Free Republic

MEXICO CITY - A new proposal from Mexico's ruling party could send musicians to prison for performing songs that glorify drug trafficking. The law would bring prison sentences of up to three years for people who perform or produce songs or movies glamorizing criminals. "Society sees drug ballads as nice, pleasant, inconsequential and harmless, but they are the opposite," National Action Party lawmaker Oscar Martin Arce told The Associated Press on Thursday. The ballads, known as "narcocorridos," often describe drug trafficking and violence, and are popular among some norteno bands. After some killings, gangs pipe narcocorridos into police radio scanners,...

Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, who has been seized by US special forces after more than a decade in power, ruled with an iron fist while seeking to portray himself as a humble man of the people. During months in the crosshairs of US President Donald Trump, who accused him of being a drug trafficker, the 63-year-old former bus driver deflected pressure by dancing to techno music at near-daily rallies, always broadcast live, as he chanted the mantra “No war, yes peace!” — in English. But for many Venezuelans, Maduro was no kindly pacifist. Seven million compatriots emigrated on his watch amid...

Australia has activated a new requirement for search engines to verify the ages of their signed-in users, with companies now facing a six-month countdown to full compliance. The rule, which began on December 27, sits within a newly registered industry code under the authority of the eSafety Commissioner and extends the country’s expanding system of online content controls. Search services such as Google and Bing must soon introduce age-assurance checks when logged-in users perform searches that might surface adult or otherwise “high-impact” material. The mechanisms vary, but common approaches include prompting users to confirm their age through a pop-up screen...

VIDEOWatch the CNN pretend "journalist" Whitney Wild decide it is her mission in life to "debunk" REAL journalist Nick Shirley. Her efforts are so over the top obvious to the extent that EVERYBODY sees what she is trying to do. The result is overwhelming condemnation of her on X (Twitter). To make matters even WORSE, take a look at who she recommends as a supposedly credible journalist. A dirtbag by the name of Lou Raguse whose idea idea of investigating child care center fraud it to slam those exposing it as racists.Unfortunately, the sad reality our our times is that...

NEW YORK (AP) — By nearly any measure, 2025 has been a rough year for anyone concerned about freedom of the press. It’s likely to be the deadliest year on record for journalists and media workers. The number of assaults on reporters in the U.S. nearly equals the last three years combined. The president of the United States berates many who ask him questions, calling one woman “piggy.” And the ranks of those doing the job continues to thin. It’s hard to think of a darker time for journalists. So say many, including Tim Richardson, a former Washington Post reporter...

One Australian politician has said the quiet part out loud It’s not often the Premier of New South Wales says something that changes the political debate in the UK and elsewhere, but so it is this week. Following the awful carnage on Bondi Beach, NSW Premier Chris Minns gave a press conference about new legal restrictions on speech, and said this: “I acknowledge that we don’t have the same free speech rules that they have in the United States and I make no apologies for that, we have got a responsibility to knit together our community, that comes from different...

As radical Islamist threats continue to plague Australia, politicians are pivoting to policing speech and tightening gun laws on law-abiding citizens—now openly admitting curbs on free expression are needed to shield their multicultural agenda.Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has unveiled a sweeping plan to combat what she calls rising anti-Semitism, but the measures conveniently sidestep the core issue of unchecked radical Islamism behind recent attacks, focusing instead on doxxing anonymous social media users and reviewing gun laws. In a joint news conference, Allan announced legislation that would force social media platforms to reveal identities behind anonymous accounts accused of spreading ‘hate’....

The State Department is taking decisive action against five individuals who have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose. These radical activists and weaponized NGOs have advanced censorship crackdowns by foreign states—in each case targeting American speakers and American companies. As such, I have determined that their entry, presence, or activities in the United States have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States. Based on these determinations, the Department has taken steps to impose visa restrictions on agents of the global censorship-industrial complex who, as a result, will...

Throughout 2015 Alex Jones detailed how Chinese-style net censorship is the stepping stone for the technocracy takeover and the depopulation endgame. Summary The speaker warns of an impending global shift toward Chinese-style internet censorship and social control systems, which he claims will be phased in worldwide starting in 2025. He asserts that major tech companies like Facebook, Google, and Microsoft are already cooperating with China to implement integrated surveillance systems that track online activity, social media posts, purchases, and credit scores via algorithms. Criticism of the government in China, he says, results in restrictions on travel, hotel stays, and buying/selling....

If Europe’s elites want war, they should pick up a rifle and fight. After the European Commission levied a several-hundred-million-dollar fine on Elon Musk and his social media platform X earlier this month, journalist Michael Shellenberger wrote a damning post in which he excoriated Europe’s rank censorship and state-sponsored propaganda. He accused the commission of engaging “in a deception campaign aimed at confusing” Europeans and Americans into thinking that European elites’ “goal” is anything other than “to censor the American people.” Shellenberger pointed out that Musk’s fine came while European governments are demanding backdoor access to all private text messages...

President Donald Trump’s administration warned on Tuesday that the United States could impose fees or restrictions on European service providers in response to what it called “discriminatory” actions against US firms. The Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), in a post on X, accused the European Union and some of its member states of “discriminatory and harassing lawsuits, taxes, fines and directives against US service providers”, while arguing that EU companies such as Accenture, DHL, Siemens, Spotify and others “operate freely” in the United States. “If the EU and EU member states insist on continuing to restrict, limit, and...

A Columbia professor was quickly shut down after warning her colleagues that the Morningside Heights campus had been infiltrated by outsiders with “known ties to terrorist organizations.” Professor Carol Ewing Garber immediately had her mic muted after speaking out about campus security at the May 3 Zoom meeting of the university’s faculty senate — which was held hours after the school’s Hamilton Hall was overrun by a mob of Hamas-supporting students. “There really is a need for good security on campus and it was very clear . . . that the university was unable to do that given the number...

VIDEOIt's on! The European Union vs Elon Musk. The battle began when the EU demanded that X (forever to be known as Twitter) bow down to its censorship regime by paying a 120 million Euro fine. However, the EU may have bit off more than it can chew because it is also trying to extend its censorship to TikTok and Apple and they are also refusing to comply. How will this war end? Will the EU be able to impose its censorship on the rest of the world? Stay tuned!

Donald Trump voiced concern about the current political track taken by EU countriesWASHINGTON, December 9. /TASS/. US President Donald Trump criticized the fine imposed by the European Commission on X and warned that Europe is "moving in some bad directions." Asked about the fine at a meeting with representatives of the agricultural industry at the White House, Trump called Brussels' decision "nasty" and added: "I don't think it's right. Europe has to be very careful." He voiced concern about the current political track taken by EU countries. "We want to keep Europe Europe. Europe is going in some bad directions....

The European Union has moved this week to punish the social media company X and Elon Musk for allegedly “deceiving users” through certain company practices. On Thursday, X, which was formerly known as Twitter, was fined €120 million ($140 million) by the European Union for violating one of the international organization’s laws regulating technology companies. The move makes the social media platform the first company to be fined under the jurisdiction of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). “Deceiving users with blue checkmarks, obscuring information on ads and shutting out researchers have no place online in the EU. The DSA...

The EU has slapped Elon Musk with a $140 million fine for refusing to censor content on his social-media platform X, in contravention of the bloc’s controversial Digital Services Act Vice President JD Vance took to X to slam the EU for its actions, which he described as “garbage” The EU has slapped Elon Musk with a $140 million fine for refusing to censor content on his social-media platform X, in contravention of the bloc’s controversial Digital Services Act (DSA).The hefty fine, announced by Bloomberg, is the first to be issued under the 2023 law, with EU lawmakers promising...

SummaryA new book by Paul Holden, building on reporting by Matt Taibbi, Paul Thacker and others, documents that the “Stop Funding Fake News” (SFFN) campaign — which led to widespread advertiser boycotts and deplatforming of outlets including ZeroHedge, The Federalist, Breitbart, The Canary and others during 2019–2021 — was not a grassroots activist effort as publicly claimed, but a centrally directed political operation run out of the same South London office as Labour Together, the think tank that backed Keir Starmer’s leadership bid.Key findings:SFFN was conceived and resourced by Morgan McSweeney (now Starmer’s chief of staff and formerly sole director...

The American left doesn’t look at the United Kingdom and see a cautionary tale, it sees a template to follow.It’s easy to look at a collapsing civil society in a foreign country and comfort ourselves that, despite all our problems, we’re not as bad off as those people. Americans are especially apt to do this with our cousins in Great Britain, whose country is now in a state of precipitous and probably irreversible decline, and whose political leadership is openly hostile to the native population. But it’s a mistake to comfort ourselves this way, partly because the corruption of a...

LMFAO! There is now an attempt to get corporate media outlets to BOYCOTT President Trump's press conferences and availabilities - "until you clean up your act!" Take Jim Acosta's advice and DO IT! 🤣 Press credentials can be swapped for New Media!

Politics will not succeed in rehabilitating the narrative of man-made, CO2-based climate change to suppress, once again, both the dialogue with the AfD and the critical debate on the Green Deal. The Federal Republic is on an economic crash course. A return to a market economy seems impossible as long as an oversized party cartel rigidly defends the course of the green transformation. The relaxation of the moral contact ban with the AfD by the Association of Family Businesses could now expose the ideological devastation of this path. Marie-Christine Ostermann has been president of the business association Die Familienunternehmer since...