A colleague forwarded me\u00a0the text of an article from Blackrocks Reporter<\/a>, which covers Canadian politics from Ottawa, our capitol.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a report on Federal Heritage Minister Steven Guibeault\u2019s ongoing vendetta against non-conforming political speech on the internet, in which he\u2019s calling for censorship of \u201churtful\u201d comments against politicians and implementation of an\u00a0internet killswitch<\/em>\u00a0to facilitate it.<\/p>\n Federal Heritage Minister Steven Guibeault<\/em><\/p>\n Blackrocks is behind a paywall, permit me to quote it here:<\/p>\n \u2018Federal internet censors should target hurtful words against politicians<\/strong>, says Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault. The Minister added\u00a0pending regulations may include an internet kill switch to block websites deemed hurtful<\/strong>, but called it a \u201cnuclear\u201d option.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWe have seen too many examples of public officials retreating from public service due to the hateful online content targeted towards themselves or even their families,\u201d said Guilbeault.\u00a0 \u201cI have seen firsthand alongside other Canadians the damaging effects harmful content has on our families, our values and our institutions. As a dad and a stepdad to six kids, I know more can and should be done to create a safer online environment.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Guilbeault made his remarks in a podcast sponsored by Canada 2020, an Ottawa think tank affiliated with the Liberal Party.\u00a0Legislation to censor internet content will be introduced shortly, he said.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI am confident we can get this adopted<\/strong>,\u201d said Guilbeault. \u201cOnce the legislation is adopted, clearly creating a new body, a new regulator like that in Canada, would take some time.<\/strong>\u201d\u2019<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The same story is\u00a0covered here by the Post Millienial<\/a>\u00a0(the rest of Canada\u2019s \u201capproved media\u201d, as in the ones who\u00a0received hundreds of millions in tax breaks and subsidies<\/a>\u00a0from the Federal Government in the run up to the last election, are not giving it a lot of airtime for some reason).<\/em><\/p>\n Coincidentally or not Guilbeault has been relentlessly pursuing the recommendations of the Canada\u2019s Broadband Telecom Legislative Review (BTLR), which\u00a0I wrote about last year\u00a0<\/a>and\u00a0tabled a petition to the House of Commons<\/a>\u00a0to kill it. Then the whole pandemic thing broke out, and we entered this \u201cNew Normal\u201d.<\/p>\n After BTLR published,\u00a0Canada\u2019s \u201capproved media\u201d\u00a0\u00a0joined the chorus calling for more regulation<\/a>\u00a0against unlicensed news outlets.<\/strong><\/p>\n For a political cabinet minister to seriously push forward new rules silencing free speech directed against politicians is quite rich, having just last week been publicly\u00a0attacked and mocked<\/a>\u00a0by a senior advisor to Premier Doug Ford (my transgression? Raising the issue of small business bankruptcies under lockdowns with my MPP).<\/p>\n Under this plan, it will still be perfectly fine for\u00a0political apparatchiks to hurl insults and ad hominem attacks at constituents<\/a>\u00a0raising legitimate issues with their MPPs. But under these impending new regulations against \u201cpolitical taunts\u201d and even \u201cunlicensed internet undertakings\u201d my\u00a0write up on the entire incident<\/a>, or even my commentary on the proposal here, might land me afoul of The New Rules.<\/strong><\/p>\n (Cue up Jacobs, who will probably come barrelling in here and call me a moron because Guilbeault is Federal and he\u2019s provincial, so I\u2019ll save him the trouble to say:\u00a0it\u2019s all one political class)<\/em><\/p>\n This global, near ubiquitous ham-fisted reaction to the global pandemic has ushered us into an era of hypernormalization. That\u2019s simply defined as when the mental fatigue and psychic stress of pretending to believe demonstrably false and often contradictory narratives begins to manifest in a kind of mass neurosis.<\/p>\n Being brainwashed or coerced into accepting ideologies that have been decided by oligarchs and billionaire Sith Lords are an additional antagonizing factor.<\/p>\n Sooner or later a tipping point will be reached and the public will simply abandon what they see as an increasingly non-functional system, one where the entire might of the state is arrayed against their own interests.<\/strong><\/p>\n When this happens it can channel into populism, deteriorate into (arguably deserved) demagoguery, or perhaps more hopefully a type of mass opt-out of the current system into the next iteration of human organization and governance.<\/p>\n We\u2019re in the early innings of an inexorable transition from the age of nation states into network , or crypto states (\u201ccrypto populism\u201d?).\u00a0<\/strong>How that looks is often the topic of discussion\u00a0on our AxisOfEasy podcasts<\/a>, it can be chilling, as in if the Network State is Facebook, or Google. Or it can be liberating, like a\u00a0decentralized mosaic of Hanseatic Crypto States<\/a>. That\u2019s a choice we, as people and citizens actually\u00a0can\u00a0<\/em>participate in, right now, today.<\/p>\n But these cocooned, self-serving elites running these dilapidated nation states? They\u2019re just rigging a game that\u2019s increasingly irrelevant. It doesn\u2019t really matter because their era is over.<\/p>\n No matter which trajectory things pursue, one thing is certain: the next step is a cascading loss of institutional and political legitimacy, such as what happened in 1989 with the implosion of communism and the Warsaw Pact states.<\/strong>\u00a0A year earlier, not one geo-political strategist, let alone party apparatchik would have forecasted the coming collapse. Eighteen months later, it was all over.<\/p>\n I think we\u2019re headed for a similar period over the next few years, and it\u2019s the current leadership and the incumbent elites who brought us here.<\/p>\n *\u00a0 *\u00a0 *<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b792-20bd8d8fa069.storage.googleapis.com\/s3fs-public\/styles\/inline_image_mobile\/public\/inline-images\/Steven-Guilbeault.png?itok=epD7OE6z\")
<\/picture><\/a><\/p>\nThe goal is obviously to silence non-conforming analysis<\/h2>\n
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<\/picture><\/a><\/p>\nThese are the last gasps of our political overlords<\/h2>\n