cartel, they don’t have an infrastructure,” he added, calling such allegations “nonsense”.
So to recap: Trump pardoned a president who was actually convicted in US court of moving 400 tons of cocaine, with overwhelming evidence including recordings, ledgers, and multiple witness testimony. Then, two months later, he launched military strikes—without Congressional authorization, in violation of both US and international law—and captured a different president based on an indictment that experts say lacks solid evidence that he’s running an actual drug cartel.
The main difference? Hernandez sucked up to Trump from the start. From Bloomberg:
President Hernández had enjoyed good relationships with President Obama and Vice President Biden, but he harbored a special affinity for President Trump, whose transactional style suited him well. Hernández had adopted the slogan “Honduras is open for Business.” During Trump’s first term, Hernández established Próspera, an economic development zone on the Honduran island of Roatán. Próspera offered investors a self-governed haven where they could set their own regulations and pay next to nothing in taxes. Libertarian-inclined Trump supporters invested in it.
Hernández had met with Trump in New York just before his brother’s trial, when they signed a series of bilateral agreements intended to encourage a Honduran crackdown on northbound migrants. “You’re doing a fantastic job,” Trump told Hernández. “My people work with you so well.”
He continued to court Trump’s favor even after his brother’s guilty verdict. The following spring, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, the US Food & Drug Administration publicly rebuked Trump’s , an anti-malarial medicine, could effectively treat the virus. Hernández seized an opportunity.
“Well, I never spoke to a scientist,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, “but I will tell you this: I did speak with the president of Honduras, just a little while ago. I didn’t bring it up—he brought it up. He said they use the hydroxychloroquine, and he said the results are just so incredible, with the hydroxychloroquine. Check with him. Call him. The president of Honduras. A really nice guy.”
For the rest of Trump’s term, even as his Justice Department was compiling more evidence of his ties to trafficking, members of the administration repeatedly praised Hernández for his commitment to battling migration and organized crime.
What’s really going on doesn’t take a very deep analysis: Hernandez was a right-wing ally who supported Trump’s policies and had publicly supported Trump. Maduro is a left-wing adversary. One gets pardoned despite a conviction based on overwhelming evidence. The other gets military strikes based on flimsier charges.
Even more absurd: Trump has been conducting all these “kinetic strikes” we’ve written about on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean, killing approximately 80 people and destroying about 20 boats—most of which likely contained far less cocaine than Hernandez was convicted of moving, and many of which may have just been impoverished fishermen. Meanwhile, he’s letting the guy actually convicted of industrialized drug trafficking walk free.
Once again, this is all about political alignment and personal loyalty. Hernandez worked with the Trump administration, endorsed Trump’s preferred candidate in Honduras’ recent election, and had allies like Roger Stone lobbying for his pardon. Maduro is a geopolitical adversary Trump wants removed.
To everyone who can keep more than one thought in their head at the same time, the hypocrisy is clear: you can’t credibly claim your military action is justified by the need to combat drug trafficking when you just pardoned someone convicted of far more extensive drug trafficking. You can’t bomb boats supposedly carrying cocaine while freeing a man who moved 400 tons of it. You can’t invoke “law enforcement” as justification when you’re simultaneously undermining the very legal proceedings that proved another leader’s guilt.
This is nothing more than naked illegal geopolitical maneuvering dressed up in drug war rhetoric. And the fact that the administration thinks this narrative will fly shows how little they think of the public’s ability to notice the contradiction sitting right in front of us.
As one expert put it to The Guardian:
Orlando Pérez, a Latin America expert from the University of North Texas at Dallas, said Trump’s double standards on which drug-smuggling presidents to pursue revealed there was no consistent strategy to fight the region’s drug traffickers. “It’s all ad hoc and based on political considerations,” he said.
“One [Hernández] is a rightwing supporter of the US – and the other [Maduro] is not,” Pérez added. “It is ideological. It is political. It is self-interested in terms of advancing an ideological agenda – and it has nothing to do with effective anti-drug policies.”
When your “drug war” pardons the convicted trafficker and invades over the unproven allegation, you’ve pretty much admitted it was never about the drugs at all.
This is about way more than the hypocrisy, though the hypocrisy is staggering. We should be aghast at the complete erosion of any pretense that US foreign policy is guided by law, evidence, or principle rather than personal loyalty and political convenience. When the same action (drug trafficking) earns you a pardon or an invasion based solely on whether you’re useful to Trump, you’ve turned “law enforcement” into a pure protection racket. And when you can’t even maintain the fiction for two months, you’ve stopped pretending the rules matter at all.
Filed Under: donald trump, drug trade, honduras, hypocrisy, invasion, juan orlando hernandez, nicolas maduro, transactions, venezuela
There’s a particular kind of person who cheers when the president deploys military forces against American cities over the objections of their elected leaders. They call themselves patriots. They wrap themselves in the flag while applauding the systematic demolition of everything that flag once represented. They claim to love America while celebrating the transformation of American governance into something the founders would have recognized as tyranny.
So let’s settle this question once and for all: who are the “real” Americans in this moment? Those cheering the militarization of domestic law enforcement, or those defending the constitutional principles that make America worth defending?
When Donald Trump announces plans to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago over the explicit objections of Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, his supporters don’t see an authoritarian power grab. They see strength. When he federalizes state forces using Title 10 to override local democratic authority, they don’t recognize constitutional vandalism. They see Trump “getting tough on crime.”
This represents the complete inversion of American patriotism. The same people who spent decades lecturing about states’ rights and federal overreach now cheer the most dramatic federal military deployment against local authority in modern American history. What changed wasn’t constitutional principle—it was who holds the whip hand.
It turns out “states’ rights” was never about principle—it was just about who had the whip hand.
Funny how “federal tyranny” became “law and order” the moment their guy was holding the federal badge.
Real patriotism in this moment looks like Illinois Governor Pritzker standing up to federal overreach: “There is no emergency that warrants the President of the United States federalizing the Illinois National Guard, deploying the National Guard from other states, or sending active duty military within our own borders.”
Real patriotism looks like Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson defending his city’s right to democratic self-governance: “There are many things the federal government could do to help us reduce crime and violence in Chicago, but sending in the military is not one of them.”
But real patriotism isn’t just for elected officials. It’s for every citizen who refuses to normalize military occupation of American cities, who votes against candidates who support domestic militarization, who organizes to defend local democratic institutions, who calls their representatives to demand they choose constitutional principle over partisan loyalty. The founders didn’t create this system to be defended by politicians—they created it to be defended by citizens who understand that democracy dies when good people do nothing.
The people cheering Trump’s military deployments have internalized a fundamentally un-American understanding of patriotism. They’ve confused loyalty to the country with loyalty to whoever happens to control federal power. They’ve mistaken submission to authority for love of freedom. They’ve traded the messy, contentious, argumentative democracy the founders created for the clean efficiency of strongman rule.
They’ve been conditioned to see their fellow Americans as enemies to be defeated rather than citizens to be persuaded. Democratic governors become “radical leftists.” Sanctuary cities become “lawless zones.” Local officials exercising their constitutional authority become “obstructionists” who deserve federal punishment.
This is how republics die—not through foreign invasion but through the systematic redefinition of opposition as treason, of constitutional limits as obstacles, of democratic accountability as weakness.
What Trump is doing follows a clear pattern that any serious student of authoritarianism would recognize: declare emergencies that don’t exist, militarize responses to civilian problems, target political opponents, normalize federal military presence in domestic settings, and use military deployment to intimidate broader opposition.
Crime rates are at historic lows in most American cities, but Trump claims unprecedented lawlessness requiring military intervention. Notice that the cities being targeted—Chicago, Los Angeles, New York—are all led by Democratic officials who oppose Trump’s policies. This isn’t about crime; it’s about punishing political opposition.
Each deployment becomes precedent for the next, each “emergency” power becomes standard operating procedure, each violation of constitutional limits becomes the new baseline. The message isn’t just directed at the mayors and governors being overruled—it’s directed at every elected official considering whether to resist federal overreach.
This is the playbook authoritarians have used throughout history to transform democratic systems into military rule.
Let’s be clear about what’s actually happening: the president is using military force against domestic populations over the objections of their elected representatives. This isn’t law enforcement—it’s the military occupation of American cities whose only crime was electing leaders who refuse to comply with federal demands.
The Constitution these fake patriots claim to revere contains specific protections against exactly this kind of military deployment. ThePosse Comitatus Act exists precisely to prevent federal military forces from being used for domestic law enforcement. The federalist system exists to prevent any one level of government from overwhelming the others.
But constitutional protections only work when people are willing to defend them. When large portions of the population actively cheer their violation, when elected officials refuse to exercise oversight, when courts create immunity doctrines that place executives above accountability—the Constitution becomes paper rather than framework.
The real American tradition is suspicion of concentrated federal power, especially military power deployed against domestic populations. The founders who wrote the Constitution had just fought a war against precisely this kind of military occupation by a distant government that claimed to know better than local communities.
As James Madison warned: “A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.” They created a system specifically designed to prevent any one person from wielding the kind of power Trump now deploys against American cities.
The real American tradition is messy federalism, where different levels of government check each other’s power, where local communities get to make decisions about their own governance, where federal authority has limits and those limits are enforced.
The real American tradition is that when you don’t like how a city is governed, you work to change it through democratic means—you run candidates, organize voters, make arguments, build coalitions. You don’t send in federal troops to impose your preferred policies through military force.
If the founders could observe this moment, who would they recognize as defending American principles? The people cheering federal military deployment against elected local officials? Or the governors and mayors standing up to federal intimidation, the citizens defending their right to democratic self-governance, the Americans who understand that constitutional principles matter more than partisan advantage?
The Declaration of Independence was written by people who understood that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, not from their capacity to deploy military force against opposition.
We face a fundamental choice about what kind of country we want to be. Do we want to be a nation where local democratic decisions get overruled by federal military force? Where constitutional constraints get swept aside whenever the executive declares an “emergency”?
Or do we want to remain a constitutional republic where power is divided, where military force is not used against domestic populations, where even presidents must respect constitutional limits?
The people cheering Trump’s militarization have made their choice. They’ve chosen strongman efficiency over constitutional process, federal dominance over democratic federalism, military occupation over civilian governance.
The rest of us need to make ours. We can organize, vote, protest, and demand that our representatives defend constitutional principles. We can refuse to normalize military occupation as “law enforcement.” We can choose to be citizens, or we can be subjects polishing the boots that march over us.
Every generation of Americans faces a test of whether they’re worthy of their inheritance. Our test is whether we’ll defend constitutional government against military rule, preserve democratic federalism against federal dominance, maintain civilian control against militarization.
The people cheering Trump’s military deployments have already failed this test. They’ve chosen tribal loyalty over constitutional principle, the aesthetics of strength over the substance of freedom.
The rest of us still have time to pass it. But only if we’re willing to call this what it is: not law enforcement but military occupation, not patriotism but authoritarianism, not strength but the systematic destruction of everything that once made America worth defending.
Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And military deployment against domestic populations over the objections of elected local officials is tyranny, not patriotism.
The real Americans are the ones willing to say so—and willing to act on it.
That’s what real patriotism looks like when democracy is under assault.
Mike Brock is a former tech exec who was on the leadership team at Block. Originally published at his Notes From the Circus.
Filed Under: america, chicago, donald trump, invasion, militarization, national guard, patriotism, standing armies
I already wrote about the GOP’s bloodthirsty desire to use the military on Americans. They manufactured a nonsense “crisis” by over-aggressively sending in ICE agents to grab people off the streets, leading to protests, which were focused on provoking protestors into violence, which would then be used to justify an even more violent crackdown.
Given that, it’s crucial to get actual reports from what’s actually happening on the street, rather than relying on questionable media framing by those not actually there. Laura Jedeed, at The Nation, reports from the actual protest itself that the only “riot” happening is by the cops looking to provoke a response to justify their initial volley of violent activity:
I spent Sunday from about 4 pm until very late inside the LA protests, and this is what I saw. Yes, cars were set on fire in one part of the sprawling, multi-block protest. Yes, fireworks were launched at cops—a handful, sporadically. But it should be noted that these were launched long after these police officers began unloading flash bang after flash bang, rubber bullet after rubber bullet, into a largely peaceful crowd. (Flash bangs are stun grenades that produce a flash of light and deafening noise.)
The idea that cops were just reacting to protester provocation is absurd. Cops occupied intersections in an attempt to split the protest, then occasionally charged the protest lines that surrounded them to force the crowds to temporarily retreat. These assaults seemed unrelated to protester action or lack thereof. At one point, while the cops were unloading round after round of blue-tipped rubber bullets into a crowd hunkered down behind a barricade, a different group of protesters approached from the side and threw a firework into the center of the police line. The cops turned their fire against the group, which ran off, but did not pursue them. Thirty seconds later, the cops were back to shooting at the barricade.
We have heard a lot about the assault of police officers during these protests. Why haven’t we seen it? Where’s the body cam footage showing protesters injuring cops, striking them, putting them out of commission? I saw a police officer struck by a water bottle thrown by protesters in a barrage launched around 7:30 pm after those protesters spent hours absorbing “less lethal” rounds and being deafened by flash bangs, but that’s about it. Meanwhile, we’ve got drone footage of a mounted officer using his horse to trample a protester, who lies prone on the ground, surrounded by mounted police. We’ve got cops beating protesters with truncheons, cops deploying tear gas, cops bringing box after box of ammunition to the line so they could fire again and again and again into crowds of protesters exercising tremendous restraint throughout the day.
This pattern—police initiating violence, protesters responding minimally, police escalating further—isn’t accidental. It’s that fascist playbook all over again: manufacture the violence to justify the violence you initiated.
We should all be calling it out for what it is.
Tragically, most of the media are failing at that and are instead accepting the narrative the administration wants. Jadeed details how badly the media is failing:
“Pockets of LA descending into chaos,” an ABC news anchor declared in an extremely typical news segment on Monday. “Protesters setting cars on fire, dumping bikes and scooters on police cruisers on the highway. Law enforcement firing hundreds of flash bangs and non-lethal projectiles and making dozens of arrests.” In the background, footage of these atrocities: cops beating protesters with truncheons, tear gas, a car on fire. A shirtless masked man waving a Mexican flag atop a wrecked Waymo, cops firing into a crowd at close range. The only active violence in these clips comes from the cops, but no matter. That fire is what you should be worried about: the fire and nothing else.
While some organizations reported from inside the protest itself, most did not: They set up camp behind the police line, or reported using drone footage, or simply asked the cops what to say. “Dozens of people were arrested Sunday and accused of attempted murder, arson and other crimes during a day of violence and protests in Los Angeles,” NBC Los Angeles declared in an article based exclusively on LAPD sources. It’s an understandable decision on their part. Just look at Lauren Tomasi, a reporter for the Australian Channel Nine news service who got “caught in the crossfire” and struck with a rubber bullet while reporting—by which I mean an LA police officer aimed directly at the reporter from close range and shot her. She reports being “sore, but OK,” which is more than photographer Nick Stern can say: The day before, a “less lethal” round punctured his leg and required emergency surgery. As of Tuesday morning, the LA Press Club documented over 30 injuries to members of the press. Easier and safer to parrot police talking points than face down their guns.
The systematic targeting of journalists isn’t incidental—it’s designed to control the narrative by ensuring that most coverage comes from behind police lines, where reporters can only see what law enforcement wants them to see.
One of the most egregious examples of this that I saw was the NY Times posting an image of a shopping cart on fire and claiming that “the police are firing back”—as if a burning shopping cart constitutes such a direct threat to heavily armored officers hundreds of yards away that it justifies “returning” fire into crowds of people.
The Trump regime is manufacturing a fake riot to justify their own actions. They’re pushing for violence to justify more violence. The violence and attacks we’re seeing are almost entirely initiated by the cops, and yet are being falsely framed as protesters “rioting” despite the lack of evidence to support it.
The media’s willingness to amplify this manufactured narrative isn’t just journalistic malpractice—it’s complicity in the very authoritarianism they should be exposing.
So let’s be clear about what’s happening. If it’s a riot, it’s the police who are rioting. If there’s an “invasion” of LA, it’s the US military that is invading. Kudos to Jedeed and The Nation for calling this out while so much of the media is rewriting history in real time.
As the driver pointed out—as protesters around me would later point out—the president’s not wrong: LA is under invasion. But the invading force isn’t the immigrants who live and work here. It’s ICE attempting to abduct children from elementary schools by claiming their parents authorized the pick-up, or rolling up to Home Depot to abduct people doing the most American thing imaginable: pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, hiring themselves out as day laborers to make a better life for themselves and their families. It’s the Marines deployed against their fellow citizens by an administration that’s fantasized about quelling First Amendment activity by force for half a decade now. These are the un-American hordes descending on Los Angeles.
Trump can call these protests invasions all he wants: I know what I saw. As the sun began to set, riot cops from the LA county sheriff’s department showed up on trucks, fully kitted out with shields and gas masks. The rapidly shrinking protest saw the writing on the wall and, rather than confront these militarized enforcers, turned and walked away, into the night and into the city. For hours they marched, blasting mariachi music and old-school West Coast rap and chanting their simple, reasonable demand: “No ICE in LA!”
As the protesters marched, they chanted something else: “Whose streets? Our streets!” It wasn’t a declaration of war or a challenge to others who might lay claim to the city, but a statement of obvious fact. As these several hundred protesters marched the wrong way up a one-way street, completely stopping traffic, an overwhelming number of drivers honked and cheered. They rolled down their windows to fist-bump the protesters and take pictures and shout their approval.
From the very beginning of this regime, we’ve been saying over and over and over again that the most important thing is telling the truth. As Mike Brock keeps saying, “two plus two equals four” and you can’t let them get away with telling you otherwise.
This isn’t just about getting the facts straight for their own sake. When media coverage systematically misrepresents who is initiating violence and who is responding to it, it provides cover for further escalation. Each cycle of distorted coverage makes the next round of police violence more politically palatable.
The people are not rioting. The police are. Immigrants are not invading. The US military is.
We have to be clear on what ground truth is, and that requires that the media stop accepting propagandist framing.
Filed Under: california, ice, invasion, la, lapd, manufactured crisis, media, national guarde, propaganda, protests, riots, truth
Here comes The Motherland, insisting that no one allow anything to undermine its “LET’S INVADE UKRAINE” narrative. Russia, which has never taken a hands-off approach to content moderation, is demanding US companies stop fucking with its plans for world domination. Here’s Patrick Tucker with the details for Defense One.
The Russian government took steps Friday to further limit what its citizens can see in media and on the internet: “slowing” access to Facebook and ordering state and independent outlets to use only governmental sources in their reporting on Ukraine.
Russia will “partially restrict access in the form of slowing down traffic” to the social-media platform, Russia’s telecommunications agency said, in response to Facebook’s own “restricting” of four state-owned media sites: the Zvezda TV channel, the RIA Novosti news agency, and the Lenta.ru and Gazeta.ru Internet sites.
Russia is fighting fire with fire, something no one outside of Ray Bradbury novels recommends doing. But Russia is big. Unfortunately, so are the social media behemoths it’s tangling with. Who would win, a dictator who wants to see the second coming of the United Soviet Socialist Republic or Mark Zuckerberg’s ability to defeat all comers, whether they are Tyrell Corp. escapees seeking their cut of a Harvard creeper app or the guy who once rode a horse without a shirt on? Time will tell, as they say when they are escorted from the Techdirt premises.
Nick Clegg, VP of Facebook global affairs, says Facebook will prevail. His statement affirms Facebook’s inconsistent approach to content moderation, noting that the company has rejected the Russian government’s demands that it stop engaging in fact-checking and labeling of content created by Russian state agencies.
The Russian government, represented by the always reprehensible Roskomnadzor, says it will prevail, noting that local law says it can force nearly any service provider to STFU. According to the Russian agency, all companies — foreign or not — are obliged to pass on content from “official Russian sources” to comply with Russian law. Unfortunately for the Russian government, US companies are not subject to Russian law. So, unless the Russian government is willing to airdrop tanks and troops onto the campuses of US service providers, the companies are free to do what they want.
The Russian government understands this. That’s why it has given itself the capability to pull the plug on foreign services. And that’s why it has continually restricted access to content it doesn’t care for. But its scorched social media earth policy only goes so far. Russian citizens may be under Putin’s thumb, but they’re still capable of drawing their own conclusions and able to express their opinions without worrying too much about being disappeared for wrongthink.
Russian researcher Vasily Gastov says the Russian government is always saying things like this, but ultimately only has limited power when it tries to force its worldview on citizens. It makes hundreds of thousands of demands for content removal every year, but is lucky to see a fifth of its demands complied with by US service providers.
As for the millions of Russians now suddenly being asked to support a war they didn’t want, the Russian government’s censorial desires are likely to result in less support for its Ukraine invasion.
Gastov said the move to restrict Facebook could backfire. When Russian news consumers have access to multiple points of view, they may be more likely to accept the government’s course of action even if they don’t like it, he said.
But when readers “try to get alternative information and there is none, they get worried,” he said. The move to block Facebook “will increase tensions and definitely will make people more disconnected with Putin?s own media.”
If the Russian government was the undeniable force it desperately wants to be, it would give zero fucks about content posted to social media services hosted in the US. At worst, it could toss around the term “fake news” and claim US companies were amplifying a false narrative at the behest of the US government. Instead, it has decided to attempt to impose its will on entities located halfway around the world. And that won’t go unnoticed by the public the Russian government needs on its side as it angers most of the rest of the world with its invasion of a sovereign nation. A successful war requires winning over hearts and minds. But these actions show the Russian government feels it’s unable to accomplish this goal and must rely on telling people how to think by eliminating their information options.
Filed Under: censorship, invasion, rozkomnadzor, russia, social media
Companies: facebook, google, twitter
Several days into Russia’s attack on Ukraine, we are already witnessing astonishing stories play out online. Social media platforms, after years of Techlash, are once again in the center of a historic event, as it unfolds.
Different tech issues are still evolving, but for now, here are the key themes.
Information overload
The combination of — smartphones, social media and high-speed data links — provides images that are almost certainly faster, more visual and more voluminous than in any previous major military conflict. What is coming out of Ukraine is simply impossible to produce on such a scale without citizens and soldiers throughout the country having easy access to cellphones, the internet, and, by extension, social media apps.
Social media is fueling a new type of ‘fog of war’
The ability to follow an escalating war is faster and easier than ever. But social media are also vulnerable to rapid-fire disinformation. So, social media are being blamed for fueling a new type of ‘fog of war’, in which information and disinformation are continuously entangled with each other — clarifying and confusing in almost equal measure.
Once again, the Internet is being used as a weapon
Past conflicts in places like Myanmar, India, and the Philippines show that tech giants are often caught off-guard by state-sponsored disinformation crises due to language barriers and a lack of cultural expertise. Now, Kremlin-backed falsehoods are putting the companies’ content policies to the test. It puts social media platforms in a precarious position, focusing global attention on their ability to moderate content ranging from graphic on-the-ground reports about the conflict to misinformation and propaganda.
How can they moderate disinformation without distorting the historical record?
Tech platforms face a difficult question: “How do you mitigate online harms that make war worse for civilians while preserving evidence of human rights abuses and war crimes potentially?”
What about the end-to-end encrypted messaging apps?
Social media platforms have been on high alert for Russian disinformation that would violate their policies. But they have less control over private messaging, where some propaganda efforts have moved to avoid detection.
According to the “Russia’s Propaganda & Disinformation Ecosystem — 2022 Update & New Disclosures” post and image, the Russian media environment, from overt state-run media to covert intelligence-backed outlets, is built on an infrastructure of influencers, anonymous Telegram channels (which have become a very serious, a very effective tool of the disinformation machine), and content creators with nebulous ties to the wider ecosystem.
The Russian government restricts access to online services
On Friday, Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, updated that the company declined to comply with the Russian government’s requests to “stop fact-checking and labeling of content posted on Facebook by four Russian state-owned media organizations.” “As a result, they have announced they will be restricting the use of our services,” tweeted Clegg. In the heart of this issue there are ordinary Russians “using Meta’s apps to express themselves and organize for action.” As Eva Galperin (EFF) noted: “Facebook is where what remains of Russian civil society does its organizing. Cut off access to Facebook and you are cutting off independent journalism and anti-war protests.”
Then, on Saturday, Twitter, which had said it was pausing ads in Ukraine and Russia, said that its service was also being restricted for some people in Russia. We can only assume that it wouldn’t be the last restriction we’ll see as Russia continues to splinter the open internet.
Collective action & debunking falsehood in real-time
It’s become increasingly difficult for Russia to publish believable propaganda. People on the internet are using open-source intelligence tools that have proliferated in recent years to debunk Russia’s claims in real-time. Satellites and cameras gather information every moment of the day, much of it available to the public. And eyewitnesses can speak directly to the public via social media. So, now you have communities of people on the internet geolocating videos and verifying videos coming out of conflict zones.
The ubiquity of high-quality maps in people’s pockets, coupled with social media where anyone can stream videos or photos of what’s happening around them, has given civilians insight into what is happening on the ground in a way that only governments had before. See, for example, two interactive maps, which track the Russian military movements: The Russian Military Forces and the Russia-Ukraine Monitor Map (screenshot from February 27):
But big tech has a lot of complicated choices to make. Google Maps, for example, was applauded as a tool for visualizing the military action, helping researchers track troops and civilians seeking shelter. On Sunday, though, Google blocked two features (live traffic overlay & live busyness) in an effort to help keep Ukrainians safe and after consultations with local officials. It’s a constant balancing act and there’s no easy solution.
Global protests, donations, and empathy
Social media platforms are giving Russians who disagree with the Kremlin a way to make their voice heard. Videos from Russian protests are going viral on Facebook, Twitter, Telegram and other platforms, generating tens of millions of views. Global protests are also being viewed and shared extensively online, like this protest in Rome, shared by an Italian Facebook group. Many organizations post their volunteers’ actions to support Ukrainians, like this Israeli humanitarian mission, rescuing Jewish refugees. Donations are being collected all over the web, and on Saturday, Ukraine’s official Twitter account posted requests for cryptocurrency donations (in bitcoin, ether and USDT). On Sunday, crypto donations to Ukraine reached $20 million.
According to Jon Steinberg, all of these actions “are reminders of why we turn to social media at times like this.” For all their countless faults — including their vulnerabilities to government propaganda and misinformation — tech’s largest platforms can amplify powerful acts of resistance. They can promote truth-tellers over lies. And “they can reinforce our common humanity at even the bleakest of times.”
“The role of misinformation/disinformation feels minor compared to what we might have expected,” Casey Newton noted. While tech companies need to “stay on alert for viral garbage,” social media is currently seen “as .”
Déjà vu to the onset of the pandemic
It reminds me a lot of March 2020, when Ben Smith praised that “Facebook, YouTube, and others can actually deliver on their old promise to democratize information and organize communities, and on their newer promise to drain the toxic information swamp.” Ina Fried added that if companies like Facebook and Google “are able to demonstrate they can be a force for good in a trying time, many inside the companies feel they could undo some of the Techlash’s ill will.” The article headline was: .
On Feb 25, 2022, discussing the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Jon Stewart said social media “got to provide some measure of redemption for itself”: “There’s a part of me that truly hopes that .”
All of the current online activities — taking advantage of the Social Smartphone Era — leave us with the hope the good can prevail over the bad and the ugly, but also with the fear it would not.
Dr. Nirit Weiss-Blatt is the author of The Techlash and Tech Crisis Communication
Filed Under: invasion, russia, techlash, ukraine
Companies: facebook, google, meta, telegram, twitter
Looks like we finally have some secret police to call our own. Ongoing protests stemming from a Minnesota police officer’s brutal killing of an unarmed Black man have provoked a federal response. In some cases, the National Guard has been called in to quell the more violent and destructive aspects of some demonstrations. Others — like the 50+ days of continuous protests in Portland, Oregon — have been greeted with something far more frightening.
Jonathan Levinson and Conrad Wilson of Oregon Public Broadcasting were the first to break the news of unidentified federal officers yanking people off the street into unmarked vehicles and disappearing them for a few hours of interrogation.
In the early hours of July 15, after a night spent protesting at the Multnomah County Justice Center and Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse, Mark Pettibone and his friend Conner O’Shea decided to head home.
[…]
A block west of Chapman Square, Pettibone and O’Shea bumped into a group of people who warned them that people in camouflage were driving around the area in unmarked minivans grabbing people off the street.
“So that was terrifying to hear,” Pettibone said.
They had barely made it half a block when an unmarked minivan pulled up in front of them.
“I see guys in camo,” O’Shea said. “Four or five of them pop out, open the door and it was just like, ‘Oh shit. I don’t know who you are or what you want with us.’”
Pettibone was grabbed by the unidentified officers, who wore nothing indicating which branch of the federal government they worked for, and shoved into a van with his hat pulled down over his eyes. He was taken to the federal courthouse (something he wasn’t aware of until he was released), patted down, photographed, and had his belongings searched. After all of this, he was put into a cell where he was finally read his Miranda rights. He refused to talk to the officers and they released him about 90 minutes later. At no point was he told what he had been detained for, nor was he given any paperwork documenting his detainment.
No one appears to know for sure which branch of the federal government is taking people off the street and detaining them without probable cause. The officers performing these sweeps use unmarked vehicles and dress in camouflage uniforms that contain no identfying info that might indicate what agency they work for.
The federal government has deployed a mixture of federal agencies to cities with ongoing protests, including the US Marshals Service, CBP, ICE, and Bureau of Prisons riot officers. Presumably the DEA is in the mix as well, since it invited itself along for this anti-free-speech ride.
The DHS — speaking through its acting secretary — says this is justified.
The city of Portland has been under siege for 47 straight days by a violent mob while local political leaders refuse to restore order to protect their city. Each night, lawless anarchists destroy and desecrate property, including the federal courthouse, and attack the brave law enforcement officers protecting it.
A federal courthouse is a symbol of justice – to attack it is to attack America. Instead of addressing violent criminals in their communities, local and state leaders are instead focusing on placing blame on law enforcement and requesting fewer officers in their community. This failed response has only emboldened the violent mob as it escalates violence day after day.
A long list of supposed atrocities committed by protesters follows. Most of the list details graffiti, along with low-level vandalism targeting cameras and police barriers. Also listed are activities like trespassing, doxing federal officers, and deploying laser pointers. Secretary Chad Wolf universally describes the protesters as “violent anarchists,” even though there’s no evidence linking protesters to coordinated activities by anarchists groups. Setting off fireworks and clashing with riot police are normal behavior during protests, but Wolf’s narrative portrays these as acts of war in a clash local law enforcement agencies are losing.
Wolf says he’s going to take this local action nationwide. Protesters in other cities will soon be experiencing the federal government’s Stasi-esque bypassing of niceties like the need to establish probable cause before shoving people into unmarked vans and dragging them away for questioning.
With as much lawbreaking is going on, we’re seeking to prosecute as many people as are breaking the law as it relates to federal jurisdiction. That’s not always happening with respect to local jurisdiction and local offenses. But, you know, this is a posture we intend to continue not just in Portland but in any of the facilities that we’re responsible for around the country.
The Oregon state Department of Justice has already filed a lawsuit against the federal government for its actions. Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum issued this statement a few days after OPB broke the news.
I share the concerns of our state and local leaders — and our Oregon U.S. Senators and certain Congressional representatives — that the current escalation of fear and violence in downtown Portland is being driven by federal law enforcement tactics that are entirely unnecessary and out of character with the Oregon way. These tactics must stop. They not only make it impossible for people to assert their First Amendment rights to protest peacefully. They also create a more volatile situation on our streets.
TL;DR: the federal government’s secret police are rioting.
Other civic leaders in Oregon feel the same way.
The mayor of Portland demanded Friday that President Donald Trump remove militarized federal agents he deployed to the city after some detained people on streets far from federal property they were sent to protect.
“Keep your troops in your own buildings, or have them leave our city,” Mayor Ted Wheeler said at a news conference.
Democratic Gov. Kate Brown said Trump is looking for a confrontation in the hopes of winning political points elsewhere and to serve as a distraction from the coronavirus pandemic, which is causing spiking numbers of infections in Oregon and the nation.
If Trump and Republicans don’t like Governor Brown politicizing the federal response to protests, they should take a long look at their own motivations first.
Flanked by AG Barr, Pres says he’s planning announcement next week on Federal action to quell violence in cities, citing Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago. He says some cities “are like war zones,” and makes it partisan, saying they’re run by “liberal, left-wing Democrats.” pic.twitter.com/MEPVVrk1Dq
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) July 15, 2020
If you can’t read/see the tweet, it says:
Flanked by AG Barr, Pres says he’s planning announcement next week on Federal action to quell violence in cities, citing Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago. He says some cities “are like war zones,” and makes it partisan, saying they’re run by “liberal, left-wing Democrats.”
The only agency that’s confirmed its presence in Portland is the CBP.
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) spokeswoman said on Friday agents had been deployed to Portland to support a newly launched U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) unit, tasked with enforcing last month’s executive order from Republican President Donald Trump to protect federal monuments and buildings.
But the DHS claims officers have not been rolling up on people in unmarked vans and dragging them to unknown locations for questioning.
A senior DHS official said officers arrested people for assaulting federal officers and vandalizing federal property, but did not provide specific cases. The official, who requested anonymity to discuss the issue, rejected the idea anyone was arrested without good cause.
“Federal officials don’t go around arresting people for no reason,” the official said. “This isn’t communist China.”
No. It’s not. But that’s what’s happening. And it’s being done with the blessing of the “law and order” president who has spent more time bashing people engaged in First Amendment activity than condemning the actions of the law enforcement officers who triggered these ongoing demonstrations. You don’t have to be a Communist to enact a police state. Fascists like police states, too.
Let’s step away from the secret police tactics that everyone — including the agency overseeing the secret police — agrees shouldn’t be happening here and look at why federal agents and officers might be wandering the streets in gear that doesn’t clearly indicate their agency affiliation.
It’s all about dodging accountability. If arrestees and detainees don’t know who’s tossing them into unmarked vans, they’re going to have a much more difficult time suing them for violating their rights. Sure, you can sue Does and unknown agencies but without more, it’s going to be tough to keep the lawsuit alive. Detainees are being released without paperwork, ensuring there are no links between the officers doing the detaining and the rights violations they’re inevitably going to be sued over.
The lack of identifying insignias makes it impossible for onlookers to testify to more than the fact that they same someone toss a Portland resident into an unmarked van and drive away. This testimony would be mostly useless in a kidnapping investigation. It’s even less useful in federal lawsuits where officers and their agencies are already given a great deal of deference on top of the qualified immunity escape hatch.
But there’s more to it than lawsuits. This is truly frightening even for those not being disappeared. Friends and family members who witness this happening (or are informed of it by witnesses) don’t know who took the resident off the streets or who to contact to see if they can provide bail money or a ride home or even check on their well being.
Cops have been limiting personal accountability since the protests began by covering their badge numbers and removing other identifying information. The federal government’s insertion of a melange of federal agencies into the mix muddies the water further, making it almost impossible for citizens to know who’s coming after them or for what reason. Officers can stop people momentarily with reasonable suspicion but it requires probable cause to take them off the street and detain them for questioning. None of that appears to be in play, no matter what the DHS Secretary says. If the federal agents were so sure about the “rightness” of their actions, they wouldn’t be afraid to wear agency insignias and/or identify themselves when detaining people.
This is nothing more than federal-level intimidation tacitly approved by this administration — one that feels any local agency not actively brutalizing protesters has lost control of the situation. And the agencies involved are doing everything they can to ensure they and their officers will get away with it.
Filed Under: cbp, chad wolf, dhs, fascism, free speech, graffiti, invasion, oregon, portland, protests, vandalism
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