Scholz’s China trip raises hackles
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | NOVEMBER 5, 2022
German diplomacy presented a riveting sight of “counterpoint” with Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock hosting her G7 partners in Münster on November 3-4 even as Chancellor Olaf Sholz was deplaning from Berlin on a one-day visit to Beijing.
The photo-op showed the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken flanking Baerbock at the main table with Under-secretary of State Victoria Nuland — best known as the master of ceremonies at the 2014 “Maidan” coup in Kiev in 2014 — peering from behind.
Germany is catching up with photo journalism. Seriously, the photo couldn’t have arrested more meaningfully for the world audience the split personality of German diplomacy as the present coalition government pulls in different directions.
Quintessentially, Baerbock has highlighted her discontent with Scholz’s China visit by assembling around her the like-minded G7 counterparts. Even by norms of coalition politics, this is an excessive gesture. When a country’s top leader is on a visit abroad, a display of dissonance undercuts the diplomacy.
Equally, Baerbock’s G7 counterparts chose not to wait for Scholz’s return home. Apparently, they have a closed mind and the tidings of Scholz’s discussions in Beijing will not change that.
First thing on Monday, Scholz should ask for Baerbeck’s resignation. Better still, the latter should submit her resignation. But neither is going to happen.
In the run-up to Scholz’s China visit, he faced withering criticism for undertaking such a mission to Beijing with a business delegation of powerful German CEOs. Clearly, the Biden Administration looked to Baerbock and the influential “Atlanticist” circles embedded within Germany’s political economy to lead the charge.
Has Scholz bitten more than he could chew? The answer depends on a counter question: Is Scholz eyeing a legacy in the great tradition of his predecessors in the Social Democratic Party, Willy Brandt (1969-1974), Helmut Schmidt (1974-1982)?
Those two titanic figures took path-breaking initiatives toward the former Soviet Union and China respectively during defining moments in modern history, defying the shackles of Atlanticism that curbed Germany’s strategic autonomy and consigned that country as a subaltern in the US-led alliance system.
The cardinal difference today is that Brandt (who navigated Ostpolitik ignoring the furious American protestations over the first-ever gas pipeline connecting Soviet gas fields with Germany) and Schmidt (who seized the moment to cash in on US-China normalisation) — and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder (1998-2005) too, who expanded and deepened expansion of business relations with Russia and struck an unprecedented working relationship with the Kremlin leadership, much to Washington’s irritation — were assertive leaders.
Put differently, it all depends on Germany’s collective will to break the NATO glass ceiling, which Lord Ismay, the Alliance’s first secretary-general, had succinctly captured as intended to “to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” Currently, the interplay of three factors impact German politics.
First, the Indo-Pacific strategy. Make no mistake, the proxy war in Ukraine is a dress rehearsal for the inevitable confrontation between the US and China over Taiwan issue. In both cases involving the strategic global balance, the stakes are exceedingly high for the US’ global hegemony and the multipolarity in the world order.
Germany has a pivotal role in this epochal struggle, not only by virtue of occupying the highly volatile ground in the middle of Europe that also carries remains of history, but being the economic powerhouse in the continent at the threshold of becoming a superpower.
The angst in Washington is self-evident that Scholz’s China visit may weaken the US’ geopolitical design to repeat the impressive feat of western unity over Ukraine if tensions boil over in Asia-Pacific and China is forced to act.
Of course, no analogy is complete as China is unlikely to opt for a 9-month old, incremental special military operation by Russia to “grind” the Taiwanese military and destroy the Ukrainian state. It’ll be world war from day one.
The analogy is complete, though, when it comes to the sanctions from hell that the Biden Administration will impose on China and the brigandry of confiscation of China’s “frozen assets” (exceeding a trillion dollars at the very least) ensues, apart from paralysing China’s supply chains.
Suffice to say, “doing a Ukraine” on China holds the key to the perpetuation of US global hegemony, as China’s financial assets get appropriated to refuel America’s ailing economy and dollar’s status as world currency and neo-mercantalism and control of capital movement, etc. remain intact.
Second, one big diplomatic victory of the Biden Administration so far has been in transatlantic politics where it succeeded in consolidating its dominance over Europe by pitchforking to the centerstage the Russia question. The European countries’ Manichean fears of an historic resurgence of Russian power were stirred up.
Few expected a Russian resurgence so soon after President Vladimir Putin’s famous speech at the Munich Security Conference in February 2007.
The western narrative at that time was that Russia simply lacked the capacity to regenerate as a global power, as Russia’s military’s modernisation was unfeasible. Arguably, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s entire diplomacy toward Russia (2005-2021) was pinned on that facile narrative.
Thus, when Putin announced most unexpectedly at a meeting of the Defence Ministry Board in Moscow on 24th December 2019 that Russia has become world leader in hypersonic weaponry and that “not a single country possesses hypersonic weapons, let alone continental-range hypersonic weapons,” the West heard it with undisguised horror.
The Biden team cashed in on the profound disquiet in the European capitals to rally them and drum up “western unity” over Ukraine. But a hairline crack is now appearing over Scholz’s visit to Berlin. Blinken rushed in to push Scholz back into the fold.
Third, following the above, a fundamental contradiction has appeared today as the West’s “sanctions from hell” against Russia boomeranged on Europeans, pushing them into recession. Germany has been hit very hard, staring at the spectre of the collapse of entire sectors of its industry, consequent unemployment and social and political turmoil.
The German industrial miracle was predicated on the availability of cheap, unlimited, assured supply of energy from Russia and the disruption is creating havoc. On top of it, the sabotage of Nord Stream pipelines rules out a revival of the energy nexus between Germany and Russia (which German public opinion favours.)
To be sure, with all the data available from the sea bed in the Baltic Sea, Schulz must be well aware of the geopolitical consequences of what the US has done to Germany. But he is not in a position to create a ruckus and instead opted to internalise the sense of bitterness, especially as Germany is in a humiliating position of having to buy frightfully expensive LNG from American companies to replace Russian gas.
The only option left to Germany is to reach out to China in a desperate search to revive its economy. Incidentally, Scholz’s mission primarily aimed at the relocation of production units of BASF, the German multinational chemical company and the largest chemical producer in the world, to China.
It is highly improbable, though, that Washington will allow Scholz a free hand. Fortuitously for Washington, Scholz’s coalition partners — Greens and FDU — are unvarnished atlanticists and are willing to play the American game, too.
Brandt or Schroeder would have fought back, but Scholz is not a street fighter, although he senses the US’ grand design to transform Germany as an appendage of the American economy and integrate it into a single supply chain. Simply put, Washington expects Germany to be an indispensable cog in the wheel of the collective West.
Meanwhile, Washington holds a strong hand, as Germany’s corporate sector is also a divided house with many companies who are well-placed to benefit from the economic model shift that Washington is promoting, showing reluctance to support Scholz — albeit a corporatist chancellor himself.
The US is adept at leveraging such situations. Reportedly, some of Germany’s high-tech companies did not accept Scholz’s invitation to accompany him to Beijing, including the CEOs of Mercedes-Benz, Bosch, Continental, Infineon, SAP, and Thyssen Krupp.
Marjorie Taylor Greene Says Ukraine Aid Will Drop to Zero If GOP Takes Congress
By Ilya Tsukanov – Samizdat – 04.11.2022
Last month, the White House expressed concerns that Trump Republicans could jeopardize future military and economic assistance to Ukraine after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy promised to stop writing “blank checks” to Kiev if the GOP wins back control of the House in the midterms.
Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has vowed that US aid to Ukraine will drop to nothing if her party takes Congress on Tuesday.
“Democrats have ripped our border wide open. But the only border they care about is Ukraine, not America’s southern border. Under Republicans, not another penny will go to Ukraine. Our country comes first,” Greene said at a “Save America” Trump rally in Sioux City, Iowa on Friday.
The congresswoman accused President Joe Biden and the Democrats of ignoring domestic problems, including the economy, inflation, crime, and the fentanyl crisis, of “putting America last,” and “destroying every single thread of democracy in the process.”
Greene promised that the GOP would open corruption investigations, impeach Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and President Joe Biden, and “defund all the horrific policies the Democrats have passed over the past two years,” including plans to increase the size of the IRS, vaccine mandates, and political actors inside the Department of Justice and the FBI.
“In order to truly make a commitment to America, Republicans are going to have to be the new Republican Party. We can no longer be the party of Mitch McConnell, John McCain, Dick Cheney, George Bush and Mitt Romney, or any other sellout, weak Republican brand that just holds hands with Democrats and serves the globalist agenda that is the enemy of us all,” Greene said.
Greene, 48, has been an outspoken critic inside the Republican Party of Washington’s economic and military aid to Kiev. Earlier this year, she attacked the $40 billion Ukraine Spending Bill, citing the nation’s shortage of baby formula. “40 billion dollars, but there’s no baby formula for American mothers and babies,” the lawmaker said on the House floor in May.
Greene condemned the bill’s approval of “an unknown amount of money to the CIA” and other boondoggle assistance. “If this is claiming that it’s about saving lives, let’s be real. Then we would care about war-torn countries like Ethiopia. So that’s a bunch of hypocrisy,” she said.
57 mostly pro-Trump House Republicans and 11 GOP senators voted against Ukraine assistance earlier this year, citing fears of escalating tensions with Russia and a range of domestic issues. According to an NPR primary election tracker estimate, over nine in ten of the 200+ Trump-endorsed candidates running for the House, Senate, and top state offices won their GOP primaries earlier this year, oftentimes knocking out Republicans with a traditional, neoconservative stance on foreign policy, and those rejecting the former president’s claim that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him.
On Friday, Republicans in the House Judiciary Committee released a 1,050-page report citing whistleblower testimony outlining alleged politicization of the FBI and the DoJ, with the document expected to serve as a “road map” for congressional probes against Biden and the Democrats, should the GOP take Congress on Tuesday.
Ukrainian Starlink units go dark over funding issues – media
RT | November 4, 2022
Some 1,300 Starlink satellite terminals went offline in Ukraine last week due to a failure to pay the military’s internet bills, deepening fears that the country will no longer be able to afford the pricey satellite service, two sources familiar with the situation told CNN on Friday.
The terminals, all part of a block purchased from a British company in March, began to go dark on October 24 for lack of funding, causing a “huge problem” for the military that depended upon them. Aware the bill was coming due and that they would be unable to pay it, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense asked its UK allies for $3.25 million to cover the monthly cost and rotated the terminals out of use so they wouldn’t wink out at a critical moment. However, their request was turned down.
Starlink parent company SpaceX alerted the Pentagon in September that it could no longer pay the full cost of Ukraine’s Starlink usage, asking Washington to pick up the slack, according to CNN. With approximately 25,000 Starlink terminals in Ukraine, Musk estimated the military’s use of the service would cost nearly $400 million over the next 12 months. Fewer than 11,000 were being paid for at the time he wrote to the Pentagon.
Musk then appeared to change his mind about footing the bill for the service a few days later, tweeting “We’ll just keep funding Ukraine for free.”
However, a senior defense official told CNN SpaceX has continued negotiating with the Pentagon, adding that officials are eager to get Musk to commit resources in writing because they fear he will change his mind.
He has reportedly refused to operate Starlink in Crimea, fearing this would invite an escalation from Moscow, while Western media have accused him of hindering the network’s operation by Ukrainian troops in Russian-controlled areas, which Musk denies. Last month, he warned that even though the company has “diverted massive resources toward defense” as the Russian military attempts to take the system out, “Starlink may still die.”
Moscow believes Starlink is a legitimate target, reasoning that the US and its allies have been using “elements of the civilian space infrastructure, including commercial, for military purposes.” Because this “essentially constitutes an involvement in military action through a proxy,” the “quasi-civilian” satellite network is fair game, Russian diplomat Konstantin Vorontsov told the UN last month.
FBI is ‘rotted at its core,’ Republican lawmakers say
RT | November 4, 2022
America is no longer a country where citizens are afforded equal justice under the law, as guaranteed by their Constitution, because the nation’s top law enforcement agency has been corrupted by politicized leadership and a “woke, leftist agenda” being imposed from the top, Republican lawmakers have claimed.
The allegations were contained in a 1,050-page report released on Friday by Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee. The report, which was based on information gathered from 14 FBI whistleblowers who came forward to expose a pattern of misconduct, argued that the agency was “rotted at its core.”
“Quite simply, the problem — the rot within the FBI — festers in and proceeds from Washington,” the report said. “The FBI and its parent agency, the Justice Department, have become political institutions.”
The report detailed such abuses as a secret partnership in which the FBI receives private information on conservative users from Facebook, without seeking their consent or going though the legal processes that would normally be required to tap such data.
Whistleblowers also alleged that the FBI “looked the other way” on dozens of attacks against anti-abortion groups, even as the agency sent heavily armed teams of officers to arrest pro-life activists at their homes for alleged violations of selectively enforced crimes. Parents who spoke out at school board meetings over controversial policies were targeted by investigators as alleged terrorists.
At the same time, former FBI official Timothy Thibault “shut down” a probe into the overseas business dealings of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and attempted to keep the case from being reopened, the report said. Thibault openly displayed his political bias in social media posts that included his official title.
“America’s not America if you have a Justice Department that treats people differently under the law,” Representative Jim Jordan, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, told Fox News on Friday. “It’s supposed to be equal treatment under the law. That’s not happening, and we know it’s not happening because 14 brave FBI agents came to us as whistleblowers and told us what exactly is going on here.”
The report also accused the FBI of inflating statistics on domestic extremism to help fuel a narrative promoted by President Joe Biden’s administration. FBI employees who have conservative views are being purged from the agency, it claims.
Republicans argued that the FBI was plagued by a “systemic culture of unaccountability,” as well as “rampant corruption, manipulation and abuse.” The agency’s shift toward “political meddling” has allegedly pulled resources away from legitimate law enforcement duties. For instance, one whistleblower claimed that he was told after the January 2021 US Capitol riot that child sex-abuse cases were “no longer an FBI priority and should be referred to local law enforcement agencies.”
‘Activist groups’ tanking Twitter profits – Musk
RT | November 4, 2022
Twitter owner Elon Musk has accused “activist groups” of “trying to destroy free speech in America” by pressuring advertisers to boycott his platform even though he hasn’t changed any policies. The billionaire took to Twitter to complain about the “massive drop in revenue” on Friday.
The platform is losing money “due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists,” Musk tweeted, calling the situation “extremely messed up!”
“They’re trying to destroy free speech in America,” he wrote.
Musk held a Zoom call on Tuesday with representatives from the Stop Hate for Profit Coalition, a pressure group led by the ADL that has organized advertiser boycotts of social media platforms over perceived weaknesses in keeping out “hate speech.” Representatives from the NAACP, Color of Change, the Asian American Foundation, and the George Bush Presidential Center were also reportedly present, among others.
The coalition was able to secure all three of its “immediate requests” from the Tesla tycoon, according to multiple members and Musk himself.
He promised not to replatform banned accounts before the midterm election results were certified or before a “clear process” had been devised, and vowed to keep in place “election integrity” measures. Additionally, Musk agreed to form a “content moderation council” that would include representatives from the ADL and other coalition members with “diverse” viewpoints.
Despite appearing to bring the self-described “free speech absolutist” to heel, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt hinted that further controls might be necessary in a statement released following the call. He insisted “much more needs to be done to reduce lies and hate on Twitter” and said backtracking on previous progress was “not an option.”
A few Twitter users had suggestions for how Musk might deal with the pressure campaign.
“Name and shame the advertisers who are succumbing to the advertiser boycotts,” Mike Davis, co-founder of the Internet Accountability Project, tweeted, suggesting Musk’s followers engage in a “counter-boycott” against them.
More than three quarters of 2.7 million respondents agreed that advertisers should support free speech over political correctness when polled by Musk on Wednesday.
Musk fired the board of directors and several high ranking executives upon taking over as CEO last week. However, he has attempted to reassure advertisers that the site would not become a “free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequence” under his watch.
Pfizer, Democrat-led “Accountable Tech” are Blackmailing Twitter
Will they succeed at preserving censorship?
By Igor Chudov | November 3, 2022
Pfizer is “pausing advertising on Twitter” because it is “concerned that Mr. Musk could scale back content moderation, which they worry would lead to an increase in objectionable content on the platform.”
Pfizer was one of the most significant sources of revenue for Twitter. I constantly saw Pfizer ads and promoted posts, such as this one:
(If you are not sure why “the human brain” becomes so sweaty once pink “science” grabs it firmly from behind, neither am I)
What is interesting is that this advertising pause involves not only Pfizer but other large multinationals with no specific issues related to Twitter censorship, such as General Mills, a producer of popular but unhealthy breakfast cereals.
Who is behind this? Meet a new “action coalition” called “Accountable Tech” that is directing efforts to withhold advertising money from misbehaving technology companies. You may be very surprised, or not, but “Accountable Tech” is packed with Democratic operatives:
Accountable Tech is spearheading this letter to Twitter advertisers:
Accountable Tech joined more than 25 groups to deliver the below message in a letter to Twitter’s top advertisers to demand nonnegotiable requirements for their ad business in the midst of Elon Musk’s acquisition:
To whom it may concern:
Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter will further toxify our information ecosystem and be a direct threat to public safety, especially among those already most vulnerable and marginalized.
The undersigned organizations believe that Twitter should continue to uphold the practices that serve as guideposts for other Big Tech platforms. We call on you – Twitter’s top advertisers – to commit to these standards as non-negotiable requirements for advertising on the platform:
- Keep accounts including those of public figures and politicians that were removed for egregious violations of Twitter Rules – such as harassment, violence, and hateful conduct – off the platform
All these coalitions attempt to influence large advertisers into doing their bidding by withholding ad money from tech companies that “Accountable Tech” wants to punish.
I understand why Pfizer, a company selling fraudulent “Covid vaccine” and relying on censorship for continued sales, has a vested interest in Twitter continuing to censor vaccine skeptics. However, other companies mentioned above do not have such reasons.
General Mills should only care about selling its cereals. As such, they would advertise wherever the ads would bring future product buyers. So, the pecuniary interest of that company is certainly NOT in pausing their Twitter ads that go along with sports coverage and other non-controversial threads.
Thus, by stopping ads, General Mills acts against its own shareholders. Its management is not blind to this. However, over the years, the coalitions like Accountable Tech have acquired significant influence within these companies and boardrooms via various “diversity,” “equality,” and other “stakeholder” commissions intimidating corporate management.
I discussed this previously in a somewhat broader context after Musk made his first Twitter offer. I explained why “free speech” is a threat to very powerful interests:
Not all tech companies succumb to these “silencing coalitions.” Substack is a very successful, profitable platform that said no to all attempts to deplatform “misinformation superspreaders.” Rumble recently told France to bug off with its requests to close certain channels and blocked France. Other platforms like gab are doing just fine financially without these corporate advertisers.
These “fringe” platforms are resisting censorship but involve comparatively few users. What “Accountable Tech” is trying to do is keep the general masses on the largest social networks from learning the truth.
Will Elon Musk overcome this blackmail? Does he even care to have free speech on Twitter? Is he an ally of freedom? Will “Accountable Tech” win and silence us? What do you think?
Study: Incidence Of Acute Cardiac Involvement After mRNA Booster “800 Times Higher”
By P Gosselin | NoTricksZone | November 2, 2022
“Alarming: 1 in 35 booster patients has lab values indicating acute heart damage.”
That’s the headline of an article by at transparenztest.de.
The finding is based on results by a Swiss observational study by Prof. Christian Eugen Mueller published here.
1 of 35 individuals showed laboratory values indicative of acute cardiac injury after booster mRNA vaccination.
Researchers led by Prof. Christian Eugen Müller of the University Hospital Basel investigated the extent to which cardiac involvement occurs after mRNA booster vaccinations. Heart damage from the mRNA booster shots appears to be a much higher risk than previously thought, the recent findings show.
777 employees of Basel University Hospital, median age 37 years and 69% female, had received booster vaccination. After 3 days, their troponin levels (hs-cTnT) were measured. Troponin is a laboratory value that indicates acute damage to the heart.
Much higher in women
“40 subjects showed elevated troponin levels. In 18 of these cases, other causes were present. The remaining 22 cases corresponded to an incidence of 2.8%. The incidence in women was 3.7% and in men only 0.8%,” reports transparenztest.de. “Most of the subjects had no cardiovascular history. Three days after vaccination, their troponin levels (hs-cTnT) were measured to detect cardiac damage. If levels were elevated, another hs-cTnT measurement and imaging examination followed the next day.”
The surprising results were presented at the 2022 ESC Congress.
It had been previously suggested that such complications were very rare, with an incidence in the range of only 0.0035%. But the new study results suggest it’s far worse.
800 times higher than previously shown
According to Prof. Christian Müller: “The study confirms the hypothesis that the incidence of acute cardiac involvement is higher than thought. At 2.8% it was 800 times higher than in passive observational studies. But now that we need annual booster vaccinations, there could be a lot of vaccine-related cardiac involvement.”
Prof. Christian Müller adds. “From day 3 to day 4, we observed a clear drop in troponin in almost all participants, indicating that this was an acute problem.”
“Alarmingly high”
“The incidence of 2.8% of acute cardiac involvement is alarmingly high,” transparenztest.de warns. “Thus, 1 out of 35 boostered persons shows such values shortly after the mRNA vaccination. Converted, one would have e.g. with 350,000 booster vaccinations consequently 10,000 persons or with 3.5 million 100,000 persons, who show such laboratory values of an acute heart damage.”
Also see: Dr. John Campbell
Canada’s Bill C-11 explained: A chilling law that lets the government censor user-generated content
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | November 3, 2022
Canada’s Online Streaming Act (Bill C-11) is one of several recent attempts by Western governments to crush online speech while claiming that they support free expression.
The bill is being pushed by Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez — a politician who believes that unregulated speech “erodes the foundations of democracy.” And it has the full support of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — a world leader who previously said freedom of expression isn’t “freedom to hate.”
The Trudeau regime first attempted to pass a version of this bill in 2020. However, this bill (Bill C-10) failed in 2021 after mass pushback over the way it attempted to censor online speech.
After Bill C-10 died, Pierre Poilievre, the current leader of the Canadian Conservative Party of Canada who was serving as a Member of Parliament (MP) in 2021, warned critics of Bill C-10 to “make sure that we’re ready the next time Trudeau and his team come for our freedom of expression.”
And just one year later, Trudeau and his team did just that by resurrecting Bill C-10 and renaming it Bill C-11.
The bill gives Canada’s communications regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), increased powers to regulate “programs” — a definition that applies to almost all forms of audio-visual content that are uploaded by Canadian citizens.
It will empower the CRTC to set content promotion and demotion rules for Canadian content and require platforms to make financial contributions towards Canadian content.
As with most censorship bills, Bill C-11 uses freedom of expression as a red herring and claims that the bill will be “applied in a manner that is consistent with…the freedom of expression and journalistic, creative and programming independence enjoyed by broadcasting undertakings”
But the bill is so restrictive that even censorship-loving YouTube has warned that the bill will harm creators and creators are considering leaving the country if it passes.
Here are the main things you need to know about Bill C-11:
It empowers government regulators to censor user-generated content
When pushing Bill C-11, Rodriguez has implied that it won’t apply to user-generated content by repeating the phrase “platforms are in, users are out.” However, the actual text of the bill gives the CRTC vast powers to decide whether almost any piece of user-generated content uploaded by Canadian users falls under the scope of the bill.
Section 4.2 of the bill states that the CRTC “may make regulations prescribing programs in respect of which this Act applies.”
And while the CRTC is expected to consider three factors when making these regulations, Dr. Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, notes that these factors are only considerations that the CRTC can simply ignore.
“Much like the lip service the Commission has given at times to policy directions, the CRTC is free under the bill to confirm that it ‘considered’ the factors in setting the regulations and adopt a different approach,” Geist said.
The bill itself empowers the CRTC to indirectly censor any content that falls under the scope of Bill C-11 by imposing conditions on Canadian apps, social media platforms, and websites.
One of the most controversial conditions the CRTC can impose is a condition related to “the presentation of programs and programming services for selection by the public, including the showcasing and the discoverability of Canadian programs and programming services, such as original French language programs.”
This condition lets the CRTC decide whether content that falls within its scope should be boosted or demoted on Canadian apps, platforms, and websites. And according to Geist, this condition could result in platforms that host user-generated content being forced to demote content and apply warning labels to a wide range of lawful content.
It may target a wide range of apps, platforms, and websites
While most of the discussion around Bill C-11 has focused on how it will impact user-generated content on social media, the potential scope of the bill is actually much wider because it doesn’t contain any provisions that limit its scope to just social media platforms.
And an early government memo on Bill C-10 (the Bill C-11 predecessor) acknowledged that the Canadian government wanted to target audiobook services such as Audible, podcast apps such as Pocket Casts and Stitcher, music streaming services such as Apple Music and Amazon Music, sports streaming services such as DAZN and MLB.tv, video streaming services such as Netflix and Disney+, niche streaming services such as BritBox, websites such as the BBC and TVO, gaming platforms such as PlayStation, home workout apps, and more.
It will limit the reach of independent Canadian creators
Even if the CRTC doesn’t use its Bill C-11 powers to push for the demotion of lawful content, any presentation or discoverability conditions that are imposed on apps, platforms, or websites are still likely to limit the reach of independent Canadian creators and boost mainstream media outlets.
According to Geist, the current rules for determining whether a piece of content is “certified Canadian content” are “geared toward well-established productions that fall outside the digital first world” and it’s unclear whether content from independent, digital first creators even qualifies as certified Canadian content. This means that content from large Canadian media outlets is much more likely to be selected for prioritization when any Bill C-11 presentation and discoverability conditions are imposed.
Geist argues that “the impact will be incredibly damaging to digital first creators, who may find their content effectively de-prioritized in their own country based on Canadian legislation as implemented by the CRTC.”
Even if independent creator content is selected for prioritization, the way Bill C-11’s presentation and discoverability conditions force Canadian content on users who aren’t necessarily interested in the content is likely to result in lower engagement rates. These reduced engagement rates will result in algorithms recommending Canadian content less frequently outside of Canada and ultimately reduce the reach of independent Canadian content in non-Canadian countries.
It will give Canadians an inferior online experience
The way Bill C-11 forces Canadian content into the feeds of Canadian users also has a detrimental impact on their online experience. Instead of being able to fill their feeds with interesting content from their favorite creators, Canadians will have a certain amount of potentially irrelevant content forced on them by the CRTC’s requirements.
Not only does the bill prevent Canadians from being able to fully control and customize their feeds but it also makes it more time-consuming for them to find non-Canadian content. Even if Canadian users take explicit steps to seek out non-Canadian content, the requirements of Bill C-11 will continuously push a pre-determined amount of Canadian content into their feeds.
In addition to this, Bill C-11 could reduce the number of apps, platforms, and websites that are available to Canadians because the high cost of compliance may result in some companies pulling their services out of Canada.
Furthermore, Canadians will likely have to pay more to access subscription-based apps, platforms, and websites that fall under the scope of Bill C-11 as the affected companies pass on the cost of compliance to users.
It could create privacy issues for independent Canadian creators
Bill C-11’s discoverability conditions could create privacy issues for independent Canadian creators because the only practical way for these creators to verify that they’re Canadian would be to hand over sensitive personal information.
Canada’s federal privacy commissioner, Philippe Dufresne, admitted this would be the case during his appearance before a Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications.
“Discoverability conditions could nonetheless potentially require the adaptation of existing algorithms that rely on personal information or the analysis of personal information to determine whether user-generated content is Canadian,” Dufresne told the committee.
And these privacy restrictions aren’t limited to algorithms. The more personal data companies hold, the more devastating the privacy impact is on their users if there’s ever a data breach.
It disproportionately impacts small platforms
Most large apps, platforms, and websites have significant data harvesting capabilities, utilize advanced algorithms, and generate billions of dollars in revenue. These resources make it relatively easy for these platforms to comply with Bill C-11’s requirements to identify Canadian content, prioritize Canadian content in a way that’s compliant with CRTC orders, and make their financial contributions towards the production of Canadian content.
However, smaller platforms with more rudimentary technology and less revenue will find it harder to abide by the requirements of Bill C-11. Some may even find the cost of compliance to be so prohibitive that they’re left with no choice but to pull out of the Canadian market altogether.
The potential privacy issues associated with Bill C-11 could also harm smaller platforms that are attempting to differentiate from their Big Tech counterparts by offering a more private experience for their users. These platforms could be forced to start collecting personal information to comply with the bill’s discovery conditions, and in doing so, lose their competitive advantage over the tech giants.
Stay up to date with Bill C-11
Despite the major problems with Bill C-11, it has already made its way through the Canadian House of Commons and it’s on the verge of passing the Senate. However, there are some members of the Senate that oppose the bill and hope to kill it before it becomes law.
You can read the full text of Bill C-11 here.
You can track the progress of Bill C-11 here.
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Book Review
Jeffrey Epstein: A Jewish Individual?
The Occidental Observer | February 5, 2023
One Nation Under Blackmail: The Sordid Union between Intelligence and Organized Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein (Volume 1 & 2) by Whitney Webb
“Far from being an anomaly, Epstein was one of several men who, over the past century, have engaged in sexual blackmail activities designed to obtain damaging information (i.e., “intelligence”) on powerful individuals with the goal of controlling their activities and securing their compliance.”[1]
Jeffrey Epstein is dead and Ghislaine Maxwell is locked away in prison, and the thought-makers of our world seem keen to let the more explosive parts of the scandal dissipate from the public consciousness. As far as the mainstream media is concerned, Epstein and Maxwell were little more than well-connected socialites who ran a sex-trafficking ring for the rich and the powerful, and the focus has shifted instead to the criminal and civil cases seeking to achieve redress for the victims of sexual abuse.
On occasion some newspaper articles will mention the hidden cameras littered across Epstein’s properties, others the reams of CDs and hard drives found within them during the FBI raids. Altogether missing from the Netflix documentaries (Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich [2020] and Ghislaine Maxwell: Filthy Rich [2022]) or the articles that spend their time narrowly focusing on the links between Epstein and Bill Gates, is the acknowledgement of the true nature of Epstein himself and the ultimate purpose of this sex-trafficking of minors — a sexual blackmail operation.
Not everyone is cowardly enough to let these controversial aspects lie untouched, as the newly released two-volume book One Nation Under Blackmail by independent reporter Whitney Webb seeks to blow wide open this media-enforced blackout. Utilizing primarily open-source information (that is, publicly accessible information such as books, newspapers articles and government reports),[2] Webb’s book delves into the life and times of Jeffrey Epstein and his deep ties to Jewish billionaires and Israeli intelligence. … continue
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