We're in Brazil covering the HUGE anti-censorship protests!

[Music] Ezra levand here for Rebel news I am in sa Paulo Brazil one of the largest cities in the world there's about 20 million people in South Paulo it's really a whole country in the form of a city I'm here because I came in the Night Flight last night landing early this morning because I want to see what's going on in Brazil because there is a kind of Civil War it's not really violent yet but it feels like it could go that way on the one hand you have the authoritarian president Lula as he's named and his right-hand man a crusading Judge Alexander deoras and and the judge has decided to censor and silence critics of Lula and he does this through social media he has secret Trials of political figures of journalists and orders that their Twitter account be silenced censored banned suspended deleted I'm sure he's doing that to the other social media companies too like Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp but the only reason we know about it is because when Elon Musk bought Twitter and renamed it X he decided to make it a free speech platform not a censorship platform and so when this out of control activist judge started having secret trials and saying you've got to suspend this political opponent of Lula but you can't say anything about this trial we're having a secret trial with secret evidence and the outcome is secret Elon Musk said whoa no that's not why I bought Twitter we're not going to go along with it and we're going to publicize this well you don't defy authoritarians in this part of the world easily and so they banned Twitter the only way I'm able to come to you by Twitter is I'm using something called a VPN which if I'm not mistaken censor virtual private Network it allows you to uh spoof the local internet and pretend that you're in Argentina or America instead of Brazil if I tried to use Twitter from Brazil it wouldn't work I'm going on a VPN and it's working and for a while there they had huge finds for anyone caught using a VPN by the way I don't usually do this but I want to give a shout out to the VPN I'm using and I downloaded it in about 30 seconds on my phone it's called p vpn.com and they actually give us a commission if you sign up for it so I'm going to toot their own as a kind of Advertiser by the way it works great it was easy even for a technophobe like me if you go to pav vpn.com rebbel news you get a big discount and we get a couple of bucks anyways that's my commercial pic thanks for letting me say it actually the only reason I mention it is cuz I've never had to use a VPN to get around censorship before and if you're back home and in Canada you're probably saying well what's the likely that hood that I'll ever need a VPN to get around something that Trudeau is doing well what do you think the odds are 10% 20% the answer is 100% he actually is already Banning things for Canadian try going on Facebook or Instagram to see any Canadian news story it'll be blocked you need a VPN in Canada to get around Trudeau's censorship that's why I recommend pav vpn.com Rebel news I didn't know I needed it but now I do let me talk about Trudeau for one more minute he is proposing a new censorship law in Canada called Bill C63 that allows for the kind of secret trials they have here in Brazil the secret trials contemplated in Trudeau law B C63 allows the accuser to remain secret allows witnesses to remain secret and allows people to make complaints against neighbors or Rivals uh and actually get a bounty of $20,000 per person that they R out to the government so what's going on here in Brazil isn't just of interest to Brazilians it's of interest to everyone around the world because I promise you that other leaders whether it's kir starmer in the United Kingdom kamla Harris in the United States are Justin Trudeau in Canada they are all all looking at Brazil to see what can they get away with now the good news is there is an opposition in Brazil that's why we're here today is the Independence Day of Brazil and and the chief opposition figure yayer bolsero the former president he's having a massive rally in this massive city of sou Paulo it starts in about 90 minutes and we'll be there Lula the Communist authoritarian who's doing all the censoring he's having his own counter rally in the capital city of Brazilia so in Brazilia you've got the big Lula censorship rally and in sou Paulo you've got the freedom rally for bolsonaro and it'll be interesting to see how important Twitter is in that conversation I look forward to finding that out to sum up I made it into the country okay as you know I didn't announce I was coming till I was through customs because I wanted to make sure that I wasn't kept out I did disclose to them that I was here as a journalist to cover the Independence Day rallies I didn't get into the politics but I was very candid at the border and they were happy to see us come through I hope that that is a sign that things aren't quite as bad as I had feared but we'll give you the straight Goods um sou Paulo as a city is fascinating uh the first thing that stands out is the graffiti it's just astonishing it's everywhere but it's almost uh like it's being rebutted by Massive murals on every block a huge uh skyscraper has a gorgeous massive mural on it there are more murals in this city than maybe any other city in the world now unfortunately there's more graffiti in this city than anywhere else in the world too but it's a visual Feast for the eyes as we drove in there's some astonishingly poor neighborhoods in sou Paulo and there were some unusual things we didn't saw but we saw I think someone selling Voodoo bones like there's a lot of uh exotic things let me just use that adjective in this city but we're not here as tourists I can assure you that we are here to cover this rally we flew overnight our head of video OS Flores Monsanto myself we flew overnight we can't even check into the hotel yet because it's not available we're going to go straight to the rally do that all day go to the hotel and then probably do some more wrap up journalism tomorrow and then home we go we're going to have all our reports at a website called the truthout brazil.com and that's what we want to do we want to follow the facts wherever they lead we just got here we haven't gone to the protest yet we're going with an open mind I speak no Portuguese a lot of bra bra Ians don't speak English but I'm sure we'll find people to help us figure out what's going on you can follow us at the truthout brazil.com and the only way we're able to do that is because in this censorship jurisdiction where they have a China style great firewall we're using a VPN and I'm afraid that other tyrants around the world are watching the censorship here as sort of a lab experiment can they get away with it or not I hope Freedom rules to day and I'm glad that Elon Musk is throwing the weight of X which is what he calls Twitter I'm glad he's throwing the weight of his companies and his own convictions behind the freedom side all right we'll keep you posted we're going to have all our reports at a website called the truthout brazil.com and that's what we want to do we want to follow the facts wherever they lead