Released on Thursday:
→ The Private Citizen 166: The Twitter Files, Part 6
Revisiting the idiotic decision to ban Donald Trump off Twitter and what it means for the future of democracy that private companies started to influence public discourse like that and got away with it.
It has been way too long since I’ve recorded a podcast episode. So here’s an episode of The Private Citizen explaining why this has happened. Here’s to hoping I can get back to regular releases!
I just released a final episode of The Private Citizen for this year:
→ Episode 164: The Year 2023 in Review
In my annual recap episode, I am looking back at the topics that I’ve covered this year and forward to the changes that 2024 will bring for the podcast.
Ah, I forgot to post about this as I was busy with deadlines and the like, but I released this podcast episode last week:
→ The Private Citizen 162: The Westminster Declaration
What do Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, John Cleese, Yanis Varoufakis, Richard Dawkins and Walter Kirn have in common? They are all, despite holding very different political beliefs, very concerned about the future of political discourse in Western democracies.
Sometimes, I get the feeling I’m not living in the European Union, but the Cardassian Union … Is this still a democracy? Is the rule of law still in effect? Why is Gul Dukat smiling all the time?
Answers to these, and many other, questions on this week’s podcast:
→ The Private Citizen 161: The EU’s Ministry of Truth
EU bureaucrats maintain that the Digital Services Act is not a censorship regime, but is meant to save people from misinformation by deleting it from the internet or hiding it from view. Which, in fact, is the very definition of censorship. Welcome to the Cardassian Union.
The EU wants to pass a horrible law and anybody who actually understands the technology involved thinks it’s a bad idea. And now it’s become obvious that this is because the lawmakers didn’t listen to experts on technology, but to experts on cashing out. My latest podcast episode:
→ The Private Citizen 160: The Lobbyists behind Chat Control
It turns out, that the EU’s push to completely abolish digital privacy might not actually be an altruistic move to save children from abuse. Several tech companies, including one headed by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, stand to profit substantially from the decision. Which is why they massively influenced it.
While I’m sitting here, working on my preparation of episode 160 of The Private Citizen, it occurs to me that I haven’t posted the previous episode from last week yet. So here goes:
→ The Private Citizen 159: Society Is Going to Hell in a Handbasket
How following the exodus of Germany’s worst YouTuber to TikTok opened a private hell of lolcows for me. To a point where I don’t think I understand society as a whole anymore. What is this shit? And where is it all going to end?
This week’s episode of The Private Citizen is out. Get it while it’s hot!
→ The Private Citizen 158: The EU Wants to Abolish Digital Privacy
The EU wants to establish universal client-side scanning for text messages and photos on citizen’s phones. With other words: All cryptography would be useless and hence, nobody would have any privacy in the digital realm anymore.
With the release of today’s episode, The Private Citizen will hopefully return to weekly episodes, released every Wednesday. The podcast returns with an example of what happens when well-meaning, but clueless people get to decide how to run a society.
→ The Private Citizen 157: When Well-Meaning People Make the Laws
Germany tried to make its laws against child pornography stricter and it backfired spectacularly. Now, lawyers and judges are desperately trying not to enforce these laws as the government scrambles to fix them.
I finally got around to uploading the video for last week’s episode of The Private Citizen to YouTube. So I thought I’d better tell you about it on here, too. In this episode, I finally continue my long overdue coverage of the Twitter Files.
→ The Private Citizen 155: The Twitter Files, Part 5
The podcast returns with more coverage of The Twitter Files. On this episode, I am discussing how the US government used the FBI to exert censorship control over Twitter and many other tech companies to reinforce government narratives and silence critics.
I know …it’s been a while… but, my podcast is back!
→ The Private Citizen 154: The Democratic Delusion
Many people seem to think that the democratic system of government extends beyond how the state is run and into civil society. In this episode, I advance the theory that this has caused a lot of people to fall prey to propaganda and misunderstand how journalistic reporting and scientific enquiry should be done.
Episode 150 of The Private Citizen will be delayed – probably well into next week. I am very sorry about this. Especially considering I had originally planned to record and release it last Wednesday. But last week was incredibly stressful, with little sleep, as my wife was on call and busy with three heart transplants in the middle of the night in one week. And then this week is very busy for me and I feel a cold coming on for good measure.
I continue to be behind on my episode schedule and the topics I need to talk about are piling up like there is no tomorrow. But I promise, I will fix this at some point. Somehow.
I’ve recently released two podcast episodes on the most plausible scenario of the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage. This has been largely ignored in the legacy press, probably for fear what would happen to the US relations with Germany should this theory prove to be true.
→ The Private Citizen 148: An Act of War
Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, US President Biden authorised a plan to blow up the Nord Stream pipelines, which the US military executed last summer under cover of the BALTOPS 22 exercise.
→ The Private Citizen 149: The Nord Stream Cover-Up
To cover up Seymour Hersh’s report, the CIA planted a fake story about the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage with the press. Chancellor Scholz might even have discussed this cover-up with President Biden in person.
Last month, I recorded a podcast episode on some research by Dr Anthony Fauci reporting on SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in a highly respected medical journal:
→ The Private Citizen 146: Vaccines Were Never Going to Stop the Pandemic
Dr Anthony Fauci, for a long time the man in charge of the US response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, has now admitted that vaccines have failed to stop the spread of the disease and were never likely to.
Interestingly, LinkedIn was of the opinion that this was misinformation. I understand how this judgement came to pass, but it is obviously total nonsense. So I released another episode, reporting on it:
→ The Private Citizen 147: LinkedIn Says Fauci is Spreading Misinformation
Horribly broken content moderation practices at LinkedIn make the Microsoft-owned social network actively hostile to scientific progress and press freedom, it seems.
I actually pre-recorded the next episode of the podcast a while ago, but haven’t had any time to release it until now. It should be out later today. Please excuse the delays on this!
At the beginning of the month, my latest podcast project, The Private Citizen, turned three years old. It’s quite amazing to me that it’s been going for this long. I am quite happy about this and I’m very happy with the show in general. Even if I’ve lately been lagging behind a bit in releasing episodes, due to reasons that are beyond my control.
Things should start to get better soon, though. I’ve got a few new episodes prepped already and I am quite hopeful that I will be able to get back to recording and releasing tomorrow. Until then, check out the show’s anniversary episode, if you haven’t done so already:
→ The Private Citizen 143: Three Year Anniversary
Today, the podcast turns three years old and I tell the story of how I became a journalist and what I learned in the process.
I’ve just release another episode of The Private Citizen to tide you over the holidays:
→ The Private Citizen 137: Tracking Elon’s Jet
Responding to listener feedback on episodes about journalism, Drachenlord, The Twitter Files, the Fediverse, free speech, artificial intelligence and beyond.
Today, I’ve released the second Private Citizen episode on the Twitter Files:
→ The Private Citizen 136: The Twitter Files, Part 2
The Twitter Files show how the factually accurate Hunter Biden laptop story was suppressed. They also reveal the secret FBI operation targeting social media executives and high-level journalists that led to this suppression.
After a partly unplanned two week hiatus, I’ve just released the latest episode of my podcast. It’s the first in what will be a series about what might be the tech story of 2022.
→ The Private Citizen 135: The Twitter Files, Part 1
In a first episode about the Twitter Files disclosures, we look at how Twitter, at the behest of intelligence agencies, catalogued people’s speech and selectively silenced some of them. And then lied about it.
