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It's incredible how rapidly the empire has been shoving through longstanding regional domination agendas in the middle east and Latin America since late 2023. Incinerating Gaza. Decapitating Hezbollah. Regime change in Syria. Bombings and regime change ops in Iran. Kidnapping Maduro. Now moving on Cuba. It's just been grab, grab, grab for the last two plus years. Reading by Tim Foley.
At this point it's probably worth recalling that earlier this month Mike Pompeo tweeted that Mossad agents were intimately involved in the unrest, saying, “Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them.” Reading by Tim Foley.
The only unlocked door out of this dystopian nightmare is the people using the power of their numbers to force real change. There are a whole lot more of us than there are of the tyrants who are inflicting these abuses upon our world, and they know it, and they fear us. Reading by Tim Foley.
Pretty sure what's tyrannical is invading a country, murdering scores of people, and abducting its leader in order to steal control of its resources. Reading by Tim Foley.
After spending days enthusiastically applauding Trump's freakish act of imperialist aggression to oust the president of Venezuela on the grounds that he is a murderous tyrant, Republicans in the United States are falling all over themselves to justify the cold-blooded murder of a mother of three by an ICE officer in Minneapolis. Reading by Tim Foley.
The empire needs its skillful orators and apologists like Obama, but it also needs its iron-fisted overt tyrants like Trump. Reading by Tim Foley.
After all those months of babbling about fentanyl and "narcoterrorism" and freedom and democracy, the Trump administration has come right out and admitted that its regime change interventionism in Venezuela has always been a good old-fashioned oil grab. Reading by Tim Foley.
Their research has concluded that convincing westerners to hate Muslims is easier than convincing them to love Israel. Reading by Tim Foley.
Doctors and aid workers largely became the de facto journalists on the ground in Gaza when Israel banned international news media and began systematically assassinating Gaza-based Palestinian journalists. So Israel wants to get rid of those de facto reporters to hide its crimes. Reading by Tim Foley.
Reading by Tim Foley.
Send us a textJoin your hosts on this week of Serious Privacy, Paul Breitbarth, Ralph O'Brien, and Dr. K Royal as they close out 2025 with favorite moments and episodes, state law review, and predictions. And of course, a little bit about EU data protection. We'll be back January 28, global privacy / data protection day! If you have comments or questions, find us on LinkedIn and Instagram @seriousprivacy, and on BlueSky under @seriousprivacy.eu, @europaulb.seriousprivacy.eu, @heartofprivacy.bsky.app and @igrobrien.seriousprivacy.eu, and email podcast@seriousprivacy.eu. Rate and Review us! From Season 6, our episodes are edited by Fey O'Brien. Our intro and exit music is Channel Intro 24 by Sascha Ende, licensed under CC BY 4.0. with the voiceover by Tim Foley.
My name appears at the top of a list in a document the Israeli government released earlier this month in order to draw false associations between the Bondi Beach shooting and online criticism of Israel and its atrocities. Reading by Tim Foley.
If they weren't concern-trolling about "globalize the intifada" they'd make up some other excuse to express their concern, and they know it. Their objection is to criticism of Israel, not to the way those criticisms are being expressed. Reading by Tim Foley.
But of course it would be antisemitic to suggest that there's anything strange about the US president meeting with the Israeli prime minister more frequently than with any other foreign leader on the planet. Reading by Tim Foley.
Send us a textOn this week of Serious Privacy, Ralph O'Brien, and Dr. K Royal connect with Charlie Silver of permission.io to discuss data ownership and trackable permission for online data. Of course, while Paul Breitbarth is out, Raph and K cannot help but challenge some of the positions - revoking #consent, #democracy, and #optimism. Somehow, we also wound up discussing #cryptocurrency. Join us.Please subscribe in your favorite podcast app - sharing is caring! If you have comments or questions, find us on LinkedIn and Instagram @seriousprivacy, and on BlueSky under @seriousprivacy.eu, @europaulb.seriousprivacy.eu, @heartofprivacy.bsky.app and @igrobrien.seriousprivacy.eu, and email podcast@seriousprivacy.eu. Rate and Review us! From Season 6, our episodes are edited by Fey O'Brien. Our intro and exit music is Channel Intro 24 by Sascha Ende, licensed under CC BY 4.0. with the voiceover by Tim Foley.
Stop picking on poor little Israel. It's just sitting there minding its own business trying to do a little genocide in peace while aggressively lobbying your government to crush your freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, and you're OBSESSING about it for NO REASON. Reading by Tim Foley.
The dumbest thing we are being asked to believe today is that pro-Palestinian protests caused the Bondi shooting. It's self-evidently moronic. No one sincerely believes it. They're just pretending to believe it to get protests banned and criticism of Israel outlawed. Reading by Tim Foley.
If the right to free speech does not include the right to oppose an active genocide using strong and unmitigated language, then there is no freedom of speech. Reading by Tim Foley.
You are allowed to subvert and undermine Israel's interests, because Israel is trying to subvert and undermine your rights. You are allowed to interfere in Israel's affairs, because Israel is interfering in your country's affairs. As Israel tries to exert more and more influence over western society and pushes western governments to crush our freedom of speech and assembly, we should be doing everything we can to make sure that western society turns against Israel, and that western governments alienate this freakish apartheid state on the world stage. And we should feel perfectly entitled in doing so, because Israel certainly feels comfortable coming after us and our rights. Reading by Tim Foley.
Not just hate speech against Jews. Criticism of a foreign state. They're coming right out and saying it. Reading by Tim Foley.
It's so American how the Sackler family caused a national opioid crisis which ultimately led to the fentanyl crisis, and instead of imprisoning them the US eventually went "Hang on, we can use this as an excuse to start a war with a country that doesn't even produce fentanyl." Reading by Tim Foley.
Of course, these outlets and individuals do not actually care about the phrase “globalize the intifada”. If pro-Palestine activists had never chanted that slogan, pro-Israel spinmeisters would be focusing on a different line today. They are not trying to stop chants which they perceive as dangerous, they are trying to stomp out criticism of Israel's genocidal atrocities. Reading by Tim Foley.
Send us a textOn this week of Serious Privacy, Paul Breitbarth, Ralph O'Brien, and Dr. K Royal connect with Val Ilchenko, Eric Sendelbach, and Ian Runyon of TrustArc to discuss the launch of the Arc. Join us as we discuss the factors that went into developing the Arc, challenges for privacy and data protection professionals, and how AI is baked in to give professionals the tools they need at their fingertips. Please subscribe in your favorite podcast app - sharing is caring! If you have comments or questions, find us on LinkedIn and Instagram @seriousprivacy, and on BlueSky under @seriousprivacy.eu, @europaulb.seriousprivacy.eu, @heartofprivacy.bsky.app and @igrobrien.seriousprivacy.eu, and email podcast@seriousprivacy.eu. Rate and Review us! From Season 6, our episodes are edited by Fey O'Brien. Our intro and exit music is Channel Intro 24 by Sascha Ende, licensed under CC BY 4.0. with the voiceover by Tim Foley.
Palestinians don't love their families any less than Australians do. Australian lives aren't any more significant or valuable than Palestinian lives. There is no valid reason for the world to have focused any less on the 15 people who were killed in Gaza on March 16 than on the 15 people who were murdered on Bondi Beach. But it did. Reading by Tim Foley.
It's so gross watching the tail-wagging excitement of Israel supporters in response to this shooting. They're so happy they have another rhetorical weapon with which to bludgeon pro-Palestine voices into silence. They can barely contain their glee. Reading by Tim Foley.
The US pirating a Cuba-bound oil tanker from Venezuela illustrates how the empire is hurrying to shore up control over Latin America in the same way the US and Israel are quickly shoring up control over the middle east. Reading by Tim Foley.
Just as the United States hits its first official trillion-dollar annual military budget, the New York Times editorial board has published an article which argues that the US is going to need to increase military funding to prepare for a major war with China. Reading by Tim Foley.
Send us a textJoin us for a rip-roaring week in privacy on this episode of Serious Privacy, where co-hosts Paul Breitbarth and Dr. K Royal (Ralph O'Brien is off this week) cover quality, not quantity - although there is no shortage of current events. If you have comments or questions, find us on LinkedIn and Instagram @seriousprivacy, and on BlueSky under @seriousprivacy.eu, @europaulb.seriousprivacy.eu, @heartofprivacy.bsky.app and @igrobrien.seriousprivacy.eu, and email podcast@seriousprivacy.eu. Rate and Review us! From Season 6, our episodes are edited by Fey O'Brien. Our intro and exit music is Channel Intro 24 by Sascha Ende, licensed under CC BY 4.0. with the voiceover by Tim Foley.
We definitely don't need to wait until the bastards have been defeated and we're feeling safe and secure in order to begin our healing journey. Reading by Tim Foley.
The blue whales have stopped singing because the krill are vanishing because the oceans are warming because we are ruled by long-toothed liars whose insides are full of dead leaves. The great whales have gone silent and my bird has gone blind and there are chatbots in the basement and corpses in the corn. Under the overpass it is dry and still. You would never know that everything is dying. You should come and visit me. Meet me over there under the sepia streetlights with the strangleporn perverts and fentanyl fallen, all the stillborn scar tissue extractions from the wreckage of a banished womb, the NAFTA-noosed factory towns full of deserted buildings and the window-snarling meth towns full of deserted people, where the cries of orphaned Palestinians mingle with the cries of the last baby orangutan ever born in the wild. Meet me under the flickering lights. Bring me some smokes and a sad luck story and let's stay up late by the freeway watching the traffic get sparse. Show me the spots on your skin where life has kicked you and I will kiss them and give you a flower. The leviathans have gone quiet and the turbines are getting loud, and everything has become so strange. So sit with me on this curb under my burlap wing and let's laugh and heal and mark beauty until sunrise. Reading by Tim Foley.
Trump campaigned on being a president of peace and continues to stake his personal reputation on big talk about peacemaking, but in terms of concrete action he's just as much of a warmonger as the psychopaths who came before him. Reading by Tim Foley.
If Maduro really was a monstrous tyrannical dictator the US would be selling him F-35s. Reading by Tim Foley.
Gonna follow the dinosaurs out the door because it was too uncomfortable and confrontational to tell a few billionaires and empire managers to fuck off. Reading by Tim Foley.
One thing I try not to think about very often is how many reports we've been seeing about Israeli prison guards training dogs to rape Palestinian captives in torture camps like Sde Teiman. Reading by Tim Foley.
Send us a textOn this episode of Serious Privacy, Ralph O'Brien and Dr. K Royal (while Paul Breitbarth is out) connect with Mariano delli Santi of Open Rights Group - a civil society pressure group - regarding an open letter to the UK department of Science Innovation and Technology (DSIT), signed by over 70 organisations and individuals, regarding the industry perceived lack of enforcement action by the UK's Information Commissioner and calling for an enquiry.You can find the letter here, and further information here. If you have comments or questions, find us on LinkedIn and Instagram @seriousprivacy, and on BlueSky under @seriousprivacy.eu, @europaulb.seriousprivacy.eu, @heartofprivacy.bsky.app and @igrobrien.seriousprivacy.eu, and email podcast@seriousprivacy.eu. Rate and Review us! From Season 6, our episodes are edited by Fey O'Brien. Our intro and exit music is Channel Intro 24 by Sascha Ende, licensed under CC BY 4.0. with the voiceover by Tim Foley.
Whenever I see the US empire saying they plan to remove the latest Official Bad Guy from power in order to liberate a nation from tyranny, I always want to ask, what is tyranny? Is it tyranny to constantly topple foreign governments by force if their leaders disobey you? Is it tyranny to circle the planet with hundreds of military bases in order to dominate all of humanity? Is it tyranny to continuously be inflicting mass military slaughter, backing genocides, staging foreign coups, fomenting unrest and uprisings in foreign nations, meddling in foreign elections, funding proxy conflicts, imposing blockades and starvation sanctions on civilian populations, and engaging in nuclear brinkmanship in order to rule the world? Is it tyranny to treat the entire global south as your personal piggy bank from which to extract limitless labor and resources and murder anyone who tries to inhibit these practices through any movement toward national sovereignty? Reading by Tim Foley.
The most common misconception about the free press of the western world is that it exists. Reading by Tim Foley.
It's just so insane how this doesn't sit front and center in our attention all the time. There are people dying of starvation, exposure and preventable illnesses every single day for no good reason. Humanity became more than capable of ensuring that this never happened to anyone ever again, and just rode right past that stunning moment in history without even glancing up from its smartphone. Reading by Tim Foley.
US regime change interventionism is reliably disastrous, and is always justified based on lies. This would be true even if Venezuela really was a major drug trafficking threat and even if Maduro really was the world's most evil dictator, neither of which are the case. Only idiots and sociopaths are clapping along with the war drums. Reading by Tim Foley.
We're on a trajectory where soon all our information will be stored and analyzed by artificial intelligence controlled by governments and billionaire megacorporations who can then use that information to surveil, manipulate and oppress us. Reading by Tim Foley.
There are always things you can do to fight the bastards, and there are always things you can do to improve your own life. Reading by Tim Foley.
Send us a textOn this episode of Serious Privacy, Paul Breitbarth and Dr. K Royal (while Ralph O'Brien is out) connect with a long-time friend and colleague Teresa Troester-Falk. The topics are broad, but mainly center around her new book "So you got the Privacy Officer Title - Now what?" (amazon link) which has gained quite the popularity among privacy professionals and those who want to enter / grow in the field. Join us as we discuss the big topics and nuances around the CPO title and responsibilities - and visibility. If you have comments or questions, find us on LinkedIn and Instagram @seriousprivacy, and on BlueSky under @seriousprivacy.eu, @europaulb.seriousprivacy.eu, @heartofprivacy.bsky.app and @igrobrien.seriousprivacy.eu, and email podcast@seriousprivacy.eu. Rate and Review us! From Season 6, our episodes are edited by Fey O'Brien. Our intro and exit music is Channel Intro 24 by Sascha Ende, licensed under CC BY 4.0. with the voiceover by Tim Foley.
It was a surprisingly exhilarating adventure packing up poster books and mailing them off to my readers. This was my first time ever physically interfacing with my audience in large numbers to any extent, and it was so beautiful going through everyone's names and addresses and getting to send them all physical things that I could put my love into. Reading by Tim Foley.
AI products which deceive people should be illegal in the same way fraud is illegal. Reading by Tim Foley.
The western press see the killing of Palestinians as such a baseline norm that Israel can massacre dozens of people in Gaza and they'll go, "Gosh I sure hope this doesn't lead to any violations of the ceasefire!" Reading by Tim Foley.
Drop Site News reports that the IDF quietly moved part of the “yellow line” which divides Gaza 300 meters forward, and then started shelling Palestinians for being on the “wrong side” of the line. They just keep finding new ways to carve off more pieces of Gaza and murder more Palestinians. Reading by Tim Foley.
AI isn't going to save us. Tech innovation isn't going to save us. Your favorite politician isn't going to save us. The Epstein files aren't going to save us. China isn't going to save us. The aliens aren't going to save us. No one is coming to save us. There is no deus ex machina resolution to the plotline of the human story. We're going to have to save ourselves. Reading by Tim Foley.
No no everything's fine. It's perfectly normal for people to have 80 hour work weeks while billionaires transform into trillionaires and tech plutocrats feed all our drinking water to AI servers as the planet dies. This is the only system that could possibly work. Reading by Tim Foley.
Former Obama speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz made some very revealing remarks during an appearance at the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly on Sunday, expressing frustration with the way younger Jews are dismissing pro-Israel arguments because of the carnage they've seen in Gaza. Tim Foley.
The dolphins are getting Alzheimer's from algae blooms caused by warming waters and toxic runoff and you could see the bloodstains in Sudan from space. The cobalt is mined by children and the music is made by robots and the grownups are wondering where the fireflies went. It is an elephant with an eyepatch and a prosthetic leg. It's a freshly emptied bed in the nursing home. A hand offers you pills to numb the dissonance, but you swat it away and howl naked in the thorns. Somewhere there's an ibis on a piano in a junkyard in the rain. Somewhere else there's a small boy who has just learned the word "treasure". "Look! Buried treasure!" he tells his dad. "No. That's just glass worn smooth by the sea." "Is that treasure?" "No, that's just a shiny candy wrapper shimmering in the sun." "Ooh! THIS is treasure!" "No that's garbage. Put it down." And the boy's vision changes and he no longer sees the treasure in things. He runs to join his dad and they walk together down the shore through a dying world of fading wonder full of worthless beach trash. "He is wrong," you whisper as the blood leaves your body. "There is treasure everywhere." Reading by Tim Foley.