In a town hall meeting, a group of Microsoft employees were asked to identify themselves by their pronouns, and they did not do so well. They struggled to come up with a list of pronouns, but they still managed to get a lot of people confused about who they are and how they identify themselves.
00:02:03.900That's just being normal and friendly, so people know what to call you, maybe so they can associate you with a name they have only seen on an email or a voice they've heard on the phone.
00:02:17.020Saying your name is just normal human communication.
00:02:20.720If the nature of your meeting is relevant, you might identify yourself by another characteristic, too.
00:02:27.640If you're at a wedding, you might say how you're related to the happy couple.
00:02:32.080If you're at a business convention, you might say the company you're with.
00:02:37.360Useful, relevant, helpful to the other person.
00:03:33.020We just didn't know that you were so self-conscious about it, that it was so important to who you are, that you would tell us that characteristic, which, by the way, we can see for ourselves.
00:03:45.160Before you say anything else about yourself.
00:03:48.540This is your most important identity, is it?
00:03:51.960The most relevant that actually does tell us a lot about you, in a way, that you're working for Microsoft, but that you really don't think computers or software or, frankly, anything productive is the most important thing.
00:04:05.340But posing, being woke, and implicitly peer-pressuring others into the same wacky custom, that's important to you.
00:07:13.260Hello and welcome to Microsoft Ignite.
00:07:17.880We've got a big day ahead and lots in store for you.
00:07:22.180First, we want to acknowledge that the land where the Microsoft campus is situated was traditionally occupied by the Sammamish, the Duwamish, the Snoqualmie, the Suquamish, the Muckleshoot, the Snohomish, the Tulalip,
00:07:38.640and other Coast Salish peoples since time immemorial, a people that are still here continuing to honor and bring to light their ancient heritage.
00:07:52.300I'm a senior program manager in our developer tools division.
00:07:55.700I'm an Asian and white female with dark brown hair wearing a red sleeveless top.
00:08:01.260And I'm Seth Juarez, program manager in the AI Platform Group.
00:08:04.380I'm a tall Hispanic male wearing a blue shirt, khaki pants.
00:08:07.760Today we kick off two days of learning more about the latest solutions, exploring how these key innovations can empower you to do great things and connecting with peers from around the world.
00:08:18.880I actually still don't know what that is because my head is being filled with things that would make a first year grievance studies major at university, you know, spin around.
00:08:33.020Hello and welcome to Microsoft Ignite.
00:08:36.600We've got a big day ahead and lots in store for you.
00:08:40.240First, we want to acknowledge that the land where the Microsoft campus is situated was traditionally occupied by the Sammamish, the Duwamish, the Snoqualmie, the Suquamish, the Muckleshoot, the Snohomish, the Tulalip, and other Coast Salish peoples since time immemorial.
00:09:01.900A people that are still here continuing to honor and bring to light their ancient heritage.
00:10:35.420Like I know that when police, you know, put out a wand and they say he has a scar on his chin or he has a visible tattoo.
00:10:42.780To, is, I understand why police do that, but if you work at Microsoft, if you have a scar, do you have to tell people it's some other injury?
00:10:53.220Are you obligated to bring it to the viewer's attention?
00:10:56.380I mean, wasn't that considered rude until like about a minute ago?
00:11:01.620But I did learn that Dr. Evil has moved to a new lair outside of Tokyo, Japan.
00:15:37.920I guess at least they paid for it, unlike how Huawei just stole.
00:15:43.100All the intellectual property from Canada's Nortel.
00:15:45.820They stole it, hacked it, and then destroyed the company.
00:15:49.600At least with Lenovo, they just paid for IBM's computers.
00:15:54.680I'm pretty sure that Huawei's tech labs and Lenovo's headquarters, I'm pretty sure when they have company conferences, they don't identify themselves by their height or hair color or ethnicity.
00:16:11.140Then again, there really isn't a lot of diversity in those companies, not even other Chinese ethnic groups like Uyghur Muslims or Tibetans.
00:16:21.520I don't think you'd see a lot of Tibetans working for Huawei, or at least not publicly.
00:16:26.000Now, I never want us to treat minorities the way China's dictatorship treats minorities.
00:16:32.800But what we've seen here from Microsoft, while not as evil, is much more absurd, turning humans into nothing but race and sex and gender and hairstyle and height and sleeves on or off.
00:17:16.680Well, you know, we talk about the pandemic a lot because it's the worst civil liberties crisis ever to hit Canada.
00:17:23.060Perhaps the worst thing ever to hit Canada since the two world wars, which cost so many lives.
00:17:29.480I don't know if the pandemic itself will cost as many lives, but it certainly ruined millions, even if it hasn't killed them.
00:17:37.900I'm speaking, of course, about the lockdowns and the response to the virus.
00:17:42.400The virus itself is slightly worse than the annual death toll from the flu.
00:17:49.280But we do fight other fights and talk about other things.
00:17:52.320And you might recall that in the province of Alberta, a couple of years ago, before the pandemic was a thing, we were worried about the education minister in the former NDP provincial government.
00:18:04.620His name was David Egan, and he was just awful.
00:18:07.960He first came to my attention as some crazy, childish, juvenile, anti-oil sands protester.
00:18:16.420And when I learned he was appointed to cabinet, I was terrified for that reason.
00:18:20.500Here's just a reminder of just how awful David Egan is at anything.
00:19:48.740Obviously, she wasn't going to do it, but we wanted to express our point of view.
00:19:51.680However, the NDP and their elections commissioner at the time liked to stamp out any such dissent.
00:20:01.500And although we put that billboard up at a time when an election wasn't even months away, this was definitely not during the election.
00:20:09.300The elections commissioner, handpicked by Rachel Notley to hunt her enemies, came in for the kill and investigated us and condemned us and reprimanded us and threatened to fine us.
00:20:23.840Well, obviously, we appealed, and that was in the Court of Appeal today.
00:20:29.980And joining us now is our friend Sheila Gunn-Reed, our chief reporter, who was following the hearing in the Court of Appeal.
00:20:38.080I'm not sure if I summed up all the important details, but basically that billboard so irritated the Rachel Notley government
00:20:46.200that they had some bizarre witch hunt trying to ban us from saying that, claiming it was an illegal political campaign expression or something, right?
00:20:57.560Yeah, and it's even more complicated than that because it comes down to the ability for all Albertans to be treated fairly under the law.
00:21:08.380Because what happened to us, if you look at the timeline, it really was a witch hunt, but witches at least get the show trial.
00:21:15.360We didn't even get that, and that was the real problem here.
00:21:18.560Today, we were appealing a judicial review of the initial decision because we wanted a judicial review to point out that we had really had been treated unfairly.
00:21:30.300And I should explain that before we get a little further because it is so complicated.
00:21:34.120But it comes right down to freedom of speech and being able to be treated fairly.
00:21:38.360What happened was we put this billboard up at the end of November 2018.
00:21:43.160By the middle of December, sort of towards the middle latter part of December, so we're headed into the Christmas season, and don't kid yourself, government workers are not doing any hard work towards the end of December.
00:21:54.660But we get a letter in the mail saying, we've opened an investigation into your billboard, and we want you to register your opinions as third-party advertisers.
00:22:04.920Well, we're not third-party advertisers.
00:22:07.380We're journalists, and we just do the expression of our opinions in a more creative way than in the dying medium of print media.
00:22:16.020Sometimes we do billboards, which is what we did.
00:22:19.020So we get our lawyers involved by, I wrote it down, January 9th.
00:22:24.080So right after Christmas holidays, we send them an email or a letter some three weeks later saying, buckle up, we're going to fight.
00:22:35.540Five days later, on January 14th, we get a lawyer from Lorne Gibson, the now-fired elections commissioner,
00:22:42.860who says in his email, it is regarding, how do they put it here, a notice of adverse findings and a proposed fine.
00:23:00.700And so we get a letter just five days after we say, look, yep, we're lawyered up, we're ready to fight,
00:23:06.620we've got evidence, we want to show you, let's do this, let's do this.
00:23:11.920They say, oh, by the way, we've already found you guilty.
00:23:14.640Here's your notice of adverse findings and the proposed fine,
00:23:18.460which for us is like the cops coming to your door and saying, oh, by the way, we found you guilty.
00:23:25.300The only thing we need to discuss now is whether you're going to get the electric chair or the firing squad.
00:24:16.480And then we were stunned when days later, without a hearing, without hearing our side of the story, without getting the facts, they convicted us, even though our lawyer just said, hey there, we've been hired.
00:26:24.640Well, and it's even worse because the elections commissioner, whose position does not exist anymore because it was so partisan and political,
00:26:33.200he serves as the investigator, the adjudicator, the jury, and the hangman.
00:26:41.460So how is there any sort of separation between the duties of this person?
00:26:47.660We literally got a letter showing the mixing of these duties.
00:45:14.480And furthermore, Glaswegians have been urged to open up their homes to COP26 attendees, where 700 households have signed up to a homestay system.
00:45:25.440Just give up your house for two weeks for some climate activists.
00:45:41.160I thought they cared about COVID and washing their hands.
00:45:43.960And I'm sure you've seen the video that I created the other day that's been going viral recently of a Let's Do Net Zero sign being projected on a bridge powered by a petrol generator made by Honda.
00:45:56.900I mean, the hypocrisy speaks for itself, really, doesn't it?
00:45:59.960We are still yet to see more information on policy on what this event will uncover.
00:46:06.080And I have a prediction that it could be very, very sinister.
00:46:10.500Sinister in a sense that it could impede your freedoms in the near future.
00:46:16.980It could even be a reduction in red meat consumption.
00:46:19.480But it could also mean MasterCard's new unveiled card, where if you go over your carbon emission that is tracked, it will bar you from spending your own hard earned cash.
00:46:31.700And my prediction is we could see from the James Bond villain himself, Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum, where he might pitch his own disturbing, dystopian, mentally ill ideas at the conference.
00:46:44.180Now, I just want to live in a society where the government is off my back and protects my rights, not infringes upon them.
00:46:51.260And I don't want to live in some weird metaverse where Mark Zuckerberg reports me because I don't agree with him on climate change.
00:47:00.140But with all these world leaders being funded by you, the taxpayer, is this what you really want, to be told to build back better without knowing what better even means?
00:47:09.760Are you really prepared to embrace this new normal, once under the guise of COVID and soon to be under the guise of climate change?
00:47:20.480This has been Lewis Brackpool reporting for Rebel News in Glasgow, the UN Climate Change Conference.
00:47:30.140This has been Lewis Brackpool reporting for Rebel News in Glasgow.