Bill C10 – Internet censorship coming to a site you read

For some time now I have been tweeting and organizing resistance to Bill C-10. This has kept me busy in my personal capacity, as it were, and Dalwhinnie has had to take back seat to my public-facing self.

I have learned or been reminded of several truths in the course of the past few weeks, but first let me tell you about the bill.

There are two modes of communications, legally speaking. On the one hand, there are speech and writing, film production, and others which occur without prior permission from the state. You write what you want and assume responsibility after publication for slander, criminal conspiracy, obscenity, and other legal liabilities. Then there is that creature of the twentieth century, called broadcasting, which requires a licence from the state. You broadcast under conditions established for a particular class of speaker, one who is assumed to be few in number talking to hundreds of thousands who are limited in their choice of “stations”. This was the original rationale for broadcasting regulation,  few-to-many, one way and which used airwaves that interfered with one another unless carefully assigned by central authority.

It will be readily understood that every advance of electronic communications has served to increase the number of stations, from three to seven to thirty to fifty, to the Internet. The internet has exploded the number of speakers into the millions, or tens of millions. With new forms of addressing, such as IPv6, the number of “stations” will be in the trillions.

Despite this, Canadian law still treats the Internet as a form of “broadcasting”, a licensable activity that for thirty years the government had the wisdom not to touch. Previous CRTC decisions had said that regulating the Internet as broadcasting was superfluous and unneeded. These decisions of the CRTC claimed jurisdiction over the Internet but did not exercise it.

Now that restraint has been overthrown. In a search for revenue from web giants, and egged on by the Canadian cultural organizations – the ones who feed on television productions subsidies – the government, led by the Minister of Canadian Heritage Steven Guilbault, has plunged recklessly into a gigantic extension of federal authority over communications.

Bill C10, which is a series of amendments to the Broadcasting Act, would treat

  • all websites
  • all user-generated uploads to social media sites

as “broadcasting”, that is, occasions where you could be regulated by the CRTC. The difference is that, in the case of user generated content uploaded to platforms, you would not be the broadcaster, the platform would be the broadcaster. This would outsource government control and censorship to the large platforms, who would act under CRTC or other government regulations.

This website, and all others, commercial, artistic, political, would be treated as broadcasting if they were “predominantly” -word undefined – audio-visual rather than printed in nature. It is not difficult to imagine that by bit count alone, and by inclusion of a few video inserts, a newspaper would become a “broadcaster”, in the same way that a podcaster is now, according to this Bill, a radio station.

It reaches the absurdity of a zoom call among church attendees being considered broadcasting, and subject to federal regulation. Will “balance” in religious programming be imposed on church services? Will the imam share time in the pulpit? If you think this is absurd, you don’t know the CRTC.

 

The authors of C10 are seeking to jam the internet into the form of broadcasting, rather than make  broadcasting conform to the Internet.

It is readily evident that a large number of issues will remain undecided by the bill itself and that years of hearings and lawsuits will ensue, including challenges to the constitutionality of the bill, on several grounds.

But back to the tweetstorm.

The public debate on this bill took a while to get started, for several reasons. The first is that members of Parliament are not clever lawyers on the whole, and it took them a while to scope out the extent of the government’s ambitions. Both the Bloc Quebecois and the NDP favour large public subsidies to their unionized buddies in the TV production industry. The Liberals favour their own guy and they are not averse to totalitarian controls on the Internet, it seems. That left the Conservatives to slowly appreciate that the Liberals had handed them a major electoral campaign issue if they wanted it. They finally realized what the bill meant to ordinary Canadians. And ordinary Canadians are waking up.

This state of affairs was changed only by professors of communications, like Michael Geist, members of the Internet Society of canada, and former CRTC commissioners such as Peter Menzies, Konrad von Finckensten and Timothy Denton to write op-eds in papers until the latter woke up to the notion that they would become “broadcasters” if this bill passed. Open Media got involed and that meant that the political left started to agitate against it. As one wit said of the left-right alliance on C10: “we want to be able to shout at each other without the state refereeing.”

The ignorance of the press on this issue has been astounding, if you were not already cynical about their capacity to understand issues. They had to be told in black and white what the Act said, and even then they still hesitated to get it.

The opinion battle among the elites has taken place principally on Twitter. Throughout, the motives of those opposed to the Bill have been questioned. Vast conspiracies have been imagined by the proponents of the bill, sponsored by the likes of Google and Facebook. It has not occured to them that people could actually freely spend time opposing the bill because of principled concerns for freedom of speech. If you speak only for money, it comes as a shock that people will speak and write for no money at all.

Not once have the arguments of the opponents of the bill ever been frontally addressed. Not once. The Minister has been reduced to blithering incoherence on several occasions by being asked factual questions about what the Bill plainly says. It is as if he had not read his own bill, or did not understand it. A reasoned defence of the Bill has been missing. It might have been attempted, but was not, largely because to address the issues would be to deal with some real concerns that the bill’s proponents would rather not discuss.

The TV production and other recipients of cultural largesse in Canada have only tweeted their unanimous support for C10. (Canada spens about as much money on cultural subsidies overall as we spend on the Candain navy). The French Canadians, it would appear, have no concerns for freedom of speech, and seem not to understand what English Canadians are going on about. Their confidence in a federal institution, the CRTC, to decide matters of cultural concern to them, appears to be unbounded. We are confidently told by those who feel they understand Quebec that even to raise these concerns with them is a provocation.

Normally a story has a two or three day run. The C10 issue has occupied weeks of media attention, and won’t go away because it constitutes an immense assault upon historic rights of free speech won by revolutions and bloodshed in the 17th and 18th centuries, revolutions that passed French Canada by. It remains to be seen whether the Liberals have handed the Conservatives a winning election issue or not. But if enough people say they will die on this hill, not even the federal Liberals can overcome the resolve of the nation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Police State Ontario

 

Apparently, it’s only Rebel News these days that is actually reporting news. The Fake News Media ignores all this. Protesters outside City Hall, Hamilton, being ticketed by Ontario NKVD in the employ of Commissar Ford.

This is all way beyond public health now, it’s outright tyranny. No conservative or libertarian should ever vote for the Ontario Progressive Communist Party ever again.

Look at the medical evidence: lockdowns do not work[here] !

 

Rebel Yell

Covid—Now a Mass Psychosis

 

The Academy of Ideas[here] continues to produce excellent videos on the important topics in our collapsing civilization…

This is why the totalitarians who now rule are the merchants of fear.

 

As Muad’Dib, I tell you:

 

“Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

 

Reclaim your humanity by rejecting the oppressive fear of covid and our totalitarian rulers…Time is on our side.

Rebel Yell

From a year ago

The recent gentle pushback against the more egregious of Premier Ford’s recent missteps prompted a revisit to these thoughts.

“How well will the people manage compliance? At a certain point, even sheep recall they have teeth. I recall a steamy Toronto night in the 80’s, on the sidewalk outside the El Mocambo night club after it closed. A few dozen people milling around, smoking joints, making coke deals and deciding which booze can to move on to. A black-and-white pulled up and a police officer got out to ticket a car. A loud and angry voice said, “Get away from that car!” Other people started to shout. I was impressed with how quickly the mob formed, and how thrilling it was to be part of it. A special kind of adrenaline, I suppose, with all the fun and none of the fear. The cop turned around, got in the car and drove away, to a chorus of jeers and curses. Will parents cut the locks on city park gates and tell the state to fuck off? I can only hope.”

Checkpoint Charlebois

“Checkpoints from Quebec? The dream of my adult life has just come true! Where do I volunteer? ‘Out of the car, Mr Frenchman! What is your business in my province? Schnell!’ I live 300 yards from the French frontier, near a bridge, and they have to set up checkpoints nearby. I will be there, cheering on the Stormtroopers of the Doug Ford Reich.”

The Nothingness of Canada’s Conservative Party





…Or Propaganda 102…

My avid fans may remember my short missive Propaganda 101 from a few days ago. In that, I tried to show how incompetent was the Tory propaganda machine in dealing with the Sloan Affair. Actually, they made it an affair, whereas it should have been a minor annoyance.

Recall that, recently, an Ontario Christian pastor was arrested [here] and sent to jail for holding church services. On being warned by the police charged with enforcing the tyrannical “lockdown” fantasies of the Liberal government, he refused to renege on his responsibilities to his flock by signing onto some submission, but chose to remain in jail pending trial.

The pretense that lockdowns have led to any improvement in the “fight against covid” has been shown to be a fallacy. Examination of data from around the world will clearly show that lockdowns have no effect on the spread or containment of covid. The entire response of the federal government is based purely on panic and a rejection of established scientific responses to a pandemic.

Many thousands of scientists and medical experts signed onto the Great Barrington Declaration which declares that the response to the pandemic should have been based upon protecting the vulnerable, caring for the sick, and allowing civilized society to continue.

There is certainly no agreement in the scientific world as to the viability of lockdowns. There is clearly in the political world a great deal of room for open discussion, and it seems that the Conservative Party no longer believes in free and open discussion, even when vital national interests are at stake.

Now, Erin O’Toole has revoked the Conservative Party membership of Pastor Hildebrandt and his son for taking this principled stand.
Continue reading The Nothingness of Canada’s Conservative Party

The Descent Into Madness (1)



Truly, whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. So said the Ancient Greeks, demonstrating how much wiser they were than any of our current political leaders.

Almost all hitherto existing cultures and civilizations have been authoritarian states, whether ruled by an emperor, or a powerful Senate as in the Roman Republic, or a mixture of principalities and city states. Even the Democracy of ancient Athens was only a democracy of the upper echelons of that society.

For example, the Republic of Venice (the Most Serene Republic—La Serenissima) existed for over a thousand years. From its inception in 697 AD it was a center of trade in the Mediterranean and a center of learning in the arts, music and science. It was the birthplace of the great European explorer, Marco Polo, the composers Vivaldi and Marcello, the home of da Vinci and many others.

It was governed by a Grand Council of merchants and aristocrats from about a hundred families who elected the Doge who ruled for life. Venice was a shining light in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance; princes vied with one another to hire the best artists, composers and scientists. Authoritarian government is directed to control of the State—not control of society or the social being.

Totalitarianism is something quite different and much more a product of the modern age. It does not even depend on authoritarian government; in fact, modern totalitarianism defers to democracy.

Totalitarian rule is aimed at controlling the minds, thoughts and behavior of everyone, particularly in their private lives. It aims at abolishing the very concept of a private life beyond control of the rulers and their dogmas. As in 1984, there will be no ownlife.

Language is debased and slogans mean their exact opposite—War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Diversity is Strength. The Bolsheviks tried this to the extent of trying to eliminate the family, the root of all civilization even forcing people to live in communal apartments with no private space. Needless to say this collapsed after a few years.

The French Revolution was essentially the first Bolshevik Revolution of modern times. Again, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity meant the exact opposite. The Terror replaced liberty, arbitrary dictatorship replaced Equality, and fratricidal murder replaced Fraternity. The Revolutionists sought to destroy not only the aristocratic state, and the Church, but French culture itself. All thought independent of the republican dogmas was to be expunged. The Terror reached such a frenzy, that friends betrayed friends, neighbors betrayed neighbors, to the guillotine for fear of themselves being the next to be beheaded in the name of Brotherhood. Tens of thousands perished and society and the economy foundered. As Gustave le Bon remarks in “The Psychology of Revolution”…

The propaganda of the new apostles was very energetic. To convert the provinces they sent thither zealous disciples escorted by guillotines. The inquisitors of the new faith would have no paltering with error. As Robespierre said, “The republic is the destruction of everything that is opposed to it.” What matter that the country refused to be regenerated? It should be regenerated despite itself. “We will make a cemetery of France,” said Carrier, “rather than fail to regenerate it in our own way.”

The new rulers of France despised the ordinary people, their religion, their culture and their very being. The French Revolution was totalitarian—the complete extirpation of all previous social relations and ideas.

The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia was another totalitarian revolution with the same motivations and ideas. The same hatred of the Russian people was displayed; the same spite and envy powered their depraved designs. Again, attempts were made to eradicate all hitherto existing society and to control the minds, thoughts and behaviors of every citizen.

Although totalitarian regimes are usually also authoritarian, they do not have to be.

Authoritarian governments wish to control the State; totalitarian governments wish to control the mind.

In general, authoritarian rulers seek to aggrandize the State and Nation; totalitarian rulers despise the very people that make up the Nation. In our world today, the main forces of totalitarianism are extant in nominally democratic countries such as the USA, Canada, Britain and others. We see this in the proliferation of hate speech laws aimed at suppressing any and all points of view displeasing to our rulers. Punishments are exacted by cancelling people, firing them from their jobs or bankrupting their businesses. We see it too in the incessant insults against white people with the perpetual denigration of our history and with the belittling of our culture.

We see it too in the bastardization of our language. As George Orwell pointed out many years ago the control of language means the control of thought and the control of thought means the control of consciousness. The entire object of totalitarian mind control is to render coherent thought and rational expression impossible. Nations that are subject to this are easy to control and populations easy to suppress.

The recent events in the United States, the fraudulent election, the takeover of the capital by the deep state, and the attempted suppression of any opposition, are harbingers of the coming tyranny. The same is true in Canada and Britain.

In the US, Canada and Britain, no attempt has been made by the so-called conservative parties to call out the corruption of the education system, the substitution of propaganda for history, and the attempts to eradicate any freedom of discussion. The universities are now reduced to institutions of the Deep State committed to dumbing down the next generation of students and eliminating their capacity for analytical thought. The complete perversion of education is in full flight. Teachers and professors are bullied by Red-Guard students and political commissars, now called diversity and inclusion officers.

Totalitarian society is here, and it will get worse. For an outstanding analysis, read the interview with Professor of Clinical Psychology, Mattias Desmet of Ghent University, carried in lockdownsceptics [here]
Our conservative politicians in the West have shown themselves to be spineless and worthless, meekly lying down in front of this onslaught. If they wish to survive, they must stand for something and make their ideas known. That requires courage, not subservience.

Are any of them up to it?

Rebel Yell


The Rot in the West



As we experience the decay of freedom in the West and the expanding cultural rot, this is not going unnoticed in the rest of the world.

Russian director, Konstantin Bolomogov, has published a manifesto Похищение Европы 2.0, “Abduction of Europe 2.0”, in the journal Novaya Gazeta. [here] [The article is in Russian, but if you use Chrome, the translation extension will give a passable English version.]

He thinks the West is going through something like that depicted in Kubrick’s famous movie “A Clockwork Orange” wherein the hero is essentially “de-personalized” and turned into the opposite of a real man. For example,

The modern West is such a criminal who has undergone chemical castration and lobotomy. Hence this false smile of goodwill and all-acceptance, frozen on the face of a Western person. This is not the smile of Culture. It is a smile of degeneration.

A new Reich is taking shape; one which seeks to control our thoughts, and more importantly, our emotions. All totalitarian regimes require suppression of opposing ideas, hence the “community standards” of the tech tyrants.

… In this struggle, the functions of court, prosecution and isolation are not eliminated, but delegated from the state to society. The state, represented by the police and security officials, was “humanized”, but the conventionally progressive society took on the role of new storm troopers, with the help of which the same state is super effective in combating dissent.
The modern Western world is taking shape in the New Ethical Reich with its own ideology – “new ethics”. National Socialism in the Past. This is ethical socialism. Queer socialism. Siemens, Boss, and Volkswagen turned into Google, Apple and Facebook, and…
…[The] “Nazis” were replaced by an equally aggressive mix of queer activists, fem-fanatics and eco-psychopaths, just as thirsty for a total reformatting of the world [in their image].
Traditional totalitarian regimes suppressed freedom of thought. The new non-traditional totalitarianism has gone further and wants to control emotions. Restricting the freedom of emotion of the individual is a revolutionary concept in the New Ethical Reich.


Having emerged from one Hell [Bolshevism], Russians do not want another one, particularly one sold under the false gods of “tolerance” and “equity”.

He concludes:


Russian raznochintsy [19th-century déclassé intellectuals] tell us: Russia is at the tail of progress.
Not.
By coincidence, we found ourselves at the tail of an insane train heading into Bosch’s hell, where we will be met by multicultural gender-neutral devils.
You just need to unhook this carriage, cross yourself and start building your own world. Rebuild our good old Europe. The Europe we dreamed of. The Europe they have lost. [The] Europe of a healthy person.


Outstanding.

Rebel Yell