Month: October 2022

Turkish President Erdogan’s battle against the central bankers’ holy scripture continued today as in the face of soaring inflation (over 80%), he told central bank decision-makers to continue lowering rates at its next meeting in October.

“My biggest battle is against interest. My biggest enemy is interest. We lowered the interest rate to 12%. Is that enough? It is not enough. This needs to come down further,” Erdogan said during an event, according to a Reuters translation.

“We have discussed, are discussing this with our central bank. I suggested the need for this to come down further in upcoming monetary policy committee meetings,” he added.

He told CNN Turk on Wednesday night, adding that he expects the country’s key rate, currently 12%, to hit single digits by the end of this year.

How’s that plan working out for you?

But, in what appeared to be an effort to deflect from his own countries collapse under his ‘odd’ economic perspective, Erdogan also took a swing at the U.K., saying that the British pound has “blown up.”

As The Fed raises its interest rate and the dollar grows stronger, Turkey’s many dollar-denominated debts, and the energy it imports in dollars, will only become more painful to pay for.

“With external financing conditions tightening, the risks remain firmly skewed to sharp and disorderly falls in the lira,” Liam Peach, a senior emerging markets economist, wrote in a note after Turkey’s last rate cut on Sept. 22.

“The macro backdrop in Turkey remains poor. Real interest rates are deeply negative, the current account deficit is widening and short-term external debts remain large,” he wrote.

“It may not take a significant tightening of global financial conditions for investor risk sentiment towards Turkey to sour and add more downward pressure on the lira.”

“Oh the irony, Erdogan giving Truss advice on the economy,” Timothy Ash, an emerging markets strategist at BlueBay Asset Management, said in a not to CNBC.

“Turkey has 80% inflation and I guess the worst performing currency over the past decade. Lol. How low the U.K. has sunk.”

While on a year-to-date basis the two currencies relative weakness against the dollar is not miles apart (TRY -28%, GBP -18%)…

Since 1980, the Turkish Lira has lost 99.99% of its value against the greenback versus Sterling’s decline of around 50% in those 40 years…

Source: Bloomberg

Pot meet kettle?

Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

The old world broke this week. It was blown up cynically by someone who thought this would advance their agenda the most.

The act of vandalizing a major piece of physical infrastructure, targeting civilian populations, isn’t unprecedented in history, but it does signal that everything we thought we knew about the rules of the current game was wrong.

Well, for most people anyway.

When I spoke in June at the Ron Paul Institute Conference on Foreign Policy I described the game of geopolitics as a seven-player game of the ancient Chinese game, Go.

And in that game we’ve reached an inflection point where some factions are coalescing and others are splintering. The faction that is unwilling to compromise on their future is the most dangerous one at the table.

My conclusion then was that those ‘who think they are entitled to run the world’ will flip the game board.

They will change the rules of the game without remorse or a case in the world for those they harm and the aftereffects of their actions. In fact, the chaos they engender is preferable to them than losing.

We got the first inkling of this when the West didn’t just freeze Russia’s foreign exchange reserves but seized them.

Now undersea assets in international waters are fair game. The good news it that this flipping of the game board was only a couple of gas pipelines. The potential is still for something far more unthinkable, not that that’s off the table.

In the immediate aftermath of proof the pipelines were blown up everyone (including myself) came forward with their theory as to who did it. Sadly, I can construct arguments for nearly every major player in the game having done this.

But understand the significance of this act. Another redline in international commerce and relations was crossed. The burning question is by whom?

We can rule out the most idiotic takes, like the Russians blew up the pipelines themselves. Why blow up an asset which is literally your biggest piece of leverage on this particular game board when you can do what Putin has already done, shut off the taps?

The only people putting forth this idea are frothing neocons who never met a global problem they couldn’t blame on Putin. Their arguments simply confirm what we already knew, they are jumping for joy at the news.

Many are reflexively pointing to statements by Joe Biden and Victoria Nuland about getting rid of the Nordstream 2 pipeline before the war in Ukraine broke out. But, so what? Why wait seven months to make good on that threat? And why also take out Nordstream 1 at the same time?

The argument is based on this idea that the US is now a rogue state fully controlled by neocons who see their opportunity to get their geopolitcial two-fer, going to war with Russia while also regaining dominance over a vassal Europe.

Indeed this is the prevailing sentiment across the whole of the anti-US alternative media. From Pepe Escobar to Bernard at Moon of Alabama the rush to put together the motive (Escobar) and the means (MoA) is quite compelling.

I, however, do not agree.

And the reasons are many. But it starts with the basic premise is that it is too easy.

Sure, the neocons wanted NS1 and NS2 removed from the game board. Neocons staff the lion’s share of important positions in the “Biden” National Security Council, his State Dept. and the Dept. of Defense. But the neoconservative axis doesn’t stop at the mouth of the Potomac. Their roots are deep within British Intelligence, Whitehall, City of London and yes, even Germany.

When you invoke the term neocon it is a very specific term for a very specific faction of people. They are rapacious, unwilling to compromise, indefatigable and embedded like ticks all across the Western political and intelligence infrastructure.

They are also incredibly easy to manipulate because all you have to do is give them a green light for mayhem and they will take it like a pit bull seeing a squealing rabbit.

So while Bernard did a fine job of laying out all of the circumstantial ‘facts’ of this case, he didn’t make a conclusion either. He’ll leave that job to his partner in Anti-US Empire leftism Escobar and the imaginations of so many rightfully disillusioned with the US.

They and other have made the case and all that has to be done now is allow the amplifier of social media and global anxiety to run wild. Spoon feeding people cynicism today is easy. Hating on the US is now fashionable.

The groundwork for this has been laid for months with Europe shooting itself in the foot repeatedly while allowing its sympathetic chorus to try and portray them as the victim of US aggression.

Personally, I think that conclusion is nonsense and have stuck to my guns for months saying both the EU and ‘The US’ want this war with Russia but for different reasons. In other words, no one is a victim of the other’s aggression, they both want the same thing, a divorce and/or war with Eurasian integration but who gets to be the decision makers in the end is what they are fighting over internally.

I’ve laid this out in so many blog posts, but this one from January lays out all the arguments of the factions at play. While I was wrong about war in Ukraine being off the table, the interplay of the factions was still spot on.

The basic premise was always to use the neocons to destabilize the world over Ukraine, amplify the US/UK belligerence to the level of terrorist state, and portray Europe as the victim of whatever happened.

But once Putin invaded Ukraine everyone’s true motivations were exposed. Europe couldn’t back down and allow Russia to take Ukraine because Davos needed Ukraine to draw everyone into its vortex. The Minsk agreements were simply a time-buying device for everyone’s plans.

They all wanted this war with Russia but Putin chose the terms of the battle and the timing. To still think that Europe is a victim of US colonial ambitions betrays a naivete that borders on pathology.

And yet everyone fell for the silly Rand Corporation “Report” from January that prepped the ground for blowing up the Nordstream pipelines conveniently ‘leaked’ into the world two weeks before the weekend everyone had circled on their geopolitical calendar as the most significant of the year.

Yeah, and you could pull my other leg, it plays “There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute.“

Make no mistake, I’m not about to absolve ‘The US’ of any malfeasance here. Some aspect of ‘The US’ was involved. To think otherwise is also terminally naïve. No, what I’m going to do is remind everyone of the motivations, incentives and deficiencies of the players in the West and give you what I think is the best answer we will ever get (and why) as to the curious whodunit of the demise of Nordstream.

I wrote a massive Twitter thread yesterday on this which I am going to list below along with some fill in commentary where appropriate. Original Tweets in Bold, Commentary in italics.

1. Just so we are clear. I believe and have believed the hyper-aggressive Neocons (or Straussians) are a faction easily manipulated into doing things that look like they are to their benefit but ultimately aren’t.

2. People this single-minded and radical can easily be directed like a missile at a particular target, especially if that target is their White Whale, i.e. Russia.

3. Davos is obsessed with preserving the EU and transferring that power to the UN for global government through the end of commercial banking and total surveillance.
   This is incontrovertibly true. Their pushing hard for CBDCs to replace the current monetary system.

4. Getting the neocons to over-react to the current state of play in Ukraine by blowing up two vital pipelines to Europe is child’s play. You are goading them to do what they want to do anyway.
   Screw Germany and Russia simultaneously.
   Again, think Pit Bull and squealing bunny rabbit.

5. But the real win for them isn’t giving Germany no way to back down wrt Russia. It is to get Germany to see themselves as a victim of US colonialism.
   Cue the RAND report. And the protests over energy costs in Germany over the weekend.
   This leads to a critical mass of people seeing the US as the world’s leading cancer, deflecting from the real perps.
   Given the state of the commentariat today, mission mostly accomplished. With the Fed pushing interest rates to the moon this will be even easier for people to believe.

6. That this is happening after the US got major wins in the UK and Italy electing Truss and Meloni while the Fed starves global markets of dollars, the source of Davos’ real strength … Eurodollar futures and shadow banking.
   See my articles about Draghi’s fall from July and Truss’s rise from last week. Joe Biden’s called Truss to threaten her over Northern Ireland before she even sat down at 10 Downing Street. Tell me again who “Biden” works for if not Davos?

7. In the short run, the neocons think they’ve won a big victory. In the long run, it seals Europe’s fate by crashing their markets so they can blame Russia and the US for their bankruptcy while defaulting and consolidating power in Brussels.
   Blowing up NS1 and NS2 is a brilliant tactical move, it takes options from Putin and leaves him with more military than economic options. Why does anyone think the EU and Davos don’t benefit from this since this is what they actually wanted, prolonged war with Russia. Or am I misreading EU Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen, EU Foreign Minister Josep Borrell and NATO Sec. General Jens Stoltenberg? Curious.
   In the long run this is a terrible strategic move because it now puts everyone’s infrastructure on the table. Everything is fair game now.

8. France is happy to see this happen b/c bringing Germany down elevates them. Blackmailing the Italians is next on the flowchart… has to happen while Italy is in a gas deficit, i.e. Libya offline. France has been instrumental in cutting off Italy’s gas supply from N. Africa. There is no love loss between Italy and France. And EU sanctions keep Italy in gas deficit. With hostilities in Libya ending, gas will flow. So, destabilizing Italy’s financial markets now is paramount… or did no one see the blowout in BTP yields this week?

9. The Neocons are Straussian in their thinking. Better to burn down everything rather than lose. I don’t agree with all of this article, but the basics are sound.
   Theirry Meyssan — voltairenet.org/article217976.…
   In short, the Neocons are not the only Straussians at this gaming table. Davos’ whole strategy is predicated on tearing down the old system, liquidating as many liabilities as possible (people, systems, debt, etc.) and then offering a new replacement at the depth of everyone’s despair.

10. Europe’s only solution, said many times by Soros, is to default by issuing perpetual debt, consols, and rolling up all the political power in Europe to the EU Commission and the ECB.
    To do that you NEED a collapse of the German middle class.
    With the ECB losing to the Fed over keeping rates low and going for MMT, 80% of the ECB’s balance sheet is at risk. The EU cannot function with a bankrupt ECB. The eurozone ceases to exist. President Lagarde is now losing control over internal bond spreads now that the BoE intervened.

11. But you also need a scapegoat to focus German anger on otherwise you lose them. So, bring in the hyper-aggressive Yanks and the hated Russians. Perfect patsies for this operation.
    Turn Western Europe as anti-American as Eastern Europe is anti-Russian.
    The neocons have walked willingly into this trap. Russia was given the option surrender or fight. They chose to fight.

12. Turning the US into a global terrorist state in the minds of everyone is an attempt, lame as it may be, to stop capital outflow while the reset of Europe’s finances occurs.
    Only communists are so committed ideologically to their cause that they would threaten the world with nuclear blackmail in order to overthrow the only bastion of legal human rights superior to that of the State’s left in the world. I hate to break it to America’s haters but us getting our shit together is the world’s only real hope. It’s a thin hope, I realize. But the world is not made better by turning the US into a failed state like the same people I’m fingering today did to Russia after the USSR fell. But when you cheer on us Yanks ‘gettin’ what we deserve’ and apologizing for the crimes of Europe, you are cheering your own destruction.

13. Hence, the US neocons likely blew up NS1 and NS2 but under the ‘guidance’ of Davos from within the “Biden” Junta.
    This is the nuanced take. Davos had the motive, means and opportunity to pull this off. So far, I’ve only presented why the neocons would have done this. Now, here’s why Davos is the real culprit.

14. This was an act of war. No doubt. The UK and France have been trying to get NATO officially into a war with Russia since it moved into Syria… Remember the IL-20 ELINT shootdown?
    That was a French/UK op. that everyone else covered up.
    September 2018 a Russian ELINT plane is shot down over Syria. The official explanation is a complete fabrication. Reports of a missile fired from a French frigate offshore are memory-holed. Israel and Syria take the blame for the screw up which could have led to a NATO Article 5 if the Russians retaliated.
    We will simply not get the full story on this like we never got the real story about MH-17. But if Russia doesn’t respond overtly and whatever they do in parallel response “The US” doesn’t respond to then back channels have been working to stop any further insanity. The relative silence from everyone tells me a third party ordered this and the primary victim/alleged aggressor are trying to hold things at bay.

15. This pipeline explosion smells of a similar setup.. The goal? Same as always. Get Russia to over-react, weaken Putin at home for being soft.
    Set the US and Russia on a path to open, not proxy, war.

16. The same strategy is being employed with China/Taiwan. Reckless provocations to weaken Xi and get China to over-react to save face with the domestic population.
    Or did we miss the endless reckless provocations with China over the past 20 months?

17. Why? Because if these folks are all fighting while Europe hunkers down and ‘rebuilds’ itself, then they are all weakened through war and relatively speaking the EU comes out of that coma to a more-level playing field.
    This point has been routinely misunderstood. This is a long-range projection of what the ultimate goal is. By the end of the decade Europe wants to be free of Russian energy, transitioned to a hydrogen/nuclear economy with digital money, no debt and a surveillance state it can leverage around the world. They want the same thing for the US and the UK Commonwealth, but the jury is definitely out as to whether they will achieve those goals in those places… that the third US faction I keep talking about, the NY Boys and the Fed, saying no to all of this.

18. This is the plan. It’s stupid. It’s insane. But it’s clearly what’s on the table.
    The leaked RAND Report everyone was so hot and bothered about was pure psy-op to set up this latest atrocity.
    Even RAND was like. Okay, this is some serious Bellingcat/MI6 bullcrap.

19. If you think this is far-fetched:
    Who directed everyone to lock down the world over a freaking flu?
    Who tried to bankrupt you for not getting the jab?
    Who is pushing for UBI, MMT and you owning nothing?
    It ain’t the Neocons and it ain’t Russia. And it ain’t the Fed either.

20. There are clearly forces resisting this insanity but it’s not clear as to whether they are winning or not. What is clear is that most people are done with globalists, but which globalists?

21. This now opens up the possibility of the East Med Pipeline from Israel to Greece, which “Biden” took off the table earlier this year. Why? Davos wants us off oil and gas.
    Meaning, why did “Biden” pull the funding plug off of East Med? Because Davos told him no new pipelines into Europe. Davos also hates Israel, being a US/UK satellite. Realize that once you see the enmity between the Continent of European Colonial Powers and the UK/US and the former Warsaw Pact countries, you can’t unsee it. But, please continue to think it’s all just “one big club… and we ain’t in it.”

22. The bombing of NS1 and NS2 is as significant a red line being crossed as seizing Russia’s forex reserves. Both assets were considered ‘verboten.’
    Not any more. Who ordered that? Davos.|
    Who went along with that? The EU
    Who’s putting more sanctions on Russia today? The EU
    How can anyone seriously look at the last seven months and see the EU as a victim of US imperialism without seeing the imperial aspirations of the EU itself? I’m not saying anyone isn’t dirty here. They are all filthy and disgusting. But I am saying know what the real game is and what the real motivations are.
    Because if you do that work you just might see some things that don’t comport with the simple view which fuels your anger and frustration, which, in the end, is just childish. The stakes are too high here.
    FYI, the EU just put on an EIGHTH package of sanctions on Russia over the referenda in the now former territories of Ukraine. No outrage over the loss of NS1 and NS2. No furious statements about the heinous and cowardly attacks on public infrastructure serving the needs of real Europeans. No pearl clutching or hand wringing even over the immense amount of greenhouse gases being blown into the atmosphere. Just more vilification of the victim and nigh-endorsement of this act of terrorism.
    But, please, keep believing Europe is the victim of US aggression and not the complicity of your own leadership.

23. The point of this act was to freeze all pipeline construction worldwide.
    If these assets are on the table, then nothing is off the table.
    Do you really think it’s far-fetched to false flag something like this to achieve global dreams of control?
    Who has those dreams?
    If you look at this dispassionately, you know who and that’s why you know who ordered it, regardless of whose military operators put the bombs on the pipes.

I can’t stress enough folks that we are in very perilous waters here. I’m no US apologist. This country has crimes it will have to answer for. And the biggest one may be allowing this globalist assholes to corrupt it nearly beyond repair. But don’t let that blind you to what’s really happening.

The important thing I keep trying to point out that thinking in terms of ‘country’ is ultimately the wrong lens to view these people’s actions. Factions are the better lens. Factions cross political borders.

Only when we’re talking about the people and elections do countries matter here and how they interact with these factions.

I’ll leave you with that and echo Bernard at MoA…. now draw your own conclusions.

*  *  *

Join my Patreon if your faction is in trouble

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

I have noted in the past that criminals tend to brag about their criminality when they believe there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Frankly, in their narcissism many of them can’t help but revel in the moment and let everyone know how “superior” they are to the rest of us. We witnessed many moments like this from elitists within globalists institutions the past couple of years at the height of the pandemic pandemonium.

There were people like the globalist academics at MIT proclaiming that we were “never going back to normal” and that we were going to have to accept the loss of many of our freedoms for the rest of our lives in order to combat the spread of covid. There were people like Klaus Schwab declaring the beginning of the “Great Reset” and the launch of what the Davos crowd calls the “4^th Industrial Revolution.” There have also been MANY political leaders like Joe Biden that strut around on the media stage accusing ideological opponents (conservatives mostly) of being “enemies of democracy.”

If their vision of “democracy” is medical tyranny and the forced expansion of cultural Marxism, or if their idea of democracy is government cooperation with corporate monopoly and the erasure of our country’s founding principles, then yes, I suppose I am indeed an enemy of “democracy.”

The globalists were really basking in the glow of their assumed victory. They thought they had us peasants by the scruff of the neck and that their agenda was all but assured. But as I have been arguing since last year, the money elites may have celebrated a little too early.

The covid agenda utterly failed if the goal was to implement longstanding mandates and restrictions across North America and Europe. If you want to know what success for the globalists would have looked like, just examine China with its endless lockdown cycles and digital vaccine passports. The elites wanted that outcome for the west and they didn’t get it. They came close, but millions of Americans, Canadians and Europeans stood their ground and the cost to force us into compliance would have been too great.

Even Joe Biden has openly admitted that the pandemic is over. They dropped the mandates because they knew if it came to war, they would lose.

If the goal of the pandemic fear factory was simply to get the population injected with the mRNA vaccines, here they also failed. With many states in the US 40% unvaxxed (according to official numbers) and many parts of the world with large unvaxxed populations, there is a massive control group for the covid vaccines. If there are going to be constantly developing health problems associated the mRNA vax (like Myocarditis) then the public is going to know what caused them because of this control group. The globalists needed near-100% vaccination and they did not get it. Not even close.

There is no escape for them – They greatly overestimated the public’s apathy when it comes to authoritarianism. The rebellion is too large and they will eventually be held accountable for their trespasses.

Case in point: The latest election in Italy has resulted in a landslide win for the conservative coalition and the new prime minister (and first woman prime minister), Georgia Meloni, gave a rousing victory speech this week which directly exposed the far-left invasion of western nations, globalism and the poisonous collusion with woke corporations to silence dissent. She called for a return to freedom, and what was the mainstream media response? They are calling her a “fascist.”

The Italian election is just a small part of an ongoing trend, an awakening of the people to the imminent threats presented by globalists, and the globalists can’t stop it.

The fear among them is palpable. Anti-globalism is now going mainstream, and as it does people are going to start looking for answers. Why have our economic conditions been so degraded? Why are we facing stagflationary crisis? Why are prices on everything continuing to climb? Why did we almost lose all of our civil liberties in the name of fighting a virus with a tiny 0.23% official median Infection Fatality Rate? Why are pointless carbon controls being instituted in the middle of a supply chain crisis? Why are politicians and banks making everything so much worse?

The public outcry for a reckoning is growing and it’s the heads of globalists that will end up on the chopping block. All roads to destruction lead back to them and the policies they have forced upon the populace.

Of course, when criminals feel like they are being cornered they will sometimes set fires and take hostages in a last ditch effort to stay alive and slip through the net. I believe we are closing in on that stage of this terrible drama. It’s important to accept the conditions of the battlefield as they are and not underestimate the enemy. The truth is, globalists have extensive means at their disposal to wreak havoc and they have already set some of these disasters in motion.

As I warned many years ago (way back in 2017 in my article ‘The Economic End Game Continues’), tensions with eastern nations are being used to diminish the role of the US dollar as the world reserve currency and the petro currency. The conflict is also causing resource shortages and supply chain weakness, not to mention an energy crisis in Europe that is now irreversible with the sabotage of the Nord pipelines.

I also predicted in 2017 that the Federal Reserve would repeat a pattern of raising interest rate into severe economic weakness causing increased economic turmoil. They used a very similar tactic at the onset of the Great Depression, which former federal reserve chairman Ben Bernanke openly admitted was the cause of the long term deflationary collapse.

From my article in 2017:

“The changing of the Fed chair is absolutely meaningless as far as policy is concerned. Jerome Powell will continue the same exact initiatives as Yellen; stimulus will be removed, rates will be hiked and the balance sheet will be reduced, leaving the massive market bubble the Fed originally created vulnerable to implosion.

An observant person…might have noticed that central banks around the world seem to be acting in a coordinated fashion to remove stimulus support from markets and raise interest rates, cutting off supply lines of easy money that have long been a crutch for our crippled economy.”

The Bank for International Settlement’s, the central bank of central banks and the institution that writes global policy initiatives for all other member banks, called for MORE rate hikes last week. Aside from a minor intervention by the Bank of England, the evidence shows that the globalists WANT a crash and are engineering conditions of instability. They set up the dominoes in advance and now they have decided to knock them down. I think this is a fail-safe; a panic trigger in the event that they did not get the control they wanted from the covid pandemic.

They will blame Russia, they will blame China, they will blame conservatives, they will blame anything and anyone besides themselves in an attempt to divert public attention away from the international banking actions that created the crash conditions in the first place. We can’t let them. Whatever happens next, it is vital that people remember who really did this to us and who needs to be punished.

Over the course of the next couple of years the establishment power brokers are going to attempt to use a chaos screen in order to sow seeds of fear in the population. They are going to try to exploit that fear to gain even more centralized governance and change the very foundations of our society while suffocating what’s left of our liberties. It’s the only play they have left, but at least we now know for certain that there are millions of us out there – millions of people that will not comply and that will fight back. And, we know that the globalists are afraid; if they weren’t then they would not be falling back to such drastic measures.

Last year was a difficult period for many people, and as Gallup’s latest Negative Experience Index indicates, unhappiness continued to rise worldwide in 2021, “as the world overall became a sadder, more worried and more stressed-out place”.

But, as Statista’s Martin Armstrong details below, in two countries – Afghanistan and Lebanon – more people were living in misery than anywhere else on the planet.

In the 2021 survey, the two countries recorded the two highest scores in the world on the index, which is based on people’s daily experiences of sadness, stress, worry, anger and physical pain. Higher scores on the index mean more of a population is experiencing these emotions.

You will find more infographics at Statista

As summarized by Gallup, “most of the countries with the highest scores on the Negative Experience Index were contending with some type of economic or political instability in 2021”.

On Afghanistan specifically:

“When Gallup surveyed Afghanistan as the Taliban retook control last year and as the U.S. withdrew its troops, Afghans’ emotional state reflected the chaos and uncertainty. 80% of Afghans were worried, 74% were stressed, and 61% were sad.”

Tellingly, “no other population in the world has ever reported feeling this worried in the history of Gallup’s trend.”

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Twitter temporarily suspended the popular Libs of TikTok account on Sept. 25, which boasts of around 1.4 million followers, accusing the account of propagating “hateful conduct policy.”

In a blog post on Sept. 29, Libs of TikTok stated that Twitter had wrongly imposed a seven-day suspension as a result of a “targeted harassment campaign from the Left” to deplatform the account. “The truth is I haven’t engaged in hateful conduct. I’ve just exposed the Left’s depravity by reporting the facts. There’s no rule against that, so they have to make up violations I’ve never committed. But I’m not taking it lying down. I’ve vowed to sue Twitter if they permanently suspend me, and I meant it,” the post said.

Libs of TikTok is run by former real estate worker Chaya Raichick. The post goes on to point out that a lawsuit against Twitter will be “extremely expensive” and that litigation could drag on for months and years.

To support Libs of TikTok’s fight against Twitter, a legal fund has been established whereby donors can send tax-deductible donations to cover legal fees and other expenses involved in the lawsuit.

The Twitter page of Libs of TikTok (LOTT) is currently accessible publicly. However, the last post on the account was made on Sept. 25.

On Sept. 27, Envisage Law, which is representing Libs of TikTok, sent a letter to Vijaya Gadde, the head of legal, policy, and trust at Twitter, asking that the platform reinstate their client’s account.

“Many Americans are tired of listening to your company talk the talk of free expression while walking the walk of censorship,” the letter said.

“If Twitter refuses to live up to its own words and aspirations and permanently bans our client’s account, LOTT will have no choice but to ask a court to order Twitter to live up its own statements.”

Censoring Content

In the letter to Twitter, Envisage points out that this is the “second wrongful suspension” of their client’s account. The law firm had written a similar letter to the company on Sept. 1, when LOTT was earlier suspended.

In the letter of Sept. 27, Envisage affirmed that though their client’s reporting might be “offensive” to some Twitter users, this is not sufficient enough to cut LOTT from the platform. Similar to the last suspension, Twitter failed to specify which LOTT content is blamed for violating the platform’s “hateful conduct policy.”

The law firm pointed out that Twitter has sent emails to LOTT on “numerous occasions” in the past, saying that the account’s posts did not violate its harmful conduct policy. The letter contained images of LOTT content that Twitter reviewed and concluded, and subsequently decided were not “subject to removal” under the company’s rules.

LOTT’s most recent reporting is not “materially different” from any of its earlier posts. At the same time, Twitter’s speech code has not changed, the law firm noted.

The letter cites a recent case, NetChoice LLC v. Paxton, in which the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas rejected the notion that “corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say.”

“Twitter’s current censorship of LOTT violates Texas House Bill 20 and, if necessary, our client will not hesitate to seek injunctive relief under this statute if Twitter permanently suspends LOTT’s account,” the law firm warned.

Texas House Bill 20 prohibits large social media platforms from censoring users in Texas based on their viewpoints, unless such viewpoints are considered illegal according to federal law or if it falls into exempted categories.