Rebel News Podcast - A fact-checking news agency prints a fictional story about Trudeau’s SNC-Lavalin scandal

00:00:00.000 Hi team, hi rebels, mates, gov, hey gov, it's Ezra Levant here. I am saying all those British

00:00:08.180 things because I'm actually off to the UK tomorrow to cover Tommy Robinson's, one of his many trials.

00:00:14.340 But today I have a Canadian story with a bit of an American twist. Today I talk about the

00:00:19.980 Associated Press, a massive newswire service that pumps news into literally thousands of American

00:00:26.220 newspapers. And they're actually one of Facebook's official fact checkers, but they're damn liars.

00:00:34.340 And I think I prove it pretty convincingly today, you tell me. By the way, I know a lot of folks

00:00:39.660 listen to the podcast where they can't watch TV. They're driving, they're taking the bus, whatever,

00:00:43.960 they've got something else on the go, they're cooking, maybe. But may I encourage you to

00:00:47.620 consider buying a subscription to our TV version of the show? Even if you can't watch it, boy,

00:00:53.500 it's a good way to support us. It's eight bucks a month, which isn't that bad. In fact, if you buy

00:00:57.220 for a whole year in advance, you get it for 80 bucks, which is a discount, as you can tell. If

00:01:01.460 you type in the coupon code podcast, you get even more money off. That's at the rebel.media slash

00:01:06.400 shows. You get this and you get Sheila Gunn-Reed and David Menzies too. All right, without further to

00:01:13.060 do, here's my show about the Associated Press and their fake news. And hey, if you like this,

00:01:18.240 I'd be grateful if you gave it a good rating on the podcast. All right, here you go.

00:01:23.500 Tonight, an official fact-checking news agency makes up a completely fictional story about Justin

00:01:33.160 Trudeau's SNC-Lavalin scandal. It's March 11th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:01:38.100 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?

00:01:43.920 There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.

00:01:47.980 The only thing I have to say to the government of a wire publisher is because it's my bloody right to do so.

00:01:53.840 You've heard of the Associated Press, or AP, as it's also known. It's a massive news agency,

00:02:06.560 a wire service it's still called, even though we live in the wireless era. It's actually more than 150 years old.

00:02:12.520 It's basically competitor news companies sharing stories amongst each other so they don't have to

00:02:20.200 all send a reporter to cover any one particular event. There are other companies like it, Reuters,

00:02:27.360 here in Canada, the Canadian Press, or CP as it's called. It makes sense commercially, but it's also a

00:02:33.760 terribly homogenous view of the news. It's a bias magnifier. It's a competition destroyer because

00:02:43.080 all the newspapers run the same thing written by one reporter, and because it's so much cheaper than

00:02:48.580 each newspaper sending their own reporter to any given news event, it's so common. I bet the majority

00:02:55.280 of what you read in a newspaper or listen to on the radio is from the great liberal fog machine of AP,

00:03:02.180 CP, CP, or Reuters. Here's an AP story about AP. A couple years ago, Facebook gets serious about

00:03:11.700 fake news is the headline. So this was published one month after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential

00:03:17.600 election, and the Democrats and the media and the Democrat media were trying to figure out how they

00:03:22.480 lost when everyone, especially the super smart people, like here's the New York Times, saying Hillary

00:03:28.000 Clinton was a 90% plus lock on winning. And besides the Russian hacking theory, they came up with the

00:03:35.840 fake news excuse. The people were just too stupid to vote for Hillary because they weren't reading the 1.00

00:03:42.260 right news. And by that, I mean the left news. And by that, I mean news like the Associated Press.

00:03:48.320 Here, let me read a bit from this AP story about how awesome AP is.

00:03:52.040 Facebook is taking new measures to curb the spread of fake news on its huge and influential social

00:03:59.080 network. It will focus on the worst of the worst offenders and partner with outside fact checkers

00:04:03.540 and news organizations to sort honest news reports from made-up stories that play to people's passions

00:04:09.680 and preconceived notions. Hey, do you trust Mark Zuckerberg to tell you what news is honest and

00:04:16.760 what news isn't? Do you trust Mark Zuckerberg to re-engineer your perceptions of the world to get rid of

00:04:22.840 your passions and preconceived notions? I have to say, I still find it hard to believe that Zuckerberg is not in

00:04:28.640 jail. I think he's violated more people's privacy than every peeping Tom in history combined. He's been caught

00:04:36.800 breaking the law pretty much every year. And every year he just says, oh, sorry, I didn't mean to do that. He makes a few

00:04:43.800 more political donations, hires a few more lobbyists, and it's all good. I never get tired of looking at

00:04:50.220 this sweaty, shifty lizard here. Remember this? Do you feel like it's a backlash or that you feel like

00:04:57.280 you're violating people's privacy? Do you feel like you're adequately portrayed as a, because I want to 0.97

00:05:03.300 wonder about the person who actually created this thing. Yeah, I mean, you know, a lot of stuff

00:05:09.900 happen along the way. I think, you know, there were real learning points and turning points along the

00:05:16.900 way in terms of building things. If I knew what I knew now then, then I hope I wouldn't have made those

00:05:28.240 mistakes, but I can't go back and change the past. I can only do what we think is the right thing going

00:05:33.480 forward. So before we move off this privacy thing, and I thought that was a fascinating answer.

00:05:40.120 You want to take off the hoodie? No, I never take off the hoodie. I know you don't. What's with that?

00:05:44.320 There's a group of women in the audience that wish you would. No, no. Girls? Whoa. 0.97

00:05:51.360 All right. Sorry. That's okay. Yeah. So naturally, that most trustworthy of man, Mark Zuckerberg,

00:05:58.580 chose the Associated Press, AP, to be part of his censorship panel. Let me read some more from the story.

00:06:03.480 The social network will make it easier for users to report fake news when they see it,

00:06:07.840 which they'll be able to do in two steps, not three. If enough people report a story as fake,

00:06:12.760 Facebook will pass it to third-party fact-checking organizations that are part of the non-profit

00:06:17.020 Poynter Institute's International Fact-Checking Network. Five fact-checking and news organizations

00:06:23.760 are working with Facebook on this. ABC News, The Associated Press, Factcheck.org, Political Fact,

00:06:29.320 and Snopes. Facebook says this group is likely to expand.

00:06:34.260 Oh, got it. So ABC, whose chief political correspondent just happens to be George Stephanopoulos,

00:06:39.920 formerly Bill Clinton's right-hand man. That sounds like it'll be non-partisan. Or Snopes,

00:06:44.880 which is a weird homemade blog that calls itself a fact-checker, but it's been revealed to be

00:06:50.760 a homemade blog run by a left-wing activist, and they spend their money on, well, according to this

00:06:57.620 Daily Mail report, they're being discredited. They weirdly use their revenue for, yeah, prostitutes

00:07:03.940 and porn stars and things. So yeah, that's who's in charge of the truth, folks. Anyways, both ABC

00:07:10.120 and Snopes have since quit, but The Associated Press continues to be the gold standard for Facebook

00:07:15.780 to censor other opinions. Let me read just one more line from the AP story about how awesome

00:07:21.100 AP is. Stories that flunk the fact-check won't be removed from Facebook, but they'll be publicly

00:07:29.040 flagged as disputed, which will force them to appear lower down in people's news feed. Users can

00:07:34.680 click on a link to learn why that is, and if people decide they want to share the story with friends

00:07:40.040 anyway, they can, but they'll get another warning. Wow. So AP, which like I say is simply a collection

00:07:46.920 of journalists. They're not saints. They're not priests. They're not experts. And what's an expert

00:07:52.360 on the news anyways? Aren't you the expert on news? Aren't all of us, each of us, in our own way,

00:07:58.020 each of us gets to make our own choices, whether you like a left-wing slant or a right-wing slant or

00:08:01.840 no slant, or if you just want to ignore the news altogether and watch sports? Anyways, I wanted to tell

00:08:06.820 the background about the Associated Press and how they claim to be the most accurate people in the

00:08:10.740 world, so accurate that they will tell their rivals, their competitors really, that they're

00:08:15.460 not accurate. And then Mark Zuckerberg will literally interrupt your news reading experience to force

00:08:20.540 you to read an objection, a rebuttal from the AP, and you have to keep clicking on buttons to say,

00:08:26.800 yeah, you really do want to read the news that the Associated Press says is a lie. We all know how we

00:08:32.500 are on the internet. We're impatient. There's so much out there that's fast and free. We expect it

00:08:38.640 to be fast. We expect websites to load in less than a second. We hate it when there's a pop-up ad we

00:08:44.300 have to close. We hate it when we have to enter any information like our name or fill out a form. So I

00:08:49.660 bet half the point of putting in all those extra steps when the AP flags a story as fake is not to

00:08:55.700 try to convince you that AP is right and your conservative news site is wrong, but just to make it such a

00:09:00.900 hassle that you'll just abandon it and you won't actually click through. And then there's the

00:09:04.840 weirdness of it. It's like when your website says there's a security risk on a site, you just skip

00:09:09.780 it. That's what they're trying to do here. That's the AP Zuckerberg trick. They're both shifty.

00:09:16.040 Okay, so to the news of the day. We've all been talking about the SNC-Lavalin scandal for a month now.

00:09:21.860 It's the biggest scandal to Rock Trudeau since he joined Parliament. First, Jody Wilson-Raybould,

00:09:26.460 his former attorney general, resigned. That's huge. Then his best friend and his longest serving

00:09:31.820 assistant, Gerald Butts, resigned. That's huge. Then Jane Philpott, regarded as one of the most

00:09:38.500 competent cabinet ministers, resigned in solidarity with Jody Wilson-Raybould. That's huge. This thing

00:09:44.960 is real. Even if Trudeau keeps doing that weird thing where he blames the victim, where he gaslights

00:09:50.120 him, you know what that phrase gaslight means. It means to tell someone, oh, you're crazy. No,

00:09:55.200 no, no. He never did that to you. It's all on your mind. That's called gaslighting. That's what

00:09:59.060 he did to Rose Knight, the young reporter in Crest in BC, that he sexually assaulted in the year 2000.

00:10:04.280 He said this. That the same interactions could be experienced very differently

00:10:10.140 from one person to the next. And I am not going to speak for the woman in question. I would never

00:10:18.180 presume to speak for her. But I know that there is an awful lot of reflection to be had as we move

00:10:26.420 forward as a society on how people perceive different interactions. Like I said, I do not feel

00:10:33.960 that I acted inappropriately in any way. But I respect the fact that someone else might have

00:10:41.740 experienced that differently. I respect her right to have a, you know what? That's a nice way of

00:10:47.940 calling someone a liar. You're telling them they didn't experience it. It's imaginary. That's

00:10:52.420 exactly what Trudeau and Butts are saying now about Jody Wilson-Raybould. So yeah, huge scandal. It's not

00:10:58.020 going away. For the first time ever, it's really denting Trudeau's polls. The India trip fiasco didn't do

00:11:04.840 that. The Chinese fiasco with their hostages didn't do that. The Saudi fiasco, the NAFTA

00:11:09.960 renegotiations fiasco. All these fiascos, they never really pulled his numbers down. But

00:11:14.460 this one is, I mean, look at how manic he looks. This is him trying to look like everything's

00:11:19.280 totally fine. It's totally fine. At a rally the other day.

00:11:24.240 Hello, Toronto! Great to see you all! How are you all doing tonight? Are there any liberals in the house?

00:11:39.960 Holy moly! Whoa! That reminds me of this.

00:11:46.460 We've never seen you behave this way before.

00:11:48.720 I know.

00:11:49.280 Have you ever felt this way before?

00:11:51.280 You're gone. You are gone. You are gone.

00:12:04.200 Yeah. It was a little manic. So what did the fact checkers at the Associated Press have to

00:12:08.720 say? What's their big briefing to their American audience? Remember, they're mainly an American

00:12:14.640 outfit. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is engulfed in a scandal in which nothing illegal has

00:12:23.840 happened and no financial or sexual misconduct is alleged, but the follow could topple him in the

00:12:29.920 elections this fall, AP's R. Gillies reports. Really? Nothing illegal? Nothing wrong? That's what the tweet

00:12:39.580 says. Here's the story when you click on through. Canada's no sex, no money scandal could topple Trudeau

00:12:44.900 by Rob Gillies. Oh, really? Let me read a little bit from this Associated Press story.

00:12:51.100 There's no money, no sex, and nothing illegal happened. This is what passes for a scandal in

00:12:56.900 Canada. Yeah, those small-time Canadians. Nothing to see here unless you're some hayseed from tiny 1.00

00:13:04.500 little Canada. And can we talk about the real criminal Donald Trump? I'm not even kidding.

00:13:10.180 That's their next sentence. U.S. President Donald Trump has been engulfed in allegations involving

00:13:15.040 possible collusion with Russia and secret payments to buy the silence of a porn star. Canadian Prime

00:13:19.780 Minister Justin Trudeau is facing a controversy that seems trivial by comparison, but could topple him

00:13:24.700 in the elections later this year? Got it. Trump is engulfed. He's engulfed in allegations, but it's Saint

00:13:34.620 Trudeau who's paying the price. The world is so cruel. But is any of that true? This is going to thousands

00:13:41.980 of American outlets. AP writes, nothing illegal happened. But hang on, how did they know? The matter

00:13:49.340 hasn't been investigated yet, not by the Mounties, not by an independent inquiry, not even by Trudeau's

00:13:55.000 own lapdog, the hand-picked ethics counselor. The parliamentary committee hearings, as limited as

00:14:01.400 they are, they're not even done yet. And you'll recall the liberals on that committee voted against

00:14:06.520 asking the Prime Minister's office to release internal memos on the matter. But to the AP, and what,

00:14:12.180 the 2,300 newspapers they serve? They've seen enough. Nothing illegal has happened here, people.

00:14:19.340 What is he doing in the uniform? General Hogan, please. Oh, you went too far. I must report

00:14:25.840 this. It would be worth my life if I do not report this. It's only until tomorrow, and he's

00:14:30.840 going to take it off again. After he steals the tank from the Panzer Division. He brings

00:14:37.460 it here into the ground. Oh, I see nothing. I was not here. I did not even get up this morning.

00:14:44.160 Yeah, that's the Hogan's Heroes version. Remember that old show? And then there's the David Lamedi

00:14:52.160 version of Hogan's Heroes. That guy's name was Schultz. Here's Trudeau's new attorney general. Can

00:14:58.160 you see the resemblance? But if someone approached you and said an election is at stake, would that be a

00:15:03.880 persuasive argument to you? Again, it depends on the context. The leading case from the UK...

00:15:09.160 Sorry, just to stop you there, but an election could be a reason for an attorney general to interfere

00:15:14.160 in a criminal prosecution. That would be appropriate. I'm not saying it would be appropriate or inappropriate.

00:15:20.160 But on the face of it, there actually has been a crime, sorry to tell the AP that. Section 139 of the criminal code

00:15:27.160 says everyone who willfully attempts in any manner to obstruct, pervert, or defeat the course of justice

00:15:31.160 in a judicial proceeding is liable for up to 10 years in prison. Trudeau's office interfered 20 times,

00:15:39.160 according to Jody Wilson-Raybould. 10 meetings, 10 phone calls, plus texts and emails. And the pressure

00:15:45.160 continued even after she had made her decision to prosecute. The AP says, quote,

00:15:51.160 no financial or sexual misconduct is alleged. Really? On what planet? Of course, SNC-Lavalin paid 48 million dollars

00:16:00.160 in illegal bribes in Libya. And as this chilling story here shows, their bribery is pretty much everywhere they work,

00:16:07.160 including right here in Canada, where they corrupted public bids on bridges, hospitals, anything.

00:16:13.160 They were treating Canada like a banana republic. Oh, and no sex. That's what the AP said. In fact,

00:16:20.160 SNC-Lavalin spent millions of dollars for prostitutes, porn, and wild parties for Saudi Gaddafi. 0.74

00:16:28.160 That's the son of Muammar Gaddafi. This was part of their bribery. Here's how Trudeau handled that question

00:16:33.160 in Parliament. This is what SNC's intervention looked like. $30,000 worth of Canadian prostitutes given to 0.99

00:16:42.160 Muammar Gaddafi's son. This is the so-called victimless crime that our woke, feminist Prime Minister 0.74

00:16:49.160 is moving mountains to cover up. When did the Prime Minister learn that SNC-Lavalin paid for prostitutes 0.72

00:16:55.160 for Muammar Gaddafi's son?

00:16:59.160 Right, Honourable Prime Minister.

00:17:02.160 Mr. Speaker, every step of the way, we will stand up for Canadian workers. We will stand up for good jobs

00:17:07.160 jobs right across this country. We will do so in a way that is consistent with our values,

00:17:12.160 with our expectations, and with the rule of law.

00:17:16.160 Yeah. Let me keep reading a little bit from the AP story.

00:17:21.160 People south of the border would be astonished to think that this is the type of scandal that they have in Canada,

00:17:27.160 said Eddie Goldenberg, a former advisor to former PM Jean Chrétien.

00:17:34.160 Now, most Canadians would know that Chrétien was a liberal, like Trudeau is, so Eddie Goldenberg is just defending his

00:17:39.160 lifelong party. It's not really surprising, but few Americans would know that.

00:17:44.160 Remember, this story was written for Americans, the thousands of newspapers to pick up AP Wirecopy.

00:17:49.160 So the first person they quote, defending the liberals, is a lifelong liberal.

00:17:55.160 But they don't mention that he's a liberal. Why? Why not?

00:18:00.160 Because they know it would take away from his credibility, because they know it would show his bias.

00:18:05.160 Goldenberg actually says something amazing. He says,

00:18:08.160 there is a political correctness here. Nobody wants to go after an indigenous woman minister. 1.00

00:18:13.160 It's become politically incorrect to question the former minister.

00:18:16.160 Holy moly. So the liberals play the race card when making appointments.

00:18:21.160 They play the gender card. 0.88

00:18:23.160 I understand one of the priorities for you was to have a cabinet that was gender balanced.

00:18:28.160 Why was that so important to you?

00:18:31.160 Because it's 2015.

00:18:34.160 Yeah, right on.

00:18:37.160 But when an Aboriginal woman criticizes Trudeau for being corrupt, well, 0.80

00:18:41.160 she only got away with that because she's an Aboriginal woman. 0.88

00:18:44.160 That's an incredible thing to say for a liberal.

00:18:47.160 Sort of shows their whole identity politics game as a cynical ploy.

00:18:51.160 And that at the end of the day, they don't really listen to anything women or minorities say. 0.95

00:18:55.160 It's just their gender and race that they care about as window dressing. 0.99

00:18:59.160 There was nothing female or Aboriginal about Jody Wilson-Raybould's decision to block Trudeau's interference in the SNC-Lavalin prosecution.

00:19:06.160 Her race or her sex were irrelevant to that.

00:19:10.160 Here's some more from the story.

00:19:12.160 They quote a professor named Robert Bothwell saying,

00:19:15.160 It's a pseudo-scandal.

00:19:17.160 It's crap.

00:19:18.160 What the hell?

00:19:20.160 You were doing business in Libya and you were not bribing, said Robert Bothwell.

00:19:25.160 Hang on.

00:19:26.160 Didn't the same story a few paragraphs earlier say there was no crime, no financial scandal, nothing?

00:19:30.160 And now they're quoting a guy saying,

00:19:32.160 All right, fine.

00:19:33.160 They paid $48 million in bribes.

00:19:36.160 Sure.

00:19:37.160 But you know, that's how it's done over there.

00:19:38.160 Stop being so small time.

00:19:39.160 Oh, and if you thought Goldenberg's racial critique of Jody Wilson-Raybould was weird, get this.

00:19:45.160 The director of public prosecutions is also nuts and so is Wilson-Raybould.

00:19:50.160 These people are delusional.

00:19:52.160 Delusional?

00:19:54.160 It's against the law to bribe, to be corrupt, to corrupt a public procurement project either in Canada or in Libya.

00:20:04.160 It's illegal and it's against the law to interfere in a prosecution of such corruption.

00:20:09.160 That's illegal.

00:20:11.160 But the Associated Press has found another old liberal to call Jody Wilson-Raybould and the head of public prosecution, who also happens to be a woman, by the way, to call them nuts and delusional.

00:20:21.160 Maybe they're hysterical.

00:20:23.160 He left that word out.

00:20:24.160 Who is this weirdo?

00:20:26.160 Bothwell.

00:20:27.160 Look at him.

00:20:28.160 Who is this weirdo calling everyone else weird?

00:20:30.160 I'd actually never heard of him, but I had a hunch.

00:20:34.160 I thought, if you're trying to get this guy, well, I typed in his name to the big online database of liberal party donors.

00:20:42.160 And would you look at that?

00:20:44.160 He is a year after year, multi-thousand dollar liberal donor, if you add it all up.

00:20:51.160 Funny how that wasn't disclosed in the story.

00:20:54.160 Remember what Jody Wilson-Raybould said about liars in the media running errands for the prime minister?

00:21:00.160 He was like, quote, if Jody is nervous, we would, of course, line up all kinds of people to write op-eds saying that what she is doing is proper, end quote.

00:21:12.160 Yeah, I guess we've found one of those shills for Trudeau, Rob Gillies and the Associated Press.

00:21:18.160 Look, they're liars.

00:21:19.160 They are a fake news factory.

00:21:21.160 They mislead.

00:21:22.160 They omit key facts.

00:21:23.160 They spin.

00:21:24.160 And I bet that 99% of Americans who read this story simply don't know any better.

00:21:28.160 I mean, if you read an AP story from Greece or from India or from Thailand, you would take it at face value, wouldn't you?

00:21:36.160 But because we're from Canada and we've been paying close attention to the story for weeks, we can see the facile lies that they're telling Americans.

00:21:45.160 Americans should know they're being lied to by the AP.

00:21:48.160 But Canadians should know it, too.

00:21:50.160 So the next time AP says they're fact checking someone else, someone, something, anything.

00:21:56.160 Next time AP blocks your Facebook search, realize that they are the liars.

00:22:01.160 And not just random liars.

00:22:03.160 They're Trudeau's liars.

00:22:06.160 Stay with us for more.

00:22:20.160 As we started to see the direction of the voting, I reached out to someone close to me who was at the Javits Center where the big celebration was supposed to occur in New York City.

00:22:34.160 Somebody had been working on the campaign.

00:22:36.160 And I just sent them a note and said, you know, are you OK?

00:22:40.160 It looks like it's going the wrong way.

00:22:43.160 And I got back a very sad short text that read people are leaving.

00:22:50.160 Staff is crying.

00:22:51.160 We're going to lose.

00:22:53.160 That was the first moment I really felt like we were going to lose.

00:23:02.160 And it was this massive like kick in the gut that we were going to lose.

00:23:05.160 And it was really painful.

00:23:07.160 Well, that's an excerpt from an internal Google YouTube staff meeting mere days after Donald Trump surprised left wing Silicon Valley and won the 2016 presidential election.

00:23:21.160 Senior executives at Google and YouTube were literally in tears.

00:23:25.160 And they spoke about Hillary Clinton's campaign in the first person plural as in we, not she, but we as if Google itself were an integral part of the campaign team.

00:23:36.160 Well, that incredible bias continues to this very day.

00:23:41.160 And joining us now with another incredible story on the subject is the same man who brought us those leaked videos of the Google staff meeting, namely Alan Bokari of Breitbart.com.

00:23:52.160 He's the senior tech reporter over there.

00:23:55.160 Alan, great to see you again.

00:23:56.160 Another day, another great story about the politicization of the tech industry.

00:24:01.160 Tell us a little bit about the case of, and I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing his name right, Mike Walker or Mike Walker.

00:24:10.160 Here's your story called Google manager said company must stop fake news because that's how Trump won.

00:24:16.160 Tell me a little bit about this Mike Walker and what he did to blow the whistle on them.

00:24:20.160 Hi, Ezra. Good to be on.

00:24:23.160 So, this isn't a leak as such because the employee, Mike Wacker, has posted his allegations on Twitter.

00:24:33.160 So, this is a public allegation he's made.

00:24:36.160 And what he did was he's a software engineer at Google and he went on Twitter and posted an email he received from a colleague with the name redacted.

00:24:46.160 And his colleague at Google says that when he posted a comment regarding fake news on Google search, someone at the company then reported it to human resources, even though he didn't say he was, you know, in favor or against justice.

00:25:00.160 He said he cautioned that we needed to be careful.

00:25:03.160 What happened next, says this Google employee, was his manager brought it up in his one in his weekly one to one meeting and, quote, made him feel very uncomfortable for having an opposing view.

00:25:15.160 And here's the crucial part.

00:25:17.160 He then said, according to this employee, that, quote, we need to stop hate speech and fake news because that's how Trump won the election.

00:25:27.160 So, this was, is Mike Wacker, is he still working for Google?

00:25:34.160 I mean, we put his tweet up on the screen there while you were talking about him.

00:25:38.160 So, he's obviously going outside the corporation.

00:25:41.160 He obviously can't get satisfaction to his concerns inside.

00:25:45.160 Has he been sacked yet or has he quit them already?

00:25:48.160 Well, his Twitter profile says he's still at the company.

00:25:51.160 I have every reason to believe he is still at the company.

00:25:54.160 So, he is, I believe, an employee at Google blowing the whistle here.

00:25:59.160 Wow.

00:26:00.160 Well, the last time someone was in this position, James Damore, who, in a very polite manner, I must say, in fact, sort of a nerdy, super polite manner, talked about gender biases and how Google might address those in a way that wasn't, you know, anti-male.

00:26:19.160 So, I thought it was a very thoughtful discussion.

00:26:21.160 He was sacked right away.

00:26:23.160 Do you have any reason to believe that this conservative dissident won't be sacked?

00:26:28.160 Or do you think they're just making sure they have a legal pretext for doing so?

00:26:32.160 Well, Google has very little tolerance for any questioning of its political agenda.

00:26:39.160 So, you know, this Google employee certainly did a very courageous thing by coming out and posting his concerns.

00:26:47.160 The one thing that might save him here is that, you know, he didn't leak it to anyone.

00:26:51.160 You know, he's not trying to collude with anyone.

00:26:55.160 He he posted it publicly.

00:26:57.160 And he says in following tweets that I'll just quote him directly in these situations.

00:27:06.160 One should first make a reasonable attempt to resolve such matters internally.

00:27:11.160 I think that's a reasonable point to make.

00:27:13.160 And then he goes on to say in both this this case and other cases, I have made a good faith attempt to do just that.

00:27:19.160 However, those attempts did not resolve my concerns, which led me to my current course of action.

00:27:25.160 And he talks about multiple incidents, multiple concerns and many conversations that drove him to publish the email.

00:27:32.160 And he says, you know, this is just a representative example.

00:27:35.160 It's an isolated incident.

00:27:36.160 Others have had similar experiences.

00:27:38.160 So what he's saying is, you know, this isn't just one isolated incident.

00:27:42.160 It's part of a wider trendy scene at Google.

00:27:45.160 And two, he's saying that, you know, he first tried to resolve the matter internally before going public.

00:27:51.160 And I think that's been a reasonable course of action.

00:27:54.160 You know, first you try and solve it internally.

00:27:56.160 And then when that doesn't work and if it's part of a bigger, wider problem, then I think it's fair to go public and blow the whistle.

00:28:02.160 Yeah. I mean, he tweeted about human resources at Google.

00:28:05.160 And when I think of human resources, I think of someone who's behaving badly, someone who's calling sick and isn't really sick.

00:28:12.160 You know, someone who's maybe being sexually gropey or handsy at work.

00:28:17.160 I don't think of it as a political hygiene outfit.

00:28:21.160 I'm I'm I'm reminded that in the former Soviet Union, for example, on a battleship, they would have political officers as well as naval officers.

00:28:30.160 They would have like a political hygiene inspector making sure everyone on the battleship was being a good communist.

00:28:36.160 Like they would they would have bizarre counterproductive things just to ensure ideological conformity.

00:28:42.160 It sounds like the HR department at Google isn't about normal HR.

00:28:47.160 Let me read this quote from Mike Walker or Wacker or Walker.

00:28:51.160 I don't know how to pronounce it.

00:28:52.160 Here's the one. Again, this is from your story, Ellum.

00:28:55.160 In particular, HR, human resources, is not impartial.

00:28:59.160 Their actions provide clear and convincing evidence of favoritism.

00:29:03.160 And they have abused their power and authority.

00:29:07.160 It sounds like HR is how they dress up their political purges.

00:29:11.160 They say, oh, no, no, no, no, no.

00:29:13.160 This isn't politics.

00:29:14.160 This is just HR.

00:29:17.160 Yeah, that's actually what I've heard from, you know, many of my own Google sources have said the same thing.

00:29:22.160 They've been saying the same thing since 2017 when James Damore was fired.

00:29:27.160 And you mentioned his case earlier.

00:29:31.160 In fact, one of the things that came out in his lawsuit was that when an employee threatened to hound Damore over his non-progressive viewpoints, Google, Google's HR department not only failed to take action against the employee who directly threatened him.

00:29:46.160 It actually ended up firing Damore instead.

00:29:49.160 You know, at the same time, you know, Google has, you know, it tolerates Antifa inside the company.

00:29:55.160 You know, Antifa obviously is this violent organization that regularly threaten and intimidate and in some cases, you know, physically attack members of the Republican Party and conservatives.

00:30:06.160 You know, we've reported in the past on, you know, widespread Antifa sympathies within Google.

00:30:11.160 That was also something that came out in the Damore case.

00:30:14.160 So there's clearly this double standard at Google where the most radical form, radical forms of left wing behavior, including, you know, pretty violent extremist left wing behavior is tolerated.

00:30:28.160 Whereas, you know, moderate conservatives, not even moderate conservatives, you know, James Damore doesn't describe himself as a conservative.

00:30:35.160 He's just a political moderate and independent get fired for questioning progressive narratives.

00:30:42.160 You know, I can only imagine what it's like to work at Google.

00:30:47.160 We see pictures of their offices and it looks like these, you know, very progressive workplaces where there's beanbag chairs and lots of, you know, pinball games.

00:30:57.160 And it's very childish, frankly.

00:31:00.160 And maybe they want that childlike sense of discovery.

00:31:03.160 Maybe that's a good way to run a company.

00:31:04.160 I don't know.

00:31:05.160 But I also think about the dystopian view of what it might be like to work at a tech company.

00:31:13.160 I don't know if you ever watched that science fiction movie called Ex Machina, which was modeled after like, I mean, it's a very clear homage to Google and this sort of bizarre, quirky bosses.

00:31:27.160 And in this case, in the case of Ex Machina, I'm sorry to talk about science fiction, but it was a dystopian view of how all their employees are sort of spied on by the company itself.

00:31:39.160 And in that case, and I know this is a work of fiction, I'm just using it as an analogy, that your cell phone is spying on you as you talk, which actually isn't that big of a stretch these days.

00:31:50.160 I wonder what it's like to work in there.

00:31:53.160 Is it, are you being constantly monitored, like, you know, that Amazon Echo or Alexa or Google has a version too, I think.

00:32:02.160 Do you think that every keystroke you make is recorded, every conversation you have is listened to?

00:32:08.160 I think a guy could go crazy with paranoia working in a search engine, trying not to be, to have his own mind probed for political, I mean, not a probe, but like, can you even have a private conversation at Google?

00:32:22.160 It feels like a creepy place sometimes.

00:32:25.160 Well, when you talk to employees inside these companies, they do sometimes come off as paranoid.

00:32:31.160 And, you know, certainly every single tech source I know uses some form of secure encrypted communication to contact me.

00:32:38.160 They don't use any Google products.

00:32:40.160 They use apps like Signal and Telegram, which are end-to-end encrypted.

00:32:46.160 They don't collect any data.

00:32:48.160 And the reason they do all this is because they know the tech companies, you know, it's not just science fiction.

00:32:54.160 You know, the cell phones are listening to you and collecting your data.

00:32:59.160 And inside Google, you know, I know that one employee was actually fired over this.

00:33:05.160 They do monitor what your keystrokes, essentially.

00:33:09.160 They monitor what you search for inside the company.

00:33:12.160 So if you search for the wrong thing too many times, then you might get fired.

00:33:20.160 I believe one employee was, you know, curious about the James Damore case and was searching for files related to it.

00:33:33.160 And he was fired just for that.

00:33:35.160 Wow.

00:33:36.160 So, yeah, Google is, if you're an employee at Google, the general assumption is, yes, they are watching you.

00:33:42.160 They know what files you're accessing.

00:33:43.160 They know what searches you're doing inside the company.

00:33:46.160 Everything is logged.

00:33:48.160 Wow.

00:33:49.160 You know, I mean, I can understand a company having privacy and a company wanting to know what the employees are doing in general during work hours.

00:33:56.160 But that truly sounds like a place that breeds paranoia.

00:34:00.160 And I think, on the other hand, you know, if I may be permitted one more tangent, you let me talk about a science fiction movie for a minute.

00:34:07.160 Perhaps you'll give me one more tangent.

00:34:09.160 And I know a fair number of people who used to live in the former Soviet Union.

00:34:14.160 And the Soviet Union trapped a lot of people who were free thinkers, free talkers, even just plain old eccentrics, even people with a quirky personality.

00:34:26.160 They would run up against trouble right away.

00:34:29.160 But whereas it was oppressive to eccentrics or people who cared about freedom, it was like a Petri dish for those who had an authoritarian streak within them.

00:34:42.160 Sociopaths who gamed the system and realized, oh, I can thrive in this authoritarian regime.

00:34:51.160 I can work the system.

00:34:53.160 I can be an informant and tip off the KGB or in East Germany the Stasi.

00:34:59.160 I can use a security pretext to get rid of a rival, a personal rival, whatever.

00:35:07.160 And so it trapped the best of people and it brought out the worst in other people.

00:35:14.160 I bet Google has a perverse culture within it that rewards surveillance and snitching and tattling.

00:35:27.160 It's just the more I think about what it would be like to work there by this tweet from Mr. Walker and what James Damore went through.

00:35:34.160 It sounds like a terrible way to live.

00:35:37.160 Well, yes, I mean, it's sort of like a more extreme example of, you know, what we see with ordinary people on social media and, you know, and conservatives in the media as well.

00:35:52.160 You know, we have these sort of professional hall monitors almost now in the media whose job it is to monitor, you know, Twitter feeds of people like you and me for, you know, anything that can be turned into a negative story, anything that can be used to de-platform us.

00:36:09.160 And, you know, conservatives inside Google face a very similar situation where they're constantly watched by far left colleagues for anything that can be reported to HR, however slight.

00:36:24.160 There was one employee we reported on who was reported to HR for sharing a national review article internally.

00:36:30.160 Oh, my God.

00:36:31.160 You know, national review.

00:36:32.160 That's the wrong thing.

00:36:33.160 You know, I tell you, you get me going here.

00:36:35.160 I was we've been charged with an offense in Alberta for putting up a billboard that the government didn't like.

00:36:43.160 And it reminded me of something I learned when I was a kid during the Cold War.

00:36:47.160 And I recently confirmed it.

00:36:48.160 Alan, you probably know this, that in Romania, you needed to register your typewriter with the police.

00:36:55.160 You had to take it to the police.

00:36:56.160 You had to apply for a license.

00:36:58.160 You had to explain why you needed a typewriter.

00:37:00.160 And you had to give them a sample of how that because each typewriter has a slightly different like a fingerprint of how the keys would hit them.

00:37:09.160 You had to leave a sample with the police in case your contraband typewriter was found to be writing some as that.

00:37:17.160 So that's that's an insane way to live.

00:37:20.160 But at least you could sneak a typewriter.

00:37:23.160 You could hide one.

00:37:24.160 You can't hide from Google.

00:37:26.160 You cannot hide from Google.

00:37:28.160 No, I actually didn't know that about Romania and the typewriters.

00:37:31.160 But it's potentially much worse today because today, you know, the more that our versions of typewriters today, things like Google documents, Gmail, not only not only is Google control them all and can ban you from them.

00:37:48.160 But any time without any recourse, you know, everything you type on there is monitored.

00:37:52.160 Like when you draft an email on Gmail, Google knows what you've written, even if you haven't even before you've sent the email.

00:37:59.160 So if you imagine if you imagine the Romanian government being able to track every keystroke of it, every citizen that bought its typewriter, that would be the equivalent of Google.

00:38:11.160 Yeah.

00:38:12.160 So it's actually worse than what what Romanian communists were capable of. 0.73

00:38:16.160 Yeah.

00:38:17.160 Well, I tell you, this has been a very depressing conversation.

00:38:20.160 But Alan, it reminds me again, and I don't say this just to flatter.

00:38:23.160 I say this to everyone.

00:38:24.160 I mean that you, I believe, are the most important journalist on the most important beat in the free world right now.

00:38:31.160 And I know that sounds like an over the top statement, but it's a theme we come back to time and again on this show.

00:38:37.160 I truly believe our freedoms are at stake and our politics and our democracy.

00:38:42.160 And I thank you for the work you're doing.

00:38:44.160 Thank you, Ezra.

00:38:45.160 All right.

00:38:46.160 There you have it.

00:38:47.160 Alan Bocari, the senior tech correspondent for Breitbart.com.

00:38:50.160 I encourage you to read his latest story about the one Google employee who had the courage to go public.

00:38:56.160 Stay with us.

00:38:57.160 More ahead on The Rebel.

00:39:07.160 Hey, welcome back.

00:39:10.160 You know what?

00:39:11.160 I received a phone call this morning at 7 a.m.

00:39:13.160 I was up.

00:39:15.160 It was from Tommy Robinson in the United Kingdom who said, Ez, I'm on trial tomorrow and I sort of forgot to mention it to you.

00:39:21.160 I said, what are you talking about?

00:39:22.160 You've got your contempt of court case on March 22nd.

00:39:25.160 He said, no, mate, we've also got a case in Peterborough in the United Kingdom at 10 a.m. tomorrow in the county court.

00:39:33.160 But it's Tommy on the offense.

00:39:35.160 He's he's suing the Cambridgeshire police for harassing him.

00:39:41.160 He was out at a football game.

00:39:42.160 That's what they call soccer over there with his family.

00:39:44.160 And he was having lunch in a restaurant with his family, his wife and kids.

00:39:49.160 And the police barged in.

00:39:50.160 There must have been half a dozen.

00:39:52.160 And just sort of in a shocking mood.

00:39:53.160 Get out of here.

00:39:54.160 Get out of here.

00:39:55.160 Get out of this.

00:39:56.160 Get out of town.

00:39:57.160 Get out of this restaurant.

00:39:58.160 And he was, what are you talking about?

00:39:59.160 What are you doing?

00:40:00.160 And he had the presence of mind to film it on his phone.

00:40:01.160 And his kids were screaming and crying.

00:40:05.160 And he was saying, what have I done wrong?

00:40:06.160 And the manager of the restaurant comes up and says, he's just sitting here.

00:40:10.160 He's no problem.

00:40:11.160 And the cops eject him and frog march him out of town.

00:40:15.160 It was insane.

00:40:17.160 And Tommy's suing them.

00:40:18.160 And that's actually going to court tomorrow.

00:40:20.160 And Tommy called me up at 7 a.m. this morning.

00:40:22.160 And he said, as I just realized, there's not going to be any reporters there that I know.

00:40:28.160 And if the BBC sends someone, obviously, they're there to bury, not to report accurately.

00:40:33.160 Can you come?

00:40:34.160 And I said, oh, brother.

00:40:35.160 I mean, I love to come.

00:40:37.160 And the short note is starting the week by totally rearranging the week.

00:40:42.160 So I said, fine.

00:40:43.160 So actually, I assume by the time you watch this, I will actually be on an airplane going to the UK.

00:40:51.160 I land first thing in the morning.

00:40:53.160 And then I drive up to Peterborough.

00:40:55.160 So I'll be there at 10 a.m.

00:40:56.160 Be a little sleepy.

00:40:57.160 And I got to cover this case.

00:40:59.160 I think it's important because it's Tommy hunting the bad guys instead of being hunted.

00:41:04.160 And he tells me the police have tried to settle with him a few times.

00:41:07.160 Obviously, they don't want the information coming out.

00:41:09.160 They were wearing those body cams, which I think is a great innovation.

00:41:12.160 It protects both people, citizens and the police from lies.

00:41:17.160 Right.

00:41:18.160 Tommy says that he's seen some of the body cam footage where one of the cops who was harassing his family later says on tape, what are we doing here?

00:41:27.160 This is so wrong or something.

00:41:28.160 And I'll let you know what I see in court tomorrow.

00:41:30.160 So I'm not going to be here Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

00:41:33.160 I'll come back Thursday night.

00:41:34.160 So I'll be back in the studio on Friday for my regular nighttime show and for my battleground show, which I do at 12 noon on Fridays Eastern time.

00:41:43.160 But of course, we'll have the show.

00:41:44.160 We always have a show.

00:41:45.160 The show must go on.

00:41:46.160 Sheila and or David Menzies will cover the bases Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday for the nighttime show.

00:41:52.160 And I am sure they will have clips from what I'm doing in Peterborough.

00:41:56.160 And if you want to get all my updates from Tommy's trial, go to Tommy trial dot com.

00:42:02.160 So that's why I'm not going to be here tomorrow.

00:42:05.160 I hope you accept my judgment that this is the right thing to do, not only editorially, but politically and to help Tommy.

00:42:12.160 And I just think that I said, well, can we get someone else to go?

00:42:17.160 He says, as you got the legal background, you know, my case and people trust you on the Tommy file.

00:42:22.160 So, yeah, that's right.

00:42:23.160 I should go.

00:42:24.160 So I'm going.

00:42:25.160 Let me know what you think of that.

00:42:26.160 Tune in tomorrow when Sheila or David cover Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

00:42:30.160 I'll be back Friday until next time.

00:42:32.160 On behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters to you at home.

00:42:34.160 Good night and keep fighting for freedom.

00:42:36.160 Thank you for free.

Rebel News Podcast - March 12, 2019

A fact-checking news agency prints a fictional story about Trudeau’s SNC-Lavalin scandal

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