MEMO | September 27, 2026

British police on Sunday arrested two demonstrators during a pro-Palestine protest outside the ruling Labour Party’s annual conference in Liverpool, Anadolu reports.

Protesters gathered outside the conference venue, with several holding homemade signs expressing support for Palestine Action, a group banned by the UK government.

Police officers moved to arrest an elderly man who was sitting beneath a tree, before making a second arrest involving a protester holding a sign supporting the banned group.

A spokesperson for Defend Our Juries, which organized the protest, said it had hoped the new prime minister, Andy Burnham, “would do the sensible thing and bin the ban on Palestine Action given the weight of public pressure to do so and the escalating amount of resources required in enforcing it.”

Nearly 74,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 175,000 others wounded in Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza since 2023. The offensive has also destroyed around 90% of the enclave’s infrastructure.

Despite a ceasefire that took effect last October, the Israeli army has continued daily attacks in Gaza, killing over 1,400 Palestinians and injuring around 5,000 others, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

In November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.

The HQ of the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) in Berlin, Germany. © Global Look Press / Michael Kuenne

RT | September 24, 2026

Germany’s opposition lawmakers have accused Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government of seeking to create a “secret police” by dramatically expanding the powers of the country’s intelligence agencies.

The accusations came during the first parliamentary debate on the reform on Thursday, with lawmakers from the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the Left and the Greens raising concerns over surveillance and fundamental rights. The government argues that the changes are needed to counter growing security threats.

Under a reform approved by the cabinet last month, the BND foreign intelligence agency and the BfV domestic security service would gain broader operational powers, allowing them to move beyond primarily gathering and analyzing information.

Among the proposed changes, the BND could sabotage foreign companies, penetrate foreign IT systems and disable weapons deemed a threat to Germany. The BfV, meanwhile, could secretly enter homes and access computers and mobile phones under certain circumstances.

German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said the reform would usher in a “new era” by turning the country’s intelligence services into “genuine intelligence agencies” capable of actively countering threats. He said Germany must bring its services to the level of its European partners.

AfD MP Gottfried Curio branded the proposed overhaul of the BfV “Stasi 2.0,” referring to East Germany’s notorious secret police, and called the reform a “coup against the rule of law.” The AfD, however, supports granting the BND greater operational powers.

The BfV has itself been locked in a legal battle with the AfD. In 2025, the agency designated Germany’s most popular party a “confirmed right-wing extremist” organization, but a Cologne court in February barred it from applying that classification while the case proceeds.

The ruling came months before the AfD scored major gains in regional elections. It won 43.8% in Saxony-Anhalt earlier this month and 38.3% in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on Sunday.

Green MP Konstantin von Notz said granting the BfV such extensive powers would be a “grave mistake” and questioned whether parts of the reform would survive scrutiny by the Constitutional Court. He nevertheless backed giving the BND greater powers.

Left Party MP Clara Buenger went further, warning that the BfV could become a “new German secret police.”

“Fundamental rights are being trampled on here,” she said, arguing that the agency would gain powers traditionally reserved for police.

The debate comes as Merz’s government braces for growing AfD influence at the regional level. The Telegraph and Die Welt reported in July that Berlin was developing a “secret plan” to counter potential “obstructionism” by regional authorities, allowing the federal government to bypass them in a crisis.

The German government wants the intelligence reform to take effect at the beginning of 2027. It still requires approval from both the Bundestag and Bundesrat.

RT | September 24, 2026

The EU has published a wide range of reports detailing what social media companies like TikTok and Meta are doing to comply with its Digital Services Act (DSA). The reports detail the extreme censorship needed to stay on Brussels’ good side.

Under the European Commission’s “voluntary Code of Conduct on Disinformation,” the largest online platforms operating in the EU are required to submit biannual reports explaining their efforts to combat so-called “disinformation.” Although adherence to the code is described as “voluntary,” those who do not comply are subject to fines under the DSA, which came into force in 2023.

The commission published reports by Meta, TikTok, Google, Twitch, and more than two dozen other platforms on Wednesday. Each report spans hundreds of pages, and details the speech restrictions and censorship policies put in place at the behest of the EU.

These include restrictions on political speech surrounding elections, which the EU has mandated in every major European vote since 2024, under the pretext of fighting “Russian interference.” According to documents released by the US House Judiciary Committee earlier this year, these measures have almost always been used “to disadvantage conservative or populist political parties.”

In its report, TikTok admitted that it removed more than half a million posts concerning elections in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Hungary, Malta, Portugal, and Slovenia this year. RT has covered the EU’s efforts to interfere in the Bulgarian and Hungarian elections in depth, and found that TikTok came under particularly intense pressure from Brussels, after its failure to implement sufficiently draconian restrictions during Romania’s presidential election in 2024.

Each report is hundreds of pages long, and every major social media company admitted that they now defer to EU-approved “fact-checkers” to police content on their platforms. Meta explained that it now automatically down-ranks content flagged by fact-checkers, while YouTube stated that it has trained AI models to pre-emptively remove content it thinks would fall foul of these groups.

Multiple reports specify that the platforms themselves must pay the fact-checkers’ salary. These fact-checkers flagged more than 14 million posts on Facebook in the first six months of this year alone.

Every social media platform devoted a chapter in its report to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, with Facebook noting that all posts on the conflict are subject to monitoring for “disinformation and misinformation” by pro-EU fact-checkers.

Russian media outlets are banned from Facebook, while Ukrainian outlets are free to operate, and Kiev is permitted to fundraise on the platform.

Despite mentioning “disinformation” more than a dozen times, the DSA does not define the term.

In July 2025, a protester shot a cop outside an ICE detention facility in North Texas. The federal government alleged the incident was the result of an “antifa” terrorist plot involving a network of friends and acquaintances united in leftist beliefs. The case that ensued was chilling:

It didn’t matter that little evidence of a premeditated attack on law enforcement ever emerged. It didn’t matter that every defendant, except the actual shooter, was exonerated of the original attempted murder charges. It didn’t even matter that prosecutors struggled to show the defendants belonged to an “antifa cell.” In the end, they convinced the jury that Batten and most of her co-defendants were guilty of rioting, conspiracy, using explosives, and supporting terrorists.

In a Fort Worth courtroom in June, a right-wing judge sentenced Batten to 50 years behind bars—a stark warning to others who might challenge the president’s agenda.