‼️No more human rights violations and no more silencing independent voices! We stand with the victims, not the oppressors. Decades of communist rule are leading Cuba toward collapse. Yesterday, the ECR Group voted to condemn the regime and stand in total solidarity with the Cuban people. How long will we keep backing a dictatorship that keeps its own people in chains? 🇨🇺

The way it works as this goes along is that certain skeptical, independent voices arise to object to some new phase in the control push. They win loyalty and something of an audience and then on the next turn they kind of promote the new thing that you would have thought they'd be dead against and soften their audience towards it. Covid skeptic becomes "Flock cameras do have some value" person.And indeed with Flock it's happening all over now. And boy is it obvious. Former free speecher becomes tentative Flocker etc. Just observe. Quite a game, quite a technique.

The recent arrest of a prominent political analyst on Myanmar visiting China demonstrates Beijing’s intensifying intolerance of any independent voices or viewpoints not to their liking. China’s Arrest of US Scholar Part of Worsening Trend. @hrw

Beware of “Investigations in Name Only.” Who is in the Group? Which standards are they applying? Who do they share their results with? Are there any independent voices in the room? Internal governance is the frontline rn and we know far too little to assess it.

🇺🇸🇮🇷 Cenk Uygur thinks the next Iran war could trigger a global depression. I've rarely heard Cenk this angry or this worried. He believes Israel is heading toward a disastrous confrontation on multiple fronts, with fighting potentially spreading across the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Iran. His prediction is frightening. If Iranian energy facilities are attacked, he expects retaliation against Gulf infrastructure, potentially sending oil toward $200 a barrel. And he isn't warning about another recession. He's warning about a global depression. But I challenged him here: Does he blame too much on Israel? And if its influence over American politics and media is as extensive as he believes, why can independent voices like his still speak freely? Cenk told me his network has faced serious financial pressure, lost business opportunities and struggled to retain advertisers. He believes his criticism of Israel is the reason. I don't agree with every conclusion he draws. But after my own conversations with officials in the region, I'm increasingly concerned about where this is heading. The part that got me was his warning that Israel's pursuit of security could ultimately leave it less secure than ever. @cenkuygur

When the White House opens its doors to the press, it must comply with the First Amendment. The president is as free as any other person to criticize media coverage. But he can’t ban outlets from the White House just because he doesn’t like their reporting or commentary. Press credentials aren’t a reward for loyalty to the government. A free, even adversarial, press is a sign of our country’s strength. The public deserves to hear about its government from independent voices, not just its leader’s loyalists and allies.