The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has said he hopes the crisis surrounding the social network X in Brazil might teach the world that “it isn’t obliged to put up with [Elon] Musk’s far-right free-for-all just because he is rich”.
Lula’s comments to the network CNN Brasil came after the supreme court voted unanimously on Monday to uphold the ban on X, which is now largely inaccessible in one of its biggest global markets.
The suspension was first ordered on Friday as a result of the company’s refusal to obey court orders requiring the removal of profiles accused of spreading disinformation and for the social network to name a local legal representative.
Lula is so fucking great. He’s literally just backing up the courts that are applying the law fairly and as-written, which is more than I can say for most leaders.
Don’t get me wrong, Lula is correct on this. But he’s still a scummy politician who has a questionable past
Raising 20 million Brazilians out of poverty, while making his country the 8th largest economy in the world? I’m sure he’s as corrupt as any Brazilian politician, but none of them have anything that comes even close to that to show for it.
It’s politics. You could have some shoplifting charge from 40 years ago and people will yell about how you’re the worst and attempt to invalid everything you do because of it.
He also got arrested for one of the largest corruption scandals in the history of Brazil. It’s a complex person. We can criticize his vices and praise his virtues at the same time.
Oh arrested? Wow, only guilty people are arrested by states led by their fascist political rivals. If he’s arrested, he must be guilty. That’s how justice works.
You could’ve said “convicted”, but that was annulled and a UN human rights committee found that:
The committee concluded that prosecutors and the lead judge in the investigation, Sergio Moro, showed bias in Lula’s case, violating his right to be presumed innocent.
I’m not a fan of politicians in general, but I’d take these charges more seriously if the people prosecuting them weren’t so flagrantly politically motivated and breaking the rules. Presumably the reason he was tried in the wrong court was because the state was shopping for a judge that wouldn’t give him a fair trial. If he’s that guilty, they’ve muddied the waters by not actually caring about his guilt, and it’s going to be way harder to get anything to stick anymore. Like they were in charge of the whole fucking country, how were they this bad at persecuting him?
What I do know is that when a fascist like Bolsonaro is that mad at you, you might actually be doing something right.
To be fair, you don’t have to be doing anything for fascisti to hate you. That’s kinda their schtick.
Cooking up charges and rigging a court case specifically to take you down is a different level of hate though.
What’s the questionable past?
Fucking thank you. It’s nice to see at least some heads of state actually have the stones to tell Phony Stark to fuck off.
And it doesn’t mean Musk has any valid and useful intelligence. He got handed money early in life, got lucky with PayPal, and now thinks because of all of that, his views on the world matter. They don’t. He’s a piece of shit and the world should reject him among many others.
And still salty enough to rename twitter to the company that merged with PayPal since PayPal was such a better name
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com_(bank)
Also ask Musk fanboys who Greg Kouri is and they have no idea
Over the past year Musk has removed all masks and clearly believes he can operate beyond the law. His motives are clearly to watch the world burn. He is an extremely dangerous, unpredictable and powerful man, threatening democracy across the globe.
Our governments need to protect us from him. Brazil’s being brave here, I hope they’re just the first.
No. You’re giving him too much credit and actually making it seem like mr. Musk is in any sense of the word capable of self-reflection. He is a burned out, incompetent tech-junkie and nothing but a hypeman for expensive toys someone else develops. He might be allegedly blackmailed by Russian kompromat or just plainly stupid enough to believe the propagandistic image of strong Putin/Russia. The only scary thing about him is, he never takes a fall for his numerous blunders. Yet, before first-worlders become the ones paying for his mistakes he will rest comfortably upon his dollar throne.
Be that as it may, the man has influence and it would be incredibly foolish to discount this because he’s a fucking moron. Sadly, the world is full of extremely incompetent billionaires, and they hold a shocking amount of influence over the world, whether it’s through collusion on layoffs, enforcing RTO in tandem, cutting green initiatives within a month of each other, etc.
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Money is basically a vehicle for power and this a ketamine junkie in a garbage truck speeding through every intersection in the world and daring anyone to try and stop him. At least Brazil is trying.
His motives are clearly to watch the world burn.
His motives are money and power. He is indifferent to if the world burns in the process.
He’s already got all the money and most of the power. Now his hobby is far right extremism and anarchy.
He doesn’t have all the money. I have some money, Brazilians have money. It’s not enough to have most of the money and power if there’s more he can get.
He has more than anyone else in the history of the world. By any scale, he’s won at money.
And yet he still wants more. It’s not enough to have most of the money, he needs to have all the money.
At some point accumulating more money is no longer about added utility and more like a kind of cynical game score. And musky boy is clearly chasing that high score.
That’s been said, and perhaps it has been true. But when you’re the richest man in the world by a significant margin, you have literally won at money and to remain competitive you need to move onto other things. Like the power of politics, and working to destabilise multiple countries at once.
I’m an anarchist, and Musk’s behaviour is the farthest possible thing from anarchy. Anarchism is all about working together to build a better world where everyone has all of their needs met, not being a selfish, caustic, aggressive asshole. Elon would have no chance of getting consensus to join any commune anywhere in the world. Unless there’s some insane libertarian commune somewhere.
Anarchism is all about working together to build a better world where everyone has all of their needs met,
Hmm, I was working with the classic disctionary definition which is “a state of disorder due to absence or non-recognition of authority or other controlling systems.”
But you’re right, anarchism does have that other meaning, so perhaps a better word would be “chaos”.
His actions in supporting Trump in the US, promoting hate and extermist views on X globally, and encouraging civil war in the UK do all fit a chaos agenda. That’s not about money - at least, not that I can see.
He is one of the world’s most dangerous people, however, and I don’t say that lightly. Not least because of his history of being unpredictable.
More governments should follow Brazil’s example and push back.
In fairness, it isn’t like banning one social media website (and a purveyor of misinformation and disinformation at that) will have either national security concern or threatening fundamental freedoms in Brazil. It could be why Brazil had been so bold.
More like Far-right-free fall
More like fart-fight free-ball
More like “Cartwright! Your table is ready. Cartwright!”
His wealth also doesn’t mean we need to accept his wealth as valid.
That’s so Weird how Next Week the US will Find Oil in Brazil and oust Lula!
Don’t ask why the disgraced former judge Sergio Moro, who jailed Lula in 2018, causing the rise of Ballswallower, was invited by the US State Department in the oughts to do their “anti-terrorism” training.
“Ballswallower”…?
I even searched for it thinking maybe that was some real name, so now that’s in my search history
You know, the racist piece of shit who caught covid 15 times and used to be president
How did jailing Lula lead to that, and how did he rise to power AFTER becoming president
They’re talking about Bolsonaro. But yeah when you use the same insults against all the people you disagree with it makes it hard to tell them apart
Why would I call anyone else Ballswallower
That makes way more sense, duh. Thanks.
Lula was not only set to win, but set to win without a runoff vote.
“We will coup whoever we want!”
We already well past that https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrobras
Based Lula.
You’re the only person who used this expression correctly, ever.
In so many movies that revolves around what would happen if a multi billionaire… Turned EVIL
Well now we know
You don’t get to a billion dollars by being ethical in the first place. At the very least, they are all willing to exploit the labour of hundreds or thousands or more.
I hope that my country’s goverment makes the other countries realise how dangerous this man is.
brazilian futurism was not what I expected for 2024 but I’m pleasantly surprised
Based af Frfr ❌ 🧢
You’re the second person to use this expression correctly, ever.
Except it does. Money = speech = power and he has the most of any human.
Downvote this all you want, it won’t change the reality that Musk is more powerful than any other human currently alive on earth. I hate him too, but you can’t deny his power.
Turns out that if you are not a Right-wing shit head you can legislate and govern against people with money that try to do as they will :O
Doesn’t seem like it’s working out so well for him on Brazil…
I’m sure he’ll cry about it a lot while wiping his tears away with bills worth more than you or I will ever make in a lifetime.
Uhh okay? He’s so powerful his website (which he didn’t want to buy in the first place) is blocked in a whole country.
A number of whole countries, Brazil is just the most recent.
The three most powerful people on earth are the US President, the President of the Russian Federation, and any Captain of an Ohio class submarine
and money chooses who each of these is
I would like to see some evidence that Elon Musk can choose who is captain of an Ohio class submarine.
He cant choose but with money, he can influence people who can influence who is chosen.
By that logic musk would be president right now so doesnt make much sense. Its less about money and more about your family and friends. Almost all presidents of the United states have been descendants from the same british family. Including Obama yes.
I was completely with you until the conspiracy theory about a single British family and Obama. JFC. 😂
Seriously though. You gotta have a credible source for something like that. Share that Fox News link already!
Thats not a secret my dude and its not even that crazy of a fact. Basically everyone is related if you just go back enough generations.
Almost all of them stem from families that came to america during colonial times.
Related: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Stock_Americans
Whats more interesting tho is this chart that doesnt go back quite as far. You can still see that being president is not going to happen unless you have connections
Your own links indicate that the presidents came from separate families. Am l missing a key section that explains that they all came from the same family as you indicated?
If you dialed back the narrow specificity of your original claim, I would agree with your sentiment, as I think most here would. I feel like we may be debating a semantic here.
He also said almost all of the presidents, then links to a genealogy that lists less than half.
I dont know who first claimed the whole “King John” thing or how well proven it is, but whats not disputed is that many of them are pretty closely related. They might not actually all be descendant from one specific guy but for practical purposes they behave like it. They are a closed circle that is impossible to just enter.
https://familypedia.fandom.com/wiki/Genealogical_relationships_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States
You’re going to need to source that.
Not OP but it got my brain curious. Found several different sites about it, here are 2 that seem fairly reputable. Apparently a 12yr old genealogy buff did an extensive search to map the presidents and came across some connections that kept them going till they found the chain of relatives for each one.
It doesn’t seem like “put on your tin foil hat close-related”, more “if you go back far enough most of us are kin in some way related”. Though, the fact that the only one who is not related, was actually appointed instead of elected, does make it look a little weird.
https://www.geni.com/blog/look-whos-related-george-washington-and-all-the-presidents-25451.html
https://familypedia.fandom.com/wiki/Genealogical_relationships_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States
Oh wow. Thanks.
No prob Mr Maggoty. Figured I couldn’t be the only one curious, why make more folks dive down that rabbit hole.
Musk becoming president is
very real possibility, average person becoming president is not unless miracles happen. While yes, money alone can’t so easily get you power but it is requirement for it.It is constitutionally impossible for Musk to become president.
How so? Is it about birth place?
Yes, the US constitution requires that the president be at least 35 and a natural born citizen. There is more info here.
Why isn’t Trump president?
Why is there even possibility such man can realistically be president?
The assesment that he’s the wealthiest person on earth is pretty dubious, actually. The analyses which list the worlds wealthiest people always are, because they have to decide what counts as wealth and how to count it.
Normally that’s fairly easy, but for very powerful people (who, as you point out, the people at the top of those lists are) it gets murky because of things like stocks and options which they could liquidate in theory, but which would crash in value if they tried to actually do so. Does it still count as wealth if it only exists so long as you don’t spend it?
There are also people who’s wealth isn’t held in any currency, or gold, or stocks. How do you measure the wealth or power of a sovereign king, or any other kind of dictator? You certainly can’t neatly put it in a scale alongside people who just have a dragon’s horde of cash somewhere, that wouldn’t be comparing like for like
How do you measure the wealth or power of a sovereign king, or any other kind of dictator?
This is also borne out in practice as you watch the purportedly “most powerful man on Earth” constantly tap dance for Putin in lockstep with the GOP. As a kleptocratic dictator, he informally adds the entire country’s economy to his personal net worth.
The GOP is foaming at the mouth to form a right-wing dictatorship in this country for precisely the reason you are addressing here. A person with powers of complete dictatorship over the world’s biggest economy would definitively make them the most powerful man on Earth without a second even deserving mention.
SCOTUS told America the President could have anyone killed as long as it was an official act. And you’re still going to say the guy with an indirect access to influence has more power?
Hah.
Real life isn’t a Marvel movie.
Money = Speech = Power
Maybe in the US it is so, but the Citizens United decision does not apply outside of there. Some countries value the power of democracy more than money.
Name one. All I see is lip service. Action is a whole different matter.
I mean what are we looking at right now?
Another example: Unions don’t cave to Tesla in Sweden, this dispute appears to be still ongoing even after another 9 months.
The nazis, too, had a lot of power and yet they lost WW II.
It’s all a ruse
Media Bias/Fact Check - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for Media Bias/Fact Check:
MBFC: Least Biased - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: Very High - United States of America
Wikipedia about this sourceThe Guardian - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for The Guardian:
MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: Medium - Factual Reporting: Mixed - United Kingdom
Wikipedia about this sourceDid this bot really just post a fact check of itself
Rating itself higher than AP (or was it Reuters?) even.
Definitely AP. Not sure about Reuters.
We should preemptively offer to extradite
Elon is the tech version of Murdoch and is more dangerous because of his worldwide access through Twitter. Unfortunately the extremists will have more of a voice and propaganda will overwhelm the media. Since the media is controlled by billionaires they have no interest in exposing them
Elon is more dangerous because he’s a US government contractor which means his incessent law breaking and bullshittery will mean the US government will go to bat for him in a conflict
Wouldn’t want those military secrets getting out
