DAILY ｜ The West levies sanctions against Russia： do they actually do anything？
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 2 minutes
Words per Minute
155.8317
Summary
Rebel News' Ezra Levant sits down with Sheila Gunn-Reed to talk about his return to the live stream, his new venture, the Democracy Fund, and why he thinks the mainstream media should be ashamed of itself.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hi everybody, Ezra Levant here in Toronto. My good friend Sheila Gunn-Reed is out west,
00:00:20.420
outside the city of Edmonton. Sheila, how are you doing today?
00:00:23.420
I'm doing great. As usual, there's absolutely nothing happening in the world that we should
00:00:27.680
be talking about with our viewers. It's just another boring news day here at Rebel News.
00:00:31.680
You know, we've got a ton of stuff. It's a pleasure to be sitting here in the live stream. I used to
00:00:34.980
do the live stream quite a bit, but we got so darn busy. Our company really doubled in size over the
00:00:39.700
last year, Sheila. So, I mean, literally just helping to run that. And over the last year,
00:00:46.940
as our viewers know, really spinning off an enormous project called the Democracy Fund and
00:00:51.980
staffing that up. So, whereas in the early days of the pandemic, what a pleasure it was to
00:00:56.920
actually do a daily live stream. It got to the point where there were so many other duties on
00:01:02.520
me. And we had great talent who did the live stream. I mean, yourself and David, of course,
00:01:09.300
was the most, I think, favorite combo. But we've tried out so many other
00:01:15.640
folks over the last year. It's been great. But I still, I love the live stream because there's a lot
00:01:23.660
of things I like to get through that I don't have time to do on my show, which is more scripted.
00:01:28.560
I like the interactive nature of it. I like that it's okay for me to sort of rant for a bit
00:01:35.020
in a way that's a little bit different than on the produced shows. And there's just so many things
00:01:43.840
I want to say in the middle of the day. I don't want to wait till 8 p.m. So that's what I like about
00:01:47.320
the live stream. And so I'm already enjoying being back, even though I haven't really said
00:01:53.120
a word about the news yet. It's good because you can get it out of your system instead of calling
00:01:58.860
me in the middle of the day and talking to me about all these things. But, you know, you point
00:02:04.480
out that the company has grown. And I think we're truly more interactive than ever. And our reach has
00:02:11.640
grown. Specifically, we're trying out something new today. A couple of weeks ago, we tried out
00:02:16.740
something new there too, and it seems to be a success. So initially, we used to just stream
00:02:21.600
this show on the censorship platform of YouTube. And we still do. But there are certain things that
00:02:27.220
we can't say on YouTube, even if it's true, even if it's reported elsewhere. Because we're
00:02:32.760
conservative, there are certain things we can't say. So there may come a time during the show today,
00:02:36.620
viewers, that we may cut our feed to YouTube. And if that happens, I'll invite you to join us on one
00:02:43.960
of the several other platforms that we're streaming on today. I think I counted them up. It's seven
00:02:50.340
simultaneously that we're streaming on. So of course, the censorship platform of YouTube,
00:02:55.300
the quasi-censorship platforms of Twitter and Instagram. So we've got this for the first time,
00:03:00.980
we're trying that out over there. And we have the free speech platforms of Rumble,
00:03:04.920
Odyssey, and SuperU, where we're also streaming. And those last three give our viewers at home an
00:03:10.520
opportunity to support the work that we do completely willingly, unlike what Justin Trudeau
00:03:15.260
does to our viewers by making them support the mainstream media that they don't watch and
00:03:20.320
talks down to them anyway. So you can leave us a Rumble rant, an Odyssey hyper chat, or a SuperU
00:03:25.700
shout. And if you do that, that's your chance to interact with each other. Because myself or Ezra
00:03:31.600
will do our best to address those paid chats on air when our producer sends them to us.
00:03:38.040
Well, that's great. So if I've got them right, you said Twitter, YouTube, Rumble, Instagram,
00:03:47.680
Yes. I forgot Getter. I'm very sorry, Getter friends. I forgot you. We started that out
00:03:52.320
about three weeks ago, and it's been a great success for us. We're getting a lot of engagement
00:03:57.880
on Getter, and that is a wonderful free speech platform.
00:04:02.100
I'm really glad to hear it. I'm not even up and running on all these platforms myself. I had some
00:04:07.220
trouble signing up to Getter, but hopefully I can work through that. And of course, there's Trump's
00:04:11.780
imminent platform called Truth Social. So that, I presume, will be the eighth platform. That's
00:04:19.920
pretty great. And the thing is, it came out of necessity, not out of choice. We were happy
00:04:25.420
campers with YouTube for years, and we were one of the fastest growing Canadian channels
00:04:32.960
until they decided to censor us and throttle us, specifically because of our editorial outlook. So
00:04:39.180
that necessity became the mother of invention. Anyways, we're talking about talking,
00:04:43.360
which is never good. We should just talk about the substance itself.
00:04:46.340
I want to say one thing, which is we are expanding our little toehold in America.
00:04:57.380
We haven't had American talent in a long time. Gavin McInnes was probably our most famous American,
00:05:04.680
and he left us in the fall of 2017. So it's really been four and a half years since we've had
00:05:10.160
an American presence. Our friend Yankee Pollack works from Florida. He's a dual citizen.
00:05:15.940
But he's more a behind-the-scenes fellow. He's at CPAC, but he's not like a big, he's not an
00:05:23.040
on-the-spot news reporter. He works from his office. But I'm pleased to say that we are debuting
00:05:28.780
a couple of new talents, even just on a try-em-out kind of basis. We have a freelancer who's embedded
00:05:37.720
on the U.S. trucker convoy. His name is Jeremy Lafredo, and he's a man of the left who believes
00:05:48.740
in the working classes and their right to organize, and other traditional leftist views like personal
00:05:55.880
privacy and integrity of your own body, and being skeptical of big business, including big pharma,
00:06:03.080
and being doubly skeptical of the merger between big business and big government,
00:06:07.720
which historically was one of the definitions of fascism. So it's very interesting to me
00:06:12.760
to work with people who probably two years ago we wouldn't have found common cause with. I had a good
00:06:17.760
heart-to-heart with Jeremy. I said, look, there may be other things we disagree on. Let's focus on what
00:06:22.560
we agree on until we're through the crisis. And then when we're through the crisis, we can go back to
00:06:27.940
disagreeing on other things that are less important. But for now, we have this common
00:06:31.820
purpose. I really enjoyed that. And I really mean it, by the way. And the last year especially
00:06:38.740
has really been an opportunity. I mean, you would think you can't teach an old dog new tricks. But
00:06:44.200
I really believe that I have changed my outlook on groups of people. I organize the world differently
00:06:53.140
in my mind now. If I see a worker who's in the union, whose union bosses sold them out to the
00:06:59.780
corporations to get a forced jab, I'm with the worker. And I think, well, why did the union,
00:07:07.860
the yellow union, sell them out to the company? These are thoughts and words I probably wouldn't
00:07:12.060
have had two years ago. But they're a very genuine feeling in me now. We deal with people who are a
00:07:17.420
little bit more. Age of Aquarius, hippy-dippy, you know, crystals kind of thing now. People,
00:07:22.180
again, who two years ago I probably would have sort of chuckled at. But I've deeply sympathized
00:07:28.360
with their personal bodily integrity. People who are very careful about what they eat. People who are,
00:07:35.280
you know, I used to sort of chuckle at folks who were into supplements. But not chuckle. I just sort
00:07:39.720
of thought, okay, that's a different approach to me. You know, vegetarians. But people who really
00:07:44.440
thought about what they put in their body, as you can see, I, in 50 years. I think you think
00:07:49.780
about it a lot. I think about it a lot, but not in a discriminating manner. My point is people,
00:07:55.900
and I think you're right, imagine someone who's so exquisitely careful about what they eat,
00:08:00.200
how they treat their body, exercising, vitamins. And I think of, you know, a lot of moms when they
00:08:08.160
get preggers, they take folic acid, they don't eat raw cheese or sushi because they're trying to be
00:08:13.840
very, very careful about their body. Again, that's never been me. But now those people are being
00:08:18.720
forced to get a jab, an experimental jab, and then another one, and then another one,
00:08:25.280
or on pain of losing their job. And so again, I find myself in alliance with people who maybe two
00:08:33.820
years ago I would have sort of probably even made jokes about. In fact, I've always, for a long time,
00:08:41.080
I have had jokes, you know, standard jokes about, about those things, but I find myself in alliance
00:08:47.560
with them now. And I, and I don't find that contradictory. I find it actually, I, I like the
00:08:53.620
fact that I can change how I think when the world changes. You know what? I don't feel like I have
00:08:59.740
changed how I thought. I, it just, for me, I feel like all of this confirms my preexisting biases
00:09:09.420
against unions that I don't think they're in it for the working man and they never have been. And
00:09:13.620
I've just watched them get tested and they're not. And, uh, you know, I have my, my political
00:09:19.960
philosophy is leave me alone and I'll leave you alone. And that counts for the government too.
00:09:23.920
And it's nice to see people from the left, uh, holding hands with me on, on that same opinion
00:09:31.280
where I just want to be left alone by them, by the government, by everybody. And they're having
00:09:37.000
a real awakening too, I think, because they never had for them for so long, the government was on
00:09:42.820
their side and they're getting mugged by reality. Yeah. It's, you know, well, I mean, I saw that poll
00:09:48.740
that, um, um, abacus did about three weeks ago showing that 57% of green party voters saw themselves
00:09:57.240
reflected in the truckers. 57% other than PPC members, it was the highest number. And think
00:10:04.320
about it. Of course they did. They're, they're, they're a little bit dissident. They're, they're
00:10:09.080
really conscious about health. They're always skeptic about big pharma and their party sold them
00:10:14.540
out. Anyways, I, I, I think I see it teed up. I wanted to show you a quick video. We've got
00:10:18.460
Jeremy Lafredo who is on freelance assignment for us with the convoy. Do we have a little
00:10:24.120
bit of a viz from that? Cause, cause there is this growing convoy and it seems to be gathering
00:10:28.820
some steam. Let's see if we can go ahead, Sheila, you were saying. No, I was just going
00:10:33.200
to say, and the people in this video are exactly the people we're talking about where they would
00:10:38.420
probably not meet up with truckers in their usual life with blue collar Trump voting truckers.
00:10:43.620
Um, but there are people from the Occupy movement who would probably, if they were in Canada, be in
00:10:50.340
the green party. They're on this convoy too. And he ran into them. Hey, let's take a look.
00:10:56.320
I'm Jeremy Lafredo on assignment for rebel news in Kingman, Arizona, where the U S trucker convoy
00:11:00.820
arrived last night. They departed 300 miles East of here in Atalanto, California and arrived around
00:11:06.020
sundown. They're set to leave Kingman, Arizona in about two hours. You can see the sun's coming up.
00:11:10.300
The truckers are waking up before their 300 mile stretch to New Mexico East. All the trucks behind
00:11:15.620
me are brand new. You can tell that the truckers have grown exponentially since leaving California.
00:11:21.120
This grew overnight. I mean, there was half the trucks here last night. So there's a lot of support.
00:11:25.360
We're bigger on semis. We're bigger on campers and we're bigger on cars.
00:11:28.620
As far as the convoy and how big it's gotten, I started in California. It was, uh, it's amazing.
00:11:34.040
Uh, the amount of support and people I, I mean, I, I, it just, you emotionally break down. I've done
00:11:40.840
it two, three times and it's, uh, it's, it's, it's heart wrenching. We need to get rid of these
00:11:45.000
mandates. People are getting fired. People are, uh, uh, can't get in the hospitals. Nurses are getting
00:11:49.460
fired. Uh, so many people's lives are at danger right now. So basically we need to, uh, uh, raise the
00:11:56.060
word and, uh, uh, bring into fruition that, that our government needs to work for us. We don't work for
00:12:01.080
them. It's just, it's just not us truckers, but it's everybody. It's not here. Do you here in the
00:12:06.460
U S across the world? They need to know that we ain't going to deal with it no more. That's the
00:12:10.240
reason why it's supported. For me, I was an activist with Occupy Wall Street. I stood with
00:12:15.200
Standing Rock. I stood, um, you know, with people all across this country for injustice and this,
00:12:23.380
you know, forcing people to take a vaccine or a medical procedure is at the heart of, uh, there's
00:12:30.540
authoritarianism and tyranny. We support the convoy because it's time for America to be
00:12:36.100
free again. We're doing this for our kids and our grandkids. And I hope everybody joins
00:12:43.120
in and does the best they can to support America. We support the convoy here because we want
00:12:48.740
to stand up for our freedom. We came from a communist country. We know what freedom is
00:12:53.760
like. So we're not about to see freedom being taken away from the American people. If you don't
00:12:58.780
stand for something and you get older and older and you don't, you don't realize that you
00:13:05.440
need to stand for something in your life. At some point you'll be old and empty. Don't
00:13:13.300
stand for something. That emptiness. That'd be horrible. I know people like that. I'm not
00:13:20.880
going to be one. I'm going to stand for something while I can. And freedom is my favorite choice.
00:13:40.120
So it's about 10 a.m. in the Arizona desert, um, the second day of the trucker convoy and the
00:13:47.120
trucks are leaving and they're on their way to New Mexico. They're getting hundreds of
00:13:53.240
goodbyes from supporters. I'm seeing American flags. I'm seeing Canadian flags. There's a new
00:13:58.040
flag. Uh, there's a, a half American flag, half Canadian flag, which is the first time I'm seeing
00:14:03.500
this. Um, but yeah, lots of support. These mandates are very, very unpopular.
00:14:11.900
Well, there you have it. That's pretty raw footage from our friend, Jeremy Lafredo. We're going to have
00:14:15.900
a slightly more, uh, edited version of that up, uh, very shortly. And, um, I hope that I can connect
00:14:22.140
with him today on my evening show, but I'm excited to have him out there and it really looks great.
00:14:28.060
Uh, the chief difference between it and the Canadian version is it looks not quite as cold
00:14:33.380
down there, although it does look cool. I see people in Arizona wearing, uh, what I would call
00:14:37.820
winter coats. So, but, but I think that's just cause it's, uh, I don't see any snow down there. I think
00:14:44.800
that they're, they're just sort of terrified by a little bit of chill in the air, but it seemed like
00:14:49.440
salt of the earth folks, great folks, people from a diversity of backgrounds. And, um, they, you know,
00:14:55.060
there's obviously Vietnam vets. Uh, I really liked the looks of it. It really does look inspiring to
00:15:01.140
me. Well, yeah. And I think this will change hearts and minds. When you see somebody from
00:15:07.080
occupy wall street in a convoy with people with don't tread on me flags. And then when that person
00:15:14.780
from occupy wall street, here's MSNBC or CNN saying, this is a white supremacist movement of
00:15:22.120
far right radicals or whatever, it will wake them up to the fact that they've been lied to for so
00:15:28.600
long. It's very interesting group of people there. Isn't that the truth? So as Jeremy Lafredo,
00:15:33.740
he's doing a, basically a two week stint for us. I'm very excited about that. And, um, and we also
00:15:39.400
have another video. I'm not sure if it's up yet, but I expect it imminently. We have a new talent
00:15:43.820
that we're trying out in a New York city, a young lady named Siobhan Brandman, uh, Brandman who, uh,
00:15:50.400
I don't know how the algorithms, uh, brought us together, but TikTok said, Hey Ezra, um,
00:15:57.620
take a look at this. And also a woman of the left who can't believe that the left has sold out on
00:16:05.280
these issues of the day. So, um, she's tried some streeters, which are just what they sound like,
00:16:12.460
uh, talking to men on the street. So I expect to have our first video up by Siobhan, uh, today. So,
00:16:17.280
you know, I mean, these are, these are just sort of dip our toe in the, in the swimming pool moves. Uh,
00:16:23.900
you know, being a rebel is a hard job because, um, it's a wonderful job, I think, but it's hard because
00:16:30.840
you're, you're a dissident, you're a disagreeer for the establishment narrative. And sometimes that,
00:16:36.720
that's hard. Um, I can only imagine how hard it would be in a place like New York city.
00:16:43.260
Yeah. But, um, pretty easy here. Yeah. I mean, some people though, they are naturally that way.
00:16:51.580
A quick anecdote, you know, my wife's aunt, who's from Khabarovsk, Siberia. She, um,
00:16:59.120
I talked to her about, uh, what it was like under the Soviet Union. And, and she said to me that the
00:17:08.080
people who got in trouble with the KGB were not in the main political dissidents. Did I ever tell you
00:17:15.980
this, Sheila? They're not, they weren't like, it was very rare to find an, a freedom dissident,
00:17:22.240
an anti-Soviet activist. Like those were very, very rare, especially at somewhere like in the middle of
00:17:28.860
Siberia. I mean, you'd probably have them in intellectual circles in Moscow or St. Petersburg
00:17:34.620
or wherever, Odessa maybe. But, um, she said that the people who were in trouble the most
00:17:41.160
were just quirky people, eccentrics, eccentrics, people who had a personality. You know, I would
00:17:48.420
imagine people who today we would say he's on the spectrum, you know, people who are a little
00:17:52.160
irritating and they maybe didn't know it. And because of the snitch culture and the police
00:17:59.280
state culture, you bugs, I mean, it, it, you get ratted out, you get turned in. Maybe there was a
00:18:07.640
genuine political or even police reason to turn someone in, but more likely it's just that you
00:18:13.620
offended someone powerful. And so they said, get rid of this guy. And they did. And it reminds me
00:18:19.620
actually of what I learned from another police state of sorts, which was when I was in Israel
00:18:24.600
a decade ago and I was talking to one of the counterterrorism guys who was, uh, operating in
00:18:31.600
the West Bank. And, and, and he said that one of the chief reasons people turned in, um, terrorist
00:18:41.060
plots was for a personal reason, a vendetta. You slept with my sister and then humiliated her.
00:18:49.600
You slept with my brother and you know, or, you know, your, I, you know, that it was often an honor
00:18:59.080
thing, a sexual honor thing, or just a vengeance thing. The ultimate I'll get you was I'll turn you
00:19:07.520
into the Israeli counterterrorist police. And, and this goes to my point with, um, you know,
00:19:15.260
in Khabarovsk, it was just anyone who was a little contrarian, they would be removed from an unfree
00:19:22.640
society. And what's my point other than telling a couple of personal anecdotes like that? My point,
00:19:27.740
Sheila, is that part of the West is you're allowed to be contrarian. You're allowed to be eccentric.
00:19:35.400
You're allowed to be a little bit unusual. In fact, there's sort of this wonderful British
00:19:40.420
aesthetic stereotype of the mad scientist, the, the local eccentric, you know, a little bit goofy
00:19:49.100
wearing, you know, I mean, you can see it in Mary Poppins, the guy who dresses up like he's a captain
00:19:56.020
of a ship, but he's actually just the ship is in his house. Like just the idea of being a little weird,
00:20:02.120
a little dissident, a little different, but being accepted in society that used to be a wonderful
00:20:11.580
part of being in the free West where you got to be a little bit unusual. Those people are being
00:20:19.080
thrown out. And those are in many ways, the canaries in the coal mine for society, because
00:20:24.060
those are the people who color outside the lines. Yeah. That's that pot. Mary Poppins is exactly what
00:20:29.860
I mean. Thanks for finding them. And my point is, um, they're going to be the first to go because
00:20:35.800
they're the ones who irritate someone who bugs someone who are not conformist. They're not
00:20:41.820
cheering when they're supposed to cheer. And I believe that being a rebel news reporter is being
00:20:47.600
a dissident, but it's also a place where other dissident people can say, okay, I'm not going to be
00:20:52.160
bugged. I'm not going to be bothered. I'm not going to be shunned and shamed. And we've lost that.
00:20:57.720
That's part of cancel culture. That's part of de-platforming. Unless you're a cookie cutter,
00:21:03.140
what is approved aesthetically, personality wise, politically, socially, um, you're going to be
00:21:09.100
thrown out. And I think that, I think that's part of our rebel mindset. I know that was a very lengthy
00:21:16.220
indulgence by me, Sheila, but that's another reason I like these live streams.
00:21:19.980
You know what? It's funny because I found myself doing a lot of reading on what it was like in
00:21:27.160
East Germany, uh, during the time of the Stasi. And I think I can draw a straight line from that
00:21:31.900
to Ottawa and what prompted me to do that. But one in three people there, one in three were under
00:21:40.880
investigation by the Stasi for crimes. And it was, it was exactly what you say in these other
00:21:47.460
authoritarian places that if you were annoying, snitch culture was weaponized against you.
00:21:54.320
They didn't like how you cut your grass. Well, they would report you to the Stasi and that they
00:21:58.820
use the police state to carry out their personal vendettas, much like in the West Bank that, and I
00:22:04.720
often wondered how we moved so fast to other people yelling at you in the grocery store because you're
00:22:12.060
using the wrong lines. Uh, you're not following the arrows on the floor. I think it's a condition
00:22:17.380
of humanity. It isn't, it isn't unique to COVID apparently because it happens everywhere where
00:22:24.440
snitch culture is a virtue instead of something I find grotesque. Well, um, it's 1223 and we haven't
00:22:35.740
even tucked into the main thing I want to talk about. And I want to talk about what I call fake
00:22:41.140
sanctions against Russia. I want to say that I think Vladimir Putin is, um, authoritarian.
00:22:49.000
I think he's imperialistic. I don't know enough about the modern history of Ukraine and Russia to have,
00:22:56.100
um, a strong view on it, but I think we can generally say invade one country invading another
00:23:01.240
is not a good thing. Um, but what's striking to me is the difference between the West that says
00:23:13.960
they're against it and what they're doing. Now there's many things to learn about. I don't want
00:23:18.060
to weigh in too deeply on this. I honestly haven't been so focused on the trucker convoy. I have so
00:23:23.120
many other things that I don't want to suddenly position myself as an expert on Ukraine and Russia.
00:23:27.420
By the way, my family 118 years ago came from a part of Ukraine called Dnipropetrovsk, which is
00:23:34.200
now called Dnipro. So I, so the first thing I'd have to say is thank God I'm here in Canada
00:23:39.980
where these endless wars don't touch me. Um, and I'm, and I, and I hate to see the violence being
00:23:48.320
wrought against these cities and towns, but let me just show you what Justin Trudeau said,
00:23:53.780
which is similar to what Joe Biden said. And then let me come back and give you some thoughts
00:23:57.440
on it. So here's Trudeau looking very grave and listen to what he has to say.
00:24:03.680
Today, in light of Russia's reckless and dangerous military strike, we're imposing further severe
00:24:12.740
sanctions. These sanctions will target 58 individuals and entities, including members of the Russian
00:24:20.400
elite and their family members, as well as the Wagner group and major Russian banks, among others.
00:24:26.740
We will also sanction members of the Russian security council, including the defense minister,
00:24:33.380
the finance minister, and the justice minister. In addition, effectively immediately, effective
00:24:40.300
immediately, we are ceasing all export permits for Russia and canceling existing permits.
00:24:46.680
These sanctions are wide-reaching. They will impose severe costs on complicit Russian elites,
00:24:55.520
and they will limit President Putin's ability to continue funding this unjustified invasion.
00:25:02.520
I want to be clear. Our quarrel is not with the people of Russia. It is with President Putin
00:25:09.160
and Russian leadership that has enabled and supported this further invasion of Ukraine.
00:25:19.500
So he's sanctioning 58 individuals, including various cabinet ministers. Now, what does that mean?
00:25:27.080
Did they have bank accounts at Scotiabank? Was the defense minister of the Russian Federation,
00:25:35.720
was he, you know, did he have a little savings account at BMO or something? I mean, seriously.
00:25:43.780
So you've sanctioned 58 of the top. Literally anything. Did literally anything he say actually
00:25:52.800
make a difference at all to those 58 people and companies? Now, he said there was one thing I heard
00:25:59.220
him say is he was canceling export permits for Russia. So certain things you need a permit to export for
00:26:06.560
Russia. Okay, but trade typically is two-way trade. So vodka? Yeah, that's right. Well, no, no, but that's
00:26:15.440
an import. See, that's, but that's where I was going, Sheila, because, yeah, so you can't sell things to
00:26:23.420
Russia. You can't export things. So someone might say, okay, so you're sanctioning Canadian businesses
00:26:28.900
that have customers in Russia. Okay. And maybe, maybe there's certain things we don't want to sell
00:26:34.140
Russia. I don't really think we're selling them any weapons. We have a very modest arms industry in
00:26:39.920
Canada. Russia has one of the most developed arms industries in the world, I'd say, next only to China
00:26:45.960
and America and maybe the UK. So the sanctions that Trudeau announced are on 58 individuals and
00:26:55.100
none of whom deal with our banking system. I'll just tell you that right now. They're not,
00:26:59.800
they're not at TD Bank. He's punishing Canadian businesses that were selling things to Russia.
00:27:08.380
Okay, I don't know what was for sale. I don't think it was anything
00:27:11.480
of deep strategic importance to that country, but you'll notice he did not announce any sanctions
00:27:20.920
or prohibitions on imports from Russia. Why would he not do that? Because that would hurt
00:27:28.420
Russia. It would stop them from getting foreign currency and that would hurt Russian business
00:27:34.620
people. And in fact, as it so happens, Russia's largest export is oil and gas. Yep. It's about 30%
00:27:50.300
of Russia's GDP. I may be off a little bit on that, but it depends, depends on what source you go to. I,
00:27:59.440
I would say 25 to 30% of Russian GDP is energy and about 50 to 60% of their exports is energy. That
00:28:08.220
used to be even higher. It wouldn't surprise me if it's higher. You know, the three largest oil
00:28:14.140
producers in the world, and they're pretty much all tied at 10 million barrels a day. It's Saudi
00:28:19.880
Arabia, Russia, and America. And we had an image on the, on the screen for a second. Can you put that
00:28:26.740
Bloomberg? Yeah. Perfect. That chart. Um, I don't know if you can see that who's dependent on Russia's
00:28:32.760
gas. So remember, natural gas is different than oil. Oil is what you refine into gasoline and jet
00:28:40.600
fuel. Oil is very important for, you know, for, for driving. There's also some home heating or bunker
00:28:46.920
oil for, for ships, et cetera. Anything that moves needs oil, but gas is more for electricity and heat.
00:28:55.040
You know, you think about natural gas in your own home. It's your, it's your stove. Um,
00:29:01.460
many houses have a natural gas fired furnace. Uh, in Europe, there used to be a lot of coal fired
00:29:07.880
power plants. Some of those are switching to natural gas. Um, natural gas is used in, in industry.
00:29:13.940
It really is a source of power. So this chart here from Bloomberg and I've seen other, I mean, this is,
00:29:19.840
this is five-year-old data. It's even more pronounced now. I mean, seriously, find your own chart.
00:29:25.040
Who's dependent on Russia's gas. 14 countries get more than 50% of their gas from Russia. And,
00:29:35.460
and you can see the darker, the purple, the more it is. So Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,
00:29:43.180
Belarus. Um, and you can see the pipelines and this is, this is even outdated. It's more.
00:29:51.380
So even France, Italy. And what's so interesting, Sheila, is that Gazprom, which is by far the
00:30:00.620
largest Russian gas company, you can sort of tell by the name Gazprom. They're, they're deemed a,
00:30:08.400
first of all, they're owned 51% by the Kremlin. So it really is like a state energy producer,
00:30:13.320
but they're deemed a, um, strategic corporation, which means all of their foreign contracts have
00:30:20.880
to be approved by the Kremlin. So the price, keep with that map up just for one more second.
00:30:26.560
So the price that, uh, Gazprom charges for these different countries is a politically determined
00:30:36.140
price. So you could have natural gas piped all the way to France being sold at a more,
00:30:44.500
a lower price than let's say what's sold to Poland, even though, as you can see, uh, it's closer to
00:30:52.120
Russia. Thanks very much. And the reason I say that is that there is a world price for oil and
00:30:57.800
there's sort of regional prices for gas, but with Gazprom, the prices are determined by what
00:31:03.340
Vladimir Putin has to negotiate with them. So if you're obedient and submissive and helpful,
00:31:09.940
he gives you cheap gas. And if not, he he'll give you expensive gas and he can outright turn it off.
00:31:15.940
As you may know, Russia has on several occasions, simply turned off the flow of natural gas to Ukraine
00:31:23.340
in the dead of winter, by the way. And I tell you that, uh, to let you know that this, that Russia
00:31:31.980
still sells oil to Canada too. Yeah. And to the United States. So Joe Biden shut down, um,
00:31:43.780
the Keystone XL pipeline, which was going to bring 800,000 barrels of oil a day from
00:31:48.000
Alberta down to America. Joe Biden shut that down. He imports oil from Russia instead.
00:31:52.800
That has not been touched by sanctions. Canada, Justin Trudeau shut down the Energy East pipeline
00:31:58.940
that was going to take oil from Alberta, take it to, you know, the biggest refinery in Canada,
00:32:04.640
Sheila, I know you know this cause you've got, you're, you know a lot about oil and gas. It's
00:32:09.280
St. John, New Brunswick. It's, um, it's the Irving refinery. So where does that largest refinery in
00:32:16.380
Canada get its raw material from? Not from Alberta. They want to, it's actually cheaper for them to get
00:32:22.220
oil from Alberta, but they're not allowed to cause Trudeau blocked it. So they have to buy oil and gas.
00:32:27.520
Some of it comes up from American fracked oil, but a lot of it comes from tanker ships from OPEC.
00:32:35.540
So you have Saudi oil sailing all the way to Canada. You have Russian oil selling all the way
00:32:41.380
to Canada. And you heard Justin Trudeau. We played it at some length. He is not cutting off imports
00:32:49.620
from Russia. He's not cutting off the imports. What do you think of that?
00:32:53.840
You know, as you were talking there, boss, I was pulling up the statistics. So, uh, exports,
00:33:01.160
total value of Canadian exports to Russia is one 10th of 1% of our GDP. That's it. It's, uh, about
00:33:09.980
half a billion dollars annually. Um, and it's mostly in, um, food product and that's it. So this is
00:33:18.440
really quite insignificant what he's done and actually imports to Canada from Russia are double
00:33:24.960
that. And they're probably a lot of oil. Um, yeah, yeah. It's, it shows as oil and gas.
00:33:31.680
Now, let me show you this. Um, Andrew, I sent you, uh, uh, the chart. I mean, there's lots of
00:33:37.720
different oil prices because oil is largely a world, uh, global commodity. There's different wrinkles.
00:33:43.080
There's West Texas Intermediate, North Sea Brent, you know, Saudi oil, um, Western Canadian select.
00:33:51.200
Exactly. So different, the different kinds of oil have slightly different prices, a couple of bucks
00:33:57.760
more, a couple of bucks less. Uh, so, you know, I don't know what the benchmark, uh, would be for
00:34:04.000
the price of Russian oil, but it's not going to be too different from West Texas Intermediate or
00:34:09.500
whatever. So I want to show you what's happened over the last six months with the price of oil.
00:34:15.320
I think we've got a chart there. So roughly speaking, the price of oil was, you don't even
00:34:24.820
have to be rough about it. It's zoomed. It's increased tremendously for a number of reasons,
00:34:31.780
supply and demand, obviously the main one risk. And there's nothing riskier than war
00:34:39.480
and sanctions. But why do I tell you this? So if oil is now about a hundred bucks a barrel,
00:34:47.520
whereas six months ago, it was half that. And Russia's pumping out 10 million barrels a day.
00:34:56.420
Just, just do some really back of the napkin math with me. So I'm not, I'm not saying this is precise.
00:35:01.480
But if Russia's making 10 million barrels of oil a day, and if the price of oil has gone up by 50 bucks
00:35:11.820
a barrel, and if in fact the war makes oil prices go even higher because of risk. So Russia is making
00:35:22.160
$500 million per day more than they were six months ago.
00:35:34.160
Russia is pretty much, we'll get to that video in a second. Yeah, don't put that video up just yet.
00:35:39.140
I want to show that video. It's such a funny video.
00:35:41.340
Um, so if you are not willing to sanction Russian oil,
00:35:53.320
500 million bucks a day. Now obviously war is very expensive, it's probably costing them billions a day.
00:35:58.660
But, but you heard Trudeau, he's not putting sanctions on,
00:36:05.600
And Europe has refused to stop buying gas from Russia.
00:36:13.740
Where are the sanctions again? I mean, we know Justin Trudeau looked in the camera and spoke very passionately like he was on a first date or something.
00:36:21.000
But, but I don't think that he, um, I don't think he's put a dent in Russia. Do you think those 52 senior Kremlin officials have a bank account, you know, at the Royal Bank of Canada? I don't think so.
00:36:34.660
Sheila, I want to show you a funny video in a second, but do you have anything you wanted to jump in on first?
00:36:40.240
Sure. I've been doing a lot of research over the years into how we got into this position.
00:36:45.340
And it is the real Russian collusion. In fact, um, I recall that, um, there was some investigation done.
00:36:56.040
And I think some of it was actually done by Ann and Phelan McAleer. It was in their movie Frack Nation.
00:37:02.580
But Russia has been funding environmentalist activist groups in the United States, in San Francisco.
00:37:11.980
They've been giving money to this holding company called Klein. It's Bermuda-based.
00:37:17.680
Klein then gives money to the Sea Change Foundation in San Francisco, where all of these places are headquartered.
00:37:24.960
Sea Change gives it to Tides, and then Tides dumps it into Canada and all around the world to oppose pipelines.
00:37:31.880
And that has been very clear in congressional reports. And in fact, according to WikiLeaks, Hillary Clinton knew about this as early as 2014.
00:37:42.480
And she spoke about it in a speech in 2016. And she was the Secretary of State, so she should know.
00:37:48.400
But when the people on the left won't shut up about Russia collusion, Russia collusion, they're enabling the Russia collusion by their green policies.
00:38:00.000
And people always get on my case, Sheila, why do you care so much about green activism and green policies?
00:38:05.120
Well, this is why. Because it has filled up Russia's war machine with money, and it's destabilizing Europe now.
00:38:12.420
But don't worry, they got their pipelines blocked.
00:38:15.780
And did you have that clip of Trump lecturing NATO about... Yeah, let's play that for a second.
00:38:22.420
So we were talking about all this Russian money and all this Russian oil and gas.
00:38:28.020
Here's a clip from a few years back when Trump was at a NATO meeting.
00:38:30.980
So these are other NATO leaders. You can see Mike Pompeo there.
00:38:33.540
And actually, the NATO leaders are loving this because their own, you know, the NATO leadership and the NATO defense ministers, their own politicians refused to pay for their military.
00:38:46.980
And they were all in love with this Russian gas. And here's Trump lecturing them.
00:38:51.100
This was actually well-received by NATO, who said, finally, someone's trying to encourage us to stand up to the Russian bear. Take a look.
00:38:59.460
I think it's very sad when Germany makes a massive oil and gas deal with Russia, where you're supposed to be guarding against Russia.
00:39:11.160
And Germany goes out and pays billions and billions of dollars a year to Russia.
00:39:15.960
So we're protecting Germany. We're protecting France. We're protecting all of these countries.
00:39:20.620
And then numerous of the countries go out and make a pipeline deal with Russia, where they're paying billions of dollars into the coffers of Russia.
00:39:30.640
So we're supposed to protect you against Russia, but they're paying billions of dollars to Russia.
00:39:37.420
And the former chancellor of Germany is the head of the pipeline company that's supplying the gas.
00:39:42.640
Ultimately, Germany will have almost 70 percent of their country controlled by Russia with natural gas.
00:39:54.720
I mean, I've been complaining about this from the time I got in.
00:39:58.220
It should have never been allowed to have happened.
00:40:02.760
Yeah. You know, Andrew, type in, go to Google Images and type in Putin and Schrader.
00:40:11.460
Gerhard Schrader is a former chancellor of Germany.
00:40:14.160
Imagine you're the boss of Germany, the chancellor.
00:40:16.680
Like, that's the equivalent of our prime minister or the American president.
00:40:27.160
That would be like if, you know, Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter or Barack Obama literally went to work.
00:40:35.620
Yeah. So, and just, just, I mean, that's one picture.
00:40:39.000
But if you just, I want to show the mass of it.
00:40:41.240
So go to Google Image Search and just type in Putin and Schrader.
00:40:44.640
I want you to see there are hundreds of pictures of them.
00:40:51.820
The former chancellor of Germany is the pipeline boss for Russia's state pipeline company, for Gazprom.
00:41:09.320
It would be as if Barack Obama, I mean, just look at the best friends.
00:41:14.080
It would be as if Barack Obama went to work for Venezuela.
00:41:17.980
It would be as if, it would be as if George W. Bush went to work for Cuba.
00:41:30.340
You know, and I was thinking about this the other day.
00:41:32.680
There are 40,000 American troops stationed in Germany.
00:41:39.480
Why is Germany getting the economic benefit of this?
00:41:43.860
All of those troops should really be pulled out and placed in a more stable, reliable ally like Poland.
00:41:50.000
Let them have the benefit of the economic stimulus of 40,000 American troops spending their salaries there.
00:41:58.320
And, you know, as you were talking about how Russia basically owns Germany, it's no joke.
00:42:06.000
Germany blocked the sale of Estonia was going to export arms to Ukraine.
00:42:14.080
Germany blocked the sale of that because they were German-made weapons.
00:42:20.740
So they're using these back channels to still be overrun, I guess, by the Germans or by the Russians.
00:42:32.860
I used to, I mean, I wrote a book called Ethical Oil, The Case for Cannabis Oil Sends.
00:42:36.720
And then I wrote a follow-up called Groundswell, The Case for Fracking.
00:42:39.940
And I had a whole chapter about Gazprom in there.
00:42:41.800
And I learned a lot about Gazprom because it's a real crony, like it's half owned by the Russian government.
00:42:53.220
And so there's all these sort of mafia-style characters who are just placed there.
00:43:02.260
Like it would be as if the world's largest gas company were owned by Tony Soprano.
00:43:11.600
It's an extremely, like I think it is actually the world's largest gas company.
00:43:18.420
They just built a staggering new headquarters in St. Petersburg.
00:43:27.900
Like their office looks like it's just Gazprom office, St. Pete.
00:43:41.300
I think that's an artist's depiction of it or is that a photo?
00:43:49.040
It looks like something you'd see in Dubai where they just waste money on buildings.
00:44:14.660
So I don't think Exxon has a, has a sports team, but.
00:44:22.540
And so Gazprom has a song, like a corporate song, which isn't that weird.
00:44:27.380
But this executive of Gazprom, his name is Vladimir Tumayev.
00:44:35.400
And he's, so he came up with the idea of a song for Gazprom.
00:44:42.460
But instead of hiring like Celine Dion to sing it or the winner of the Euro contest, whatever
00:44:49.620
that's called, Vladimir Tumayev said, no, I'll sing it.
00:45:00.060
He's like just some, he looks like a soprano and he says, I think we need a company song.
00:45:18.840
And no one had the courage to say, that's not a great idea.
00:45:24.560
In fact, they all said, that's a great idea, boss.
00:45:32.560
There's no one who is a better video rock star than you.
00:45:37.980
And let's make a corporate video for Gazprom and boss, other than Vladimir Putin himself,
00:45:50.460
And I swear to God, what you are about to see is real.
00:45:55.500
Let me now play for you the anthem, the corporate song for Gazprom, sung by no one less than Vladimir
00:47:07.380
He won Russian Idol like seven years in a row for this.
00:49:52.880
I mentioned before that Gazprom has a soccer team,
00:50:08.160
which is another way of saying he's 50 pounds overweight.
00:52:03.780
I'm trying to remember what he was charged with,
00:52:08.220
for like ordering a hit on someone or something.
00:52:30.100
So, I think that he may be in custody to this day.
00:53:49.760
Thank you for letting me tell you all these tall tales.
00:54:07.520
As the risk of war causes the price of energy to go higher.
00:54:36.800
from selling half a billion worth of stuff there.
00:54:41.700
Why are you banning the good guys from business
00:55:37.560
unless you've had two, three, four shots of vodka