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Censorship Industrial Complex

Trudeau government abandoning long-threatened ‘hate speech’ bill after backlash

Published

8 months ago

7 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre has warned that Trudeau’s desire to censor online ‘hate speech’ is nothing more than a ‘woke authoritarian’ tool to silence views that Trudeau dislikes.

The Liberal government is shelving its long-threatened bill to regulate truth and “disinformation” on the internet.

According to information obtained on February 21 by Blacklock’s Reporter, the Liberal government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is abandoning legislation to regulate “hate speech” on the internet following feedback from Canadians that they consider the measure unconstitutional.

“The government heard from Canadians and stakeholders that while false and misleading information online can carry significant consequences, creating legislation and policies that restrict or otherwise limit speech based on the veracity of information would undermine freedom of expression to an unacceptable degree,” Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc wrote the Commons ethics committee.

The committee had previously recommended legislation to “hold online platforms accountable for publishing false or misleading information”; however, LeBlanc replied that internet literacy programs were sufficient to regulate Canadians internet use.

“Legislation is not the only tool in the government’s toolbox to combat false or misleading information,” he said.

Additionally, most of 9,218 petitioners to the Canadian Heritage Department condemned the proposed legislation as unconstitutional.

Likewise, according to Privy Council research in 2023, most Canadians opposed the measure, saying that “it was of critical importance for Canadians to be able to leave comments and have their voices heard regarding initiatives and policies important to them.”

“While most believed harmful content online represented a growing concern few felt it to be a major issue at present,” the report said. “Several were of the view that individuals were typically able to avoid harmful content by blocking it or not utilizing platforms on which it was present.”

The legislation was first proposed in 2021, when the Trudeau government suggested that a “Digital Safety Commissioner” should police “content moderation” on the internet. Those who violated the “content moderation” would face up to $25 million in fines.

“I think everybody in this country, and especially elected officials, have, I think, a responsibility, a duty to ensure that we protect our institutions and that the last thing we should try to do is to somehow diminish them just in the hope we can score points,” he added.

While Liberals support the measure, Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre recently declared that Trudeau’s desire to censor online “hate speech” is nothing more than a “woke authoritarian” tool to silence views that Trudeau dislikes.

“What does Justin Trudeau mean when he says the worst hate speech?” he questioned during a press conference earlier this week. “He means speech he hates.”

Poilievre warned that Liberals would label anything they disagree with as “hate speech,” referencing former adviser Gerald Butts said that it was “hate speech” to criticize Trudeau for using the term “peoplekind,” labelling those who made fun of Trudeau as “Nazis.”

Poilievre also reminded Canadians that Trudeau branded Canadians who protested COVID regulations in the Freedom Convoy as “a small fringe minority” with “unacceptable views.”

“I point out the irony that someone who spent the first half of his adult life as a practicing racist, who dressed up in hideous racist costumes so many times he says he can’t remember them all, should then be the arbiter on what constitutes hate,” said Poilievre.

“What he should actually do is look into his own heart and ask himself why he was such a hateful racist… And maybe in that way, rather than through coercion, he could help us all in the fight against real hate,” he added.

While the bill regulating “hate speech” seems to have been abandoned for now, since taking office, Trudeau managed to pass bills C-11 and C-18, both of which restrict free speech over the internet.

Bill C-11, or the Online Streaming Act, became law last year and now mandates that Canada’s broadcast regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), oversee regulating online content on platforms such as YouTube and Netflix to ensure that such platforms are promoting content in accordance with a variety of its guidelines.

Recently, Canadian law professor Dr. Michael Geist warned that new powers granted to Canada’s broadcast regulator via Bill C-11 will not stop at “Web Giants” but will lead to the government going after “news sites” and other “online” video sites as well.

Trudeau’s other internet censorship law, Bill C-18, the Online News Act, was passed by the Senate in June.

This law mandates that Big Tech companies pay to publish Canadians content on their platforms.

As a result, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, blocked all access to news content in Canada.

Critics of Trudeau’s recent laws, such as tech mogul Elon Musk, have said it shows that “Trudeau is trying to crush free speech in Canada.”

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Censorship Industrial Complex

Julian Assange laments growing censorship, suppression of truth in the West upon release

Published on October 8, 2024

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Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, attends the European council on October 1, 2024, in Strasbourg, France

From LifeSiteNews

By Frank Wright

Speaking after 12 years of confinement, Julian Assange warned of the erosion of free speech in the West, linking his own prosecution to global censorship, political corruption, and attacks on honest journalism.

On October 1, Julian Assange made his first major speech since his release. In it, he delivered a verdict on how we are governed which is as damning as it is revealing.

“I am not free today because the system worked,” Assange said, “I am free today because after years of incarceration I pled guilty to journalism.”

Julian Assange was convicted under the U.S. Espionage Act and spent 12 years in confinement, first taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012, followed by five years in Britain’s maximum-security prison in Belmarsh.

Had his plea not been accepted he faced a sentence of 175 years in prison. He was speaking in Strasbourg, France, at a hearing convened by the Parliamentary Assembly of the European Council – which recognized Assange as a “political prisoner.”

Saying how “incarceration has taken its toll,” Assange noted how the world he had rejoined had changed – for the worse:

I regret how much ground has been lost during that time period. How expressing the truth has been undermined, attacked, weakened, and diminished.

Assange gave a chilling account of the state of the Western world today, saying he now sees “more impunity, more secrecy, more retaliation for telling the truth, and more self-censorship.”

He believes that his own treatment was a turning point for the suppression of freedom of speech in the West:

It is hard not to draw a line from the U.S. government’s prosecution of me – its crossing the Rubicon by internationally criminalizing journalism – to the chill climate for freedom of expression that exists now.

During his speech, Assange alleged that former CIA director Mike Pompeo devised a plan to kill him, following Wikileaks’ revelation in 2017 of CIA operations in Europe.

Citing the testimony of “more than 30 former and current U.S. intelligence officials,” Assange said that “it is a matter of public record that under Pompeo’s explicit direction the CIA drew up plans to kidnap and to assassinate me” while he was in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Assange was originally pursued for having publicized U.S. actions in Guantanamo Bay, and alleged war crimes in Iraq, which he explains intensified following Wikileaks’ CIA revelations.

Cracks in our system

Assange’s case and his extraordinary testimony reveals one of many fault lines in the Western world.

“Today, the free world is no longer free.” said Salvadorean President Nayib Bukele, describing also how the West is becoming “more pessimistic,” adding that, “[t]ragically, we can see more evidence of this decline every day.” Speaking at the United Nations on September 30, he said:

When the Free World became free it was due to freedom of expression, freedom before the law. But once a nation abandons the principles that make it free it’s only a question of time before it completely loses its freedom.

His observations are echoed by statements from across the political divide in the U.S.

The former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard warned on October 5 that the party she left now seeks to undermine the First Amendment. She said on X, “People like Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris do not believe in the First Amendment because they see it as an obstacle to achieving their real goal: ‘total control.’”

Her remarks followed those made by Hillary Clinton in a recent video interview, in which Clinton said “whether it’s Facebook or Twitter/X or Instagram or TikTok … if they don’t moderate and monitor the content, we lose total control.”

Clinton’s remarks about losing “total control” come after Sen. John Kerry spoke at the World Economic Forum on September 25, saying “our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to just hammer [disinformation] out of existence.”

Kerry argued that opposition to the polices of the WEF was fueled by “disinformation” when critics in fact simply dislike its policies. Populism generally is described as a threat to democracy in the West, when it is also simply the preference for popular policies, against the unpopular ones of the current ruling elite.

“Disinformation,” and “misinformation” are terms invented and used by the language and ideological police to hide their malicious intent.

It appears that unpopular policies such as those of permanent war, Net Zero, deindustrialization, and denationalization can only be pursued with “total control” of the information seen by the public.

The meaningful political debate is not about left and right. It is about the meaning of what is right, and the outrage at what is obviously wrong. Assange says “it is uncertain what we can do” about the “impunity” of our leadership, which as yet has faced no meaningful consequences for its pursuit of deeply unpopular policies at the expense of widespread corruption and defended by censorship.

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Elon Musk Warns Harris Will Try To Shut Down X ‘By Any Means Possible’ If Elected

Published on October 8, 2024

By

From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

 

By Harold Hutchison

Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk said Vice President Kamala Harris will launch “lawfare” in an effort to shut down X “by any means possible” if she wins the 2024 presidential election.

Musk sat down for a two-hour interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, a co-founder of the Daily Caller and Daily Caller News Foundation, released on Monday. Musk said that should Harris win the presidency, he anticipated that he and his companies would face legal action.

“If she wins, how can they let X continue in its current form, in its current role in American society?” Carlson asked Musk about the future of the social network if Harris wins the presidency.

“They won’t,” Musk responded. “They will try to shut it down by any means possible.”

WATCH:

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for Americans to be “criminally charged” for spreading what she viewed as disinformation during a Sept. 17 interview with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, and warned that a lack of censorship was causing a loss of “total control” in a Saturday interview with CNN host Mike Smerconish.

Carlson asked Musk to explain what he meant when he said a Harris administration would use “any means possible” to shut down X.

“They might try to pass laws,” Musk said. “They’ll try to prosecute the company, prosecute me. The amount of lawfare we’ve seen taking place is outrageous.”

Musk noted the Biden administration had sued SpaceX for failing to hire asylum seekers

“I mean… the Department of Justice, for example, launched a huge lawsuit against SpaceX for failing to hire asylum seekers,” Musk continued as Carlson expressed shock. “Not those granted asylum, but asylum seekers. Now, there’s also a law called International Traffic in Arms Regulations that because SpaceX develops advancements in technology that can be used in nuclear ICBMs… we have to be careful who we hire. We can only hire a permanent resident or a citizen.”

The Justice Department announced the suit against SpaceX in August 2023, claiming the company “discouraged asylees and refugees from applying to the company” in legal documents. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sued Tesla in September 20203. claiming black employees faced harassment and threats, including nooses.

The Biden administration launched other investigations and lawsuits into companies Musk is tied to, including Tesla, since he purchased Twitter in 2022. Musk predicted a dirty tricks campaign in May 2022, as his purchase of Twitter was in progress.

Musk has been an outspoken supporter of former President Donald Trump’s bid to return to the White House, funding America PAC, speaking at Trump’s Saturday rally at Butler, Pennsylvania, at the site of an attempted assassination of the former president and donating to efforts to elected House GOP candidates.

Harris did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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