Last Week Today Episode 174 Show Notes for Monday, November 11th, 2024
Canada Orders TikTok to Close its Canadian Offices, Trump Outlines Plans for Next Four Years, Tamara Lich Trial Continues & "The View" Melts Down Over Trump Election Win.
Canada Orders TikTok to Close its Canadian Offices
The Canadian government has ordered the closure of TikTok’s Canadian offices,
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company that moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2020. The Canadian offices are operated under the banner of TikTok Technology Canada Inc., which controls local offices in Vancouver and Toronto.
However, as outlined in the November 7th, 2024 Newsmax post, “Canada Orders TikTok to Dissolve; App Not Blocked | Newsmax.com,” the app itself hasn’t been blocked, even as the Federal government has ordered their Canadian offices closed by the end of 2024.
According to the post:
Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said Wednesday it is meant to address risks related to ByteDance Ltd.’s establishment of TikTok Technology Canada Inc.
According to Champagne, the dissolution order was made in accordance with the Investment Canada Act, which allows for the review of foreign investments that may harm Canada’s national security.
Of course, that review doesn’t seem to be publicly available.
While Canada’s regulatory action does not ban TikTok outright, it adds to a series of restrictions the platform faces in multiple countries, including a potential ban in the United States if ByteDance does not divest its U.S. operations by early 2025.
The November 6th, 2024 Canadian government press release on the topic, “Government of Canada orders the wind up of TikTok Technology Canada, Inc. following a national security review under the Investment Canada Act,” doesn’t include the actual the national security review, although it references it.
Canada has already banned TikTok from all government-issued mobile devices, reflecting “widening worries” from Western officials over the video sharing app.
But, at least for the near future, the app will remain available and will continue to collect personal information which could be used for nefarious purposes, just like Meta and Google and most other online apps.
The only thing that changes is that the Canadian offices are closing.
As outlined in the November 9th, 2024 Vancouver Sun post, “Closure of TikTok’s Vancouver office a big blow to employees, content creators,” several hundred people are expected to lose their jobs in Vancouver and Toronto over the next six weeks.
Canada’s independent new media, unlike the legacy outlets which focus on repurposing government press releases, seems to be asking some useful questions and researching useful data.
The November 10th, 2024 Canuck Law post, “TikTok Ban In Canada: Not Even All-Party Lobbying Could Prevent,” notes that, “it’s unclear why the app can still be used if the offices had to be closed.”
But the Canuck Law post also notes that, while there were no public efforts by lobbyists to silence TikTok, several prominent names did advocate in favor of TikTok.
Those advocates seemingly cut across party lines.
The list of TikTok lobbyists was taken from the Federal government’s Lobbying Registry, a publicly available Federal government database which legacy media journalists need to learn how to use.
According to the Canuck Law post, the stated goals of these meetings were:
To engage federal officials on legislation related to privacy and online safety
To engage federal officials on policies, legislation and regulations relevant to digital media and user-generated online content, including privacy, data security, and copyright
To engage federal officials on policies to support digital first content creators and foster the creation, discoverability, and exportability of Canadian cultural content online, including Indigenous and French-language content
According to the post:
Among recent Government initiatives were taxing and otherwise regulating social media content. This was hardly limited to just TikTok. Other platforms were getting squeezed as well. But they all had connected “strategists” to meet with political figures, and smooth things over.
As outlined in the November 11th, 2024 the Conversation post, “The reasons for shutting down TikTok in Canada appear tenuous at best,” an outright ban against the app can be challenged in court and would likely be politically disastrous to a government already being accused of censorship.
Champagne may also have chosen not to ban the app because he agreed that concerns about the platform itself are mostly speculative.
The Conversation post also notes that fears about the “Chinese government obtaining access to user data or using the app to advance misinformation campaigns” seem misplaced:
The Chinese government can readily obtain most of the same information from several commercial sources, and could easily advance a misinformation campaign by using surrogates on any other social media platform.
The real government fears seem speculative but seem to be related to the capabilities of TikTok employees in Toronto and Vancouver to “assist the Chinese government with misinformation campaigns by directly interceding with influencers or politicians” or gain “effective and dangerous (direct) access to our telecommunications infrastructure.”
But those reasons are unsupported by available evidence.
Perhaps the real reason for TikTok’s Canadian problems are related to the stories TikTok tells.
If nothing else, the November 1st, 2024 NBC News post, “Critics renew calls for a TikTok ban, claiming platform has an anti-Israel bias,” suggested that the real reason for banning Tik-Tok had to do with the “anti-Israeli bias,” of its international affairs coverage.
The August 2nd 2024 Jerusalem post story, “TikTok shown to be reliant on biased anti-Israel sources - N12,” goes further, noting that “videos boosted by the platform included those saying Zionism is Nazism and that Hamas is not a terrorist organization.”
Also in the News this Week
Trump Outlines Plans for Next Four Years
US President-elect Donald Trump moved quickly last week, releasing an overview of his plans to dismantle the aggregation of US powerbrokers and influential long-term government employees known as the Deep State.
As outlined in the November 8th, 2024 Modernity News post, “Trump Outlines Plan To Decimate The Deep State,” the ten point plan has some rather interesting components.
And Trump’s “promise to let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “go wild” on health is demoralizing public health experts, who worry he could meddle with key government agencies, amplify vaccine hesitancy and direct agency funding to favor his preferred views,” at least according to the November 11th,2024 The Hill post, ““RFK Jr.’s New Bully Pulpit Sends Public Health Shock Waves.”
That post goes on to note:
Those include removing fluoride from public water, promoting a wide variety of unorthodox and unproven treatments and pushing a deep skepticism of pharmaceutical companies and the agencies overseeing them.
The November 9th, 2024 The Hub post, “The Weekly Wrap: Trump’s election proves the mainstream media no longer matters,” points out the obvious. The legacy media’s role in the current US presidential campaign “has never been more insignificant.”
But not everything is turning up roses for the Republicans.
As noted in the November 8th, 2024 Reclaim the Net post [2Capture6], “US Lawmakers Investigate Biden White House-Affiliated UK Censorship Group’s Plot To “Kill” Elon Musk’s X,” it seems quite possible that there were indeed shady national and international figures attempting to influence the US election, just not the ones we thought.
But at least the legal challenges are going away. As outlined in the November 6th, 2024 Epoch Times post, “Asked about Dropping Trump Charges, DOJ Says Policy Is To Not Prosecute Presidents.”
The final word on this topic seems to be the November 5th, 2024 Off-Guardian post, “The Fakest Election of Our Lifetime Goes to the Polls.” The author of that article says everything about the 2024 election was fake, even faker than the 2020 US election.
Tamara Lich Trial Continues
Also in the news this week. The Democracy Fund estimates that the Tamara Lich Trial Costs defendant one half million dollars so far and still no judgment. Judge promises an update on November 25th. [2Capture9]
The November 7th, 2024 Todayville post, “Mischief Trial of the Century: Inside the Crown’s Bogus, Punitive and Occasionally Hilarious Case Against the Freedom Convoy’s Tamara Lich and Chris Barber,“
“The View” Melts Down Over Trump Election Win.
And finally tonight, here’s the November 3rd, 2024 Mongo Minds on Bitchute post, “Day 4 Of The View Having An Absolute Meltdown Over Trump Winning. I Can Watch This All Day.”
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