Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of Google's video platform YouTube, was awarded the Freedom Forum Institute's 'Free Expression Award' on Friday in a ceremony sponsored by her own company - despite YouTube's track record of censorship.

In the digital awards ceremony, YouTube video creator Molly Burke praised Wojcicki as a free speech leader before the YouTube CEO detailed in her acceptance speech how much the platform censors its users.


"The freedoms we have, we really can't take for granted," Wojcicki declared, adding that "we really have to make sure we're protecting them in every way possible."


Wojcicki, however, went on to argue that "we also need to make sure there are limits," and revealed that the company removed nine million videos in the last quarter, 90% of which were taken down by machines.

She also said there is "a lot of content that technically meets the spirit of what we're trying to do, but it is borderline, and so for that content we will just reduce - meaning we're not going to recommend it to our users."



Social media users mocked the irony of Wojcicki receiving an award for free speech, and the video of the ceremony on YouTube had garnered more than 400 dislikes and just one like at the time of writing.

Amazing news over the week-end: President Lukashenko has declared that Biden gave the order to kill him in a coup organized by the CIA. Now, we all know that Lukashenko says all sorts of things, many of them false or plain silly. Except that the Russian FSB has confirmed it all! According to the Russians, a joint operation of the (Bielorussian) KGB and the Russian FSB has uncovered the plot early on and the Russians monitored the full operation until they had enough evidence to arrest all the plotters. Not only do the Russians have videos of their meetings, they also intercepted their Zoom videoconferences (Zoom users, use Jitsi instead!).

So far so good. But it gets better!

Unlike the US/UK and others, the Russian FSB did not say that they were "confident" that it was "highly likely" that this operation took place. They released all the footage of a meeting of the plotters in Moscow which confirms it all (I don't have the time to translate that footage, but I am confident that somebody will - if you come across an English language translation, please post it in the comments section below!).

One not familiar with such operations might be baffled over why this meeting took place in Moscow and not in Warsaw or Riga. There are several reasons for that:

• There is a practically open border between Belarus and Russia, which form "а unified state", and there is nothing easier for the (supposed) Bielorussian traitors (from the military) to jump in a car and get to Moscow.
• Using Warsaw or Riga would dramatically reduce what the CIA calls "plausible deniability" for the US and NATO.
• Yes, meeting in Moscow was still stupid, but no more stupid than the failed US coup to do to Maduro when the US did exactly what they tried to do to Lukashenko. The fact that both operations failed is par for the course for the (mostly clueless) CIA.
• The main plotter, a very well-known anti-Lukashenko activist, is a double national Bielorussian and US American and for him to move to Minsk for that meeting would be very dangerous.
• Last, but not least, the Bielorussian KGB operates in a very tightly controlled Bielorussian society whereas Russian is an open and liberal society, so one could have (mistakenly) thought that a meeting in Moscow would have been a better idea.

Interesting story, no?

The woke revolution in the classroom is about to go federal. In an early but revelatory move, President Biden's Department of Education has signaled its intent to impose the most radical forms of Critical Race Theory on America's schools, very much including the 1619 Project and the so-called anti-racism of Ibram X. Kendi. (Kendi's "anti-racism" — which advocates a massive and indefinite expansion of reverse discrimination — is more like neo-racism.) Biden is obviously co-opting conservatives' interest in reviving traditional U.S. history and civics to deliver its perfect opposite — federal imposition of the very ideas conservatives aim to combat.

Biden's Department of Education has just released the text of a proposed new rule establishing priorities for grants in American History and Civics Education programs. That rule gives priority to grant "projects that incorporate racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse perspectives." The rule goes on to cite and praise the New York Times' "landmark" 1619 Project, as well as the work of Critical Race Theorist Kendi, as leading examples of the sort of ideas the Biden administration wants to spread.

Strategic Context

All of Europe is discussing Czechia's surprise decision to expel a whopping 18 Russian diplomats on alleged espionage pretexts as well as their curious claims that Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov of Skripal saga infamy were behind an accidental 2014 munitions depot explosion in the country. This follows hot on the heels of the US imposing its most intense sanctions against Russia since 2018, which itself occurred within the context of Ukraine's unprovoked US-backed military escalation in Donbass. I posited that the purpose of the latter is actually to manufacture the political conditions whereby Europe's possibly impending large-scale purchase of Sputnik V might become impossible, thereby indefinitely prolonging America's fading hegemony over the continent seeing as how close epidemiological cooperation between Russia and the EU could in theory create the opportunity for an incipient rapprochement between them. I elaborated on this in my relevant analysis asking, "Are Vaccines The Real Driving Force Behind The Latest Donbass Destabilization?"

Twenty Czech diplomats have been declared personae non-gratae and must now leave Russia before the end of April 19, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Sunday, a day after Czech officials expelled 18 diplomats to Moscow.

Earlier on Sunday, the Czech ambassador to Moscow, Vítezslav Pivonka, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry, which expressed a "strong protest" over Prague's actions this weekend. Citing allegations of the involvement of the Russian intelligence in a 2014 blast at a military depot in the Czech Republic, which was initially thought to be an accident, the Czech government ordered 18 Russian diplomats out of the country. The decision was announced on Saturday by Prime Minister Andrej Babis and Foreign Minister Jan Hamacek.

The envoy was also informed that 20 staff members of the Czech embassy in Moscow would have to leave Russia by the end of Monday, April 19. Reports in the media on Saturday cited diplomatic sources as having said that a proportionate retaliation from Moscow would effectively shut down the embassy, but it was not immediately clear how severely the work of the diplomatic mission has actually been affected.

Notably, the diplomatic scandal rocked Czech-Russian relations on the eve of FM Hamacek's scheduled visit to Moscow, where he was to have discussed the possible purchase of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine.

Unless the world wants to see loved ones "burned alive in a nuclear holocaust," politicians should cut out the "macho" act and begin to deescalate. That's according to former US congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, a US Army veteran.

Speaking to Tucker Carlson on Fox News on Thursday, Gabbard said the American people must decide if they're willing to go to war with Russia on behalf of Ukraine. If not - the rhetoric must be toned down.

"Such a war would come at a cost beyond anything we can really imagine. This is something that will directly impact...every single one of your viewers. It is a war in which there are no winners."

"Never let a good conspiracy theory go to waste" seems to be a motto in Washington, which went full BlueAnon to create a pretext for sanctioning Russia, long after that canard created to oust Donald Trump had served its purpose.

Announcing a series of anti-Russian measures - incorrectly called "sanctions" - last week, President Joe Biden claimed Moscow is engaging in

"efforts to undermine the conduct of free and fair democratic elections and democratic institutions in the United States and its allies and partners."

A White House "fact sheet" also spoke of "Russian government-directed attempts to influence the 2020 US presidential election, and other acts of disinformation and interference" and claimed the US seeks to "disrupt the coordinated efforts of Russian officials, proxies, and intelligence agencies to delegitimize our electoral process."

Look, here's the deal - to borrow a phrase from Biden himself - the only one doing the delegitimizing here are Americans themselves. It wasn't 'Russia' that declared the 2020 election was the "most secure... in American history." It wasn't the Kremlin that claimed absolutely nothing had gone wrong with any votes anywhere, and anyone so much as wondering about it was evil and ought to be silenced - it was the corporate media and Biden's Democrats. And it wasn't VK or Telegram that rushed to do the silencing, but the very American-owned Facebook, Twitter and Google.

While in Minnesota it took mere hours to charge former police officer Kimberly Potter with manslaughter in the shooting of wanted Daunte Wright, the Biden Justice Department closed the investigation into the death of unarmed former service member Ashli Babbitt.

Biden's Justice Department announced Wednesday it closed the investigation into Babbitt's homicide, which took place inside the Capitol during the riot on January 6.

Babbitt, who was unarmed, was shot and killed by a plainclothes Capitol Police officer as she climbed through a broken window, per the Gateway Pundit.

The Justice Department said that shooting her without a warning was appropriate. The statement reads:

"The investigation revealed no evidence to establish that, at the time the officer fired a single shot at Ms. Babbitt, the officer did not reasonably believe that it was necessary to do so in self-defense or in defense of the Members of Congress and others evacuating the House Chamber. Acknowledging the tragic loss of life and offering condolences to Ms. Babbitt's family, the U.S. Attorney's Office and U.S. Department of Justice therefore closed the investigation into this matter."

Despite an increasingly tense relationship, the U.S. and China agreed Saturday to work together to tackle global climate change, including by "raising ambition" for emissions cuts during the 2020s — a key goal of the Biden administration.

Why it matters

The joint communique released Saturday evening commits the world's two largest emitters of greenhouse gases to work together to keep the most ambitious temperature target contained in the Paris Climate Agreement viable by potentially taking additional emissions cuts prior to 2030.

• In addition, the document leaves open the possibility that the U.S. and China can act jointly on climate change while having strong disagreements on trade, technology, and national security issues, though how far this cooperation can extend remains to be seen.

With both India and Turkey cracking down on bitcoin, is China set to warm to the cryptocurrency that it has been waging a not so quiet capital control war with for the past four years? In a dramatic and material shift in Beijing's tone after a crackdown on cryptocurrency issuance and trading nearly four years ago, CNBC reported that China's central bank is now calling bitcoin an "investment alternative."

Industry insiders called the comments "progressive" and are watching closely for any regulatory changes made by the People's Bank of China.

"We regard Bitcoin and stablecoin as crypto assets ... These are investment alternatives," Li Bo, deputy governor of the PBOC, said on Sunday during a panel hosted by CNBC at the Boao Forum for Asia.

"They are not currency per se. And so the main role we see for crypto assets going forward, the main role is investment alternative" he added.

Whereas back in 2017, China was the world's largest buyers of bitcoin as local savers and speculators used crypto to bypass China's great capital firewall, Beijing promptly cracked down on this practice and not only banned so-called initial coin offerings but also shut down local cryptocurrency exchanges. The moves were prompted by concerns about financial stability. As a result, most of the recent activity has been driven by the US, not Asia... but that could soon change.