UK celebrity gets police visit for using transgender woman’s male name on Twitter
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Summary
A celebrity is visited by police for calling a transgender woman by her original male name. Why should others go to jail when you won t give them an answer? You come here once a year with a sign, and you feel morally superior? The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it s my bloody right to do so.
Transcript
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Tonight, a celebrity is visited by police for calling a transgender woman by his original male name.
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It's October 11th, and this is The Ezra LeVant Show.
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Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
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There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
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You come here once a year with a sign, and you feel morally superior.
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The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
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I am not actually obsessed by the United Kingdom. I know sometimes it looks like it.
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I love Canada. I admire the United States. I enjoy traveling to other countries, too.
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It's just that since I've been dragged into the UK's dysfunctional politics and media and judiciary,
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through my involvement with Tommy Robinson, I've come to realize that they are about five years further down the path
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of political correctness as we are. Five years further, five years worse, five years more politically correct,
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five years worse in terms of media bias, in terms of Islamification of the establishment, in terms of censorship.
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Five years worse in terms of politicized policing and courts.
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Five years further down the road of civilizational unraveling. That's my view.
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I think they're a cautionary tale, a canary in a coal mine for us here in Canada,
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the same way that Canada has served that role for the Americans.
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Let me give you an example today. You might not know the celebrity I mentioned.
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Maybe he's not even really a celebrity, but I think maybe the analogy here in Canada would be someone like Rick Mercer,
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though Rick is much nicer than the British guy I'm going to talk about.
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And he's a creative type, co-writer, co-creator of a show called Father Ted.
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I actually hadn't heard of it, but I watched a bit of it online. It's a comedy.
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Can I show you a two-minute clip? I know that's a long time, but it's a funny little clip, just so you understand.
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It's sort of funny, and it's a tiny bit controversial, but not really.
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I just want you to get a two-minute flavor of the show,
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so you know who and what I'm talking about for the rest of this monologue.
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That's the inn family. They're living over there in that old Chinatown area.
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Chinatown there? There's a Chinatown on Craggy Island?
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Dougal, I wouldn't have done a Chinaman impression
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if I'd known there was going to be a Chinaman there to see me doing a Chinaman impression.
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I'm going to have to catch up with them and explain I'm not a racist.
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How did you get interested in that type of thing?
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What's the official line the church is taking on this?
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I might not be able to devote myself full time to the old racism.
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Well, someone has a guts to stand up to them at last.
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Coming over here, taking our jobs and our women.
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Reminds me a little bit of that show Curb Your Enthusiasm with Larry David,
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Larry David's always the guy saying the wrong things and it just spirals.
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It's still safe to make a joke about joking about Chinese people.
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I mean, in the U.K. that gets you fired within seconds.
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This is sort of edgy, probably edgier than the boring anti-Trump pablum served up every week on Saturday Night Live out of New York.
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Anyway, I say again, the co-creator of this show is named Graham Linehan.
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And as with so many dramatic types, he gets into fights on Twitter.
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And Twitter can be dangerous for guys like that since it's so instant.
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And unlike an email, the whole world sees it, not just the person you're emailing to.
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So Graham Linehan started getting into a quarrel with a transgender activist, someone who was born a man but now says they're a woman.
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He goes by the name Stephanie Hayden now, which is a girl's name, of course.
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So they're both leftists, but one's transgender and they're fighting on Twitter, which isn't really fighting, it's words.
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And Linehan calls the activist by the name he was given by his parents, a male name.
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I'm not going to get into the quarrel too deeply.
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And I don't even think I'm going to take sides between them because my point today isn't a gossipy quarrel between two minor celebrities in a faraway place.
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So I'll skip over the details and I'll get to the end of the story.
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My run-in with Stephanie Hayden made the Times.
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Favorite bit is where Stephanie, Tony, Stephen, explains how it's perfectly legal and normal to have multiple identities,
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but if you don't call him the female one, you're doing a hate crime.
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What Graham Linehan did was to republish photographs of people associated with me,
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and then continue to defame deadname and misgender me.
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Now, deadname, in case you're wondering, is a new and wonderful phrase that means calling a transgender activist by the name that they used to have but have now renounced.
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It would be like calling Muhammad Ali, Cassius Clay.
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Or calling the singer Bono by the name Paul Hewson.
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Even though it's the legal name carried by that person for decades, the name lovingly chosen for them as a baby by their loving parents.
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As with so many online quarrels, the real loser is anyone who wastes their time on it.
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Well, Hayden complained that Linehan was doxing people, that is, revealing private information about them.
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But he denies it, saying, oh, one thing on this.
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Tony Stephen Stephanie is claiming I doxed him.
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Everything I retweeted was already available online.
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Tony Stephen Stephanie retaliated by going after my wife.
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So I know you're thinking, why are you boring us with this celebrity quarrel about celebrities who aren't even celebrated over here?
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I mean, we have quarrels like that in Canada, right?
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Remember, it was when Professor Jordan Peterson first refused to call someone G or Zer.
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That caused the big fuss when transgender activists tried to get him fired from U of T about it.
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I don't think I had heard the word deadname back then, but that's sort of what this was about.
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And Jordan Peterson was worried about federal legislation exposing him to prosecution for refusing to call someone by a made-up word, G and Zer, instead of their dead names, he and her.
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The police in the UK still are disarmed, so they're not gun-toting, are they?
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But they have badges and cars, Priuses usually.
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But still, Father Ted writer Graham Lineham was given a harassment warning by police.
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This is a story in the BBC, the state broadcaster.
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The co-creator of Father Ted has been given a verbal warning by police for alleged harassment following a row on Twitter with a transgender woman.
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Graham Linehan, I don't know if it's Linehan or Linehan, and frankly, I'm glad if I'm getting it wrong.
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Graham Linehan was told by West Yorkshire police not to contact Stephanie Hayden.
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Let me just read that one more time in case you didn't hear it.
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She reported him for referring to her as a he and for tweeting the names she used before transitioning.
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Mr. Linehan, 50, told the BBC he is also considering taking action against her.
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Okay, again, I don't really care about people filing lawsuits against each other.
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The row comes amid a continuing debate about gender recognition in the UK.
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Currently, if someone wishes to have their gender identity legally recognized,
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they have to apply for a gender recognition certificate.
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Oi, bruv, where's your gender recognition license, eh?
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Some argue the medical element should be removed and say there should be a system of gender recognition based on self-identification.
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But not all agree with some gender-critical people believing the system could be abused by predatory men.
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It ain't the land of Thatcher or Churchill or Shakespeare or the Queen anymore.
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So, that last point there about being gender-critical, that's actually a real issue.
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I mean, we've seen cases of sexual predators, males, simply declaring themselves to be women
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and then being put into women's prison and obviously continuing to commit sexual assaults in there against the women prisoners.
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The federal prison system is changing the way it treats transgender inmates who will now be placed in a men's or women's facility
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That's the Canadian Globe and Mail I just quoted from there.
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But one of those three things actually gets you transferred from a male prison, which is not a very nice place,
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So there is a debate there, even for the gender critical.
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But again, that's not what we are talking about here today.
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Miss Hayden, who is pursuing civil proceedings accusing him of harassment, defamation, and misuse of private information,
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See, I spoke to the police for 45 minutes about how I wanted to go forward.
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But thought if the police spoke to him and advised him with a warning,
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he would possibly realize the hurt he had caused.
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The point I want to get across is this isn't about free speech.
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So you can get the police to give you attention for a Twitter spat.
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Attention that they wouldn't give to, say, a stabbing victim or an acid attack victim can get.
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And they'll sit there and listen to you blah, blah, blah for 45 minutes.
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They actually go to your Twitter sparring partner and tell him to shut up.
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Here's some more from the Daily Mirror that also covered it.
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He has been handed a verbal harassment warning, reports ITV.
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The police asked me to stop contacting someone I had no intention of contacting.
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It was a bit like asking me to never contact Charlie Sheen.
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I don't take kindly to a public figure tweeting about me, referring to me as a man and putting my legal name in quotation marks to suggest it's not valid.
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And the police warning issued to Mr. Linehan is not a conviction or caution, but a warning used to deter individuals from further behavior.
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Nothing to be charged with, let alone convicted.
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He hasn't done anything wrong other than to call him a him instead of call him a her.
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You'll note the Mirror and the BBC are not foolish enough to commit that gender critical thought crime.
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He says he won't do anything other than maybe say some mean things.
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But the cops are going to send him a message, rattle his cage a bit.
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They do, however, appear on enhanced criminal record checks.
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Oh, so that really is a form of a criminal record.
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Then maybe you're thinking of doing something, man.
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Where's your license to be gender critical, mate?
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Makes sense, though, because look at what the UK was like in 2017.
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Look at this tweet from the Metropolitan Police.
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We have 900-plus specialist officers across London dedicated to investigating all hate crime.
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That's bigger than some countries' armies, I think.
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Not to attack the crime wave of knife stabbings or acid attacks.
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People drive around on mopeds and hurl acid in people's faces.
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But you've got 900 officers going after hurt feelings.
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Here's a picture of women in London wearing a niqab, standing behind a cop, trying to hurt her feelings.
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I bet those niqabed women have strong views on transgenderism, too.
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They can't spend all day in front of a computer screen, creeping through other people's Facebook photos, looking for bad jokes.
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Police visiting you to tell you not to be mean on Twitter.
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And mean is calling a transgender man to woman a man.
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Warning you not to say things that hurt feelings.
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And the national media, I've read to you from the Mirror and the BBC, it's the same with all the papers.
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That implies we'll be that bad in the year 2023.
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I think we're more probably going to be like that in six months.
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Well, there have been incredible internal documents in recent months leaked from the Silicon Valley Titans.
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For example, that Google staff meeting right after the 2016 presidential election, where it was basically a group therapy session.
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Different executives practically crying about the results of Donald Trump's win and swearing to use all their power to stop it.
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Well, now comes another leak, a huge scoop delivered to the leading media outlet that is concerned about the political bias and censorship of Silicon Valley.
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I'm talking about our friend, Alan Bokhari at Breitbart.com.
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And he has received a massive internal memo about what Google calls good censorship.
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Here's the cover story for Breitbart, the good censor.
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Google admits concerns about political neutrality are now mainstreaming.
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And joining us now via Skype from Washington, D.C., is Alan Bokhari.
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I think it's because you're really the journalist who most consistently reports on bias and censorship in Silicon Valley.
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Yeah, we've been covering this topic for over a year now, and the news stories just keep on coming.
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I mean, it's clear that Silicon Valley as a whole has just completely abandoned their early commitment to free speech.
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And that's actually something that they admit quite clearly in this new document that was leaked to us.
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They say that initially these companies promised free speech to their users, and then they gradually shifted towards censorship.
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That's the first time we've seen them admitting it.
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It's obviously something they've never admitted publicly, but they do admit it privately.
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They're aware that they're no longer what they once were.
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I mean, I remember when Google was new, they had this trite motto, don't be evil, which people would say, well, of course, don't be evil.
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But here we are in 2018, and this same Google is saying it will not work with the U.S. Pentagon for ethical reasons,
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but it is deeply working with China on this kind of social censorship where your Internet account is tied to your phone,
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It's really real-time tracking of every single human in China.
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And I think some of these Chinese tactics that they're learning are being imported to America and around the world.
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Well, one of the striking parts of the document was where they talk about the censorship requests they receive from foreign governments.
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And they show a massive, massive, according to their own internal research, they show a massive spike after 2016.
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So certainly there's a lot more pressure on these tech companies now from state governments to censor their platforms.
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In fact, later on in the document, they say that if Google and other tech companies, if they want to expand globally, continue global expansion,
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And, you know, Google told us when we asked WeChat for comment, they told us that this document doesn't reflect company policy.
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But in the case of China, they're developing this new censored search engine, Dragonfly, they call it,
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that's going to have blacklisted search terms that the Chinese communists don't like.
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It's going to tie users to their users search to their phone numbers.
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So clearly they are following the recommendations of this briefing in that particular instance.
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It's incredibly tempting for Google, for Facebook, for Twitter to comply with the Chinese government,
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because it's not just getting in to the world's most populous market.
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It's getting in ahead of or instead of your competitors.
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I mean, Google and Facebook are doing enormously well in Europe, in America, around the world.
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It's about getting into China and keeping out your rivals.
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So it's almost a race to see who will be the most submissive.
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And if you, you know, if the Chinese Communist Party comes with 20 demands and Facebook will meet 10 of them,
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but you'll meet 15, well, it's not just that you're both getting in.
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And you'll be the first to be able to stake it out.
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And anyone who thinks that these tech billionaires aren't motivated by those, I think, is deluded.
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And you've certainly got their incentives down there.
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But it's quite terrifying to imagine the merging of state power with the power of these tech companies.
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These companies know everything about you, everything you search for, everything you email.
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They have unprecedented control of the information we see.
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And for them to work with authoritarian regimes like this, it should be very, very concerning to everyone.
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Because this is a power that, you know, authoritarian regimes of the past, like the Soviet Union, couldn't even have imagined.
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So it would be an entirely new kind of all-seeing, all-knowing totalitarianism if Google were to give in to too many requests by a government like China's.
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You know, for the Chinese government itself to try to spy on all of its 1.3 billion people would require an enormous technological and resource effort that's probably outside their power.
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And, I mean, they would certainly try, but to have full, real-time surveillance of every single Chinese person, knowing everything they say, everything they look at, everywhere they go.
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On your own cell phone, there's something called system services or location services that tracks where you go.
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It can tell you the traffic on your way to work or the closest, you know, gas station or whatever.
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But for the communists of China to try and plant that on you would be impossible.
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But if they can just get Google, Facebook, Apple, whatever, to agree to let them have access to the GPS on your phone, to let them have access to what you write on Gmail,
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China itself doesn't have to be the highest tech company in the world because it just gets Sergey Brin or Mark Zuckerberg to do that for them.
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So it's, what was it, was it Solzhenitsyn who said that the capitalists would sell the Soviet Union the rope by which they would be hung?
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I think it's Facebook and Google saying, yeah, we will be your secret police for you and you don't even have to pay for it.
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Europe, you know, they've had these hate speech.
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Europe and Canada have had these hate speech laws on the books for decades now.
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And we've seen people arrested for doing journalism in the case of Tommy Robinson.
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We've seen people arrested for jokes in the case of the YouTube account Dankula.
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And at least in the past, you know, these governments wouldn't be able to see everything you say.
00:26:18.260
But as we move into the digital era, that is exactly what they can do.
00:26:22.200
And for companies like Facebook and Google to be working with them is very troubling to me.
00:26:26.900
Well, I mean, remember that IBM did computer work for the Nazis, of course.
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And there's no shortage of companies willing to do business in the theocracy called Saudi Arabia or who want to get back into Iran or happy to sell things to Venezuela.
00:26:45.540
So there's never been a shortage of people willing to deal with dictatorships.
00:26:52.660
And thank you for letting me bounce some of my own thinking off you.
00:27:07.380
I did look through the whole thing on your website.
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I recommend everyone go to brightbart.com and look through the primary document itself.
00:27:16.860
But there were three slides that I thought were interesting from this internal Google document.
00:27:24.080
The first one is about a section of a U.S. law called Section 230.
00:27:31.260
And then, Alam, can you explain to our viewers what it means?
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This slide from this internal Google document says,
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An important U.S. federal statute from 1996 supports this position of neutrality.
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Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, tech firms have legal immunity from the
00:27:50.080
majority of the content posted on their platforms, unlike traditional media publication.
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This protection has empowered YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit to create spaces for free
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speech without the fear of legal action or its financial consequences.
00:28:08.860
It's hard to say what the global internet would look like if Section 230 had never become the law of the land.
00:28:17.620
Can you speak to the importance about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
00:28:21.480
and how these companies might be violating it by becoming censors?
00:28:27.120
So Section 230 is, as the briefing admits, totally critical to the business model of Google and Facebook
00:28:37.220
Because it says that these platforms can't be held legally responsible for content posted by their users.
00:28:44.600
Because if they were held legally responsible, then they'd be liable, they'd be facing lawsuits for every piece of defamation
00:28:51.540
posted on Twitter, you know, millions and millions of posts every single day, that would be impossible to deal with.
00:28:57.260
You know, every time Google put a search result at the top of its search results that, you know,
00:29:05.180
that accuses you or me of peddling hate speech, they'd be liable for that comment.
00:29:10.660
So if these tech companies were ever to lose the protection of that law, they'd be in a lot of trouble.
00:29:17.900
Their business model would be in serious jeopardy.
00:29:20.780
And it's contingent on them behaving as platforms rather than publishers.
00:29:27.620
Because publishers, as we know, they are liable for defamation.
00:29:32.020
So as these companies move towards becoming censors, making editorial decisions about what should go up in their algorithm,
00:29:42.800
what should go down, editorial decisions about who should be allowed on, who should not be allowed on, who gets priority,
00:29:50.420
And actually later on in the document, they admit that, that their new role as censors risks categorizing them as publishers,
00:29:58.980
Yeah, I mean, an analogy, I mean, I've used the analogy before of someone who just owns a stage
00:30:04.580
and allows any actor to come and say anything on the stage without discrimination.
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A publisher would be the director of the play who chooses what's said.
00:30:14.800
Or think about it another way, a bulletin board on the sidewalk of a street
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You're not going to sue the actual bulletin board itself for what something is tacked to it
00:30:31.920
unless they start saying, well, we will now decide what is or isn't on.
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If the bulletin board owner starts saying, I'm making decisions about what goes on here and what doesn't go on here,
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It's my view that social media companies are breaking that rule.
00:30:54.180
There's another graphic I want to show you, which is perhaps the most terrifying.
00:31:02.540
And again, I encourage everyone to go to the actual Breitbart.com website to see this 80-plus page slide deck from Google.
00:31:09.900
They acknowledge that the Internet used to be freer, but the shift towards censorship.
00:31:15.900
And you can see on the right, they call it to create well-ordered spaces for safety and civility.
00:31:25.840
Well, that don't sound like the Internet I'm familiar with and love.
00:31:28.800
And here's some of the four values they talk about, or the demands.
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Appease users, maintain platform loyalty, respond to regulatory demands, maintain global expansion, monetize content through its organization, increase revenues, protect advertisers from controversial content, increase revenues.
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So you can see it's about money and global expansion.
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This is why they're shifting towards censorship.
00:32:00.180
But governments were unhappy to cede power to corporations.
00:32:05.380
It's impossible to neutrally promote content and info.
00:32:14.380
That's the way the arrows are pointing, aren't they, Alam?
00:32:17.000
Yeah, and it's very cynical and hard-headed how they describe it.
00:32:20.380
This is all about getting access to new markets.
00:32:22.520
It's all about increasing revenues by satisfying advertisers who are eager to avoid controversy.
00:32:30.860
You know, don't be evil has gone out the window, clearly.
00:32:33.020
It's all about the dollar and maximizing profits and getting access to those new markets.
00:32:38.860
That doesn't mean a political bias isn't involved in this document as well.
00:32:43.860
But this lays out why they're doing it, really.
00:32:46.740
Yeah, there's one more slide, and I think it's quite a compliment to you personally, which
00:32:51.820
I thought was interesting, and I'm sure you had a quiet glow of pride.
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I refer to the slide about where free speech is now championed.
00:33:02.820
Being critical of big tech censorship powers was once a niche stance coming mostly from
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those on the right, but now concern about big tech's abandonment of neutrality has gone
00:33:14.260
And this, and on another slide, they show that the number one critic and journalist looking
00:33:26.600
And you, of course, are their senior technology correspondent who's been on this file.
00:33:30.460
In fact, on this page, you can see they have one of your headlines, Google doubles down on
00:33:36.100
They also refer to the Wall Street Journal and the Spectator and frontpage.com.
00:33:41.800
But they have another chart on the next page, actually, that shows that Breitbart, by far,
00:33:47.740
I think you, and I've said this before, that you're the leading journalist in the world that
00:33:51.940
I know of on the beat of Silicon Valley's bias and censorship.
00:33:55.560
We've shown some of the most worrisome things here.
00:34:01.180
I have to be candid and say there was some self-awareness in this document that they're
00:34:07.240
not the do-no-evil, you know, Boy Scout of the past.
00:34:13.880
There were some comments in this document that showed there was a little flicker of self-awareness
00:34:22.360
But I don't think that's the direction of this whole thing, where it's going, is it?
00:34:29.020
I do believe that whoever wrote it is being exceptionally honest in this document.
00:34:38.440
That's one of the reasons why I didn't include his name in it.
00:34:40.760
But this is a document that's intended to be read by Google internally, possibly by Google
00:34:47.980
So it's not going to pull in any punches or beat around the bush.
00:34:51.720
It's going to be very direct and forward about what's happening.
00:34:59.060
It just lays out the facts of where things are headed.
00:35:01.700
And it shows, really, that there's a massive gap now between what Google says publicly and
00:35:10.940
And it shows us what the company is thinking internally.
00:35:19.040
And I say, now that I'm older, much older than you, Alam, I'm probably double your age.
00:35:24.880
When you get to be my age, Alam, you will learn that the phrase, I told you so.
00:35:29.720
When you're young, you love saying, I told you so, because it proves you were right.
00:35:33.100
When you're my age, Alam, you hate saying, I told you so, because it means you failed
00:35:42.060
You are shouting a warning and no one listened and your pessimistic predictions came true.
00:35:47.860
That's what I told you so means when you're my age, Alam.
00:35:50.360
And I see this document as a giant, I told you so.
00:35:54.220
I mean, we've been railing on about internet censorship for about two years here.
00:36:04.380
But I think it is incontrovertible that every foul prediction that we've made has unfortunately
00:36:18.000
I guess the optimistic thing about this document is that they do acknowledge that they at least
00:36:22.180
have to value free speech a little bit, even if they're moving away from it.
00:36:27.060
But any, you know, Democrats say social media censorship is a conspiracy theory.
00:36:35.560
You've got Silicon Valley itself admitting to it.
00:36:40.480
The question is what's going to happen and who's going to stand up for consumers here,
00:36:43.520
for ordinary users whose trust has been abused.
00:36:48.540
And I thank you so much for the time you spent with us today.
00:36:51.340
And over the years, frankly, you have been my personal sherpa, my guide, as we get to
00:36:59.020
And I hope we continue to stay in touch as this story evolves.
00:37:06.340
Alan Bocari, the senior tech writer at Breitbart.com, who is not mentioned by name in
00:37:17.220
That Alan, he's not just writing, not just shouting into the wind, as sometimes we feel
00:37:22.080
like we are, but inside Google, they are aware of his criticisms.
00:37:26.700
And hopefully, hopefully, it will make a difference on the inside.
00:37:31.500
Hey, welcome back on my monologue yesterday about a British soldier being discharged from
00:37:46.700
the British Army for taking a picture with Tommy Robinson.
00:37:50.180
Tammy writes, this is definitely an example of the military submitting to Islamists.
00:38:02.840
He said, is there a list of people you can't take a photo with?
00:38:08.840
Listen, I understand you don't want people in uniform to be partisan.
00:38:15.760
You don't want people to say, oh, that's a liberal police officer or that's a conservative
00:38:33.000
You shouldn't be door knocking for a candidate in your kit.
00:38:37.600
But I'm sorry, you're at a roadside truck stop and you see an internet celebrity, which
00:38:42.000
is what these, the kid who's being discharged, he's 17.
00:38:46.420
He's not a deeply scholarly, historical, political guy.
00:38:50.040
He just, Tommy Robinson, that's a pro-military guy, he's on YouTube.
00:38:58.820
He's being drummed out of the army because he took a selfie with Tommy.
00:39:01.120
I'm sorry, taking a selfie at a truck stop and posting it on your private Facebook page
00:39:05.700
is not corrupting the non-partisanship of the British army.
00:39:11.200
Linda from Britain writes, every mainstream media describes Tommy Robinson as being far
00:39:18.820
However, they can point to no actual evidence to back these claims up.
00:39:21.920
He holds the same views as millions of people around the world.
00:39:24.420
And we are sick of being called these idiotic names by race baiters simply because we have
00:39:30.660
And I, I mean, he is critical of the religious and political doctrine called Islam.
00:39:40.300
In fact, I told you I've been to the UK too many times, mainly in relation to Tommy.
00:39:44.720
And I've been to a lot of labor towns, northern towns, spent a lot of time in a smallish city
00:39:51.920
called Sunderland, which is near Newcastle-on-Tyne.
00:39:55.620
I never in my life thought I'd be going to these places, by the way.
00:39:59.760
The one thing they have in common, Manchester, London, Luton, the one thing they have in common,
00:40:13.880
So how is it that thousands of people in Sunderland labor down the line?
00:40:28.940
No, I don't think you can get away with just saying far right.
00:40:37.060
The 1,400 girls who were systematically raped in Rotherham, hard left-wing city.
00:40:45.180
It's not a right-wing thing to be upset that your daughter, your sister was raped.
00:40:54.160
In fact, most of the victims are working class.
00:40:56.440
I think you would traditionally call them labor.
00:41:00.500
The problem with throwing that word around is that when you actually want to label someone
00:41:06.280
far right, far right, the word will be meaningless.
00:41:13.220
And when you need it to be sharp, it ain't sharp anymore.
00:41:17.080
And that's why we try to keep certain words the opposite of profane.
00:41:24.320
To call someone a Nazi who is not a Nazi takes away the special meaning of that word.
00:41:35.520
I don't say he's a commie, she's a commie, because to me, communism has a special meaning.
00:41:41.800
And I don't say it unless someone self-identifies or they truly are communists, because I don't
00:41:46.100
want to profane the meaning of that term by overuse.
00:41:50.520
The promiscuity with which the left calls people far right and racist is taking away
00:42:00.440
And I think that's a shame, because we actually do need to call out true racists.
00:42:05.020
And if you're calling Tommy Robinson, whose best friends are black and Sikh, you're calling
00:42:08.760
him racist, you're really destroying the meaning of the word.
00:42:11.960
Another letter, Steve writes, I wonder when a Muslim will be stationed in Westminster to
00:42:18.120
Well, I was at the Sun News Network and I interviewed Anjum Chowdhury, who's now in prison for supporting
00:42:27.720
He wants her to submit, and he wants, of course, Westminster Palace to be turned into a mosque.
00:42:35.560
Keith writes, caution, Ezra, that petition could get you barred from the UK.
00:42:40.280
They barred Kurt Wilders and Robert Spencer for less.
00:42:43.080
You're talking about the petition in support of these British soldiers.
00:42:50.340
Every time I go over to the UK, I cringe for a moment.
00:42:52.980
I have what's called a registered traveler or trusted traveler status.
00:43:05.820
But every time I sort of tense up, I think, oh, is this the time they're going to say,
00:43:11.320
oi, mate, where's your gender critical license?
00:43:13.880
Mate, where's your license to, oh, you like Tommy Robinson, where's your license, mate?
00:43:19.560
On my interview with Lee Humphrey on the ISIS terrorist who really wants to return to Canada
00:43:24.240
because he's tired, Lance writes, I've been saying for years these guys should simply be held prisoner.
00:43:30.420
There is a command structure, they carry their weapons openly, and they have a uniform,
00:43:35.820
No, I think you might have misunderstood my point about the Geneva Conventions.
00:43:42.700
Geneva Conventions was a great civilizational step forward.
00:43:47.960
In the past, cruel and barbaric armies, when they captured soldiers in war, would just kill them.
00:43:57.280
Other armies, through pragmatic reasons, as much as moral reasons,
00:44:05.540
If you came and paid gold or whatever wealth, you could redeem your captive soldiers.
00:44:12.580
So there was actually an economic incentive not to be barbaric.
00:44:16.260
You could sell the prisoners free to the other side.
00:44:19.900
So the Geneva Conventions was a great moral step forward in the laws of war.
00:44:26.080
And you might say, well, laws of war don't mean anything.
00:44:31.060
It's the replacement of law by brute force, the failure of law.
00:44:37.140
But civilized countries can make war in a lawful way.
00:44:40.640
And the Geneva Conventions were an attempt to do that.
00:44:42.640
Now, of course, in the Second World War, I mean, Japan was barbaric in its treatment of captured soldiers,
00:44:49.880
including British soldiers in Hong Kong and Burma and places like that.
00:44:55.420
I mean, in Canada, even where I come from, Alberta, there were thousands of Wehrmacht soldiers
00:45:01.120
sent by ship from Europe to Canada to, I'm not going to say they were nice,
00:45:09.860
These thousands of German soldiers, conscripts, they were not put on trial for the crime of being a soldier
00:45:16.060
because it's not a crime to be a foreign soldier.
00:45:20.500
We just kept them off the battlefield until the Nazis surrendered.
00:45:24.820
And I think I might have told you the story one day about one young Hitlerjugend who was pressed into service.
00:45:33.060
In the final moments of the war, they were just literally sending kids into battle.
00:45:37.400
Well, he told me he surrendered the first moment he had contact with the Allies.
00:45:41.380
They shipped him to Alberta and he liked it so much he stayed.
00:45:44.620
I won't tell you his name, but he tells me the story.
00:45:47.320
So he told me the story about his denazification exam.
00:45:50.080
They gave these people exams before they were allowed to stay in Canada.
00:45:55.100
I don't think that terrorists deserve the treatment of the Geneva Convention.
00:46:06.900
They don't meet the three tests, bear their weapons openly, be part of a chain of command,
00:46:10.980
wear a uniform, and generally follow the laws and customs of war that I just described that the West follows,
00:46:19.200
So terrorists are a species in law, hostess humanae, going from memory.
00:46:28.220
And you can actually kill them on sight with a drumhead trial.
00:46:38.120
They don't have the benefit of the Geneva Convention like my old buddy from the Wehrmacht had,
00:46:47.860
So in law, you can have a drumhead trial and execute these people.
00:46:59.160
And Trudeau not only doesn't prosecute, let alone execute,
00:47:03.140
he gives them ten and a half million bucks each.
00:47:06.720
but I want to let you know that these terrorists do not have the rights
00:47:28.560
historically, in the West or the Geneva Conventions,
00:47:35.520
on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters,