EZRA LEVANT ｜ Now that COVID is endemic, what's the next big issue？ How should we look at the world？
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Summary
For two years, we ve been trying to make sense of the Russia-Ukraine war, but what s the next big issue? Is there a unifying theme? I ll give you some thoughts on it, and how to look at the world.
Transcript
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Hello, my friends. A bit of a philosophical ramble from me today. I'm going to try and think about
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what the next battle is. I mean, for two years, we've been fighting lockdownism and
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fighting junk science behind the pandemic. We're trying to make sense of the Russia-Ukraine war,
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but what's the next big issue? Is there a unifying theme? I'll give you some thoughts
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on it and how to look at the world. That's today's podcast. Let me invite you to become
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a subscriber to the video version of the podcast. It's called Rebel News Plus. I do a video every
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day of this podcast. In fact, it sort of started first. The podcast came later. In addition, we
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have four other weekly podcasts. Sheila Gunn-Reed, David Menzies, Andrew Chapitose, and Nat and Kat
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have a show called Misunderstood. So that's a lot of content video-wise every week, and it's behind
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our paywall, but it's just eight bucks a month, which I think is really cheap, if I may. So I'd
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love to invite you to subscribe to. Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe, eight
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bucks a month, half the price of Netflix. And importantly, that's how we pay our bills here,
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because we don't get any money from Justin Trudeau, unlike the rest of the media. All right,
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here's today's podcast. Tonight, how should we look at the world? It's March 18th, and this
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is The Ezra Levant Show. Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer
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I know? There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer. The only thing
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I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right
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How should we look at the world? I don't mean that metaphorically, like what ideology or
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through what philosophical lens? I mean, how should we actually look at it? How do you
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see the world? Well, the answer, as anyone in the last hundred years knows, is you look
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at the world through your own eyes, but most of the world you look at through someone else's
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eyes, not just through their storytelling in words, but through their visual medium, their
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videos. Photography is about 170 years old, I'd estimate. Before that, I suppose you would
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look at the world partly through paintings, and certainly through your own imagination from
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stories. But these days, would you agree with me that most of the world is filtered through
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someone else's visuals and words? That's sort of trite and obvious to say. The trouble is,
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those lenses through which we look at the world are filtered. Again, pretty obvious. Marshall
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McLuhan talked about such things. But it really came home to me when I was talking to our friend
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Joel Pollack the other day about my feelings about the Ukraine-Russia war. Now, of course,
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I'm against war. And of course, I'm against the destruction of a sovereign country. And of course,
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I know that Vladimir Putin is a KGB agent who's quite brutal. We saw that in Chechnya.
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He wants to be an imperialist. I know all that. I've written a book with a chapter denouncing
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Vladimir Putin. And I feel like I'm giving you my anti-Putin credentials because what I'm about to
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say next, which is I can't help but feeling that I'm being lied to. Now, of course, truth is the first
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casualty of war. And there's propaganda on both sides. I just feel like the entire Canadian media,
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the Western media, the American media, and most importantly, social media is full tilt pro-Ukraine
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propaganda. Now, maybe that's okay. Just as the media during the Second World War, again, you know,
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you had newsreels during the movies, you had radio, and of course, you had propaganda. And it was good
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to have pro-Canadian, pro-allied propaganda in the Second World War. But the propaganda that we're
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being fed this time is drowning out basic news, legitimate news coverage. I find it confusing.
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It's obviously on both sides. For example, here is a tweet by the Ukrainian side showing death and
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destruction on the streets of a city of Donetsk. It's heart-rending, as so much Ukrainian war propaganda
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is. And I feel very sympathetic looking at it. But I happen to know that Donetsk is a Russian
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enclave. It's not part of the Ukraine that was annexed by Russia a few years ago. But if someone was
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shot and wounded in Donetsk, I think they were shot and wounded by the Ukrainian side, because
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that's sort of a Russian town. I've seen so many propaganda images that both the Ukrainian and the
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Russian propagandist claim shows their guys in the right and the other side of the wrong. And I mean
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literally the same picture. I don't even know whose soldiers are whom. Sometimes it's a lie. For example,
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in Babi Yar, we talked about this, the site of a mass murder during the Holocaust. The Ukrainian side
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said that Russia bombed the Holocaust memorial. An Israeli reporter went to the site and proved that
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no such thing happened. I don't think I'm mad that countries are engaging in propaganda. And I'm certainly not
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mad that I guess the good guys are engaging in it, and perhaps more successfully. But because I don't feel
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like I have a deep personal stake in this war, because I'm neither Russian nor Ukrainian, although my family
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came from Ukraine 118, 119 years ago. I just don't feel like I need to be in the propaganda milieu as if it were
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my own country. And I would like to get some basic news. And more importantly, I would like the right
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to access the news of my choice, including, if I so choose, to see the propaganda of the Russian side.
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Because if I'm on my alert, if I'm being very careful, I believe I can watch Russian propaganda.
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And I think I showed you a short clip from Russia Today a couple weeks ago. And I actually learned from it,
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even if all I'm learning is how they think and what they want to show the world. There is something
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useful to hearing someone lie. You get an insight into their mind, into their conduct. You know what
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to beware of. You know perhaps what they're sensitive of. I believe that Russia Today, which was originally
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banned by the government of Canada pressuring the cable companies, a ban that was confirmed by the CRTC
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in a hasty decision. I believe that Russia Today was useful. And I believe that I'm sharp enough
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not to be duped by it. And I'm disappointed that as a Canadian citizen in the country of Canada,
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I'm denied my civil rights to, as a viewer, to see that. And frankly, that they're denied their rights
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to publish it. And the reason I mention all this is because I find it hard to cheer along
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with Justin Trudeau and the political media establishment, which I sometimes call the media
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party, after two years of being lied to and being gaslighted. You know what that word means. It
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comes from the movie where someone would turn down the gas lights and then turn them back up.
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And someone he was trying to gaslight would say, what's going on with the lights? And the first
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person would say, oh, nothing. You're going mad. It was an attempt to manipulate someone,
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to tell them something that they saw with their own eyes wasn't so, to drive someone crazy by
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lying about reality. That's what gaslighting means. After two years of gaslighting by Justin
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Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland, the same Chrystia Freeland that seized bank accounts in this country
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without rule of law. After two years of censorship and being abused and having peaceful political
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opponents like the truckers convoy bullied by Trudeau, demonized by Trudeau, I am unable,
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as I said to Joel Pollack, to immediately flip into cheerleader mode along with Justin Trudeau and
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Chrystia Freeland. Perhaps it's because the trucker convoy and their abuse of it and their invocation of a
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form of martial law is so recent. I mean, just weeks ago, I'm unable, I am inflexible. I am unable to
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so quickly go from saying, look at how authoritarian Trudeau and Freeland are.
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Look at the bullies they are. Look at the censors they are. Look at their crackdown on civil liberties
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to immediately cheering them on as they criticize Putin for several of those same things. Now, I do not
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say that Trudeau and Freeland are as violent as Putin, but that may be only because they are unable to be
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as violent as him. They have certainly shown no limits of their appetites for power, at least
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peacefully, if you can call their treatment of the trucker convoy and seizing funds. And it made me
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think about how we see the world, because I think I was always a skeptic of Justin Trudeau and frankly
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of all politicians, but the last two years has scorched any remaining vestige of respect or more
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importantly, trust that I had for the media. I saw the lying in real time. I am firmly concluded that the
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so-called profession of fact-checking is anything but. It's spin by another name that the most fact-checking
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that fact-checkers do is they're criticizing the opposition, the opponents of power. And so I tell you, how do
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you look at the world? And I think about this because what should Rebel News be doing now that
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some aspects of the lockdown and the pandemic are waning? We talked at great length the other day
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about how it's not over yet. The no-fly list is in effect. There are various punitive mandates still
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in effect. And of course, the residual powers are there that could be reinvigorated at any time if
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Teresa Tam or Justin Trudeau wants to. But if things are subsiding, what should Rebel News cover?
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What's the most important thing in the country? What's an important news story? What's the most
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important thing to criticize, to analyze? Because that's what we do here. We do the news. We give
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you the news. But we also give you news analysis. How should we think of the news? What should we make
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of the news? How should we view the world metaphorically? And here's how I think about it. We don't just look
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at the world through our eyes. We don't just look at the world through the eyes of the media. But I think
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more and more we're looking at the world of the eyes through big tech. It's as if we're all wearing those
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big, clunky, virtual reality goggles. As I said on a live stream a couple weeks ago, Mark Zuckerberg is creating
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an entire world that he calls the metaverse, where you walk around, you interact with other people,
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you conduct commerce in this virtual reality as if you're a computer simulation. You have a little
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avatar walking around, but not just a human. You could be a robot. You could be an animal. But the thing is,
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Mark Zuckerberg controls the entire metaverse. Everything you see, everything you hear,
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he knows everything that you say and do. And of course, he's there to sell you everything.
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I believe that the greatest news story is also the greatest threat to our freedom.
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And that is how big tech and big government are combining to put a pair of virtual reality goggles
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on all of us, on every subject. It's combining big tech, big government, frankly, big pharma,
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the number one thing that's censored these days, the industrial military complex these days, you're
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censored if you say certain things about Russia or Ukraine, blending that with censorship, putting
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that on everyone's heads. And so you'll never know what you don't know. You'll only know what they let
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you know. And any opposition to the official narrative is what they call controlled opposition.
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It's to give you a semblance that there's a diversity of opinion. You know, I, for today's show,
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my interview with Linda Blade, which is coming up in a minute, I googled the name of the transgender
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swimming athlete who just crushed it at the NCAA swimming competition in Atlanta, Georgia. You know
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what I'm talking about. Leah Thomas, who was a man until most recently, who's just crushing it in
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girls sports. I think it's a disgraceful story. But here's what I mean about the virtual reality
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goggles. What was the name of Leah Thomas that his mom and dad gave him? What was he born as before he
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transitioned a couple of years ago? I typed in Google, Leah Thomas birth name. I typed in Leah Thomas
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dead name. That's a transgender phrase for your old name when you were your old self. And I must have
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gone through 40 results and I couldn't find it. Google will not let you find the so-called dead
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dead name of Leah Thomas. They simply have banned that information. Now we see this happening to us
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all the time, but that was a fact you think would be pretty easy to find. Now I switched to another
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search engine called DuckDuckGo, and I found it with a little bit of effort. But DuckDuckGo, and that
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was their selling feature. That's what they said to web surfers. Use us. We may not be quite as great
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as Google, quite as fast, quite as big, quite as many features, but we will not filter. If you're
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wearing the goggles, it's just a clear plate glass window. There's no colors. There's no virtual reality.
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It's real reality. But look at this. Here's a tweet from the boss of DuckDuckGo just a week ago saying
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they made the decision to downrank Russian sources that they didn't like. Well, all of a sudden,
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DuckDuckGo is in the virtual reality goggles gaslighting business. You know, I have an account
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on TikTok. I had deleted it because I thought they were snooping on my phone. I reactivated it. Maybe
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they are snooping on my phone. You'll laugh at me, but I go to the gym now. I'm trying to get less fat.
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And so I talk about the gym, but I've literally never texted or emailed the word gym or personal
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trainer. I just don't. But I talk about it a little bit. And on TikTok, half of the videos
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being served up to me by the algorithm are of people in the gym. I swear I've never emailed or
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texted that, but all your devices are listening to you all the time and serving up to you what they
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think they're interested in. Now, I know none of this is news to you, but I'm trying to answer the
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question, what is the greatest issue that we face in Canada today? And it's not just Justin Trudeau.
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It's not just the seizing of the bank accounts. It's not just the lockdown. It's not just the threat
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of the third year of the pandemic, as Pablo Rodriguez says. It's not just the censorship. It's
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not just the war in Ukraine and Russia. It's all of it. It's literally everything. If you're forced
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to wear the virtual reality goggles, not of Mark Zuckerberg, who we know is a creepy privacy
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busting terms of service, violating megalomaniac. Yes, I'm worried about him by it, but I am far more
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worried not about his private ambitions, but about the government blending with big media and big tech
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to simply stop you from seeing anything they don't want you to see. It's one thing when they ban Russia
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today, and I say again, I wish they didn't. I would like to know that, but what if they ban things
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that you never even knew about, and you never will know about them? I think of the crises in this
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country today. I mentioned the lockdown and the pandemic. I mentioned the war. I mentioned censorship.
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How about housing? Just out of control prices in any Canadian city. Inflation, the highest in decades.
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How about the fact that Canada's oil has been landlocked by environmental extremists who cut off
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the pipelines? The world could so desperately use more oil and gas. Now, we in Canada could,
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but it's been stopped. These are individually important issues, but if you cannot find out the
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truth and the whole truth about them, how can you possibly make decisions about anything?
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And so I've come to the conclusion, as the lockdown wanes and as the Russia-Ukraine war replaces it as the
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new big thing for people to have a strong opinion about, that the media itself is the biggest issue
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because the media itself is every issue because it's being corrupted, the media. It's being colonized.
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You saw the story in Black Locks the other day about the former editor-in-chief of the Globe
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Mail, Edward Greenspawn, putting together a click of 25 Ottawa insiders who would accept payment and a
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flight to a secret huddle about how they can be trustworthy conduits of government information.
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25 journalists participated in that, and all 25 of them kept it a secret who they were.
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However, those 25 are indeed trustworthy if you're Justin Trudeau, but if you're someone
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wearing the VR goggles, not so trustworthy at all, are they? And I think that's why Rebel News' work
00:18:50.320
will never be done. You know, I don't think other than David Mente is a single person on our team has
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a journalism degree. I could be wrong on that. We have such a big team these days. I don't quite know
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everyone's story, but our style is citizen journalism. It's very low tech. We often just
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take a cell phone, point it at things, and live stream that. I think it's our lack of fanciness,
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our earnest citizen journalism style. Some people laugh at it. We're not as slick and professional
00:19:20.900
as the big networks, but I think it's that citizen journalist style that makes us authentic and
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trustworthy. It's the opposite of the fancy virtual reality goggles that we're supposed to wear.
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I don't know if there's ever going to be an end to it, because I think we're all so extremely online.
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Everything we do is online. Compare how much you use cash to how much you use credit and now your Apple
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pay. I think we are irrevocably online, and I don't know if the internet will ever again return to its
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Wild West days of pure freedom. I actually don't think it will, which is why Rebel News has its
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purpose. For the last two years, our purpose has been fighting against the civil liberties bonfire
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of the lockdowns and fighting against the junk science of the pandemic fear mongers. We've moved
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beyond just talking about it. As you know, we've crowdfunded money for lawyers for it too, for
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helping ordinary people who got caught up in the system. I think our work will never be done
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because in Canada, at least, more and more, journalism itself is the problem. Stay with us for a moment.
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Welcome back. Well, Will Thomas was a pretty good swimmer when he was in high school.
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He placed in the championships. He placed in the Ivy League championships, but he was never a gold
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medalist and certainly not a record breaker. So Will Thomas decided to become Leah Thomas and to
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compete as a woman. And ever since, he has been crushing it. Here, take a look at him yesterday
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at the NCAA. Women's swim meet. That's the best of the best, but no one's as good at being a woman
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I don't know if you caught that. Someone shouted out cheater at the beginning of the race. Well,
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so what? Didn't stop him from winning. Here he is crowing about his victory and how glad he is to be
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there. A new moment, a new milestone in sport. Leah, how did that performance measure up to your
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expectations coming into this meet tonight? I didn't have a whole lot of expectations for this
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meeting. I was just happy to be here trying to race and compete as best as I could. You've undoubtedly
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been under the spotlight over the past few months. How have you been dealing with that
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and reasoning with everything? I try to ignore it as much as I can.
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I try to focus on my swimming, what I need to do to get ready for my races and just try to block out
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everything else. What did that race mean to you? It means the world to be here, be with two of my
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best friends and teammates, and be able to compete. Thank you for stopping by.
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Very disappointing for the girls and young women who have trained all their lives, getting up very early,
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going to swim meets, sacrificing. Here's the podium. There is Will, excuse me, Leah on the left,
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and then there's the three genetic women who came in second, third, and fourth. But as I always say,
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why do you think there will only be one transgender woman in a competition? Why don't you think others
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would say, hey, I sort of am middle of the pack as a fella, but let me go into the women's league and
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maybe I can beat Leah Thomas, but maybe I'll come in second and that's still better I can do
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against other blokes. Soon you will see the entire podium, first, second, third, all the way down
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being trans women. Why wouldn't you? It worked for Leah Thomas. Why wouldn't it work for anyone? Well,
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joining us now to talk about this is a Canadian coach, a national champion athlete in her own right,
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and the author of a book published by Rebel News called Unsporting, our friend Linda Blate.
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Linda, it's a pleasure to have you here. You were a champion athlete yourself in track and field,
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and you've been a coach for many years. You were there yesterday. Tell me a little bit about the
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mood in the room. I've got to think that most of the people there were, you know, born double X
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chromosome women and girls, and they had been training their whole lives and getting up early and
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going to swim meets and sacrificing, but they all knew in advance they were going to be beaten by
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the lad, by the bloke. That's kind of hung over the whole event, did it? Yeah, to me, going into a
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sporting venue, it seemed rather subdued, I have to be honest. It seemed quite subdued, and of course,
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those of us who were there protesting and making our voices heard on behalf of the women and the female
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athletes, had a, I felt anyway for myself, I can only speak for myself, but I felt torn, because
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on the one hand, I didn't want to be there at all. I did not want to witness the destruction of women's
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sport, which is what is happening here, but on the other hand, I felt the need to speak out and to show
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the world that women really aren't just taking this laying down. We really do want to fight for our
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sports, and we feel, those of us who've had our turn, we feel like we need to help these young
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girls, these young women athletes, and fight on their behalf. I mean, it's very important that
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somebody speaks out and says, this is not correct. I have a similar feeling I do when I look at the
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Olympics in a totalitarian regime like Beijing, or even some of the boycotts against Russian sports
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teams now. On the one hand, it's important not to glorify and participate in something that's
00:25:54.400
immoral. On the other hand, these, you know, do you really make a young athlete pay a political
00:26:01.780
price for you? Do you really say to people, you can't go to Beijing Olympics because we don't like
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Beijing? And the reason I make that analogy is because what were the other young women supposed to
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do? Were they supposed to not compete? Were they supposed to go and try and start up some rival
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league or conference? I mean, I don't even know what they should do because the fix was in. I mean,
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it's like a rigged boxing match. It's the opposite of sport. So they were fighting over second, third,
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and fourth place. And as I say, I think next year, they'll be fighting over just third and fourth place
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and just over fourth and fifth place as more, more lads get in on the game.
00:26:40.880
Yes. So there are a number of people who have called for the girls to boycott and to stand on
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their blocks and not participate. But honestly, I wonder whether in this moment, we they they had,
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they haven't had enough time to organize. And in fact, you have to remember that these women who are
00:27:01.760
competing, they are rivals, it's not like they're going to put their heads together and figure out
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what they're going to do together. I don't think the women in this particular year have even had
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enough time to figure out what they're going to do. Now, having said that, those girls who are in
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their fifth year, fourth year university last competition, they should be willing to come out
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afterwards and say, this is not correct. And this is not appropriate. And it's unethical.
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And maybe in years to come, there will be more opportunities for action. In the meantime,
00:27:39.700
what these girls want is a university education and to be able to go and get a job. So if they protest
00:27:47.460
or do anything radical, their universities have literally told them, they will make sure that
00:27:55.000
they're not going to get a good job offer. They've been threatened that way.
00:27:59.340
You know, it's interesting, Caitlyn Jenner, really the first household name, global celebrity,
00:28:05.640
really, and former great Olympic athlete in his own right, when he was called Bruce Jenner,
00:28:12.640
he's now transitioned to Caitlyn Jenner. Interestingly, he or she weighed in on this
00:28:20.280
yesterday himself. It was rather a self-deprecating joke. I don't know if you saw Coach Blade. He said,
00:28:26.160
I got the balls to stand up for young women. And I think it's rather incredible the reaction to him
00:28:34.220
from the trans activists. They're raging against Bruce Jenner, Caitlyn Jenner, really the pioneer of
00:28:42.060
transgenderism, because it's clear that he just wants to be in his own skin. I mean,
00:28:48.400
I don't want to delve too deeply into the psychology of it, but Bruce Jenner really felt
00:28:55.100
like Caitlyn Jenner, and that's who he wanted to be. That's a very different motivation than I want to
00:29:00.480
take something away from other people. I think if you had to say it, Bruce or Caitlyn Jenner was using
00:29:06.840
transgenderism as a shield, whereas others want to use it as a sword. And it's one thing to say,
00:29:12.000
let me be me. Let me be who I am. Let me express myself in my own way. You may not understand it,
00:29:18.380
but just leave me alone to be who I want to be. That's a very different kind of transgender politics
00:29:23.820
than I am coming into your spaces, and I'm going to take your things, and you will call me woman.
00:29:34.700
Yes. In fact, it reveals the split in the LGBTQ community, because when you think back to the
00:29:42.640
gay rights movement, all they wanted to do was have their own rights taken care of and leave us
00:29:49.240
alone, so to speak. But now the Q and the T come along, and they insist on not only being able to
00:29:58.820
live as their truth or whatever they feel like in their own skin, but now they want to compel
00:30:03.840
everybody else to believe a lie, to believe something they don't agree with, to use pronouns
00:30:10.500
the way they want us to, to dictate speech and dictate how the rules should work for everybody
00:30:16.660
else. So this last part of the Q part of the, you know, LGBTQ community is quite kind of almost
00:30:25.720
totalitarian in that way. And meanwhile, there is a split even in the trans community, because as you
00:30:31.700
pointed out, there are many transgender women or people who identify as women who are born male,
00:30:39.280
who just want to acknowledge that they're really male at birth, and they just want to express in a
00:30:46.060
different way. And they want and they don't believe in going into women's bathrooms and women's private
00:30:51.640
spaces and women's sports and that they want to they understand there's sex, the way you're born,
00:30:58.740
male or female, and then layered on top of that is whatever the gender or whatever the expression
00:31:05.300
they feel like they want to have. But the people like Leah Thomas and those activists, the trans
00:31:13.280
activists, they want to now deny the very reality of sex, which is, it's just not practical. It's even
00:31:21.280
not, it's not doable in society. We have to have guidelines, we have to have sex-based rights.
00:31:26.940
Yeah, it's very strange. And, you know, I saw just yesterday, I, it's so atrocious, I hate to even
00:31:33.040
say it. I saw women referred to as bleeders, a reference to having one's period. And I was just
00:31:46.220
so furious when I saw that, because it's, again, that's being done in the name of the trans project.
00:31:51.780
I mean, so the denormalization and the denaturing women adding prefixes and suffixes and euphemisms.
00:32:03.920
So it's, and to me, that's rock solid proof that this is not about protecting trans people. It's
00:32:10.440
about destroying the definition of women. And it's incredible to me how many people who once called
00:32:18.100
themselves feminists are going along with this. I, I don't know, I don't know where this is coming
00:32:25.420
from. I don't know why it's happening. But I have to tell you that, for example, even our conversation
00:32:30.060
here, Linda, this conversation is unlawful on Twitter, because I've done two things. I've dead
00:32:38.160
named Leah Thomas by saying the name he was born with. And I think both you and I have misgendered
00:32:46.100
people, which is to call them he instead of her. I don't know if you did that, but I did.
00:32:52.340
Both of those things are enough to get you kicked off of social media. In fact, I, in fact,
00:32:57.560
the harshness, the speed, and the unforgivable nature of censorship in the trans issues is stricter
00:33:06.420
even than those, if you have dissident views on the pandemic. And this all happened in five years.
00:33:12.920
I don't know how it happened so quickly. Where did it all come from?
00:33:17.380
Well, I think it had been bubbling under the surface, being indoctrinated in the schools
00:33:21.780
through the last, you know, 10 or 15 years. And it just kind of rose to the surface after that
00:33:28.600
generation started having jobs where they were in bureaucracy and in the policymaking sphere.
00:33:34.580
I will say this, though, if misgendering is a sin on Twitter, and it should not be abided,
00:33:43.200
why is Leah Thomas supposed to be on there at all in the women's show being shown swimming
00:33:49.580
with women? Because as far as I'm concerned, the moment a male bodied person, a male person
00:33:55.880
competes with women, or goes into the women's category, that person has just misgendered all
00:34:02.320
the women in that group. Yeah, I find it very frustrating. And I think there's, I mean, swimming,
00:34:11.320
you steal the victory from women and girls who've been working on it for years or decades. But there
00:34:18.820
are actually transgender athletes in violent sports, like mixed martial arts, and wrestling,
00:34:25.280
and football, and things like that. And to see men who transition to women physically smash
00:34:34.600
genetic women in the name of equality is so appalling. And I think that the reason why Will Thomas,
00:34:45.560
Leah Thomas is a media star, is because that it's less viscerally offensive to see a man beat women in a
00:34:54.700
separate swimming lane. But there are transgender athletes in every sport, including the ones with
00:35:00.980
physical contact. And maybe the reasons those aren't as quite as celebrated in the media is
00:35:06.100
because there's something very deep within us, I think even genetically, probably over the course of
00:35:10.900
thousands of generations, to see a man physically pummeling a woman generates a sense of disgust and rage
00:35:19.200
and sympathy amongst us. And I don't know, I don't know how this is going to end. But it's nowhere
00:35:27.220
close to over yet. Let me ask you this last question, Lynn. And thanks very much for joining us. I know
00:35:31.340
you're on holidays right now, but I appreciate you chiming in. Is there any resistance to this? Or is
00:35:38.220
everyone just so afraid? Everyone's afraid. And I feel like if we if we don't start speaking out now,
00:35:47.840
we have actually literally lost women's sports. Because even in Canada, all of our sports associations
00:35:55.340
are being pressured in the most absurd and intense way to adopt the self identity strategies like
00:36:06.020
I know, in my sport and track and field, we actually are now looking at a draft policy
00:36:10.800
that basically says for domestic competitions, anybody can compete in whatever strategy, whatever
00:36:18.100
category they would like to identify into. And that's not even like no hormones, no surgery.
00:36:25.440
It could change from one day to the next. And, you know, we're just going to have to have the
00:36:32.060
doors wide open and let people and no questions asked and let people just compete the way they
00:36:36.640
want. But if you know the point my job as president of athletics, Alberta, which is the Alberta branch
00:36:43.980
is to go to the table and really argue these points. But you know, it's amazing to me, Ezra,
00:36:48.900
how much fear and hesitation to say anything happens even in these meetings behind closed doors,
00:36:58.000
when you have presidents of provinces. And everybody's so afraid, whether it's Bill C-16,
00:37:04.340
I don't know what it is. Nobody wants to say anything one way or another. There's like a dead
00:37:10.360
silence. And it's like the polite smiles at coffee time, like it's nobody wants to talk about it.
00:37:16.280
You know, when I was a kid, very young age, I remember the Olympics, there was always questions,
00:37:22.640
well, were the East German women's teams, were they, you know, were they actually men? Were they
00:37:29.120
on steroids, et cetera? There was a, everyone knew there was some shenanigans afoot. We naturally knew
00:37:34.220
there was some trickery and unsportsmanlike. And, you know, it was, we all knew instinctively it was
00:37:40.540
cheating. If only they were 40 years later, they would just be running all the East German and Soviet
00:37:50.740
men. And the West would invite them to come and cheat. It's, it's, it's very depressing.
00:37:59.360
But I think the key is to be able to talk about it. That's how everything starts, which is why
00:38:03.820
they're censoring it. I'm glad you're talking about it. I'm very proud that Rebel News published
00:38:09.980
your book. And I'll just read it one more time. I'll put it on the screen. Unsporting,
00:38:12.680
how trans activism and science denial are destroying sport. And you can get that at unsporting.com.
00:38:19.300
Great to see you. Thanks for joining us in the middle of your vacation. Appreciate you taking
00:38:22.940
time away. Thank you very much, Ezra. I appreciate it. Hi, everybody.
00:38:27.660
There you have it. Linda Blake. Stay with us. More ahead.
00:38:30.140
Hey, welcome back. Your letters to me. Hope Dealer 64 says, in reference to the Melinda Gates
00:38:50.300
interview, how could she have any discernment about a man she met once, but not the one she
00:38:58.780
was married to. I call bull. Well, I don't know if you saw my story about Bill Gates, where
00:39:05.700
I did a deep dive on him. There's a lot of very strange things with Bill Gates, including
00:39:10.480
the fact that he every year would go on a getaway with his former girlfriend with the approval
00:39:20.900
of his wife. And that's sort of what his best friend Warren Buffett does, too. He had two
00:39:29.640
wives. And I think just there was so much weird about Bill Gates. And he gets away with it because,
00:39:36.700
first of all, he looks sort of like a harmless schlep. But second of all, he just spends hundreds
00:39:41.540
of millions of dollars bribing people not to ask him prickly questions. It is rather amazing that
00:39:48.880
Melinda Gates said those things. I think you're right. I can only imagine the things she's seen.
00:39:56.760
I can only imagine the things she put up with before Epstein was the breaking point. It's just,
00:40:02.920
I tell you, billionaires, they're not like us, are they? Rebel in the City 77 says, the same actors on
00:40:10.020
the same set on the same movie, all reading from the same script. Nazis learned they can't conquer the
00:40:16.280
world by force. I think you're talking about the World Health Organization in this script. I don't think
00:40:21.920
I would equate the World Health Organization with Nazis. Nazis implies mass violence. But I think the
00:40:27.700
World Health Organization are fear mongers. They like the power of unelected public health. I think they
00:40:36.960
saw it as a way to create the panopticon, the all-seeing surveillance state. And I think a lot of them had
00:40:44.980
been daydreaming about this pandemic crisis for a long time, Bill Gates being the most obvious one of
00:40:49.240
them. Friend of the King says this is just a preparation in case the Ukrainian war doesn't work
00:40:56.140
out for them. I don't know what the interests of the West are in the Ukrainian war, other than to
00:41:04.280
have it stop and keep as much of Ukraine whole and sovereign and independent as possible.
00:41:11.020
I know there's some who really, really want Ukraine in the NATO alliance. I'm not sure if
00:41:17.280
that's good for anyone. I don't know if it's good for Ukraine, because I think Russia would feel the
00:41:22.240
need to come in and stop that from happening. I think that's one of their rationales for invading
00:41:27.280
this time. And I don't know if the NATO alliance, including Canadians, want Ukraine to be a tripwire for
00:41:33.340
World War III. Sometimes I get the feeling that it was Americans who wanted the war in Ukraine
00:41:40.800
almost more than Russia. Here, look at this video featuring John McCain and Lindsey Graham
00:41:46.880
from about 10 years ago. And tell me if I'm wrong.
00:41:50.520
Russian aggression. It is time for them to pay a heavier price. I believe you will win. I am convinced
00:42:03.500
you will win. And we will do everything we can to provide you with what you need to win.
00:42:09.920
I believe that you will win. You will win. I am convinced that you will win. And we will help you with all the possible tools.
00:42:20.920
Well, those are our letters for the day. Let me say goodbye to you and thanks for watching all week
00:42:25.920
and have a great weekend. We'll see you on Monday. But let me leave you with our video of the day.
00:42:29.920
Our friend Tamara Ugolini doing a story on pilots still facing termination and the link between vaccine
00:42:38.780
mandates and digital ID. There's a video from Tamara. Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at
00:42:45.680
Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.
00:42:49.920
Tamara Ugolini with Rebel News discussing more aviation squashing through continued COVID-related
00:42:55.500
mandates and restrictions. Early in 2021, Air Canada specifically took a massive government bailout
00:43:01.780
at the tune of $5.9 billion after record losses in both 2020 and 2021. The airline lost $3.6 billion
00:43:12.360
in 2021, which was an improvement from a $4.6 billion loss in 2020. Air Canada's 2021 revenue from
00:43:21.500
domestic flights was only at 39% of what it was in 2019, while revenue from international flying was
00:43:28.560
at a mere 20% of that 2019 baseline. At the beginning of 2022, the aviation industry, like many other
00:43:36.780
sectors across Canada, saw staff shortages allegedly due to illness and isolation rules, while healthy,
00:43:43.980
unvaccinated employees remain on forced unemployment despite being ready and able to work. One of those
00:43:51.060
is Greg Hill. He is a Canadian airline pilot and military veteran. Greg is both co-founder and
00:43:58.480
director of Free to Fly, which is an initiative started by aviation professionals to stand alongside
00:44:05.900
passengers in defence of freedom, obviously to fly, and more broadly, travel. Despite vaccine mandates now
00:44:14.160
being reined in in almost all sectors across Canada by provincial and territorial guidance,
00:44:21.040
federal travel restrictions remain heavy-handed. Greg and I discuss what this has looked like for him,
00:44:27.560
a pilot with an impeccable safety record. Check it out. Well, we kind of saw this coming last April,
00:44:35.400
almost a year ago. We figured as part of the airline industry, we'd be at the pointy end of any
00:44:40.160
mandate. So the Free to Fly was really born out of trying to get ahead of that. And it did go the
00:44:47.960
route that we expected it to go. The walls closed in, I guess, until the end of October. And at that
00:44:55.080
point, the bulk of our membership ended up unpaid at home as of the end of October. And then fast forward
00:45:03.440
to where we are now, this unpaid leave for the bulk of the industry came to a close around the
00:45:10.340
end of April. And the time, you know, the clock was ticking roughly as we got towards the end of
00:45:17.660
April. And now what we're seeing over the last few weeks, for some, it's been further back, even in
00:45:24.500
the fall, we've had some of our members outright terminated. But we saw most recently Air Canada,
00:45:29.740
you know, one of the top 25 largest employers in the nation announced that they're going to
00:45:36.360
terminate all of their unvaccinated employees effective the 1st of May. So that's, in a nutshell,
00:45:41.400
where we've been. Lots of advocacy from amongst our group, really encouraged by their willingness to
00:45:47.920
stand firmly for their God-given freedoms in a variety of means, whether it's advocating
00:45:54.100
with politicians, whether it's showing up at rallies, whether it's speaking out with their unions and
00:45:58.740
their employers. So there's, there's many means, but that's, that's where we've been the last year.
00:46:03.660
What would you say is the amount of colleagues that you have who are taking this stance with you?
00:46:12.600
Well, it's difficult to say in terms of numbers, because as we know, this is a matter of privacy,
00:46:17.780
but obviously the bulk of our members have spoken out and it's obvious as we head towards
00:46:22.380
terminations. But, you know, statistically across the nation, you're looking at vaccination numbers
00:46:28.080
in the range of 85 to 90%. So to be, to be blunt with you, it's not as large of a number as we
00:46:35.000
would have liked to have seen, which sounds counterintuitive. But the reason I say that is
00:46:39.780
if, if you look south of the border, for instance, down in the States, we had some of their airlines
00:46:44.840
where take, take their pilots, for example, they were very firm. 15, 20% of them said we will
00:46:50.100
absolutely never concede our bodily autonomy. And guess what? They're still flying airplanes down
00:46:55.340
there. Unfortunately, in Canada, for a variety of reasons, it's been a discouragingly small
00:47:01.440
number. And this is the nature of collective action. When we don't act collectively and stand
00:47:06.800
up against authoritarian overreach, this is where we end up. And that's really a comment
00:47:11.200
for broader society, not so much just within our own industry.
00:47:15.260
Can you comment at all on where you're at with your union and these talks with the airline?
00:47:20.720
Well, I'll speak broadly as far as our membership as a whole with free to fly, we've got 42,000
00:47:27.500
members, 38,000 of those are passengers. And then we've got around 3000 plus as far as the aviation
00:47:36.540
professionals go. And I'll speak with what should be most obvious in terms of recent news. You look
00:47:44.080
at Air Canada, for instance, over the past week, they announced as of the 1st of May, as I mentioned,
00:47:48.320
that any of their unvaccinated employees will be terminated. So if, you know, if you take a
00:47:55.200
statistical range, you're looking at 1,500, 2,000 employees, potentially, if the numbers are
00:48:01.160
similar to broader society in terms of who's vaccinated and who's not, surprisingly or unsurprisingly,
00:48:06.680
depending on your outlook, this is unknown to the broader public, which seems surprising given
00:48:11.460
the size of the employer and the amount that Air Canada tends to trend in the news. So in terms of
00:48:18.800
where those employees are at with their unions, it's been very discouraging. I think that's a common
00:48:24.320
story that you'll hear across the various industries, not just in aviation, that the unions themselves have
00:48:31.060
done very little. At this point, they are trying to push back to a certain extent, but it feels like
00:48:38.160
it's a little bit too little, too late. Within 24 hours of receiving this termination notice,
00:48:45.540
you say that a partnership popped up with KDTI, so that's the known traveller digital identity.
00:48:55.420
Why does this concern you, and who are those partners? It's a great question, Tamara. Well,
00:49:02.560
the WEF, the World Economic Forum, is what's behind this KDTI. It was really rolled out in 2019,
00:49:10.160
but a white paper came out in 2020. And I would encourage, well, I'd say every Canadian to get
00:49:17.040
their hands on that. It's not difficult to find it's on the internet and read through it. I would
00:49:22.140
call it the Trojan horse for digital ID more broadly. And you take a read through that white paper,
00:49:30.320
and it is very concerning. It literally says that KDTI, which is the known traveller digital ID,
00:49:36.300
is the foundation for a globally accepted decentralized identity ecosystem, which is
00:49:43.280
rather euphemistic. But, you know, it talks about how the layers of cryptography and everything else
00:49:49.060
that form the foundation of it aren't sufficient in and of themselves to create a trust network,
00:49:54.660
that this requires developing agreements between issuers such as credit unions, banks, stores,
00:50:00.720
healthcare providers. The document itself says that in black and white. And so this wasn't rolled
00:50:08.820
out immediately just last week. It's been sitting around for a while, but I'd say it means something
00:50:14.160
very, very different. And as it rolls out, that's something that seems convenient. And increasing safety,
00:50:20.280
which are things that we keep hearing over and over again, convenience and safety, convenience and
00:50:25.200
safety. And before you know it, this cage starts to close around you. And I think broadly in society,
00:50:31.520
we're kind of looking left and right sometimes, and people are feeling like, wow, I, you know,
00:50:36.160
I got through this unscathed. It looks like those guys are getting terminated, but I'm going to be okay.
00:50:40.600
But I think what we don't realize is that there's a broader cage that's kind of closing around
00:50:45.940
all of us at this point. And I think this KTDI needs to be looked at in more depth
00:50:52.680
by everyone in terms of where it's going. Connecting the dots is a very relevant aspect
00:50:59.220
of these indiscriminate vaccine mandates. See, vaccine passports have begun the normalization
00:51:04.940
of carrying around a scannable QR code on your cell phone to gain access to places.
00:51:09.620
And that translates well into situations like airport security. After all, removing our shoes
00:51:16.360
and belts and carrying travel sized liquids in clear containers were all supposed to be
00:51:21.460
temporary measures post 9-11 that still remain in place today. And in many instances have become
00:51:28.280
even more aggressive. Like Greg says, it's all about convenience and safety. Soon your handy little
00:51:35.440
QR code will be tied to your hotel and then to your rental car. And well, next thing we know it,
00:51:41.400
we're building a known traveler status, which ties in attestations from your university,
00:51:48.560
your bank statements, or your vaccination status. This decentralized identity foundation aims to be
00:51:54.960
an open source, decentralized identity ecosystem that equips the identity community
00:52:00.080
with the protocols, tools, and implementations necessary to create and validate identity
00:52:06.460
attestation. This is the future that Greg is opposing, and he believes the vaccine mandates and,
00:52:13.560
of course, the subsequent passports are the precursor to. The dots certainly connect, don't they?