News Round-Up: Germany Curbs Free Speech with Jail Threats, Covid Restrictions Imposed Again in the US and Youtube's New Censorship Rules
News Round-Up: Germany Curbs Free Speech with Jail Threats, Covid Restrictions Imposed Again in the US and Youtube's New Censorship Rules
Every week, the editorial team of Freedom Research compiles a round-up of news that caught our eye, or what felt like under-reported aspects of news deserving more attention.
Over the past week, the following topics attracted our attention:
Freedom of expression in Germany: playwright faces jail for the design of his book cover and criticising a minister.
In the United States, Covid restrictions are rearing their head again.
YouTube tightens censorship rules on medical information: It is good to post whatever the WHO says.
Censorship gets a new tool: the EU's Digital Services Act comes into force.
British demographer: A low birth rate is good for the planet.
Freedom of expression in Germany: playwright faces jail for his book cover design and criticising minister.
The American playwright and satirist C.J. Hopkins could face jail time in Germany for his book cover design and a Twitter post, journalist Matt Taibbi reports in Racket News. Specifically, the writer, who lives in Germany, was given a choice by the court – to spend 60 days in jail or pay a fine of €3,600. Hopkins is being fined for the design of the cover of his book about the absurd and authoritarian Covid politics, The Rise of the New Normal Reich. There is a picture of a face mask on the cover of the book and on it, a scarcely-visible image of a swastika.
Although there are scores of books, historical or otherwise, with the swastika on the cover, and even in this book the symbol is understandably intended to draw a parallel with the past and a jab at the current government, Hopkins was charged in June with spreading national socialist propaganda. In actuality, the book is, of course, a work of the opposite kind to Nazi propaganda, with Hopkins drawing cautionary parallels between German pandemic laws and Nazi legislation.
Hopkins is also accused of re-posting to his own account a Twitter post originally published by Die Welt, which quoted German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach as saying that 'the masks always send out a signal'. In doing so, he added to the post a picture of the same book cover, or a mask with a swastika.
Throughout the pandemic, Hopkins was a vocal critic of lockdown policies, vaccine coercion, and other such unscientific measures and their enforcement by the police, and drew attention to the many violations of individual freedoms carried out by Germany and other countries. Taibbi pledges to financially assist Hopkins in paying the fine.
Covid restrictions raise their head again in the US
Covid restrictions have been reintroduced in several parts of the United States. Three new strains of the Covid virus are being cited as the reason, and they are spreading more rapidly than before – in particular, a strain named Eris.
For example, Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Georgia, has announced a mask mandate, a ban on parties and major student events, and isolation for at least five days in the event of a positive test, due to student infections. It will also begin to trace those who have come into contact with the infected in order to isolate them too. Statistics show that the need for hospitalisation for Covid has risen by 30% in the state of Georgia.
Measures are also being put in place in California, which has also seen an increase in infections. For example, the film studio Lionsgate imposed a mask requirement in its office as several employees were infected. A number of hospitals have also imposed mask requirements.
There are experts who have also started to speak out, saying that people at risk of Covid should start wearing masks again.
The need to wear masks and a new strain of the virus is increasingly being reported in European publications as well.
However, as far as the mask mandates and other measures are concerned, it is actually evident to date, on the basis of both Swedish experience and research, that they are of little use in stopping the spread of the virus. On masks, for example, one can look at a meta-study that shows that wearing masks had no significant effect on the spread of the virus. We also wrote about one in-depth analysis of lockdown measures, which gave them a damning assessment, in our earlier news review.
Meanwhile, the administration of US President Joe Biden is again recommending a booster dose of the coronavirus vaccine for all Americans, citing the wider spread of the virus. Vaccine companies are promising that their vaccines will work effectively against the emerging new variants as well. Still, updated versions of the vaccine for the newer variants are additionally promised by mid-September.
However, real-life evidence does not speak in favour of the efficacy of these vaccines. It is also clear that, in the case of the coronavirus, there are certain groups of the population that are at risk – be it the elderly or people with co-morbidities. It is therefore strange to impose the vaccine on younger healthy people, particularly given that these vaccines do not prevent the transmission of an infection and that there are other dangerous health risks associated with injections. At the same time, such a general national recommendation to inject vaccines serves the economic interests of the pharmaceutical companies very nicely once again. As we also recently wrote in one of our earlier news reviews, the turnover of the pharmaceutical companies – take Pfizer, for example – that had been artificially inflating their sales with billions of taxpayers' money spent on those vaccines, has now plummeted.
YouTube tightens censorship rules on medical information: It is good to post anything the WHO says
Google-owned video platform YouTube recently tightened its rules related to medical misinformation. The company's blog post describes how they have learned critical lessons to develop their Community Guidelines in line with guidance from local and global health authorities, or national health departments, and the World Health Organization (WHO). It is hoped that this will prevent the spread of 'medical misinformation'. In particular, they say, it is about preventing the spread of misinformation on issues such as Covid-19, vaccines, reproductive health, harmful substances, cancer and cancer treatment information, etc.
Under the new framework, content that casts doubt on the efficacy and safety of vaccines will be removed. Videos recommending a substance, medicine, or treatment that is considered harmful will also be removed. The rule is worded in general terms, but we can understand that it largely applies to problematic coronavirus vaccines – their safety and efficacy must not be questioned. We might also presume that 'harmful substances' imply not only a laundry detergent or something else as strange being recommended for the treatment of diseases, but also, for example, the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin, which is obviously not to be talked about in terms of its efficacy in treating coronavirus. Since the deletion is based on the opinion of the health authorities as to whether a particular treatment or medicine works, it is no longer possible, in principle, to doubt or contradict the views of the authorities on YouTube.
Content that casts doubt on the existence of particular health problems or diseases will also be removed from the platform. Here, the example of Covid-19 is given, and it is stated that content denying that people have died from this disease will be removed. This raises the question of whether the accuracy of the statistics on Covid deaths, for example, could be debated on YouTube. The problem with those statistics may be that the cases where the cause of death was actually something else but the person had also been infected with the coronavirus and tested virus-positive, were also recorded as Covid deaths.
Company’s blog post does not answer such dilemmas.
Censorship gets a new tool: The EU's Digital Services Act comes into force
On Friday, August 25, the EU's Digital Services Act came into force, which primarily concerns 19 large internet corporations with at least 45 million visitors a month. This includes Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (former Twitter), YouTube, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc.
The new regime will impose a series of obligations on these companies. For example, companies will have to act swiftly to take down illegal content uploaded to their services. This could include truly criminal paedophile photos, fake goods in online shops, etc., but in addition, the platforms now have a clear obligation to fight against 'misinformation' or cyberbullying.
Illegal content can be reported to businesses by both public authorities and citizens. Platforms have now had to create simple and easy-to-understand ways to flag and report inappropriate content to their services. Platforms must suspend the accounts of users who consistently post content deemed illegal.
If companies fail to meet their obligations to remove content or comply with other conditions, they could face significant fines of up to 6% of their global turnover. For example, Facebook and Instagram holding company Meta had a turnover of $116.6 billion (€107 billion) last year, of which 6% would be $7 billion (€6.4 billion). Under the new rules, the European Commission will be able to ban platforms that consistently fail to comply.
Thierry Breton, the Internal Market Commissioner, has been eagerly awaiting the tougher regime and promises to effectively subject companies to the new rules. "If they fail to do so, they will be immediately sanctioned. We have teams who can intervene immediately," Breton said in July. "If they don't act immediately, then yes, at that point we'll be able not only to impose a fine but also to ban the operation [of the platforms] on our territory," Breton added.
British scientist: low birth rate is good for the planet
Britain's birth rate has fallen to its lowest level in 20 years, but that's a good thing, according to one of the country's leading demography experts and gerontologists, reports The Telegraph. In England and Wales, 605,479 babies were born last year. The last time that there were as few births was in 2002, with a drop of 3.1% compared to 2021.
Commenting on the figures, Professor Sarah Harper, founder and director of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing and a former government adviser, said the falling birth rate was good for the planet. "I think it’s a good thing that the high-income, high-consuming countries of the world are reducing the number of children that they’re having. I’m quite positive about that," she said.
According to the professor, declining fertility in rich countries will help address the problems of general overconsumption that we are currently experiencing and which, she says, are having a negative impact on the planet.
The Daily Sceptic, which cited the Telegraph article, noted that Harper is also active in the World Economic Forum (WEF), among other positions, to put the professor's statement in fuller context. It is well-known that the WEF meetings are in constant discussions on how to limit human activity in the name of supposedly saving the planet.
A good test to see if the advocates of depopulation are really true believers, is for them to line up put guns their heads and blow themselves away. Upon witnessing such an event I might be inclined, to a degree, to believe in their agenda.