Juno News - WHO's planned pandemic treaty threatens sovereignty and free speech

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:01:20.360 north hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show here on true north

00:01:30.680 the andrew lawton show on this thursday january 11th this is our last program for a week in the

00:01:38.900 lovely dominion of canada next week as you may have heard we are taking the show on the road

00:01:43.740 we'll be doing it live from sw actually i should probably tell you we are not going to be doing

00:01:49.020 the show from Switzerland, we are going to be, this is a funny story in a way, we're going to

00:01:54.140 be doing the show from Austria because we could not afford an Airbnb in Switzerland. This is like

00:02:00.740 how dedicated we are to bringing you coverage from Davos. So in the past, you've heard me lament what

00:02:06.600 happens here. The problem is that the World Economic Forum snatches up every hotel in Davos

00:02:12.040 in the neighboring town of Closters. And there are a smattering, I don't know what the quantitative

00:02:17.940 value is of a smattering, but I think smattering fits here. There are a smattering of Airbnbs.

00:02:23.880 And as you find, you have a couple of options. There is like some giant chalet that goes for

00:02:29.380 $10,000 a night, or there is like a stained mattress that's shoved in some creepy mountain

00:02:36.580 man's closet, which is like oddly also $10,000 a night. So there's like a going rate for these

00:02:41.860 things. But Sean and I didn't want to like bunk up with the mountain man in his closet. So last

00:02:47.300 time when we went, we found an Airbnb because we booked very early. I was literally at my computer

00:02:52.760 the day they announced the dates for Davos and was able to book an Airbnb at not a terrible price.

00:03:00.960 That Airbnb long gone this time around. This time, I think I hesitated like five minutes to book

00:03:07.280 and we could not find a place. Even places we were finding that on Airbnb were saying they

00:03:13.340 were available, we would go and do the booking and then be like, ah, no, sorry. We are reserving

00:03:18.220 this for the WEF. And I was like, well, I'm going to WEF, but they're like, no, no, no. The World

00:03:22.440 Economic Forum will tell us. We don't want you schlubs here. They'll tell us who they want to 1.00

00:03:26.200 put up there. So it ended up being where we were going to have to spend like some obscene amount,

00:03:32.920 like tens of thousands of dollars for five nights, or we could get very affordable accommodations,

00:03:39.240 accommodations. Not the next town over, not the next county over, but the next country over. So

00:03:44.220 we will be driving in and out on those lovely mountain roads in January every day. So we may

00:03:50.880 need to do a crowdfunding campaign to like just fish the car out of the bottom of the Swiss or

00:03:55.400 Austrian Alps from Lake Zurich to bring back home. But hopefully it won't come to that.

00:04:01.140 We will be very careful and cautious, but that's how dedicated we are to getting there and getting

00:04:07.080 the story so at least it should be a rather beautiful commute but this is all a long way

00:04:11.760 of saying next week we're doing the show in a different location and we're going to be doing

00:04:15.160 it in a different time as well so I believe we settled on 3 p.m eastern 1 p.m mountain time so

00:04:21.420 two hours later than normal just to give us time to you know drive to Austria which is a strange

00:04:27.100 sentence and get all situated after covering what's been happening in Davos during the day

00:04:33.200 But Davos is just one of many global summits where people come together and decide to put their agendas forward for the world.

00:04:41.760 There is also the World Health Organization.

00:04:44.740 Now, the WHO is a body that prior to three years ago, it was a much simpler, I guess four years ago now, it was a much simpler time.

00:04:53.600 We didn't really know of it.

00:04:54.800 If it popped up on our radar at all, it would be because every now and then they put out some press release about malaria or Ebola and they kind of keep their nose clean.

00:05:02.780 But then COVID came along. And just as the COVID pandemic empowered a wave of public health officials in this country who had only ever had meaning and purpose from distributing condoms to high school students found all of a sudden they had tremendous power and they effectively became the de facto heads of government in places across the country.

00:05:24.280 And now we have on a global scale, a World Health Organization that has had a similarly emboldened sense of self in the last four years, which is a bit of a wind up to what's happening in May when countries from around the world will descend on Geneva, Switzerland.

00:05:41.020 All world domination tends to start and end in Switzerland for some reason, but they'll descend on Switzerland, on Geneva, and they will put forward what they hope to become a pandemic treaty, a pandemic treaty.

00:05:53.840 Now, a treaty implies an agreement between states. This is what they hope to accomplish. So as of right now, it's a draft treaty. It's a proposed treaty. It's a proposed agreement. But if you look at what they have proposed, there are things that people should be very concerned about.

00:06:09.420 They talk about making the World Health Organization the body that sits at the helm and declares a public health emergency, which you may think, OK, what's the big deal?

00:06:19.180 Well, this also means that countries who sign on to this are saying they undertake to follow the WHO's recommendations.

00:06:26.980 If the WHO says shut down your border, countries are essentially committing to doing that.

00:06:32.100 If the WHO says, hang on, you need to mandate vaccination, countries are committing to doing that.

00:06:37.340 Now, any international relations expert will say, well, hang on, no, these agreements don't force countries to do anything. They're not binding. But at the same time, we are foolish to turn away and turn a blind eye to countries saying they want to do this and willingly saying they are going to do this.

00:06:55.340 What else does the draft agreement say? That countries will commit to censoring what they call disinformation misinformation. And this is something that we're all supposed to shrug our shoulders at. Now, when people like Lesley Lewis, who's a Conservative Member of Parliament, have spoken out about this, the media and the Liberals will just dismiss them as conspiracy theorists. Here's one exchange in the House of Commons where Justin Trudeau faces some questioning about this.

00:07:22.620 Mr. Speaker, May 22 to May 28, representatives from 194 countries will meet in Geneva at the World Health Assembly to discuss the WHO Global Pandemic Treaty and to vote on amendments to the international health regulations.

00:07:45.720 Why didn't this Prime Minister establish a public health inquiry into our COVID response

00:07:52.880 before considering signing amendments to the international health regulations?

00:07:59.680 The Right Honourable Prime Minister.

00:08:02.080 Mr. Speaker, as an active member of the WHO, Canada has always been there to push for better science,

00:08:08.440 to push for better impacts in the way we collaborate around the world.

00:08:13.300 Canada is a leading voice on ensuring not only that we make it through this pandemic,

00:08:17.420 which is continuing to be ongoing, but also that we prepare for future pandemics,

00:08:23.200 which unfortunately may well be the reality for decades and generations to come.

00:08:27.800 We will continue to be active, strong participants in international for around health,

00:08:33.200 while always respecting and protecting Canada's sovereignty and choices to make the right decisions for its own citizens.

00:08:40.300 that was a load of nothing it was a bit of a word salad perhaps there might even be listeria there

00:08:48.000 in that word salad and we can call it a public health emergency and trigger a shutdown of 0.91

00:08:53.000 speeches like that in the years to come why has there not been a public health inquiry maybe it's

00:08:58.520 because Justin Trudeau does not want an admission from Canadian officials under oath that there was

00:09:04.040 no scientific basis for much of what happened take for example this story in the New York Post

00:09:10.100 where Anthony Fauci, who was the Teresa Tam of the United States,

00:09:15.540 Anthony Fauci was testifying before the House Select Subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic

00:09:20.860 that the Six Feet Apart recommendation, social distancing,

00:09:25.500 it was all the rage a few years back, was, quote,

00:09:28.000 likely not based on scientific data.

00:09:32.080 So, you know, those stickers, you still see them on grocery store floors every now and then.

00:09:36.200 It's a bit of an artifact of a bygone era.

00:09:38.460 But all of that, we had to orient our lives around it. Restaurants had to pull tables out because of it. And it was, oh, well, likely not based on scientific data, Anthony Fauci is admitting. And again, I don't think Justin Trudeau wants Teresa Tam to make those same admissions in Canada about social distancing, vaccine mandates, border closures, shutdowns, and so on.

00:09:58.800 Sean says someone should open a COVID-themed restaurant like 10 years from now.

00:10:04.340 Well, actually, I have opened a COVID-themed restaurant because it's no restaurant at all.

00:10:08.660 The restaurant's all closed during COVID.

00:10:10.780 So there you go.

00:10:11.640 A COVID-themed restaurant is just no food takeout only.

00:10:15.140 That's the COVID-themed restaurant.

00:10:17.300 But you could probably have some fun with it.

00:10:18.920 I think in Las Vegas, there's that Heart Attack Diner or Heart Attack Grill.

00:10:22.680 So yeah, I'm sure you could do that.

00:10:24.100 We could come up with in the comments your best menu items for the COVID.

00:10:28.800 I would say Fat in the Curve would be the name of the COVID restaurant,

00:10:33.040 if I just think of the first one that comes to mind there.

00:10:35.640 But nevertheless, we'll get to COVID nostalgia in time to come, I am certain.

00:10:41.300 Let's talk about this World Health Organization business here.

00:10:44.220 Bruce Pardee had a great piece in the National Post about this,

00:10:48.080 where he talks about why I think people in Canada and around the world should be very concerned.

00:10:52.960 He is a law professor at Queen's University and the executive director of Rights Probe,

00:10:57.620 And it is always good to see him.

00:10:59.560 Bruce, welcome back.

00:11:00.580 Thanks for coming on today.

00:11:02.200 Hello, Andrew.

00:11:02.900 Thanks for having me.

00:11:03.560 Good to see you.

00:11:04.600 So, I mean, there's always this battle whenever we see these international agreements where

00:11:09.620 anytime someone raises alarm bells, as you rightly have, you get people saying, oh, it's

00:11:13.940 non-binding.

00:11:14.760 What's the big deal?

00:11:15.820 Don't worry about it.

00:11:16.760 And I say, well, if it's so insignificant, why bother doing it at all?

00:11:20.540 But why is it you find this one to be of particular concern?

00:11:24.520 Well, this is part of the plan for the next time around, yes? So I think it goes like this.

00:11:33.520 The WHO takes responsibility for driving the boat. They get authority to declare when a public health emergency happens, and they get to make recommendations that will be binding.

00:11:47.440 And the countries will promise to put the binding recommendations into place in their own countries.

00:11:53.840 Now, as you say, the control is basically still in the hands of the individual governments in those countries, but the game here is that I think those governments will use the WHO's recommendations as cover for their own decisions, as in, well, I'm sorry, but the WHO has recommended lockdown, so you have to stay in your house, and we're sorry, but it's out of our hands.

00:12:21.520 So in this way, they're sloughing off responsibility for making the hard calls,

00:12:26.460 even though hard calls is what they want to make.

00:12:29.060 Governments are always anxious to avoid responsibility.

00:12:31.940 And this is one of the ways they're going to do it.

00:12:34.660 That's an incredible point.

00:12:36.360 And I think that was one of the big disgraces of the pandemic response.

00:12:39.860 I mean, around the world, but certainly in Canada,

00:12:41.820 is where you had governments hiding behind public health bureaucrats. 0.99

00:12:46.200 It happened federally with Theresa Tam.

00:12:48.480 it happened in pretty much every single province. And it, you know, one of the big issues from a

00:12:54.060 policy perspective is that public health bureaucrats, they have their place. I would say

00:12:58.340 it's a far smaller place now that I would give them than I would have given them five, six years

00:13:02.560 ago. But they're very singularly focused on one metric. They're not focused on constitutionality.

00:13:09.700 They're not focused on the economy. They're not focused on mental health. They're not focused on

00:13:14.140 child development, they're focused on, okay, getting cases down, even if we could agree on

00:13:18.740 what a case was and how significant it was. And yeah, it's very dangerous for people that we elect

00:13:24.180 to make the decisions, which we think are going to come from other experts, like a response should

00:13:28.700 have been, okay, we hear what the public health doctor has to say, we hear what the economist has

00:13:33.140 to say, we hear what the child psychiatrist has to say, and then we make a decision on balance.

00:13:38.220 Now, maybe they wouldn't make the right one, but at least there would be a clear delineation of who

00:13:43.140 made the responsibility it's incredibly dangerous as you point out to hide behind the experts which

00:13:48.360 is really what they're agreeing to do here that's exactly right it's it's it's a it's it's a plan to

00:13:53.720 hide and you know i i have i agree with what you said but i have an even more basic um objection

00:14:04.280 which is that there are some of these decisions that ought not to have been able to be made in

00:14:08.980 sense that they told people what to do with their own lives and and instructed them on what risks

00:14:13.860 that they were allowed to take themselves which is not a thing that any kind of official ought

00:14:18.580 to have in my books but yes this is going to change the focus from the local officials who

00:14:27.620 who are exercising their discretion to giving them an excuse for saying that they really have

00:14:33.620 have no choice which is which is absolutely not correct so there's one of the arguments against

00:14:38.840 this planned regime from the who is that it will override our sovereignty and it will suspend our 0.91

00:14:48.400 constitution and and those two things are really not quite true yes it will have it will affect

00:14:56.660 us detrimentally, yes, it will appear that we will lose control over the rules that are being

00:15:03.420 applied to us. All those things are true. But the real people to finger in this,

00:15:12.920 it's not just the who, it is actually our own officials, our own politicians, our own

00:15:17.860 government, who number one, are eager to sign on to this. And number two, who actually still

00:15:24.720 have the authority to decide and to decide to what extent they're going to recognize our rights

00:15:30.780 and freedoms, our civil liberties, and the ones who are failing to weigh all the factors that

00:15:37.500 you mentioned. They are the ones who are really at fault, and they are the ones who are democratically

00:15:42.400 accountable to us. The officials in the WHO, the bureaucrats in the WHO are not accountable to us.

00:15:48.340 They are accountable to the countries that put together this agreement. So our first line of

00:15:53.380 attack, if you like to put it that way, are the people who purport to represent us, and they are

00:15:58.700 the ones who are falling down on the job. Yes, and we've already seen in one notable way I'll

00:16:04.680 describe momentarily where our government is all too willing to go along with this, and that's on

00:16:08.460 regulating discourse. So in this draft agreement, it says that countries would commit to censoring

00:16:15.020 quote, false, misleading, misinformation, or disinformation, unquote. Now, these are terms

00:16:21.480 we've heard the federal government in Canada talk about warranting a government response already.

00:16:27.160 And we know that the government in Canada is doing an overhaul of internet regulations as we speak.

00:16:32.860 Well, here we have a prime example where these two agendas seem to be aligned already.

00:16:37.220 It's perfect. It's perfect. I mean, can't you just imagine the government saying,

00:16:41.540 well, you know, we were concerned about this, but the WHO basically has told us that this kind of

00:16:46.680 information should not be allowed because it interferes with global health global health my

00:16:51.860 goodness well we can't ignore that so we're going to have to put in in place regulations that require

00:16:57.160 you to or prohibit you from you know questioning the the the narrative that the who is put forward

00:17:04.280 as to what's important to keep people alive all right so that's it's it's a perfect excuse for

00:17:10.540 the government to do what it already wants to do and in that way make it appear as though they're

00:17:16.740 not the one making the call. I just checked on YouTube where we're streaming live right now

00:17:22.240 because every now and then we get like the big disclaimer that YouTube throws up on our shows

00:17:26.420 depending on what we're talking about and I don't know if they put it up live or if they put it up

00:17:29.700 after the fact we don't have one now but often no we didn't get it yet Sean but like if you talk

00:17:34.720 about climate change you'll get like a disclaimer if you talk about COVID you will and sometimes

00:17:39.220 it's like a disclaimer from health canada other times it's from the world health organization and

00:17:43.860 uh the the information they give you so we already have i mean there's an example of big tech

00:17:48.260 on its own deciding to outsource you know truth basically to the world health organization and

00:17:54.100 just imagine if you go one step further and make that a deputization by the state to do the same

00:18:00.500 thing and i i don't think you know being able to say it with a disclaimer will even satisfy

00:18:05.700 what countries want i think they want you to not be able to say it at all oh oh no question no

00:18:10.900 question and sure so so the the proponents of this will say quite rightly actually that this

00:18:20.160 does not suspend the constitution you know your rights and freedoms are still in place

00:18:24.040 the who doesn't have the power to to set the constitution aside that is true 0.94

00:18:29.660 but we've already seen that during the first round the charter of rights and freedoms

00:18:34.740 was not very useful.

00:18:37.240 The courts did not come to the conclusion

00:18:39.800 that a lot of these measures violated the Charter.

00:18:42.920 So just because the Charter is not being suspended

00:18:45.540 doesn't mean that you're going to have your civil liberties.

00:18:49.180 And if international norms change

00:18:52.580 and the cause is a global cause

00:18:56.300 and a Canadian court is interpreting what the Constitution means,

00:19:01.800 then it's just as likely that that court,

00:19:03.680 especially given the track record is going to say well of course you still have your rights but in

00:19:08.820 this case you're the infringement of your rights are are are either not existing or they're justified

00:19:15.600 under section one of the charter because after all we have this emergency and the who has said so

00:19:20.060 so this this this the the this it doesn't these this plan does not have to suspend our constitution

00:19:28.280 in order for the plan to be a very bad idea.

00:19:31.180 Yeah, I think that's a very valid point.

00:19:33.540 And I'd go back to where you mentioned a few moments ago

00:19:36.240 as being the first line of defense on this,

00:19:38.200 which is the nation state.

00:19:39.300 It's countries that need to have pressure put on them

00:19:41.860 by their citizens to perhaps change or scrap this process.

00:19:45.900 I mean, I'm looking around at the world here

00:19:48.200 and not to say I have a firm grip

00:19:50.380 on every domestic government around the world,

00:19:53.680 but if I look at the big players,

00:19:55.320 I'm not seeing anyone with one exception

00:19:57.880 that I think would push back against that.

00:19:59.440 And that one exception maybe is the Argentinian president.

00:20:03.120 I mean, I know he's an economic libertarian.

00:20:05.820 I don't know if he wants to be the bull in the China shop

00:20:08.540 on the world stage at some of these

00:20:10.500 and say, no, we're not signing on to this.

00:20:12.980 Who knows?

00:20:13.640 Argentina doesn't wield a huge amount of power,

00:20:15.660 but the United States does.

00:20:17.480 And I don't think Joe Biden is gonna say no to this.

00:20:20.080 I don't think Canada will.

00:20:21.840 The UK has a nominally conservative government,

00:20:24.160 but as you and I actually discussed in the UK,

00:20:26.400 not really.

00:20:27.160 when you talk about all these things.

00:20:28.660 So I don't see any countries

00:20:30.360 that are going to want to put their necks out

00:20:32.100 and say, whoa, I'm not signing on to this

00:20:34.100 in its current form.

00:20:35.740 Oh, I think that's a correct assessment.

00:20:37.760 And in fact, it's difficult to know

00:20:39.820 exactly what's going on behind the scenes

00:20:41.360 as this thing is negotiated.

00:20:42.980 But I would guess that a lot of these countries

00:20:45.520 are actually pushing for this

00:20:46.700 for the very reason that it's to their advantage

00:20:49.620 so that they are set up better than they were last time

00:20:53.060 to do the same kinds of things as last time and worse.

00:20:56.000 like like the like the more targeted prohibition on expression of dissenting views so obviously

00:21:04.300 we have to be a bit forward looking here and uh we hear i mean that clip i played from justin

00:21:09.860 trudeau earlier he's talking about oh pandemics for years to come so you know i've gone my entire

00:21:14.160 life without ever having a pandemic until the last few years as have you as have you know anyone who

00:21:18.800 was born after the spanish flu basically and now we're being told this is just going to be business

00:21:24.120 as usual, which I think is in and of itself a bit suspicious, because we've seen the public

00:21:28.480 healthification of everything. And I think that's another part here that is not really said in the

00:21:33.580 treaty, which is that what they decide to call a public health emergency is a big issue. I mean,

00:21:39.140 we hear people saying that you need to make obesity a pandemic, you need to make climate

00:21:43.540 change a pandemic. And all of a sudden, you take these powers and apply them to all of these other

00:21:48.040 things. And we've got a big problem on our hands. Yeah, no question. No question. This is very

00:21:53.900 broad, discretionary, vague

00:21:55.960 power to declare

00:21:57.520 an emergency when you feel

00:21:59.860 like it. People have referred to this

00:22:01.960 as the beginning of the biomedical

00:22:03.740 state, and I think they're right.

00:22:05.580 This is a new era.

00:22:08.280 They're normalizing

00:22:09.440 what happened during COVID.

00:22:12.360 And this

00:22:13.080 is bad news.

00:22:16.380 Obviously, you can

00:22:17.820 see it in Justin Trudeau's

00:22:19.560 comments. They're planning

00:22:21.920 for this to be the normal

00:22:23.840 thing where the powers that they exercised are going to be powers that they exercise

00:22:28.100 regularly whenever they think it's justified. And believe me, if you have power, the state is going

00:22:33.720 to use them. All right, Bruce Party, it is a fantastic piece in the National Post, WHO Health

00:22:39.760 Treaty, a convenient cover for more government overreach. You are the best one on the army

00:22:44.600 against the technocrats. So we're glad to have you, Bruce. Thanks so much. Thanks, Andrew. Good

00:22:49.640 All right. Thank you as well. And I should play this clip, by the way. So Tedros Adhanom is the non-doctor who, I mean, he's got a PhD, but he's not a medical doctor at the helm of the WHO. I wanted to play this clip from him for your benefit right now.

00:23:04.900 We cannot kick this can down the road.

00:23:11.620 If we do not make the changes that must be made, then who will?

00:23:18.720 And if we do not make them now, and when?

00:23:22.100 When the next pandemic comes knocking, and it will,

00:23:29.080 we must be ready to answer decisively, collectively, and equitably.

00:23:34.900 And for enhanced international cooperation, the pandemic accord, a generational commitment that we will not go back to the old cycle of panic and neglect that left our world vulnerable, but move forward with a shared commitment to meet shared threats with a shared response.

00:23:57.140 That's why we say the pandemic accord is a generational agreement.

00:24:01.420 That is Ted Ross teeing up the pandemic accord at last year's World Health Assembly now coming

00:24:09.140 this year. To be honest, we haven't made a decision. I was wondering if it would be worth

00:24:13.660 going to Geneva to cover it. And then I looked up the price and it was like even to stay at like

00:24:19.640 some weird mid-level like residence in, it was going to be like $750 a night. So maybe we skip

00:24:26.380 out the World Health Assembly in Geneva. You never know. We can, maybe I can stay in a,

00:24:31.700 on Geneva, we'd have to stay in France if we wanted to do the commute every day. But

00:24:36.240 nevertheless, that was Tedros. Now he's going to be in Davos next week. I was looking at the agenda

00:24:42.100 for what presentations people can see at the World Economic Forum annual meeting.

00:24:47.520 And one of them is this, preparing for disease X with fresh warnings from the World Health

00:24:54.460 organization that an unknown disease X, because X is like the menacing letter. If they called it

00:24:59.920 like disease blue, no one would give a hoot. But disease X could lead to 20 times more fatalities

00:25:09.140 than the coronavirus pandemic. So what novel efforts are needed to prepare healthcare systems

00:25:13.700 for the multiple challenges ahead? So here we have a bunch of people and we'll be monitoring

00:25:18.800 this session. You can follow it along from home as well. Them talking about this mystery disease

00:25:23.580 that no one's ever heard of, that WHO actually identified in 2018, that we're already saying,

00:25:28.400 oh, it's going to be 20 times worse than COVID, so let's get ready. Well, in the same breath,

00:25:33.260 we are hearing public health officials admit that their measures for COVID were not even rooted in

00:25:38.720 science in many cases. So we can look at the agenda just very briefly, because we are going

00:25:44.460 to be reporting from Davos next year, or next week rather, maybe next year, who knows. But next week,

00:25:50.120 And there are a number of sessions that I'm incredibly curious about.

00:25:54.280 One of them is talking about the future of freedom of expression.

00:25:58.240 Now, in the past, when they talk about freedom of expression, it's not spoken about as a positive, really.

00:26:03.980 It's spoken about as something that is getting in the way, these absolute rights and freedoms.

00:26:09.420 There is also one that sounds lovely.

00:26:13.320 It sounds great.

00:26:14.720 But if you look into the fine print, it might not be so great.

00:26:19.060 The session is called Protecting the Vulnerable Online.

00:26:23.260 The description, more than half of internet users worldwide, age 13 and older, face at least one potential online threat.

00:26:29.580 Cyberbullying, online harassment, hate speech, and misinformation pose significant challenges.

00:26:36.440 What are the key developments in trust and safety online?

00:26:39.380 And what measures should stakeholders, and that includes governments and corporations to them, embrace to foster a safer internet for all?

00:26:47.880 and one of the panelists on this one I should point out is Julie Inman Grant who's an Australian

00:26:53.840 online safety bureaucrat who two Davos meetings ago talked about how we need to recalibrate the

00:27:00.460 way we view freedom of speech so I mean I'm all for recalibrating free speech as well but I want

00:27:06.440 to recalibrate it to actually protect it not to get rid of it Sean has said he attempted to write

00:27:13.360 decalibrate, but wrote da alley rate, uh, whatever that means. So anyway, uh, I think he was going

00:27:20.120 for recalibrate. Uh, let's, uh, we will, we will put a pin in this and revisit it from the Swiss 1.00

00:27:25.460 slash Austrian Alps next week. But, uh, before we get there, I wanted to talk about the scourge

00:27:31.540 of antisemitism, which I am very ashamed to say as a Canadian has become the norm and the rule

00:27:37.880 rather than the exception.

00:27:39.860 We've had some little bits of change on this front.

00:27:43.880 Toronto police have decided now that no,

00:27:46.140 people shouldn't be shutting down a bridge

00:27:48.540 in a Jewish neighborhood to protest against Israel

00:27:51.720 because, you know, let's be real,

00:27:52.960 they're just protesting against Jews.

00:27:54.720 But at the same time,

00:27:55.840 we also see an increasing normalization of this.

00:27:59.480 All of the people who were tremendous supporters

00:28:01.880 of Israel and the Jewish people

00:28:03.340 on October 7th, 8th, and 9th, and 10th

00:28:05.500 have become less and less so as time has gone on, and the media has become a very key player in this.

00:28:13.360 Barbara Kay had a fantastic piece in the Epoch Times.

00:28:16.220 She said, to uphold the preferred narrative, the media will go to any lengths to demonize Israel.

00:28:21.860 Barbara Kay joins us now, and it's always good to see her.

00:28:24.780 Barbara, thanks for joining me today.

00:28:26.680 Pleasure to be here, Andrew.

00:28:28.480 So, I mean, the media's role in this cannot be at all overstated.

00:28:33.100 The media, I mean, when you're talking about something happening in the Middle East, the media is, to some extent, our only glimpse at what's happening there.

00:28:41.320 And we've seen the framing on Israel issues to just be absolutely disastrous.

00:28:46.920 And, you know, CBC not calling Hamas a terror organization, which is a statement of fact.

00:28:52.280 It's a statement of law in Canada.

00:28:53.740 It's not even an arguable point.

00:28:55.900 And, you know, media that does false equivalency. At one point, they referred to the agreement by Israel to release prisoners in exchange for hostages as a hostage exchange, which is just, again, an absurd thing here.

00:29:09.780 But you've talked about the media really being particularly brazen on this.

00:29:14.560 They're very brazen. We just saw, I don't know if you saw it on X, Honest Reporting had done an expose of some Reuters and Associated Press journalists in Gaza laughing about, you know, looking at some of the atrocities of October 7th and laughing.

00:29:38.520 Gaza is filled with so-called journalists. We know that some of the journalists that the New York Times employed actually accompanied Hamas on the rampage, the pogrom of October 7th.

00:29:51.520 7th. In other words, they knew about it in advance. They wanted to capture it as it happens.

00:29:57.680 And it was clear that from the familiar way in which they were palling around with the Hamas 0.96

00:30:06.440 fighters, that they are actually supporters of Hamas or likely supporters of Hamas. And

00:30:13.400 as I've said many times on social media, and in my column that you cited,

00:30:21.520 The very words from sources in Gaza should send alarm bells ringing in any mainstream news outlet because there is no such thing as a report out of Gaza that is inherently trustworthy. 0.66

00:30:38.260 Not that they always give false news, but you can never be sure that they're not giving false news because no reporter is allowed to report from Gaza without censorship by Hamas.

00:30:53.420 And so no reporter is free to publish what they want from Gaza unless it goes through Hamas censorship.

00:31:04.860 And as well, many of the journalists, the so-called journalists in Gaza are actually not journalists.

00:31:11.340 They are simply working for Hamas in the capacity of stringers for other, you know, bigger companies.

00:31:18.920 But they are, in fact, agents for Hamas.

00:31:21.440 I only speak about, you know, four or five lines of Arabic. So I have to rely on other translations when I see Arabic footage. But I have seen at least three or four clips from within the last few months, which are presented as some of one of those journalists that you were just describing interviewing people. And when they start to criticize Hamas, the interview gets quickly and abruptly ended.

00:31:45.000 So when the people in Gaza are saying, well, hang on, Hamas is using us as shields, the interview ends.

00:31:50.960 So you're right. There is no, you know, unbiased commitment to truth there, which is, I think, a big part of it.

00:31:57.020 A lot of these are activists wearing press vests.

00:31:59.860 Yeah. And of course, you know, you expect biased reporting from Al Jazeera.

00:32:04.300 You know, that's that's that's their job.

00:32:06.360 But when it comes to New York Times, BBC, CNN, we just saw a story out of CNN.

00:32:14.780 Some of their Middle Eastern stringers were posting disgustingly anti-Israel stuff on social media.

00:32:24.720 They've lost control of the journalistic situation over there, it seems to me, since they have decided to accept stuff coming out of Gaza without verifying.

00:32:35.560 And when you see the BBC doing that and the CBC, it's really sickening because there's a long history of this.

00:32:43.800 They know very well that a lot of reports are doctored or they're complete fiction, complete fiction.

00:32:51.020 And as we've seen in the whole Palestinian movement in the last several decades, you know, truth in journalism is not a value. 0.98

00:32:59.840 It's not a Middle Eastern value in regimes that are not democratic, and none of them are except Israel. 0.79

00:33:08.040 I mean, you'll get honest reporting out of Egypt and some of the bigger, the more stable entities there.

00:33:16.360 But from the West Bank or Gaza, you really have to verify anything you hear out of there.

00:33:22.580 And in fact, I remember in a column I wrote some time ago, I remember there was a report from Matty Friedman, one of the top journalists on this scene, who recounted the anecdote of a West Bank politician checking with an Israeli journalist to see if what he was being told by his own journalists in the West Bank was true or not.

00:33:47.000 He just, a rumor that there was an assassination plot.

00:33:50.820 He didn't know whether to believe it or not.

00:33:52.120 So he checked with Israeli journalists.

00:33:54.240 That's how bad it is.

00:33:56.320 You talk about this phenomenon, which I've heard before, and it sounds silly, but it's

00:34:00.620 actually a very serious thing, which is Pallywood.

00:34:03.220 And I'm wondering if you could explain that for people that haven't come across this term.

00:34:08.720 I guess not.

00:34:10.320 I guess she can't explain that.

00:34:12.120 Oh, there we go.

00:34:12.960 We got Barbara back.

00:34:13.620 I'm sorry.

00:34:14.460 This has happened before, Andrew.

00:34:15.700 Yeah, I'm having flashbacks now, like literal flashes and then, yeah.

00:34:20.220 And now you're freezing up again a little bit too.

00:34:22.340 I don't know.

00:34:22.760 I'm on Chrome.

00:34:25.560 I'm hearing you now.

00:34:26.580 Can you hear me?

00:34:27.520 I hear you very well now.

00:34:28.600 Okay, perfect.

00:34:29.540 So tell me what Pallywood is for people that aren't familiar.

00:34:33.560 Pallywood is an actual news producing industry in the West Bank and Gaza.

00:34:41.020 And it's like Bollywood in the sense that it's fake stuff, but it's an actual industry.

00:34:48.980 There are producers and directors and actors and extras, all kinds of industry norms going on that actually are producing fake news.

00:34:59.840 So if they want to show that an Israeli struck, say, a site, then they will produce it. 0.99

00:35:12.080 They will actually create a scene and produce it with fake dead people on stretchers.

00:35:16.420 And suddenly an ambulance comes screeching up.

00:35:19.400 You know, somebody hails an ambulance to come screeching up four seconds later.

00:35:23.000 so it's it's um it's it's and then they produced it as news uh the famous mohammed aldura affair

00:35:32.780 in 2000 um that was highly contested it was shot by a palestinian stringer who was also well known

00:35:41.080 in hollywood industry of making fake news but he had sent a 59 second clip that purported to show

00:35:48.240 that during the Intifada that Israeli snipers had actually targeted and killed a 12-year-old boy

00:35:55.320 by the name of Muhammad al-Dura. When the 23 minutes of raw footage was seen by other journalists

00:36:03.780 and skeptics presented a very different picture and eventually there were lawsuits over this and

00:36:10.440 eventually the IDF concluded and reported there was no way that child could have been hit by an

00:36:16.180 Israeli bullet because of the angle of the bullet and all that but that was one of the bigger stories

00:36:21.540 but they're very consequential these stories like the Janine massacre the Janine massacre you may

00:36:26.580 remember in 2002 when they were trying to get to the source of the all the suicide bombers

00:36:32.420 they had a ground operation into Janine the first reports out of the West Bank were a massacre of

00:36:38.740 500 civilians, and that story stuck. In the end, after many reports and many actual

00:36:46.500 investigations, it was concluded that 53 civilians were killed and 23 IDF soldiers who had done a

00:36:54.740 ground invasion in order not to kill civilians, and as a result were ambushed, their own soldiers

00:37:01.300 got killed, but they were trying to prevent civilian deaths. But these stories are used

00:37:06.260 as propaganda again and again and again. And the images are extremely emotive. So

00:37:13.780 this industry is extremely harmful. It's called lethal journalism. It is lethal because people

00:37:21.860 die over it. Osama bin Laden used the Mohammed al-Dura story in his own propaganda because he

00:37:28.660 could see that the picture of this boy huddling behind his father, apparently being targeted by

00:37:35.780 israeli bullets which was not the case they are made into martyrs they are remember that little

00:37:42.020 boy uh the syrian boy lying in the sand that little two-year-old boy and these images have

00:37:48.580 an incredible effect well and i recall i seem to recall that there was evidence that emerged later

00:37:53.940 that that boy had been moved i mean it was still a tragedy but the photo had been to some extent

00:37:58.900 stage to make a bigger point from that it's it's not hard to see that uh this whole palestinian

00:38:08.340 issue this whole israel is is a very much um an emotional thing and a lot of the people that are

00:38:16.820 active in it uh when you corner them and you ask them you know to state why they don't even know

00:38:23.300 why they're part of a herd uh in fact the toronto sun just had a piece out today saying some of

00:38:28.340 these protesters are being paid um to be part of these protests but anyways there's a lot of

00:38:33.140 hysteria involved uh in these protests because this issue has uh you know Palestinian activists

00:38:43.940 on campuses for example they're there for years and years not they're not very good at studying

00:38:48.420 but they're very good at propaganda this is this is they're paid for this uh you know there's a

00:38:53.940 lot of foreign funding of these movements in the West. It's a very deep rabbit hole, Andrew, and

00:39:01.380 you know we could spend hours on this. But in terms of the journalists, the irresponsible journalism

00:39:07.700 that is attached to this subject, it's just remarkable how far these media outlets will go

00:39:16.580 to push a narrative that is harmful to Israel. They are lock, stock and barrel,

00:39:22.580 committed advocacy journalists rather than um objectives it's just not journalism simply is not

00:39:30.660 what you it's not what it should be it's not what true north does uh it is it is uh pure it is

00:39:38.340 getting to be pure propaganda um in too many of formerly respectable uh outlets so it's yeah

00:39:46.900 we're lucky to have a few um outlets in canada like the national post true north uh the epoch

00:39:53.220 times that uh that is i what i consider to be journalism that verifies sources actually fact

00:40:01.700 checks you know does basic stuff well yeah what should be uh you know used to be basic and second

00:40:08.660 nature anyway and the only area where you could say uh that can rival the israel hatred in much

00:40:15.700 much of the media is in academia, as we've seen in the last few months. And I just very briefly

00:40:20.600 wanted to ask you about this story, because I understand you're writing about it this week in

00:40:23.540 another piece. There is now a class action lawsuit against so far six major Canadian universities,

00:40:29.980 Queens, York, Concordia and Montreal, TMU, which used to be Ryerson before Ryerson's name became

00:40:36.400 a hate crime, and the University of British Columbia facing claims that Jewish students

00:40:41.540 are unsafe on their campuses. I mean, look, that's a difficult thing to refute with just

00:40:48.140 raw footage we've seen of what's happened on these campuses, isn't it?

00:40:52.140 Yeah, I always felt that lawsuits were the way to go. I was promoting the idea years and years

00:40:58.620 and years ago. I said, the only way these universities are going to change if it hits

00:41:02.520 them in the pocketbook. These particular class actions are by a law firm, but they are in

00:41:11.520 in partnership with the Lawfare Project, which is a pro bono legal fund for fighting anti-Semitism

00:41:20.480 around the world. They do phenomenal work and they just had a very big success

00:41:26.760 against a restaurant in Toronto, an owner of a restaurant, for defaming in defamation suit

00:41:34.240 against a Canadian media personality who was also a Zionist and was targeted on social media.

00:41:41.080 So unless lawsuits make these institutions pay out big time, and the one against McMaster is what, $77 million, and the more that are targeted, the better, because just a couple have to win, and you'll see the whole culture of university will be forced to change, and that's the only way this is going to be happening.

00:42:05.920 Just as in the States, that president was not going to – Claudine Gay from Harvard.

00:42:12.460 She was not prepared to step down.

00:42:15.440 But donor, you know, when you lose a billion dollars in funding from your donor class, that talks louder than ideology.

00:42:27.200 And I can only pray that these lawsuits succeed because I think that's going to have a very abrupt –

00:42:35.920 and very um cleansing effect on on uh campuses in terms of anti-semitism i know you're you're

00:42:44.080 jewish yourself and you live in montreal which has always had a very vibrant jewish community

00:42:49.360 how have you what's your sense been i mean i know you are are not recognizably jewish like some

00:42:54.800 orthodox people in montreal are so i don't know if you personally feel unsafe walking around but

00:42:59.680 what's the mood been in the last few months there well i mean certainly there have been incidents

00:43:05.040 that are quite harrowing you know bullets in a door of uh of in school in in areas that are

00:43:10.800 intensely jewish i live in a very mixed and very diverse neighborhood uh i am known to be jewish

00:43:16.640 because i from my writings i'm a pub you know publicly identified as jewish uh but i don't feel

00:43:22.880 physically unsafe no my neighbor not in my neighborhood but i know that there are areas

00:43:28.160 uh where yes uh people do feel unsafe and and for reason uh so far nothing cataclysmic has happened

00:43:39.360 but there have been threats and and you know there have been incidents in malls and just like there

00:43:44.560 have been in toronto there there have been a lot of very unsettling uh incidents and i know on

00:43:49.680 campus. Concordia is known to be a hotbed of pro-Palestinianism, UQAM and McGill to a certain

00:43:59.300 extent, but Concordia has had a long time reputation of, that's where Laith Marouf got his start in

00:44:06.440 anti-Semitic. Yeah, anyone who said hate doesn't pay certainly didn't look at the business model

00:44:14.840 there. Barbara Kay, fantastic work in the Epoch Times and in the National Post as always. Thank

00:44:22.540 you so much for coming on today. Thanks for having me, Andrew. All right. That does it for us for

00:44:27.300 today. That means I am saying farewell to Canada for a little bit of time, but we will see you on

00:44:32.540 Monday from Davos. This is the Andrew Lawton Show, Canada's most irreverent talk show on True North.

00:44:38.040 Thank you. God bless and have a great weekend. Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:44:42.920 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:45:12.920 We'll be right back.

00:45:42.920 We'll be right back.

Juno News - January 11, 2024

WHO's planned pandemic treaty threatens sovereignty and free speech

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript