Ex-Kazakh security chief arrested on suspicion of 'high treason'

Recently sacked head of the national security agency is among detainees

Karim Masimov, the former chief of Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee (KNB) was arrested earlier this week along with other unidentified suspects as part of a probe into “high treason,” the security agency said on Saturday.

The KNB had launched a pre-trial investigation on January 6, it said in a statement, adding that its former chairman, Masimov, and others had been arrested and placed in pre-trial detention on the same day. The agency provided no further details on the case, citing the ongoing investigation.

A veteran politician, Masimov, had served as the head of the KNB from 2016 almost until his detention. He was sacked by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on January 5, amid an outbreak of violence in Kazakhstan’s largest city, Almaty, where rioters stormed and ransacked government buildings and set them on fire.

Over the past week, Kazakhstan has seen unprecedented protests, which were sparked by surging fuel prices. The demonstrations turned violent and quickly spiraled into large-scale riots that affected several of the nation’s regions. The riots, which Kazakh officials blamed on “bandits and terrorists,” have resulted in dozens being killed, both civilians and law enforcement agents. Almost 4,000 people had been detained as of Friday.

On Friday, Tokayev claimed that constitutional order had been “mainly restored” in all the regions. Earlier, a former aide to Kazakhstan’s first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, said the crisis had been prompted by a number of high-ranking officials, including security officers, whom he accused of “betraying” the nation.

The aide, Ermukhamet Ertysbayev, who also once served as the culture minister, described the violent riots as a “coup attempt” and an “armed insurrection” that would have been impossible without there having been “treason by top government and law enforcement officials.” He did not name any individual in particular, however.

Masimov himself was a close ally of Nazarbayev. He served as the nation’s prime minister twice – between 2007 and 2012 as well as between 2014 and 2016 – and headed up the presidential office between 2012 and 2014.

Meanwhile, the KNB has dismissed reports about the arrest of Masimov’s first deputy, Lieutenant General Samat Abish. The agency called such reports a “provocation.” Abish is Nazarbayev’s nephew.

https://www.rt.com/russia/545442-kazakhstan-security-chief-arrested-treason/

Twitter suspends conservative pundit over transgender tweets

The ban will be lifted only when the tweets in question are deleted

Conservative pundit and Daily Wire podcaster Matt Walsh announced on Friday night that he had been suspended from Twitter over tweets claiming there were only two genders, and suggesting trans women dominate women in competition.

Walsh announced that he’d been notified of the suspension only minutes before a segment on Fox News’ ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’, telling Carlson, “I just found out five minutes ago, just before we went on the air, that I just got suspended on Twitter because I pointed out that biological males are men.”

Walsh’s tweets did not name anyone specifically, but referenced multiple transgender people who he says he refuses to refer to as women, despite that being their preferred pronouns and gender identity.

“The greatest female Jeopardy champion of all time is a man,” Walsh tweeted in one of the flagged tweets. “The top female college swimmer is a man. The first female four star admiral in the Public Health Service is a man. Men have dominated female high school track and the female MMA circuit. The patriarchy wins in the end.”

https://www.rt.com/news/545462-matt-walsh-twitter-suspension/

FEC data show Twitter employees made 99% of political donations to Democrats, Google employees were at 94%

Nearly all of the political donations made by Twitter and Google employees went to Democrats in 2021, according to data from the Federal Elections Commission.

Google employees gave $652,600 to Democrats and only $37,700 to Republicans, which means that 94% of political donations went to Democrats, according to FEC records.

Twitter employees made 561 contributions totaling $14,848.98 through ActBlue, an online payment processor for the Democrat Party. There were a mere eight donations made to Republicans through the GOP fundraising platform WinRed, according to FEC data. A whopping 99% of political donations made by Twitter employees in 2021 went to Democrats, the New York Post reported.

According to FEC data, Twitter chief financial officer Ned Segal donated $5,800 — the maximum legal donation an individual can give — to Democratic Pennsylvania Rep. Conor Lamb.

Seksom Suriyapa — who was until recently the vice president and head of corporate development and strategy for Twitter — donated the legal maximum to Democratic California Rep. Ro Khanna.

Twitter in-house attorney Evan Stern gave $2,900 to Democratic Arizona Sen. Mark Kelley, Democratic Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, and Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman — also a Democrat.

The largest donation that a Twitter worker gave to a Republican was $250 to anti-Trump Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) — who is one of only two Republicans on the House select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 — from former VP of finance Rich Sullivan.

"Their day to day actions also contribute to that political party,” the Media Research Center's Dan Gainor said of Twitter. "There was a time when you could give to one political party and still be fairhanded, but that time is long past."

Twitter has been accused of censoring conservatives and protecting Democrats.

Twitter has censored, suspended, or permanently banned conservatives or right-leaning individuals, including former President Donald Trump, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), Steven Crowder, Jason Whitlock, Allie Beth Stuckey, Matt Walsh, Dr. Robert Malone, Dave Portnoy, Milo Yiannopoulos, Gavin McInnes, and Alex Jones.

Twitter also locked the official account of the New York Post in an effort to censor the outlet's bombshell Hunter Biden story.

Yet, in June, Twitter argued that a free and open internet is "an essential human right in modern society."

Google has also been accused of big tech censorship, including censoring internet searches for "Kyle Rittenhouse" in the same way it bans Adolf Hitler and the Taliban.

YouTube — which is owned by Google's parent company, Alphabet — has demonetized and suspended Steven Crowder's YouTube account multiple times.

Earlier this week, Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky announced that he would stop posting almost all content on YouTube in an effort to fight big tech censorship.

The anti-Biden anthem "Let's Go Brandon" has been banned from YouTube and Instagram.

"From the top to the bottom, these companies are overwhelmingly liberal, overwhelmingly pro-Democrat," Gainor told Fox News. "At the top, they contribute to Democrat causes. At the bottom, they contribute to Democrat causes in overwhelming numbers."

https://www.theblaze.com/news/big-tech-donations-favor-democrats

https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?contributor_employer=Google&two_year_transaction_period=2022&min_date=01%2F01%2F2021&max_date=12%2F31%2F2022

After Testing it With COVID, Experts Weigh ‘Authoritarianism’ to Fight Climate Change Too

A recent study published in American Political Science Review, a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by Cambridge University, begins with a teasing question: “Is authoritarian power ever legitimate?”

For many, the answer is clearly no, concedes the study’s author—Ross Mittiga, an assistant professor of political theory at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. But Mittiga, in the abstract to the study, suggests otherwise:

“While, under normal conditions, maintaining democracy and rights is typically compatible with guaranteeing safety, in emergency situations, conflicts between these two aspects of legitimacy can and often do arise. A salient example of this is the COVID-19 pandemic, during which severe limitations on free movement and association have become legitimate techniques of government. Climate change poses an even graver threat to public safety. Consequently, I argue, legitimacy may require a similarly authoritarian approach.”

‘Explicitly Argues for Authoritarian Governance’?

The study caught the eye of Alexander Wuttke, a Twitter user who studies political behavior at the University of Mannheim in Germany.

“In my reading, it explicitly argues that we must put climate action over democracy and adopt authoritarian governance if democracies fail to act on climate change,” tweeted Wuttke.

In an extensive thread, Wuttke explained why he disagrees with Mittiga.

“I am genuinely puzzled about the origins of this anti-democratic intuition that seems to give rise to the entire endeavor of exploring whether we should sacrifice democracy for the sake of a higher good,” Wuttke says at one point. “The article argues that crises not only can legitimize but may require authoritarian governance. This is not true. Democracies have fought the pandemic without giving up being democratic.”

In a rare (and refreshing) display of civility for Twitter, Mittiga said he appreciated Wuttke’s thoughts and thanked him for “his good will in sharing these comments with me before posting.” In his own thread, Mittiga sought to address what he said were “several mischaracterizations or confusions” in Wuttke’s comments.

“The relevant question is not whether giving up democracy was somehow necessary for addressing the emergency (in this case, COVID-19). Clearly, it was not, and I certainly never suggest as much in the paper,” Mittiga explains at one point. “Rather, the real question — the one that gets at what I tried to argue — is whether democracies have addressed the emergency in purely democratic, rights-respecting ways. The answer is, of course, that they have not.”

https://thefreethoughtproject.com/after-testing-it-with-covid-experts-weigh-authoritarianism-to-fight-climate-change-too/

Chinese State Media Uses Times Square Screen to Play Xinjiang Propaganda

NEW YORK—Chinese state media Xinhua is running digital billboards in one of the world’s most coveted ad spaces to promote goods from Xinjiang amid rising global outcry over the regime’s campaign of repression in the region.

In New York City’s Times Square just before Christmas, a giant screen measuring about 64 feet high and 40 feet wide repeatedly played a video by Xinhua, depicting Shihezi, one of the largest cities in Xinjiang, as a thriving “green” city.

The 30-second video touted Shihezi as an “epitome” of China’s green development efforts, with “sweet fruits, intoxicating wines, a green city image, and a happy life of people,” according to a description from a Jan. 4 press release from Xinhua Screen Media Co.

“China’s Shihezi city delights Times Square with fruits of green development,” Xinhua stated in the press release.

Such portrayal stands in stark contrast with the regime’s human rights abuses in the region, which includes the detainment of an estimated 1 million Uyghurs in camps, where they are subjected to torture, forced labor, and political indoctrination.

Those concerns have led the United States and allies to stage a diplomatic boycott against Beijing’s 2022 Winter Olympics. The U.S. government, several Western parliaments, and an independent people’s tribunal have classified Beijing’s campaign as a genocide.

Presenting Shihezi as a “green city” against this backdrop feels ironic, according to Ilshat H. Kokbore, vice chair of the executive committee of advocacy group World Uyghur Congress. Kokbore worked as a college teacher in Shihezi for 15 years from 1988 to 2003.

The regime is trying to “whitewash the genocide accusation,” he told The Epoch Times. With the Olympics coming in just four weeks, any diplomatic recognition or praise from the West would equate to a “success” that Beijing could use to boost its legitimacy, he said.

https://www.ntd.com/chinese-state-media-uses-times-square-screen-to-play-xinjiang-propaganda_724848.html

Farage Backs Djokovic Against ‘Big, Bullying, Nasty Government’

Brexit champion Nigel Farage has backed tennis ace Novak Djokovic against “big, bullying, nasty government” in Australia, where the Serbian athlete is currently being detained in a hotel.

The world tennis number one, dubbed “Novax Djokovic” after appearing to express scepticism about coronavirus vaccines, travelled to the former British colony at the invitation of Tennis Australia to participate in the Australian Open with, he has argued, an exemption.

On arrival, however, he was detained by the Australian Border Force, and he will remain detained until at least Monday — already missing Orthodox Christmas on Friday, with the authorities refusing to allow a Serbian Orthodox priest to visit and bless him — when he will have an appeal hearing.

Farage, commenting on the situation on his personal YouTube page, insisted that the sportsman did have an exemption under the relevant regional rules and alleged that “big government, big, bullying nasty government [had] intervene[d], the federal government [went] over the top of Victoria state and Scott Morrison, the Prime Minister, [said] there must be no exemptions for anyone.”

“The most astonishing thing with all of this is how few people are prepared to speak out, how the broadcasters are making out that somehow Djokovic is a threat to public health — well, he absolutely isn’t,” Farage asserted, claiming that even if you have “one, two, three, or in Israel four injections” you are still at risk of catching and spreading the coronavirus.

The BBC, citing research published in The Lancet, did report in October that people “who have had two vaccine doses can be just as infectious as those who have not been jabbed”, although The Harvard Gazette reported in December that, per Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health research, “People who are vaccinated for SARS-CoV-2 but get breakthrough infections may be less likely to spread the virus because they shed it for a shorter period than unvaccinated people”.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/01/08/farage-backs-djokovic-against-big-bullying-nasty-government/