Brownstone Institute
CRTC’s podcast rules mean the days of enjoying a free and open internet are over: Former CRTC vice-chair Peter Menzies
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From the MacDonald Laurier Institute
By Peter Menzies
Podcasters need to be afraid that what the CRTC is going to come up with is a set of rules governing the transmission of podcasts by the likes of YouTube, Spotify, and any other platform with revenue of more than $10 million.
Perhaps you like listening to podcasts produced by the likes of Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and Joe Rogan.
Maybe you lean to the left and tune in to the rabble.ca podcasting network in Canada or, in the States, Al Franken.
You might not even be into politics at all. Your interests might focus on food, fashion, travel, celebrity news, movies, or music.
Here’s something you need to know: Going forward, all your favourite podcasts will be transmitted and overseen under the keen regulatory eye of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and its nine cabinet appointees.
Your days of enjoying a free and open internet are over.
That’s because the CRTC declared, in its first decisions since being granted authority over the global internet through the Online Streaming Act (Bill C-11), that podcasts meet its definition of “programming.” That means, according to the federal regulator, that the transmission of such “programming” constitutes “broadcasting” which in turn leads to the definition of any platform distributing podcasts as a broadcasting distributor, which most of us know as a cable company.
So, thanks to all that regulatory legerdemain, platforms that distribute podcasts must now register with the CRTC so that it can decide how, in the words of Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge, to “best support” podcasts.
You will hear a lot in the weeks and months to come from St-Onge and CRTC Chair Vicky Eatrides about how they won’t be regulating podcasters—absolutely not!—and their content, just like they “don’t regulate” television and radio programs.
They may even honestly believe that. If they do, they are living in a world of self-delusion and denial; virtually everything the CRTC does in terms of broadcasting dictates the terms and conditions under which those programs are allowed to exist.
Broadcasting licences detail—in many cases to the minute—what sort of programming will be transmitted, when, and in what proportion. And—here’s the crunch—it is the CRTC’s responsibility under its governing legislation to make sure “the programming over which a person who carries on a broadcasting undertaking has programming control should be of high standard”—as subjective a measure as is imaginable.
To meet that obligation while avoiding getting the regulator’s hands dirty, the radio and television industry “volunteered” decades ago to “self-regulate” through the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC), to which virtually all radio and television operators except for the CBC belong.
The CBSC’s most notable decision of late was its somewhat grudging acceptance—despite the complaint lodged by a single viewer outraged by its racism and misogyny—that CHCH-TV’s “Happy Days” reruns did not violate its code despite there being “no doubt that some components of the program may not be pleasant for some viewers.”
It also famously—again, based on a complaint from a single listener—declared that the Dire Straits iconic 1985 song “Money For Nothing” could no longer be played because one of the characters portrayed through its parody lyrics uses a homophobic slur. You may agree with this or you may disagree. But it is, without question, censorship.
The CBSC’s code of conduct is overseen by the CRTC, to which it files an annual report, and its decisions regarding complaints can be appealed to the commission. As it proved when it sanctioned Radio-Canada for allowing the N-word to be spoken on air, the CRTC doesn’t hesitate to assume the role of censor when called upon to do so.
Censorship is a business it has been in for decades.
The organization just prefers to do it by stealth, which is why podcasters need to be afraid—very afraid—that what the CRTC is going to come up with is a set of rules governing the transmission of podcasts by the likes of YouTube, Spotify, and any other platform with revenue of more than $10 million. There is no reason to expect this will unfold much differently than it did with the creation of the CBSC, which established a system of self-censorship that has hovered over Canadian broadcasters since 1991.
Don’t take just my word for it.
“Broadcasters in this country have a long history of self-censorship, whether through the ‘independent’ Canadian Broadcast Standards Council or just in the privacy of their own head offices,” wrote Globe and Mail columnist and CBC panelist Andrew Coyne recently when assessing the CRTC’s podcast decision. “And now we can look forward to the same online.”
What Canadians have been experiencing through their CRTC-governed and controlled broadcasting system is an arrangement through which the scope of opinion, the range of perspectives, and the manner in which they are expressed are carefully and meticulously curated. This is done through an unspoken but deeply embedded mutual understanding between the regulator and broadcasting companies. You, as a consumer of content, have no say.
They think that’s fine. It’s really all they know.
I don’t think that’s fine. Not at all. And, if you value your freedom, neither should you.
Peter Menzies is a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an award winning journalist, and former vice-chair of the CRTC.
Brownstone Institute
The Latest “Bird Flu” Psyop
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From Brownstone Institute
By
I am expert in influenza, and have consulted with the WHO over the past two decades on the topic of flu vaccines. This is one subject matter I am extremely knowledgeable about. This goes back to my medical school days, when I worked with Robert Lamb, one of the top influenza virus specialists in the world. It extended through much of my career, including my serving as Director of Clinical Influenza Vaccine Research for Solvay Biologicals, in which I oversaw over $200 million in federal (BARDA) alternative (cell-based) influenza vaccine research funding.
What is happening now with “Bird flu” is another psyops campaign being conducted by the administrative/deep state, apparently in partnership with Pharma, against the American people. They know and we know that the “vaccines” being produced will be somewhat ineffective, as all flu “vaccines” are. The government is chasing a rapidly evolving RNA virus with a syringe, just like they did with HIV and Covid-19.
Generally, the currently circulating avian influenza strain in the US does not include any cases of human-to-human transmission. And the current mortality, with over 60 cases identified, is 0%. NOT 50%.
All the while they are getting prepared to roll out masks, lockdowns, quarantines, etc.
All the while getting ready to roll out mRNA vaccines for poultry and livestock, as well as for all of us.
The more they test, the more “Bird flu” (H5N1) they will find. This “pandemic” is nothing more than an artifact of their newly developed protocols to test cattle, poultry, pets, people, and wildlife on a massive scale for avian influenza. In years past, this was not even considered. In the past, the USG did fund a massive testing and surveillance program called “Biowatch.” That program was a colossal failure and a massive waste of money. Billions of dollars.
Of course, these facilities producing the tests have been repurposed from the Covid-19 testing facilities.
Key questions include:
Will we all comply?
Will we be forced to comply?
Will President Trump go along with the PsyWar/psyops campaign again?
We will know soon enough.
As the United States is testing everyone who has even the mildest symptoms for the H5N1 (avian) influenza, guess what – they are finding it! This is what we call in the lab, a “sampling bias.”
Globally, from 1997 until the present, there have been 907 reported cases of H5N1. And in fact, this particular outbreak was not the worst – and it is the only one where a massive testing campaign has occurred. It appears that this is partly due to the new diagnostic capabilities developed and deployed during Covid-19. The more you test, the more you find. But is it clinically significant?
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The Case Study of Tetanus: Supply Chain Issues.
The CDC recommends a booster for the tetanus vaccine every 10 years for adults.
However, research published almost a decade ago suggests that the protection from tetanus and diphtheria vaccination lasts at least 30 years after completing the standard childhood vaccination series.
“We have always been told to get a tetanus shot every 10 years, but actually, there is very little data to prove or disprove that timeline. When we looked at the levels of immunity among 546 adults, we realized that antibody titers against tetanus and diphtheria lasted much longer then previously believed.”
-Mark K. Slifka, Ph.D, study author
This research, published in a highly reputable journal, suggests that a revised vaccination schedule with boosters occurring at ages 30 and 60 would be sufficient. As this was published in early 2016, the US government, at the very least, could have commissioned easily designed prospective and retrospective studies to confirm these results. And those results would have been published by now, with the tetanus adult schedule revised to reflect what is now known about the durable immunity of tetanus and diphtheria vaccines. Reducing the boosters to just two shots would save the government vast sums of money.
Not only that, but both the tetanus and diphtheria vaccines carry risks for adults. It is estimated that 50%–85% of patients experience injection site pain or tenderness, 25%–30% experience edema and erythema. Higher preexisting anti-tetanus antibody levels are also associated with a higher reactogenicity rate and greater severity (reference).
Anaphylaxis after tetanus vaccination represents a rare but potentially serious adverse event, with an incidence of 1.6 cases per million doses. That means if 100 million adults receive the booster every ten years, 320 cases of anaphylaxis will be avoided over the 30-year period – from those two boosters being eliminated. Tetanus has always been a “rare” disease, spread through a skin wound contaminated by Clostridium tetani bacteria, commonly found in soil, dust, and manure. Before vaccines were available, there were about 500 cases a year, with most resulting in death. Concerns about vaccine-associated adverse events when immunizations were performed at short intervals led to a revision of the tetanus/diphtheria vaccination schedule in 1966 to once every 10 years for patients >6 years of age.
It has recently come to my attention that the traditional stand-alone tetanus vaccine (TT) that one used to receive as an adult has been discontinued due to WHO recommendations. Their reasoning being:
Use of TTCV combinations with diphtheria toxoid are strongly encouraged and single-antigen vaccines should be discontinued whenever feasible to help maintain both high diphtheria and high tetanus immunity throughout the life course.
The CDC blames the shuttering of the only plant producing TT for the current lack of a stand-alone TT vaccine.
Now, in order to get a booster tetanus shot, an adult must take the following.
- Td: Sanofi’s Tenivac protects against tetanus and diphtheria. Given to people 7 years and older as a booster every 10 years. *A version also includes pertussis (eg DPT), but due to the risk of encephalitis, it is not recommended as a booster.
Why is the DPT combination vaccine discouraged in adults due to encephalitis risk, but is it recommended for children? Another one of those inconvenient issues that plague the CDC-recommended childhood vaccine schedule.
While supplies of diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (Tdap) vaccines (Sanofi’s Adacel and GSK’s Boostrix) aren’t limited, they are more expensive, and a very small fraction of patients can develop encephalopathy (brain damage) from the pertussis component.
In the United States, diphtheria is virtually non-existent, with only 14 cases reported between 1996 and 2018. Of those cases reported, most were from international travelers or immigrants.
The market for a stand-alone TT vaccine vanished worldwide due to WHO recommendations to stop the sales of the TT vaccine. Which was due to the relatively few, economically stressed countries where diphtheria is still an issue. So, therefore, the only facility manufacturing the TT vaccine was shut down within the last year.
The blowback from the WHO recommendations is that now there is a shortage of tetanus and diphtheria (Td) vaccine in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website.
This all comes down to poor planning. And illustrates why supply chain issues and infectious disease countermeasure stockpiles are essential considerations for governments.
The good news is that unless one is immunosuppressed, most of us have almost lifelong immunity against tetanus and diphtheria.
My recommendation is that unless one gets a very deep and dirty puncture wound and has not had a tetanus shot in over ten years or longer, avoid that booster.
Here is the ugly secret about influenza vaccines. They are given to protect one group of vulnerable people. Those who are immunosuppressed, and that cohort includes the very elderly.
If those influenza vaccine manufacturing plants only make enough vaccines for those susceptible to a severe case of the flu, there would not be enough of a market to sustain their production costs. Furthermore, if there were a pandemic of some sort of highly pathogenic influenza, there would not be sufficient capacity to make enough vaccines to meet demand.
Egg-based influenza vaccine production requires super “clean” eggs; about 100 million “clean” fertilized eggs are needed annually for vaccine production in the US alone. Candidate vaccine viruses are injected into the eggs. If the process is shuttered, the whole production comes to a screeching halt. Many vaccines can be stored for long periods. Even as long as a decade. This stockpiling system works well for DNA viruses with a low mutation rate. Stockpiling is rarely a solution for vaccines developed for RNA viruses that mutate rapidly.
Therefore, the influenza vaccine is pushed on the American people year after year. As a way to maintain “warm base manufacturing” and ensure sufficient market size to support industrial operations.
I have spoken on this subject at the WHO and US government agencies, as well as many, many conferences. Unfortunately, because the mRNA and RNA vaccine platforms require a lot of freezer space (commonly -20°C) to stockpile for even short periods, this limits the ability to stockpile. Furthermore, the frozen storage requirements are only for up to 6 months. That means stockpiling for more extended storage is not currently done, and it is back to square one on the supply chain issue.
The issue with freezer space and mRNA vaccines is one that most likely won’t be solved. This benefits the manufacturers of this vaccine technology – the US government has an endless need for new vaccines as the old ones expire.
My small hope is that the mRNA platform will be too costly to justify its continued use, as appeals concerning safety (or lack of) seem to fall on deaf FDA ears.
In the meantime, don’t believe the hype generated by ex-officials from the Biden and Trump administrations.
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Both Dr. Lena Wen, CNN correspondent, and Dr. Redfield, ex-director of the CDC, have gone on to mainstream media shows and promoted the narrative that the case fatality rate for avian influenza is over 50 percent. This, frankly, is a lie that the WHO is promoting. Bird flu generally is not tested for when someone has flu symptoms. When an outbreak of avian flu occurs on a poultry farm, testing of farm workers who are seriously ill will commence. This has led to the generation of the 890 case reports since 2003. Of those seriously ill patients reported to the WHO, over 50 percent died.
This is not an actual case fatality rate of avian flu around the world. It is, again, a sampling error due to a tiny data set derived from those who are at greatest risk due to general health. And just like the WHO reported on an exaggerated case fatality rate for mPOX, which was also based on a sampling error, or for Covid-19, again a sampling error, it is now used to justify psychological bioterrorism on the world population. Please don’t fall for it.
El Gato Malo on X succinctly points out that Dr. Leana Wen and her public health ilk are advancing:
1. Do more of the same lousy testing used in Covid-19 to overstate a disease and cause panic.
2. Develop another non-sterilizing non-vaccine that does not work to be pushed on “the vulnerable.”
3. Doing it “right now” under EUA, so whoever makes these tests and jabs can cash in and be shielded from liability.
4. Claiming that proxies like “triggers antibody production” demonstrate clinical clinical efficacy.
It’s just one last smash-and-grab for cash before the Brandon (Biden) administration ends. Anyone who falls for this one will truly fall for anything.
Question: what are Leana’s conflicts of interest? Who is paying her or giving her grants?
For those that haven’t viewed Dr. Redfield speaking of the avian flu case fatality rate, have a watch below. It is genuinely shocking. This fear-mongering comes from an ex-director of the CDC. Shame on him.
Frankly, it reminds me of the 51 intelligence officials claiming that Hunter Biden’s laptop was fake.
One has to wonder what conflict of interest motivated him to say this on national TV?
Remember in the US, there have been 62 cases of avian influenza discovered, and all but one case were very mild.
This deep dive into the supply chain issues is meant to show that public health has put itself into a groupthink situation that it can’t escape.
Many solutions to this quandary do not involve an evermore expanding schedule of vaccinations, stockpiled for some future use. I have some general thoughts before I sign off.
- The use of early treatments via safe, proven drugs is a good solution.
- We now have many antibiotics to treat bacterial infections. Vaccines do not always need to be our first defense.
- Our medical system is very good at treating infectious diseases. The risks from such diseases are much less than it once was. People do not have to live in fear of infectious disease. I like to ask people, how many people do you know have died of flu? If you know of any (I don’t), how old were they?
- The need to scare people into more and more vaccines is a dangerous trend.
- And yes, the more vaccinations one receives, the more likely an adverse event.
- Vaccinating pregnant women and babies should always be a last resort.
- It is time for Congress to rethink the vaccine liability laws.
Republished from the author’s Substack
Brownstone Institute
The Real Purpose of Net Zero
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From the Brownstone Institute
By
The recent Telegraph headline rang out of England recently with unsettling tones: Tenth of farmland to be axed for net zero
More than 10 per cent of farmland in England is set to be diverted towards helping to achieve net zero and protecting wildlife by 2050, the Environment Secretary will reveal on Friday.
Swathes of the countryside are on course to be switched to solar farms, tree planting and improving habitats for birds, insects and fish.
The move comes on the back of an aggressive and highly unpopular inheritance tax placed on generational farmers by British politician Rachel Reeves that has drawn sustained protest in the country. The commercial officer of Britain’s largest supermarket chain Tesco warned Reeves’ tax raid on farmers is placing “UK’s future food security is at stake.”
What if that’s the whole point? Tucker Carlson recently asked Piers Morgan this uncomfortable question.
Morgan refused to let his mind go there. And for good reason. It’s a dark premise. Yet one with historical context that must be analyzed due to the aggressive moves now in play against farmers around the world and humanity at large.
The British East India Company was the early template for the modern mega-corporate monopoly, globalization & vehicle to expand colonial power. Eventually dominating trade between Indian and Britain and far beyond. To say the company’s practices were ruthless would be putting it lightly.
Thomas Malthus was the East India Company’s first economist training individuals for service as administrators for the organization. Malthus was also a eugenicist in the economic wheelhouse of the world’s largest corporate monopoly with its own private army.
He wrote the following in his 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population:
The power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction; and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague, advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and ten thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world.
Eugenicists aren’t picky. Whatever gets people off the planet en masse – they’re into. Notice his last sentence, when bases are loaded and “success be still incomplete,” it’s the famine that is the preferred home run hitter – the weapon of choice.
In the 1860s, the full weight of the East India Company’s monopoly helped kill off India’s economy of textile industries putting countless out of work and forcing them into agriculture. This, in turn, made the Indian economy much more dependent on the whims of seasonal monsoons as dry seasons gripped the country.
The Indian and British press carried reports of rising prices, dwindling grain reserves, and the desperation of peasants no longer able to afford rice.
All of this did little to stir the colonial administration into action. In the mid-19th Century, it was common economic wisdom that government intervention in famines was unnecessary and even harmful. The market would restore a proper balance. Any excess deaths, according to Malthusian principles, were nature’s way of responding to overpopulation.
The current overlay argument government, NGOs, and global bodies like the United Nations are using to interrupt farming during present day is because of ‘net zero’ goals.
[See video below on the origin of the ‘climate crisis’ narrative highlighting the Club of Rome’s hand in crafting the modern day operation.]
Cows create greenhouse gases, carbon emissions from fertilizers, destruction of wildlife, and people themselves are all, we are told to believe, BIG negatives for the earth. Therefore they must be reduced.
Not in an orderly way, but as fast as possible because we’re told change in climate is the biggest, world-ending threat humans face – or something like that.
The United Nations [think Agenda 2030, Paris Agreement] has been the prime mover, policy-shaping action arm to accomplish this ‘net zero’ utopia. Enter Julian Huxley.
Huxley emerges after World War 2 as a crucial bridging figure from what has been referred to as “old eugenics” [Malthus] to a new eugenics based on molecular biology and human evolution.
In 1945 as World War 2 was ending, the United Nations was founded in New York. That same year, the United Nations Conference for the Establishment of an Education and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) was also founded in London with Julian Huxley becoming the first Director-General.
One year later Huxley wrote UNESCO ITS PURPOSE AND ITS PHILOSOPHY stating:
At the moment, it is probable that the indirect effect of civilisation is dysgenic instead of eugenic; and in any case it seems likely that the dead weight of genetic stupidity, physical weakness, mental instability, and disease-proneness, which already exist in the human species, will prove too great a burden for real progress to be achieved. Thus even though it is quite true that any radical eugenic policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for Unesco to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care, and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that now is unthinkable may at least become thinkable.
As it appears we are now in the home stretch of the environmental overlay of modern-day eugenics, the consensus-building and subtle messaging are being done away with.
A 2022 research article published in the journal Social Studies of Science titled Environmental Malthusianism and Demography writes:
Some bioethicists argue that, because ‘we are threatened with more population than the planet can bear’, humans simply ‘don’t have a right to more than one biological child’ (Conly, 2016: 2). Some recommend that governments act to uphold this limit (Hickey et al., 2016). Even feminist historians and sociologists of science, including some sharp critics of the population control projects of the late 20th century, now call for measures to reduce childbearing as a means of combatting climate change. Environmental Malthusianism, the idea that human population growth is the primary driver of environmental harms and population control a prerequisite to environmental protection, is experiencing a resurgence.
The current leadership of the UK, EU member states and the U.S. in regards to climate. Where Keir Starmer is racing to fulfill ‘net zero’ goals, as of last week, the U.S. has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change via executive order.
Without food, food production, and farming, there is famine. It’s that simple. The failed pandemic response was a reminder of that.
It has been assumed that leaders and policymakers, especially the United Nations, know these basic historical and current facts. Farmers are becoming endangered because of government policy to meet ‘climate goals’ and it’s being allowed to happen.
Republished from the author’s Substack
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