Rex Krueger
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Did you read that headline? I certainly didn’t. And I wrote copy’n’pasted it. Have you ever heard of either of those organizational entities? I hadn’t until I read Colby Cosh’s article.
A wire story by The Canadian Press’s Joan Bryden arrives over the transom. Let me quote briefly from Bryden’s copy, as an exercise in describing how news sausage is sometimes ground. “An international report says Canada has taken ‘commendable’ steps to safeguard this fall’s federal election from foreign interference. But the report says this country needs to do more to regulate social media giants and should impose ‘major sanctions’ on those that fail to control fake news and other forms of disinformation on their platforms.”
An international report says Canada is vulnerable to fake news! Food for thought. But as I was mulling over this dread warning about sensationalistic information from questionable sources, a skeptical question came to mind: what is “an international report” exactly?
Bryden goes on to tell us, sort of: “The report,” she writes, “is part of a series of assessments conducted by the Centre for International Governance Innovation and the Transatlantic Commission on Elections Integrity for the Alliance of Democracies Federation.” Show of hands: how many of you found it possible to read that sentence without falling asleep? Don’t worry, you weren’t meant to read it — just to absorb its general miasma of seriousness.
Ottawans will know the Centre for International Governance Innovation: it is, essentially, a big pile of Jim Balsillie’s money, and ours. There is a CIGI Campus in Waterloo, Ont., built by Balsillie with matching funds from the provincial and federal governments, that contains the CIGI think-tank and collects rent from the U of W and Wilfrid Laurier U. The Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity is another think-tank, an international one established amidst post-Trump panic by a range of institutions that includes Microsoft, BMW and other global companies and nonprofits.
Bill Gates didn’t write the “international report.” The report says it was “submitted to TCEI by Allan Rock, TCEI member.” Mr. Rock was, you may recall, a key figure in Jean Chrétien’s cabinet and then president of the University of Ottawa. He “submitted” the report … but did he write it? What the text says is that research and writing done by two University of Ottawa law students “were essential to the preparation of this report … Allan Rock expresses his sincere appreciation for their excellent work.”
So, yeah: it’s a jeremiad against fake news that is pretty much just a long op-ed written on contract by two underpaid young Canadians. After a few impressive-sounding (and foreign-funded) brand names are tacked on, this ends up in your newspaper as a distinguished “international report” justifying draconian regulation of social media.
Otto von Bismarck talks with the captive Napoleon III after the Battle of Sedan in 1870.
The “news sausage” comment is a reference to a quote frequently (but apparently mistakenly) attributed to German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, that laws and sausages are things you should never watch being made.
Extra Credits
Published on 18 Jun 2019Go to https://NordVPN.com/ExtraCredits to get 75% off a 3 year plan and use code
ExtraCreditsto get an extra month free. Protect yourself online today!A Clockwork Orange reflects a cultural fear of society’s moral decay in the 1960s. Its usage of a mashup slang language known as “nadsat” illustrates the complexities of rebellious youth culture. Ultimately, Anthony Burgess’s work asks us to think about if or when free will should ever be suppressed, but the major differences between the book and the film version of this story present contrasting takeaways.
Where the dystopias of Brave New World and 1984 warned against the easy slide into totalitarianism, and painted for us worlds in which freedom is nearly a forgotten thing… A Clockwork Orange presents us with a protagonist who has almost an excess of freedom, and in doing so it shows us the shift in societal fears.
I saved this link at the time, then life intervened and I only just re-found it now … but it’s not a time-sensitive article and the arguments he makes are still worth considering:
Studying such things in detail meant I was now looking at the operational level of war. Any conflict — or business for that matter — is understood to be conducted on three levels. The first is the strategic — that is, the overall aims and ambitions. The second is the tactical: the coal face, the actual fighting, the pilot in his Spitfire or man in his tank. And the third is the operational — the nuts and bolts, the logistics, economics and the supply of war.
Almost every narrative history of the war ever published almost entirely concentrates on the strategic and tactical levels, but gives scant regard to the operational, and the result is a skewed version of events, in which German machine guns reign supreme and Tiger tanks always come out on top.
Studying the operational level as well, however, provides a revelatory perspective. Suddenly it’s not just about tactical flair, but about so much more. Britain, for example, decided to fight a highly mechanical and technological war. “Steel not flesh” was the mantra and that’s why the British had a small army, yet still ensured it was 100-percent mechanized. They also developed a vast air force and built a staggering 132,500 aircraft during the war — and that’s 50,000 more than the Germans. Until the start of 1944, the priority for manpower in Britain was not the army or navy or even air force, but the Ministry of Aircraft Production. Well-fed men and women were kept in the factories.
Germany, on the other hand, was very under-mechanized but had a vast army, which meant it was dependent on horse-power and foot-slogging infantrymen. As a result of so many German men at the front, their factories were manned by slaves and POWs, who were underfed and treated abominably, and whose production capacity was affected as a result.
And if the ability to supply war was key, then in the war in the West, it was the Battle of the Atlantic that was the decisive theater. Yet Germany built a surface fleet before the war, which could never hope to rival Britain or France and in doing so neglected the U-boat arm. Despite sinking substantial amounts of British supplies in 1940, it was still nothing like enough to even remotely force Britain to her knees. In truth, there were never enough U-boats to more than dent the flow of shipping to Britain. In fact, out of 18,772 sailings in 1940, they sank just 127 ships, that is, 0.7 percent, and 1.4 percent in the entire war.
The Tank Museum
Published on 20 Mar 201821 March 1918, was the action debut of the German A7V tank during the First World War.
One hundred years later, historian David Fletcher talks through the vehicle and its history. The Tank Museum’s A7V is a replica, which can be seen running at Museum events, like TANKFEST.
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Elizabeth Warren, a smug Harvard professor, is no populist. She doesn’t have an iota of Bernie Sanders’ authentic empathic populism — but Sanders will be too old to run next time around. I tried to take Warren seriously during the run-up to the primaries, but her outrageous silence about Sanders’ candidacy when he was battling the corrupt Hillary machine made me see Warren as the facile opportunist that she is. She craftily hid from sight throughout the primaries — until Hillary won the nomination. Then all of a sudden, there was bouncy, grinning Warren, popping in and out of Hillary’s Washington mansion as vice-presidential possibilities were being vetted. What an arrant hypocrite! Warren stands for nothing but Warren. My eye is on the new senator from California, Kamala Harris, who seems to have far more character and substance than Warren. I hope to vote for Harris in the next presidential primary.
Camille Paglia, “Prominent Democratic Feminist Camille Paglia Says Hillary Clinton ‘Exploits Feminism'”, Washington Free Beacon, 2017-05-15.
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