"Do you think it's a problem when major media corporations, Big Tech, academics, and NGOs get together in advance of a story in order to essentially create their own misinformation campaign ... not only that—somehow there's a connection to the highest reaches of the Intelligence Community, all the way up to Secretary of State [Antony] Blinken." In this episode, I sit down with Andrew Lowenthal, director of liber-net, an online platform promoting civil liberties and countering digital authoritarianism. "The civil society organizations who are receiving many millions, hundreds of millions of dollars to police disinformation need to switch from policing disinformation street crime to disinformation corporate crime," says Mr. Lowenthal. For over a decade, Mr. Lowenthal worked to foster online free expression in South Asia and combat disinformation from state actors. He witnessed first-hand how the very organizations in the West, once suspicious of government surveillance infrastructure, suddenly signed up to be part of it. Watch the clip: "This is the new weird world that we live in. Essentially, this kind-of neocon war on terror, [with a] massive amount of surveillance infrastructure that was built up, is then kind-of turned into this 'countering populism' infrastructure that the left, which previously were the people who were most suspicious of the war on terror and the various agencies that became extremely bloated under that banner, have now signed up to be to be part of," says Mr. Lowenthal. 🔴 WATCH the full episode (41 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S1209AndrewLowenthal FULL TRANSCRIPT Jan Jekielek: Andrew Lowenthal, so good to have you on American Thought Leaders. Andrew Lowenthal: Lovely to be here. Mr. Jekielek: Let's talk about the Westminster Declaration. Let's talk about free speech and the need for it in the first place. For full disclosure, we are both signatories. You contacted me about it some weeks back, and I'm very proud to be part of it. What is this all about? Mr. Lowenthal: The Westminster Declaration came out of a meeting that was called by Matt Taibbi, Michael Schellenberger, and myself, that occurred in London in June 2023. Essentially, it was a gathering of people from both the Left and the Right, however much those categories still make any sense, who retained a commitment to free speech and free expression, and were particularly concerned about the way in which anti-disinformation was being used as a cudgel for censorship. That's the main thrust of the declaration. It says that so much of this work is illegitimate and should be pushed back, and that we need free speech and free expression if we're going to maintain a free society. Mr. Jekielek: Malinformation is one of these words that is particularly pernicious. Basically, it's something that is true, but goes against the prevailing narrative. Mr. Lowenthal: It's information that is used in ways that someone else doesn't like. Mr. Jekielek: It is something that's officially prohibited in some places. Mr. Lowenthal: Yes, in terms of the full definition. At the same time, disinformation and misinformation have been very corrupted as terms. They have the same function as in the Virality Project, this so-called vaccine disinformation initiative run out of the Stanford Internet Observatory, which claimed that true stories of vaccine side effects should be considered misinformation. This was the advice they were giving to their seven Big Tech partners. Even the other words are being corrupted, and the whole conceptual framework is moot in many respects. Mr. Jekielek: You have been interested in the topic of disinformation for quite some time and you have recognized its ill effects. I was looking at communist China, and you were looking at other countries. Please tell us about how you came to be focused on issues of free speech. Mr. Lowenthal: In 2005, I founded an NGO [non-governmental organization] that predominantly worked in Southeast Asia, East Asia, and South Asia on issues of online free expression, online privacy, and other digital civil liberties issues. Because I'm from Australia, we are very focused on building bridges between Australia and Asia, and focusing on what was important around the new forms of human rights online that were emerging in the early 2000s as internet use was growing. We were working in Indonesia. I lived in Indonesia for five years and in Thailand for almost four years. I ran that NGO for almost 18 years. We were dealing with countries that had serious levels of repression of free speech, oftentimes dictatorships like Myanmar or Thailand. Everyone that we were working with would have identified as liberals and progressives interested in human rights, democracy, and free speech. There was not really ever a question around that. At some point, the question of disinformation began to pop up. It was real in the sense that there really were state actors like in the Philippines who were building online troll armies to distribute misinformation and disinformation online, trying to manipulate elections, decision-making, and public opinion. That was real, and is still real, and needs addressing. There were pernicious laws in Malaysia and Singapore where they would use fake news as a way, just as misinformation and disinformation are used now, to squash dissent. The progressive activists that we were working with in the NGOs knew that. They were campaigning against these fake news laws. Then I saw people in the West start getting into this new form of pro-content moderation. For someone in the Philippines or someone in Thailand to start saying, "You need to trust the government more to manage content on the internet," no one was thinking that was a good idea. There was this schism that started developing at the same time, because that NGO space is predominantly populated with people from the middle and upper middle class. They took on far too many of the ideas that the West was imparting to them, because the money was coming from the West and the big foundations that they were reliant on. Mr. Jekielek: Your nonprofit from the outside almost appears to be like many of these other nonprofits that exist right now in the name of making sure that good, accurate information is transmitted, but they are actually playing a kind of censorship role. Mr. Lowenthal: There are actually two things. My first organization was called EngageMedia, then I left and started this new entity called liber-net. With my previous organization that still exists today there were anti-disinformation initiatives that we participated in that still stand up. They were addressing troll armies in the Philippines that were clearly state-based manipulation of the public. Mr. Jekielek: That is similar to the infamous 50 Cent Army in communist China. Mr. Lowenthal: These things are real, but they totally overreached. They overreached partly because the culture changed, and people became more pro-censorship, and also because the philanthropy changed and started directing people more in this direction. Mr. Jekielek: At one point, you saw organizations that had been genuinely trying to foster free speech and expression become their own worst enemy. Mr. Lowenthal: I don't think they would definitely not see it as that. It depends who I'm holding in my mind and thinking of as an example. If I'm thinking of the local groups that I would've worked with in Indonesia, they would've thought, “No, we are combating state and corporate disinformation.” It has been much more in the West where the shift has occurred conceptually, where the policing of disinformation or the transparency and advocacy around it switched to from targeting the most powerful actors to essentially targeting everyday people.That's linked the massive amount of infrastructure that was built up during the war on terror which was about countering violent extremism, which then got hijacked to be about countering populism, and essentially got directed towards everyday people. That's why in Australia, for the Twitter Files that I did there, the Department of Home Affairs and its counterterrorism unit was dealing with an account with only 20 followers. What is that going to do? Why does it need to be doing that? It's completely off mission, at least based on the kind of outline that it gives to the general public. But internally, there was a massive cultural shift where this became acceptable and was driven by progressives, but started by neocons. This is the new weird world that we live in where this neocon war on terror with massive amounts of surveillance infrastructure is then turned into this countering-populism infrastructure. The Left, the people who were most suspicious of the war on terror, and the various agencies that became extremely bloated under that banner have now signed up to be part of it. Mr. Jekielek: Is it just about the money? You mentioned that the philanthropy groups changed their focus, saying, "We need you to do a little more of this instead. There's a few million dollars in there for you." That can mean a lot to a small nonprofit, whatever it is that they are working on. I'm wondering how much that created this effect, wherever it was. Mr. Lowenthal: It's not so much them saying, “We need you to do a little more of this instead.” You are presented with, "This is the new strategic plan of this foundation. We're working on climate change, anti-disinformation, and women's equality.” Then you get to choose which grant you apply for. If they were just freely handing out money to organizations, they would be doing something very, very different. But all philanthropy comes with strings attached. A lot more strings got put in place post-Trump and post-Brexit. The philanthropic sector freaked out and thought, "We can't be so hands-off when we give our money out." Obviously, there were always a certain amount of strings, but they decided they had to be much more focused on how the money they gave out was used. It became very targeted towards their specific objectives. Part of the panic was them thinking, "When we said free speech, we didn't mean that. We meant this." There was a lot of big ideology around the internet at the beginning that was extremely utopian, that essentially imagined what the internet looked like from the perspective of people from Harvard, Yale, and the West Coast, which doesn’t represent most people at all. Then the plebs got on the internet and they all freaked out and said, "Oh my God, we can't have this. This is not what we meant. We assumed there would be this civilizing process," I don't know why they thought a civilizing process would come along with this process of getting access to information. Then you saw a switch to, "There's an infodemic, it's dangerous, and we need better control.” There were problems, that was absolutely true. A certain number of people were concerned, and for good reasons. But then a certain number of people were saying, "We're losing political control here. This is very, very dangerous, and we need to do something." But then this becomes all mixed up. When you look at that diagram of the censorship industrial complex, every single organization, every single fact-checker, and every single university institute is not working for the man. There is a total mix. That's why it works in some ways, because there are people who are in there doing work that very directly contradicts the actual aims of what anti-disinformation should be. For example, there is the Virality Project, which calls true stories misinformation. Then there are legitimate groups that might be a local organization in the Philippines who are combating these troll armies that are created by political parties or the government. But it's all going into one blob. Teasing it out is quite difficult to do. Who is a legitimate actor, and who is an illegitimate actor? Sometimes they might be swapping back and forth on the same day and have some staff that are doing quite legitimate work and other staff who are doing very politicized work. Mr. Jekielek: I'm very familiar with the German Marshall Fund, which still exists in the U.S. They had a program doing this kind of stuff, but they also had a whole bunch of programs that are very useful. Mr. Lowenthal: There needs to be a legitimate basis for what these organizations are doing. They can't call themselves the Global Censorship Project. They need to be tasked with a mission that ordinary people, well-intentioned people can get on board with, like if your mission is to stop the next Christchurch massacre. That is a well-intentioned and good idea. Mr. Jekielek: Everyone would be on board with that. Mr. Lowenthal: Who would not want to do that? But the problem is that it gets chipped away and chipped away, and then at some point starts accelerating dramatically. I would say it was around Covid. Some people might say it was Russiagate or before, but certainly around Covid there was… an uptick would be an absolute understatement. The sector that I was part of is dedicated to online free expression and gets hundreds of millions of dollars across hundreds or thousands of different NGOs, and not just organizations looking at anti disinformation. They're organizations that are tasked with protecting free expression online. That is their remit. I can count on one hand the number of organizations from that sector who put their hands up during Covid and said, "This is censoring the idea that there might have been a lab leak, or how effective is masking, or do the vaccines stop transmission?" Almost none of them touched any of it, but we did. At EngageMedia, we did something modest because it was very difficult to even get my staff on board with what was going on. That would probably have changed now, but back then this was a collapse. When we talk about a collapse of institutions, there was this massive sector that is still there, who was meant to be looking out for free expression online, and who failed. Mr. Jekielek: Actually, it was worse than failing. Mr. Lowenthal: It was worse than failing. Lots of them became part of the apparatus of censorship. My connection there was that I could see during Covid that something wasn't quite right. I had been doing work around media censorship propaganda for more than 25 years. I probably read Manufacturing Consent when I was 19-years-old. Something was just a bit weird. This was not Iraq WMD [weapons of mass destruction]-type public opinion management. This was something new, and it was something online. There were different things going on that were much more difficult to understand. I had this sense that something wasn't quite right, so I also knew when to look. When I came on board to work with Matt Taibbi on the Twitter Files, the reason that he brought me on was essentially because I personally knew a lot of the people that were leaders in this so-called anti-disinformation field. I knew who was connected to who, all the different funders, and where the meetings happened. But at the same time, my mind was blown. To find them so ascendant into the center of this new system of public opinion management was also mind-blowing, and to see the connections with the intelligence community, or to see a so-called anti-misinformation organization like First Draft, who actually co-coined the disinformation framework, participating in the Aspen Institute's Hunter Biden laptop tabletop exercise two months before anyone apart from the Trump campaign team and the FBI knew about the laptop. Somehow, the Aspen Institute managed to put together this exercise with the New York Times, with Rolling Stone, with CNN, with the Washington Post, with Twitter, and with Facebook. Mr. Jekielek: We weren't invited for some reason. Mr. Lowenthal: You were not. I saw the email and you were not on there. Next time. Mr. Jekielek: This particular instance is telling, because early on it was obvious that this was real. For years, there were incredible amounts of disinformation repeatedly fed into the system. Does everybody now understand that it's real? Mr. Lowenthal: Yes and no. For example, a couple of months ago, I went to the 25th anniversary event of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. I was a fellow there for a couple of years, and I met people who thought that it was just a crazy conspiracy theory of their mom who had gone a bit QAnon. That's what they thought. Mr. Jekielek: They still believe that. Mr. Lowenthal: These are very intelligent people who have affiliations to Harvard University. It's probably not that surprising for many people. But other people were clued in and were actually quite encouraging in other regards. But everyone was very quiet and not willing to speak up, which is also part of where we are in these times. A lot of people in the liberal space haven't received the memo. Actually, there's a lot of people who still think it's a conspiracy theory, so there's a lot of work to be done, essentially. To them that justifies that it should be suppressed. I would talk to people, who said in a Sam Harris kind of way, “I'm okay with that because Trump was such an existential threat, and therefore it's justified.” But most people can see that the Aspen Institute's tabletop exercise was extremely egregious. You can ask them, "How did they know there was a laptop to do this? Do you think it's a problem when major media corporations, Big Tech, academics, and NGOs get together in advance of a story in order to essentially create their own misinformation campaign?” Not only that, somehow there's a connection to the highest reaches of the intelligence community all the way up to Secretary of State Blinken, and to this letter of the 50-plus former intelligence officers who said, "Classic earmarks of a Russian disinformation operation." You have a top to bottom situation, and what do you want to call it? Mr. Jekielek: Coordination. Mr. Lowenthal: Coordination is probably the politest word. At the same time, someone like Antony Blinken will be platformed at major events in this online human rights sector. There's actually an event called RightsCon, which I once actually co-organized with the NGO that runs it, that platformed Antony Blinken and Nobel Prize winner Maria Ressa in a session on disinformation at what would be the world's most important conference about human rights on the internet. Now, that tells me something is very, very rotten in Denmark. Mr. Jekielek: But why? Mr. Lowenthal: There has been a lot of capture. The money that has flowed into the sector has steered it in particular ways. This sector was the kind of place where Edward Snowden was celebrated. In that sector where I was, everyone thought Edward Snowden was great. He was defending freedom. He was trying to stop mass surveillance and push back against the administrative state. This was great. Then someone got the memo and said, "This can't be the culture of the internet freedom community. We've got to tailor and shift it somehow." That came from philanthropy, and it came from powerful state actors as well. It's a lot of money that the United States government gives directly to internet freedom, which comes out of this Clinton doctrine around internet freedom. Around 2010, Hillary Clinton actually had quite a good speech about freedom online, and said something to the effect of, "Just because someone's feelings might be hurt, or there's difficulties and challenges with free expression, it doesn't mean we should give up these American values. This is the reason we're fighting the war on terror.” That is just an absolute contrast with the kind of people who are now the mascots of this work, like Jacinda Ardern, who says, "We will continue to be your single source of truth." There are basically inorganic and organic elements to that. You can see in the Twitter Files and all through this Aspen Institute tabletop there is coordination between state actors, the nonprofit sector, and academia. Do we need to know exactly what the mix of inorganic and organic is? It probably would be helpful to a degree, but we can clearly state that it's there and that it's happening. Mr. Jekielek: Whatever mechanisms you create, someone's going to take advantage of those, and sometimes it will be the person you align with, and other times it will not. Why don't we create things with resilient structures that can overcome that? That idea is very central to the Westminster Declaration. Mr. Lowenthal: Yes, absolutely. At the same time, I wouldn't say it's a free speech absolutist declaration, either. That’s not what you're saying, but some people might interpret it that way. It looks to both Article 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the First Amendment, because those two things appeal to different people, and they're both useful in terms of what we can draw on. Where the boundary sits is always the conversation. The forever conversation around free speech is, “Where is the line?” The internet has changed that because it has changed the way that we express ourselves and it can be weaponized. But just as free speech can be weaponized, censorship, content moderation, disinformation can also be weaponized. We need to work out quite quickly what the new configuration is, because clearly what's happening now is not working. It was a disaster during Covid. We would have got such better results from our leaders, and we would have held these huge mega-corporations to account much more easily and more quickly had we had our free speech rights intact. Literally, if you want to talk about safety, it actually was a question of safety. People engaged, they took jabs, they lost businesses, or they suffered from mental health issues, which was all about their safety and well-being. The things that were proposed to them or mandated to them as behaviors that they must adhere to oftentimes put them in danger and didn't keep them safe. Free speech would have actually protected us from these depredations of the state and corporate power. There needs to be a new playing field created that fosters massive amounts of extremely rapid innovation in the online world that will meet the needs of the market for free speech. Mr. Jekielek: One of our partners, Gan Jing World, is trying to create a clean system, which fosters freedom of speech, but no pornography. There are very specific limits outlined to encourage people to participate. The behemoths, as you called them, have become very big. There's a lot of antitrust legislation that the U.S. has ignored for a long time. Some of these behemoths are larger than certain countries at the moment. Mr. Lowenthal: Without major political change, it's not possible to break them up. There's a cozy relationship and there's this agreement where, "We won't break you up and overregulate you, but you've got to do this for us." Essentially, it’s a quasi-monopoly situation that is working for big government and Big Tech. Someone has to get in there, be an actual disruptor, and create space for 1,000 different platforms. Mr. Jekielek: It's not really just a censorship industrial complex. The term I like to use is the perceived consensus manufacturing complex. Mr. Lowenthal: Yes. Because it's not only about censorship, it's also about putting bad information, malinformation, and disinformation into the system. It's about downranking information that is unhelpful to them. Walter Kirn uses this amazing metaphor about making a mixtape and pushing a bit of the treble up, and bringing the bass down, and essentially mixing reality. Mr. Jekielek: Imagine having those dials in your hands. That is an unbelievable amount of power that you could wield without people noticing, in many cases. Zach Voorhees, one of the Google whistleblowers, came out with documents where they talked about machine learning fairness. For example, if you searched for American inventors on Google, you would get a disproportionate number of female and black inventors. The reason was, since a lot of the greatest inventors in the past were white men, the ideological injection here was to be fair to everyone. As a concept, we're talking about this ability to dial up certain things, but also to inject entirely new visions of reality. Mr. Lowenthal: Absolutely. Every day I'm constantly surprised that people never imagine that this might be used by people for purposes that they're against. Maybe a Trump manager in that space might say, "Let's dial down the black, the Latino, and the women. White men have been unfairly treated this last decade. Let's rebalance it again by overcompensating and therefore excluding certain people." This is a bad system all round. You don't want that. You always want some level of interpretation. But what was so great about the way that it worked earlier on is that it just expressed what the people online were recognizing. Maybe there was some bias there, but you didn't manipulate it by changing the algorithm. You go and do a documentation project on black female inventors, and you build a website about them. If people find that interesting, and follow it, and link to it, then it will come up higher in the search results. But you don't change the recipe and say, "We're just going to dial up and down whatever we think appeals to us at this particular time, for what this particular group of people thinks is important." Because it can go the other way, and we're seeing that now. So again, the shoe is going to be on the other foot. That is why we had free speech in the first place, to recognize we're not building a system for one team or the other. We're building a system for the umpire. We're building a system of rules so that we have a game that we all agree on, and all agree how we're going to play it. We don't keep trying to put a blue or a red jumper on the umpire. Mr. Jekielek: The idea is to let the best ideas rise to the top. Mr. Lowenthal: Yes. We'll have a system that is going to enable the best ideas to rise to the top. It is one that does not manipulate, and essentially leaves it to people's personal initiative to advocate for things that are important for them. People used to be very excited about the wisdom of crowds before the crowds became mobs. Mr. Jekielek: The Westminster Declaration has been published for a while, and there has been some interest. What do you hope to accomplish? What do you think the value is here? Mr. Lowenthal: It's a tool or it's kind of a banner or a standard that people can look to and say, "This is how we think we should approach this.” By having a large number of very prominent people signed up, it gains recognition and legitimacy. There's obviously been other letters in the past like the Harper's Letter, but this is quite different. Harper's Letter was more, "Hey, everyone, be nicer to each other and let each other speak." Whereas, this is much more specific about the problem of misinformation and disinformation or the overuse of hate speech, and how the technology itself is impacting free speech. It's much more a declaration that's linked to these times around Covid and what happened with platform manipulation and censorship. I hope that it will be a tool for people to say, "This is what we want. This is the standard that we want to see happen. This is what platforms and politicians should be adhering to." It was very deliberately, as much as possible, balanced between liberals and conservatives so that we could get back to this idea of, "We need a shared set of rules about how we have discussions, because whatever is going on now is not working. We need to get away from systems that are easy to hijack, no matter who is doing the hijacking." Mr. Jekielek: Powerful disinformation called inauthentic activity or botnets can influence whole populations and is being used by various state actors. Disinformation has become a bad word because it's a euphemism for speech someone doesn't like. But there are actual bad actors, some funded to the tune of billions of dollars, that are pushing actual disinformation. Mr. Lowenthal: The civil society organizations who are receiving hundreds of millions of dollars to police disinformation need to switch from policing disinformation street crime to disinformation corporate crime. They have essentially focused on these small actors like crazy Joe in city X, who says, "Take this snake venom potion and you will cure your Covid." But aren't looking at what is in Pfizer's potion. They're not focused on that. One of the key things that needs to be changed is the orientation, which should have always been the orientation of civil society actors, which is to focus on the people with the most power. It seems entirely obvious, but they switched from taking power to account to actually working for power. To switch that back immediately would go a very, very long way. But they also need to understand that it's very complicated. They think their side is 100 percent right and the other side is 100 percent wrong, at least a great deal of them. Their fear is around censorship that comes from the Right, and there is a certain amount of it. There needs to be a shift in who people understand to be the most powerful—the elites across the board, rather than those on either the Right or the Left. Mr. Jekielek: Andrew Lowenthal, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show. Mr. Lowenthal: It was great to be here. Thank you, Jan. Mr. Jekielek: Thank you all for joining Andrew Lowenthal and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek. 🔴 WATCH the full episode (41 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S1209AndrewLowenthal Epoch Original DVD collection:

In a turn of events, a former top FBI official, who played a key role in the Trump-Russia collusion probe, was just sentenced to four years in prison for colluding with Russia. Those four years might only be the beginning, given that he is facing indictments for hiding $225,000 in payments from a former Albanian intelligence officer. The man in question is named Charles McGonigal—a top FBI official who previously led the FBI’s New York counterintelligence division. In January of this year, Mr. McGonigal was arrested and slapped with two separate indictments. One indictment was related to the secret Albanian money (that case is still ongoing), while the second was related to Mr. McGonigal taking bribes from a Russian oligarch to investigate a rival Russian oligarch. The second indictment charged Mr. McGonigal with counts including conspiracy to evade U.S. sanctions, money laundering, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and conspiracy to violate federal law against doing business with sanctioned individuals. Mr. McGonigal pled guilty to these charges and was sentenced to four years in prison, as well as a fine of $40,000. Watch the video: 🇺🇸 Epoch Times 25¢ Full Access Special Offer: https://ept.ms/RomanSale Exclusive video on EpochTV: Jack Smith Demands Twitter Info on All Americans Who Interacted With Trump | Facts Matter According to a heavily redacted search warrant and other documents released earlier this week, Special Counsel Jack Smith demanded information on Twitter users who liked or retweeted President Trump’s tweets leading up to January 6th. Twitter ultimately complied. This means that if you interacted with President Trump’s Twitter account before he got kicked off — well, your name is literally on a list. Watch the exclusive video 👉 https://bit.ly/3TaF5wp

On Tuesday, the Colorado State Supreme Court issued a ruling ordering the secretary of state to remove former President Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot. The details of how this Colorado case got to this point are truly revealing, and so, let’s go through the details of this case, the court’s decision, how other states are using this court’s decision to do the same thing in their states, and who’s financing all this behind the scenes. Watch the video: 🇺🇸 Epoch Times 25¢ Full Access Special Offer: https://ept.ms/RomanSale Exclusive video on EpochTV: Jack Smith Demands Twitter Info on All Americans Who Interacted With Trump | Facts Matter According to a heavily redacted search warrant and other documents released earlier this week, Special Counsel Jack Smith demanded information on Twitter users who liked or retweeted President Trump’s tweets leading up to January 6th. Twitter ultimately complied. This means that if you interacted with President Trump’s Twitter account before he got kicked off — well, your name is literally on a list. Watch the exclusive video 👉 https://bit.ly/3TaF5wp

California is now looking for a way to remove former President Donald Trump from the 2024 presidential ballot, following a state supreme court decision in Colorado. This takes place as the nation waits on a U.S. Supreme Court decision on whether or not President Trump can be included on the ballots. In this live Q&A with Crossroads host Joshua Philipp, we’ll discuss this topic and others and answer questions from the audience. Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 🔵 Watch the full episode HERE 👇 https://ept.ms/3NyQnHm Stay Informed. Stay Free. https://www.joshphilipp.com/

Matt Taibbi is editor of Racket News and one of the key investigators of the Twitter Files. Last week, he testified before Congress on issues related to the First Amendment and government censorship. "It was two different hearings if you watched it. The Republicans were holding the hearing on government censorship, and the Democrats were holding basically a 'but Trump' hearing, where every time they got a chance to engage in anything, their entire focus was the dangers of Donald Trump and how that superseded anything that we could possibly be talking about," says Mr. Taibbi. Mr. Taibbi, along with journalists Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag, recently exposed a new set of documents from the Cyber Threat Intelligence League, an "anti-disinformation" group that waged an aggressive information operation on the public. Watch the clip: "In the CTI files that we saw last week, there was one training session, and the second slide in the training was a quote from the joint chiefs of staff talking about how you have to use certain tactics to defeat your enemy. And these are people who are going to be reviewing domestic speech, and they're thinking in terms of other Americans as the enemy," says Mr. Taibbi. 🔴 WATCH the full episode (32 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S-1206MattTaibbi Epoch Original DVD collection:

Despite a near-total media blackout, 120,000 Armenian Orthodox Christians have been under blockade by their Muslim neighbors for pretty much the entirety of the year. For nine months, these Armenian Christians were being starved to death by a blockade that was imposed on them by the government of Azerbaijan. The area where these Christians were blockaded was the Nagorno-Karabakh region (or, as the Armenians call it, the Artsakh region). This is where tens of thousands of families were trapped and starved, until finally, in September, they accepted exile from the homeland and fled across the mountains to escape persecution. While those in the West might look at what’s happening in Armenia as being completely separate from the war currently raging in Israel, it’s really worth mentioning that that’s not how the Muslim nations see it. For many Muslim leaders, this is all part of a broader conflict between the forces of the West (specifically Christendom and Judaism) versus the Islamic forces of the Middle East. The Crusader-Crescent war that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan mentioned in a recent speech about is a reference to the Christian crusaders versus the Crescent symbol of Islam. And he included what’s currently happening in Azerbaijan as just one example of that broader conflict—one battle in a larger war. Watch the video: 🇺🇸 Epoch Times 25¢ Full Access Special Offer: https://ept.ms/RomanSale Exclusive video on EpochTV: Jack Smith Demands Twitter Info on All Americans Who Interacted With Trump | Facts Matter According to a heavily redacted search warrant and other documents released earlier this week, Special Counsel Jack Smith demanded information on Twitter users who liked or retweeted President Trump’s tweets leading up to January 6th. Twitter ultimately complied. This means that if you interacted with President Trump’s Twitter account before he got kicked off — well, your name is literally on a list. Watch the exclusive video 👉 https://bit.ly/3TaF5wp

In a legal victory for former President Donald Trump, the judge overseeing his case in Washington has just decided to pause all of the trial proceedings, pending a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court. Judge Tanya Chutkan (who was appointed to the bench by Barack Obama) decided to pause the case until the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether or not President Trump is covered under the presidential immunity doctrine. Watch the video: 🇺🇸 Epoch Times 25¢ Full Access Special Offer: https://ept.ms/RomanSale Exclusive video on EpochTV: Jack Smith Demands Twitter Info on All Americans Who Interacted With Trump | Facts Matter According to a heavily redacted search warrant and other documents released earlier this week, Special Counsel Jack Smith demanded information on Twitter users who liked or retweeted President Trump’s tweets leading up to January 6th. Twitter ultimately complied. This means that if you interacted with President Trump’s Twitter account before he got kicked off — well, your name is literally on a list. Watch the exclusive video 👉 https://bit.ly/3TaF5wp

The Chinese communist regime has been aggressively seeking to expand its control of the Pacific Islands through political warfare, bribery, and “gray-zone” activities, says David Panuelo, the former president of the Federated States of Micronesia. During his tenure, which lasted from 2019 to 2023, he penned a number of letters to other leaders in the region to raise awareness about the Chinese regime’s belligerent tactics. “I wasn't doing it because I wanted to be bold. I wanted to do it to protect our citizens and the sovereignty of our nation,” Mr. Panuelo says. Watch the clip: So why is this region so important? It’s part of the “Second Island Chain” of defense in America’s military strategy, and is critical to deterring a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. 🔴 WATCH the full episode (43 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S1205DavidPanuelo FULL TRANSCRIPT Jan Jekielek: President David Panuelo, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. David Panuelo: Jan, thank you for having me on your program in Washington, D.C. It's a pleasure to be here and I'm a fan of The Epoch Times. Mr. Jekielek: Thank you so much and welcome to America. I've been watching what you've been doing over the past several years in the Federated States of Micronesia, where you were the president, standing up to communist China. It is very uncharacteristic behavior, I might add, and something people could learn from. But it wasn't always like that. I've been reading several letters that you wrote. At the beginning, you're extremely cordial in this Pacific Islander way that we love and cherish. By the end of a one or two-year period, you're very direct and very pointed about some very egregious behavior on the part of the Chinese regime. Tell me how this all happened. President Panuelo: Jan, thank you. Our country, I want to say it very clearly and upfront that we are, in our foreign policies, friends to all and enemies to none, really. Based on that premise, we have good relations with every country around the world. With the United States being our enduring partner, the treaty that we have is very important. We're going to go and do that. But on your question, in terms of China, China is a beautiful country, a beautiful culture and tradition, people are friendly, but it's the government that over time, as the president of our country, I felt I need to take a strong stance to make sure that the sovereignty of our nation is protected. I was invited by President Xi to go to China, and all the treatment that was given to me is appreciated, how the head of state is treated in China. But overall, over the course of time, I learned that I must take some bold actions to make sure that the sovereignty of our nation is protected and also for the Pacific region as a whole, because security is very important, so I did write several letters, one, when Prime Minister Sogavare signed the security agreement with China. Mr. Jekielek: That's, of course, the president of the Solomon Islands. President Panuelo: Yes. The Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands, and because we shared the region when that happened. Of course, as a Pacific leader, I wrote to Prime Minister Sogavare in a very friendly manner, because he's like a brother to me. As a family, we share what we're concerned about. I did share about the concern, what we see around the world, that it can potentially happen in Solomon Islands and escalate tensions. The letter elicited the Prime Minister to also share with the Pacific Islands Forum the promise that China will not militarize the Solomon Islands, which can make a harmonious region become less secure. It raises the level of escalation. Mr. Jekielek: Do you think that anything has changed since that time? Do you feel like that promise has been kept? President Panuelo: We have to monitor that carefully, because as you can see in recent events, with the support of China into Solomon Islands, with the Pacific Games, for example, has postponed a very important democratic process, the elections. But what I think we Pacific leaders must be very cautious about is when foreign influence comes into the country and upsets the system of government, then infighting can happen. The Solomon Islands have that history. In the past, other Pacific nations sent police forces to help settle the escalation of a conflict in the Solomon Islands. I think those are important. The Pacific Islands Forum is the premier regional organization that can also serve that purpose to make sure that the Pacific works together with strength in numbers, to make sure that we keep it as peaceful as possible. Mr. Jekielek: Of course. You're saying that, as we know, in the Solomon Islands, the Chinese did provide some security support. That reminds me, the Federated States of Micronesia has a very deep relationship with the U.S. President Panuelo: Correct. Mr. Jekielek: Mainly, it relies, by treaty, on all its protection. Explain that relationship to me. I also want to talk about why did that deal get struck, do you think? President Panuelo: I must emphasize, and cannot overemphasize enough, the importance of the Compact of Free Association between the FSM [Federated States of Micronesia] and the U.S., similar to Palau and the Marshall Islands. We call it the freely associated states or the compact nations. We do have a treaty that comprises the main pillars of economic cooperation, political and security or defense cooperation, which is embedded in that treaty, and it serves as the cornerstone policy for the bigger Pacific region. That cooperation gives the U.S. certain rights and FIDO powers when it comes to security. The very big exclusive economic zone and airspace of the three countries combined is a very important strategic part of U.S. operations in the Pacific. It gives the U.S., from California to Hawaii to the Marshall Islands and FSM Palau, a very uninterrupted, contiguous space, an open space where the U.S. can cross to the bigger Asian countries. You can imagine how important that is. I put it to the U.S. leaders that it is very important and we look forward to the approval of the compact in the U.S. Congress. Mr. Jekielek: Maybe I'll get you to speak to this. World War II tells us how important it was, correct? President Panuelo: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: But maybe if you can speak to that briefly. There were a number of key battles in the Pacific. President Panuelo: In the Solomon Islands, you can talk about the Guadalcanal battle in Peleliu, in the Truk Lagoon during the Second World War. These were among the very, very biggest wars that broke out in our Pacific region. So, we know what war is, when we talk about war. Our ancestors, our grandfathers lived through the war, so those are things that we don't want repeated in the Pacific, let alone in Micronesia. Mr. Jekielek: I'm going to highlight for everybody how strategically important for U.S. naval operations that region is. That change in the balance of power there has a profound impact on the ability of the U.S. to project power west. President Panuelo: It is very important, and the United States military bases in Guam and in Hawaii are well known. The fact is that our population combined in Hawaii and Guam is larger than two of our states in the Federated States of Micronesia. That unique relationship allows our nation, young men and women, to also serve in the U.S. Armed Forces in higher per capita than any of the states in the United States. So, you see how unique that is. Mr. Jekielek: That's fascinating. I had no idea about that. That's an incredible statistic. President Panuelo: Yes, it is an incredible statistic. Mr. Jekielek: What did the Chinese Communist Party do throughout your tenure that made you change your view or feel like you had to step out and become very, very pointed with your criticisms of what you saw the CCP doing and how different leaders were reacting? I'm talking about a few of your past comments here. President Panuelo: My first letter to Sogavare was prompted by the security agreement. We shared that Pacific region. The second letter was directed to the leaders of the Pacific, my brothers and sisters of the Pacific, regarding the Common Development agreement, which China was proposing to be signed by all the Pacific leaders during a meeting in Fiji. We reviewed that Common Development agreement and learned that by signing that we would have given away and compromised our sovereignty. Through tedious review, that would allow Chinese to come in and also look at the minerals of our exclusive economic zone. It would give them access to knowing who's entering our country and who's getting out of our country through electronic means, and through customs and immigration, among other things. I wrote to the Pacific leaders, brothers and sisters, to warn them about the Common Development agreement. Upon review, leaders did find out that would cause the problem of compromising our sovereignty. From that time, the agreement was shelved. I think until now, I have not seen that coming about. But we have other examples of direct agreements on the blue economy that I didn't give agreement to or authorize to be signed. Here, Chinese diplomats in the embassy locally, working with our Secretary of Foreign Affairs and with our officials insisted that they must sign it, even though they heard our top cabinet say, "The President doesn't authorize this to be signed," and they kept going at it. I can cite many examples, but we have to stand up strong and bold and draw the line in the sand to say, “If this encroaches on our sovereignty, then it's not good for the sovereign interests of our nation and collectively for the Pacific Island countries.” Mr. Jekielek: I wanted to comment on the Common Development agreement. Thank goodness that got shelved. I often think of what the CCP's doing in the Pacific as a model of how they infiltrate and influence and control and buy all sorts of other places. It's very, it's powerful to hear. Maybe you've given a couple of examples, but maybe you can give me a few of the other egregious things that you noticed that really got you thinking and changing your mind. President Panuelo: With the Common Development agreement, the letter that I wrote out has picked up some of that steam, in a way, so to speak. Then I issued the third letter to our leaders of the FSM. I targeted the entire leadership, because we're comprised of a federation; four states, municipal governments with state governments, and two federal governments. I targeted the entire leadership to warn them of some of these activities that can be subtle in nature. You won't see it coming or it could be aggressive in some ways, because we've experienced some of that, what they call wolf diplomacy, depending on the personality of the diplomats who are there. Some are subtle and some are very aggressive. We've experienced all of that during my administration. As a president, I would go to a Japanese function to celebrate the birthday of the emperor, for example. They would hold a very big event. From when I walked in, the Chinese ambassador to the FSM would constantly follow me and whisper in my ears to be careful, because they heard I was going to Palau. They don't like it, because Palau is sympathetic to Taiwan, those kinds of things. Until the point where it was so persistent that I had to stop and talk to the ambassador and say, "Ambassador, don't ever treat me like that,” because he was persistently warning a head of state. I warned him not to ever do that again, because we're a sovereign nation. He can say what he wants, but he cannot be directing us in that way. I've come out by being very vocal, one-on-one with them, and there were folks who were listening. When we came together to meet Palau and Marshall Islands, because they recognize Taiwan, they would be warning us. As a sovereign country, how do you take it, with that diplomat who's consistently and persistently telling you that in your ear? I just had to stop and really point at him and warn him not to ever do that ever again to me. With my third letter that I sent out, there's also direct evidence of one of the governors coming to me, from the state of Kosrae, to tell me that there were agents from China who went and saw him to try to go against my letter. The governor confided in me and he said, "Mr. President, of course I told them no, because that would be treason." Mr. Jekielek: It's so outrageous. I'm smiling, because this is, of course, what the CCP does, it's its modus operandi almost, but it's so outrageous and blatant. I think your example is very interesting, of just insisting that something that's already been decided be changed, presumably, because you have the backing of the whole Chinese regime behind you, so you feel like you can do that. President Panuelo: Yes. I don't think the Pacific leaders, especially in Micronesia, should feel like we're walking on eggshells, that when we have to take strong positions, because we're in defense of our own sovereignty, our national interest that is best for the security of our citizens, we shouldn't be dissuaded just by thinking, "This is going to be bad, because we're going to get repercussions of criticism or some action to come back." We need to stand up strong as sovereign nations to defend the interest of our country in every way that we can. I think that message is very important to demonstrate. Mr. Jekielek: You just reminded me that you prevented the appointment of , at least as long as you were president, one of the appointees for ambassador. President Panuelo: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: Tell me about that and what happened. President Panuelo: When China presented their ambassador to succeed the ambassador I was talking about, who's always using wolf diplomacy, we reviewed the background of that proposed ambassador through what they call agreement. We noticed with some background checking that there has been a very strong security background of that ambassador, and that's just common sense, and also looking ahead in the cooperation we have with China. This is the point that I've always made, that our relationship with China is always and will always be only on economic and technical terms and cannot be strategic. But China always takes the opportunity to unilaterally come out with press releases that call our relationship a strategic partnership, even though we've said, "No it's not a strategic relationship." But they've always done that and they're good with the propaganda of getting out that message. At the point when I was a president, I also shared with our government that they cannot sign any joint agreement that says strategic partnership. You have to differentiate that in your alliance with countries. Then I think if we do that, it's not going to be the kind of policy or agreement that we want, especially if we have a compact treaty with the U.S. with the pillar of economic, political, and security cooperation. Mr. Jekielek: There are also examples when you opted not to sign some agreement and then the PRC diplomats said that FSM is on board. President Panuelo: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: That seems incredibly egregious. Tell me about that. President Panuelo: It is. It's documented in emails that have been exchanged, where our Secretary of Foreign Affairs was fuming, “How could he be doing that when he already knows that the head of state says no to any agreement, but he keeps pushing that he signs it anyway?” Those are the examples that I think are important to understand, even to the point where, as a president, I had to be very cautious of the recommendations that's coming out of our embassy in Beijing, of our diplomats. Because it's almost filled with the content that China wants to push on to the government, for example, the trade agreement that we're talking about. When that happens, then maybe it's a good intention by our diplomats, but they must know that, first and foremost, they represent our interest, not the interest of China. That fine line has to be determined, what is in the best interest of our nation when we're signing these documents that are being recommended. Mr. Jekielek: I want to highlight that this seems like an incredible amount of pressure when you have the second-largest economy in the world, an aggressive superpower like Communist China, doing this. That's a huge pressure on anybody. President Panuelo: Fortunately, I love my country so much, and representing our country was a passion that I took on. Yes, I'm sure that is going to be pressure on anyone who's leading a nation, but I viewed it as something that is a very sacred crown, that I have to defend our nation and make sure that I make the decisions that are in the best interest of our country, even if it disappoints that superpower. Because, after all, who am I serving? It's our nation and our citizens. You put it right, but I think leaders must know these elements, even to the point where I went ahead and also put a moratorium on the research vessels coming into our exclusive economic zone, because information that we learned, that it's not only conducting research, but also doing other elements that are not in the best interest of our nation. Mr. Jekielek: What you just said makes perfect sense to me, but it seems to be a rare position. I'm not just talking about the Pacific, I'm talking about anywhere. President Panuelo: Yes. For example, I've warmed up to Taiwan also, because they're a democratic entity and strong in trade, in culture, in sports, so I opened up to that. You can see how China was running around meeting all our leaders to try to reverse that. Of course, with the One China policy, our country signed it thirty-three-odd years ago, but the landscape and the evolution of the political scene has changed. The world is changing. That quickly had Chinese officials meeting our government to go against my actions, I believe, to the point where they had to work in resolution to state that our government still opposes the One China policy and I know the U.S. does too. But I think we need to be bold and open to scenarios that can work for our respective Pacific Island nations. Mr. Jekielek: I know that your critics back home, and of course the CCP itself, will say, "You might be endangering the whole country or the whole region by what you're doing." How do you react to that? President Panuelo: I think, first of all, as leaders, we're serving the interests of our nation and serving the interests of our citizens, and then working with the proper allies that have shared values. I think that's important to remember all of the time as a leader. Working together with allies to preserve the rules-based international order, the shared values that we have, is something we need to be strong about. Because every country, especially the superpowers, both the U.S. and China see influence as important, so that they can make sure that their interests are strong in the Pacific Island countries. But when you talk about democracy vs. authoritarianism and you look at the events that are happening in the world, we need to be strong about it. An example that I want to also share is how China also persistently works with countries to try to tone down human rights issues. One recent example is late October when our country was persuaded to abstain from the vote on that resolution, on the Uyghurs human rights issue. But I think the more that countries can stand up and be strong about these issues, to advocate for the treatment of all people equally, about their human rights, it's important for the collective world to be strong in their voice, and especially at the multilateral center of the world, at the United Nations. We need to have a clear conscience, in my view. You see the change in my administration during the time I was president. I think we use the softer approach to say we respect the internal affairs of your country, and encourage them to treat everyone with the same human rights. But we see the overall events where that has not changed that behavior. Sometimes, when the world comes together to condemn human rights treatment, I think we need to stand together strong without feeling like we're walking on eggshells. Because the truth is the truth. We need to do that, and with a strong feeling that we are leaders advocating these shared values that are universal. Mr. Jekielek: I agree with you, and especially when what's happening are some of the worst things that humans can do to each other, such as genocide and crimes against humanity which are egregious, extreme violations that the CCP is regularly involved in. Tell me about how you came about your way of thinking. What is it influenced by? President Panuelo: I grew up under parents that are very strong in their beliefs. I thank my parents, growing up with many siblings and growing up in the Micronesian culture of respect. I think that's important. I went to school, and I'm one of the leaders who was educated in the United States, at Eastern Oregon University. But at an early age, I remember being in a university, and I was already writing to the second president at the time, in the mid-'80s, asking them to start the FSM Trust Fund, for example. I was clearly already thinking out already for the future of our nation. Immediately, when I finished university, getting my career course, and getting me in that direction. I started as a young person, as a diplomat, and then served in our embassies in Fiji, where we were a young nation, coming out as a young nation to be integrated with the Pacific Island countries. I trained and worked with the United Nations. I think when I was ready to become a member of Congress, I started my career in public office and then became the ninth president of our country. It's just from my heart. When you're a leader and you're representing the best interests of your country, you listen to your heart and you listen to information that comes to you to make the best sense of it, in guiding and helping the decision-making. In the presidency, information is very important. We created the Cybersecurity Bureau in our Department of Justice to help with that. We also, for the first time in the history of our nation, the Office of the President established, through executive order, the Information and Intelligent Services Bureau to guide decisions, so that when Pacific Island nations are limited with the information, to work with allies and make sure you get that information to help in the decision-making. You can see through the compact that we have a very strong, enduring partnership with the U.S. That's important for the Indo-Pacific region, and the overall security of our nation. We consider ourselves as part of homeland security when it comes to defense. That's how strong our enduring partnership is with the United States. Mr. Jekielek: I'm thinking back to these letters that you wrote. At least in the first one, you highlight how China is our friend, and the U.S. is our friend. But then as time goes on, you're highlighting China as more of a threat. There is a desire to not have to choose. The status quo is, "I don't have to choose." What do you think about that? President Panuelo: I've been asked a question a few times by the media, whether, as a small island country, I feel like I'm sandwiched between two superpowers. My pointed answer was no, because I definitely know the best interests of our nation. I think if you know that, it makes it easier. Because we know our trusted partners and who to work with to advance the overall security of the Pacific and the entire world together. When that question was asked of me, I never felt once that I was sandwiched between two superpowers. Mr. Jekielek: Thinking about your third letter, which was to the various FSM leaders, how did people react to your expose of the CCP? President Panuelo: I genuinely put out a letter that I thought would be good for leaders, as I was coming to the tail end of my administration, based on the insight and experience that I underwent as a president of our country, highlighting important things. I got a letter from one of our governors in response to that to highlight how important the letter was during that time. He also shared his fears and concerns about the escalation of tension in Micronesia and in the Pacific region. But overall, it's almost like silence from the rest of the leaders. There was another letter that I sent to the then speaker, who is now the president, Simina, regarding the resolution on the One China policy, because the hearing was canceled when we were preparing to "do the hearing" to help explain the foreign policy decisions that I've taken. They canceled, then went ahead and adopted the resolution, though I felt it was necessary to document the chain of events that was happening. Because as a president, I'm trying to demonstrate that I was very vocal about the things that I do. In everything, we must work together to make sure. I was vocal when the constitutional crisis was happening in Samoa, with the transition of government from one prime minister to the next. I stood up and wrote a letter to advocate that the constitution must prevail. On the issue of Ukraine, we were the first country to sever diplomatic relations with Russia when they invaded Ukraine. I was trying to demonstrate that, as a nation, even though we're small, our voices are very strong when we work together with our Pacific leaders. I have a strong confidence in the leaders of the Pacific, that working together on these issues will make our region a harmonious and a peaceful region. Mr. Jekielek: You highlighted the obvious, very special relationship that the U.S. has with these three states and the FSM. What would you like to see the U.S. do at this point? Do you feel like the U.S. is fulfilling its role? Do you feel that there's other things it can do? President Panuelo: As a former president, looking from the outside into the prism of the U.S. bureaucracy, I get worried and concerned about the non-cooperation, to the extent that it paralyzes the functioning of government in the House of Representatives. We watch it, because the rest of the world also will be impacted by these actions. Clearly, in the context of the FSM and the freely associated states of Palau and Marshall Islands, our compacts are binding in the U.S. Congress. We went through the very tedious efforts of negotiations and completed that. The U.S. leadership promised us that there's bipartisan support. Now, the most important thing that I see as a former president, to speak very truly, we believe that the United States must approve the compact funding for the three compact nations, because it underpins the security of the Indo-Pacific region. I hope that the U.S. can see this importance and not to offset it. I think they must put it on the front burner and approve these compact fundings, because a lot of things hinge upon the success of the funding. We're beyond the fiscal year where the old compact has expired, waiting for the approval of these funds to help with the security of Micronesia and the overall larger Pacific region. Mr. Jekielek: Help with the security of Micronesia and the U.S. President Panuelo: And the U.S. It's a mutual security relationship that must be, as I have emphasized, a strategically important location our compact nations hold with the United States. Yes, it is important for our security and U.S. security, and the collective security of the Indo-Pacific region. Mr. Jekielek: I'm going to read something you wrote and get you to comment. China's intent is to "shift those of us with diplomatic relations with China very close into Beijing's orbit, intrinsically tying the whole of our economies and societies to them. The practical impacts, however, of Chinese control over our communications infrastructure, our ocean territory, and the resources within them, and our security space, aside from impacts on our sovereignty, is that it increases the chances of China getting into conflict with Australia, Japan, the United States, and New Zealand, on the day when Beijing decides to invade Taiwan." President Panuelo: Yes. Overall, if you look at, in the context of the Common Development agreement, it has those elements in there, and the trade agreements, the blue economy agreements that they were pushing on to us, and when a president says no, they were going at it to have it signed by a cabinet member. That's where we look at the overall region to see how this is happening. Mr. Jekielek: What has been the impact on you and your family of all this? President Panuelo: I don't get my family involved in this. If I carry the burden myself, then I must carry it myself, because I served as the ninth president of our country and protecting our interest and our sovereignty is first and foremost. The personal cost, of course, is there, because we read the news around the world about what happens to people who do these kinds of things, and especially the retaliation that comes about. I try not to think about these things and not worry about it. I did talk about the security of former presidents. Our Department of Justice forwarded the travel legislation to our Congress, and I knew it was not going to be acted upon, because I don't think there's been any president in our history who has taken on these types of decisions that are difficult, maybe challenging, and probably bold. But I wasn't doing it because I wanted to be bold. I want to do it to protect our citizens and the sovereignty of our nation. It wasn't hard for me to do it. The impacts and what the implications may be, I try not to think about it, Jan. Because the bigger good is what I believe should be the outcome from public servants and presidents like myself when they have the opportunity to serve our nation. I thank our citizens for the confidence they have in me and for the period I had, four years, and maybe shorter, because COVID took away two normal years of the governance that I had running and being the president of our nation to serve the best interest of our country. Mr. Jekielek: I hear your passion and I'm inspired by your passion. Yet, few world leaders seem to share that level of passion when it comes to facing the Chinese regime. What would you say to them? President Panuelo: It might not be an easy decision for world leaders, but for me, it wasn't difficult, because we have to make sure that the truth is known. I think The Epoch Times is one of the objectives of seeking out the truth. I think, collectively, we have to do that. Because in the complexity of this climate we have today, it's a rarity to come out and speak honestly and boldly of what is good for your country and for the community at large. The truth and transparency is important to come out and advocate for. That's what I did as a president, and I don't think that's a difficult thing to do. At the end of the day, I think we will be happy with the outcome of our decisions. If it has to be bold, then be bold about it, because we want to make sure that the truth comes out. Mr. Jekielek: President David Panuelo, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show. President Panuelo: Likewise, Jan. I thank you for having me on your program. Thank you. Mr. Jekielek: Thank you all for joining President David Panuelo and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek. 🔴 WATCH the full episode (43 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S1205DavidPanuelo Epoch Original DVD collection:

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Fewer murder cases are being solved in the United States, despite the fact that the number of murders is increasing. The trend suggests something concerning is taking place in the American justice system, following anti-police and light-on-crime movements that have damaged law enforcement. Meanwhile, when it comes to anti-gun laws in the United States, it seems that even when laws are passed, there are large-scale movements to simply not cooperate with them. This is now being shown in Illinois. The state passed a sweeping anti-gun law, and citizens in the state are simply choosing to not cooperate with it. In this live Q&A with Crossroads host Joshua Philipp, we’ll discuss these topics and others, and answer questions from the audience. Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 🔵 Watch the full episode HERE👇 https://ept.ms/3ThvOmt Stay Informed. Stay Free. https://www.joshphilipp.com/

Argentina's new President-elect, Javier Milei, is promising to close the country’s central bank. The proposed move was previously ridiculed as just being a rumor, but Mr. Milei has written that shutting down Argentina's central bank is a “non-negotiable matter.” So what is the issue with centralized banking, and how does this fit into the broader picture of small government? In this episode of Crossroads we’ll discuss this topic and others, and answer questions from the audience. Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 🔵 Watch the full episode HERE 👇 https://ept.ms/3uNEOWc Stay Informed. Stay Free. https://www.joshphilipp.com/

After reports that children in China were falling ill from a new illness outbreak, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders have given secret orders to cover up the spread of the new virus. This is according to inside sources of The Epoch Times in China, who revealed the details. Meanwhile, children elsewhere are also now falling ill, including in the United States. As this takes place, the Chinese regime is allegedly trying to open additional clinics, and new lockdowns may be on the table. In this live Q&A with Crossroads host Joshua Philipp we’ll discuss these topics and others, and answer questions from the audience. Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 🔵 Watch the full episode HERE 👇 https://ept.ms/3TdgY01 Stay Informed. Stay Free. https://www.joshphilipp.com/