Europe Escalates the Threat to Online Free Speech
reason.com
reason.com
Here is an article from 2016 about an Iranian using his satellite connection to get access to banned content... https://www.wired.com/2016/04/ingenious-way-iranians-using-s...
Let's go back to February. Texas/Florida opened up and everything was fine. Omicron had proven to be no worse than a cold and less problematic than the flu. Which in history we didn't do anything for the flu. Texas/Florida obviously won. UK declared they were dropping restrictions leaving it to the British people to make the decision for themselves. There world was generally opening up.
Canada on the otherhand went the other direction. In february, we became more restrictive and even put a bunch of people out of a job. To what end? To coerce them into taking medication? That boat sailed. Provinces were dropping their restrictions.
Naturally there is an expectation that we open up and at least provide a roadmap to when we open up. Science around the world made it clear it was time to return human rights. A legitimate protest formed to protest in Ottawa. A judge has ruled that this was a legitimate protest. Obviously there is something to be said.
There was something very unusual though. Canadian government news ran the story on the protest being a bunch of nazis, racists, sexists, confederates, unacceptable views, white supremacists, etc who were planning to overthrow the government. A truly crazy story because Canadians are not those things. So naturally the international media sent people to the protest. Afterall if you cover a story of nazis actually overthrowing the Canadian government. That's instant Pulitzer prize. Except they all found the protest to be exactly what it was... just a regular bunch of canadians asking for reasonable roadmap to end restrictions like the rest of the world.
Trudeau when confronted with his own words called a Jewish lesbian a nazi. I think peak hilarity was disgraced Gerald Butts calling NYTimes, Economist, and financial times trash publications. The same day, the CBC and Global called for the denazification of the hate convoy.
Feb 14th, they declared a national emergency. Arrested all the protest organizers. Seized various bank accounts including seizing a bitcoin processor. They utterly crushed the legitimate protest. There was 70 semi trucks but a thousand protesters? If you aren't going to violate the right to protest. You tow the illegally parked trucks and leave the protest alone. They didn't do that, they crushed the protest in whole.
The NDP backed the Liberals in voting for the national emergency saying that it was a bunch of white supremacists looking to overthrow the government.
2 days later they revoked the emergency act and started talking about the importance of talking to that conservative uncle or friend. The general 'escape your echo chamber' type stuff. https://twitter.com/gmbutts/status/1496445242115076100
I was surprised as all hell, it was an abrupt sudden change. The authors of the articles that had been labeling the protest as hateful all went on vacation starting around the 18th. Which was very unusual... if you're a canadian political journalist... what the hell are you doing going on vacation during the first ever use of a national emergency? The inflammatory speech toward the protest abruptly ended. I didn't understand.
Ukraine hadn't happened yet. Canadian media for the most part was covering it as completely false. Biden was a warmonger and lying about Russia. Those troops had always been there etc.
Then the invasion happened. Russia said they needed to denazify Ukraine. That Zelensky, a jew, was a nazi. Suddenly it all clicked in.
Russia was imminently about to invade, they spread disinformation and had control over various canadian government news authors.
During the first sanctions speech by Trudeau he casaually commented on it. "Putin has controlled the media for the last few weeks." The context was russian media but that's ridiculous. Putin has controlled the russian media for decades. The last few weeks was the canadian government media like global publishing about the 'hate convoy'
It seems obvious Trudeau saw his huge mistake. He then toured Europe talking about the importance of democracy etc. The european politicians walked out on him, much like how the UN walked out on russia. Some far-right MEPs denounced Trudeau but that's not important.
Far more recently, the government again confirmed that they never used any of our intelligence agencies. They only used canadian government media to justify using the emergency act to crush a legitimate protest.
We now have the ministry of truth being formed in USA, Canada, and EU to fight against disinformation. It clear that we need to do it, but everyone is worried quite obviously that this won't be used against russian disinformation. This will be used to silence your political opponents. Which is absolutely the case.