Rebel News Podcast - Conservative Party “has lost its nerve,” this time caving to left-wing mob on global warming

00:00:00.000 Hello, my rebels. Today's podcast is about Lisa Raitt, the deputy leader and justice critic of

00:00:06.020 the opposition conservatives, second only to Andrew Scheer. And over the weekend, she did

00:00:11.320 something just incredible. She collapsed on Twitter saying essentially, you know what, I will

00:00:16.340 never criticize the theory of man-made global warming again. I'm so sorry I ever did. And don't

00:00:21.740 bug me anymore, okay? Bug someone else. That's barely a paraphrase there. And the reaction to

00:00:28.700 that and the demoralizing effect of that is incredible. I'll take you through it in a

00:00:34.120 moment. Before I do, please consider becoming a premium subscriber of The Rebel. That lets you

00:00:39.840 see all these things in video form, gives you access to other shows like David Menzies and

00:00:44.640 Sheila Gunn-Reed. And of course, we get $8 a month. And we use that money to build things here at The

00:00:51.160 Rebel. You can get your membership at therebel.media slash shows. All right, without further ado, here's

00:00:57.000 the podcast of Lisa Raitt collapsing.

00:01:01.640 You're listening to The Rebel Media Podcast.

00:01:04.880 Tonight, the federal conservative party panics and bows to a left-wing mob, this time on global

00:01:10.280 warming. It's June 10th, and this is The Ezra LeVant Show.

00:01:15.740 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?

00:01:19.520 There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.

00:01:23.140 The only thing I have to say to the government of a wire publisher is because it's my bloody

00:01:28.460 right to do so.

00:01:34.520 I saw the most curious tweet on Saturday morning. It's by Lisa Raitt, the deputy leader of the

00:01:40.680 conservative party and also the party's justice critics. So number two in the party after Andrew

00:01:45.320 Scheer. I don't follow Lisa Raitt on Twitter, so I didn't come across it myself, but rather

00:01:49.860 I came across it because it was retweeted and republished and replied to by countless

00:01:56.240 liberals. Here, let me read it to you to show you why.

00:02:00.640 Well, I've learned my lesson in tweeting anything about climate change. I'm going to be transparent

00:02:05.920 and let you know I'm deleting the earlier tweets. I'm not the one to fight with on this because

00:02:12.860 like most, I believe that emissions cause climate change and we should reduce emissions.

00:02:20.220 And I don't know if you can see those little numbers at the bottom there. 1.3,000 people

00:02:25.640 replied to it. A couple hundred people retweeted it. That's republishing it. And just under 2,000

00:02:32.280 people liked it. It's a pretty busy tweet. I'm looking at who liked it and who replied to it.

00:02:38.480 And what they said is most illuminating. Here's one of the first replies, hundreds of likes on this

00:02:46.340 reply. It's by Peggy, whose biography includes the motto, I stand with Trudeau. And Peggy says,

00:02:55.540 Lisa, you and your leader are really misguided if you think relying on fossil fuels and creating a

00:03:00.880 national energy corridor will win you votes. It will in Alberta. Yuck. The rest of us want real

00:03:07.920 progress on climate change, especially the young. And Peggy would know because she looks like a

00:03:13.680 spring chicken. Now here's someone who appears to be a conservative. She's worried now. She doesn't

00:03:21.260 know what to make of Lisa Raitt's public self-abnegation, this self-denunciation. Here's what

00:03:28.300 she said. But you'll repeal the carbon tax if the Conservative Party of Canada takes government

00:03:34.400 in October. Yes, as promised. Yes. To be clear, my vote will depend on that. It's a deal breaker.

00:03:41.860 John Groves, a Conservative citizen pundit, had a few replies of his own. He said,

00:03:48.100 emissions went down under your government, he said to Lisa Raitt. They've gone up under Trudeau's

00:03:52.380 government. The numbers back it up. McKenna lies about this daily. Your party doesn't even know how

00:03:56.260 to call her on that lie or point out your performance. You are really bad at playing this game. Stop.

00:04:00.280 And he said, seriously, why on earth do you guys think you can play this game? The climate change

00:04:05.540 game is a game invented by liberals. They make the rules. They control the rules. They change the rules

00:04:09.560 whenever they want. And they own the referees. It's a rigged game. Stop playing. I'm sympathetic

00:04:15.440 to that. Here's Daryl King, another active citizen pundit who's conservative. He says,

00:04:20.440 question isn't whether climate changes or even if humanity has some minor role in such changes.

00:04:25.240 The question is, are we going to stand meekly by while climate socialism is imposed on free people,

00:04:31.380 knowing it will have zero effect on climate and cause great harm to liberty and property?

00:04:35.600 That's a great point right there. But here's my favorite. Actually, my least favorite.

00:04:41.380 And it's by the new leader of the Liberal Party of the province of New Brunswick.

00:04:46.180 I didn't know he was a leader until I saw this tweet. You'll remember who I'm talking about,

00:04:49.960 Kevin Vickers. He was the brave sergeant at arms in the House of Commons that fateful day five years

00:04:57.720 ago when an ISIS terrorist attacked Parliament Hill in a blaze of gunfire murdered Constable,

00:05:03.060 excuse me, Corporal Nathan Cirillo. Vickers, as you may recall, went to get his own handgun

00:05:08.420 to engage the terrorist. He was later appointed as ambassador to Ireland. And that gig is over.

00:05:16.340 So he came back to Canada and in what I would call a step down, a disappointing career move,

00:05:22.520 that great Kevin Vickers has decided to become a liberal politician, the leader of the New Brunswick

00:05:28.600 liberals. That is disappointing to me, at least. Why do nonpartisan civil servants always turn out

00:05:33.960 to be political lefties? Who knows? Maybe one day he'll be Premier of New Brunswick and maybe he'll

00:05:37.940 be a great Premier. I don't know. But for now, I just look at him as a guy who should have retired at

00:05:42.300 the top of his game, hero of the terrorist attack, tour of duty, as an ambassador to a great country.

00:05:47.980 So gross how all these nonpartisan civil servants always are liberals underneath it. Anyways,

00:05:52.320 what a weird note to end his career on. But anyways, look at what he's doing now. Here's what he said.

00:05:58.080 As the liberal leader, he said, proud of you, Lisa.

00:06:00.680 Je suis fierre par vous, Lisa.

00:06:03.160 Great courage, leadership. This is not about us. It is about our children and grandchildren.

00:06:07.940 Proud of you? When your partisan opponents are proud of you, here's a little tip. They're not

00:06:17.180 actually proud of you. They want you to lose. What they really are is delighted that you're undoing

00:06:23.180 yourself. You're embarrassing yourself so they don't have to do the heavy lifting. They're happy

00:06:27.140 to see you confess to things they'd probably never be able to credibly accuse you of on their own.

00:06:33.540 It's a version of when Gerald Butts tweeted about how upset he was during the Ontario Provincial Tory

00:06:38.920 leadership race a year and a half ago, when Doug Ford and then all the other leadership candidates

00:06:44.420 came out against the carbon tax, throwing out the red Tory Patrick Brown's policy. Gerald Butts was

00:06:49.500 actually really upset by that. Why would that be? Why wouldn't Gerald Butts want a clear

00:06:56.820 delineation between his liberals and the Tories on carbon tax? Especially if he was so sure

00:07:02.780 that the carbon tax was a great idea. Why wouldn't he want his opponents to make the disastrous

00:07:08.160 mistake of opposing the carbon tax? Well, of course, because in fact, nobody likes the carbon

00:07:12.860 tax. And Gerald Butts knows that. And it wasn't a disastrous mistake by Doug Ford. It was actually

00:07:19.000 one of the keys to Ford winning a huge majority and almost wiping out the liberals altogether.

00:07:23.620 Butts was upset because the false impression that had been created until then, that everybody

00:07:29.520 supports a carbon tax. Even conservatives like Preston Manning and Michael Chong and Patrick

00:07:35.280 Brown. So look, grassroots conservatives, there's no point in objecting to this, grassroots taxpayers.

00:07:40.460 There's no political party that will be your home if you don't like this tax. So stop fighting against

00:07:44.280 it. In fact, be a loyal conservative like Patrick Brown and support this monstrous tax. Well, that

00:07:49.960 illusion of unanimity is gone.

00:07:52.120 Why do you think leftists keep saying the laughable line that 97% of scientists agree with

00:07:58.740 them? It's to make it socially unacceptable to disagree with them. It's much harder than debating

00:08:03.060 on the facts. So Gerald Butts hated the fact that the opposition party actually came to oppose

00:08:08.960 them back in Ontario. And so Vickers' point here is, thanks, Lisa Raitt. We're proud of you

00:08:16.140 for agreeing with us and removing from Canadians any alternative political vehicle. Thank you for

00:08:22.360 removing an issue from contention in the election. Because obviously, it would solidify their

00:08:29.500 authority. I mean, how many times will Lisa Raitt's capitulations be used by the liberals in 1.00

00:08:34.180 campaign ads? Of course Vickers is exciting. Hey, guys, you're unconservative if you're a global

00:08:38.880 warming skeptic. Andrew Scheer's handpicked lieutenant says so. Here's a left-wing pressure group

00:08:44.680 that was set up to oppose Jason Kenney and the oil patch. Just gleeful over Lisa Raitt.

00:08:49.460 They were delighted. Here's what they said. Lisa Raitt, trending for all the wrong reasons today. 1.00

00:08:54.980 Another bad day for the Scheer team. They were thrilled by Lisa Raitt. So what exactly did Lisa

00:09:01.620 Raitt say in the first place that she was bullied into deleting and then groveling about? Here,

00:09:08.680 her opponents kept screenshots of the original offenses because that way they can get the best of both 0.97

00:09:13.660 worlds. They can use these to mock Lisa Raitt to environmentalist voters and they can use her

00:09:19.660 renunciation to mock her to conservative voters. You never win anyone over, by the way, by doing this.

00:09:26.900 Do you think that any Green Party or any Liberal Party voters are suddenly going to vote conservative

00:09:32.240 because Lisa Raitt embarrassed herself like this? Here's what she was groveling over.

00:09:38.480 This is a screenshot of what she deleted, just to be clear. She was reading a little tweet, a note

00:09:45.520 by an accomplished global warming scientist himself, Ross McKittrick. International reputation,

00:09:51.740 well known for debunking Al Gore's hockey stick graph that purports to show that global warming and carbon

00:09:57.600 dioxide have been steady, steady, steady, steady, steady, steady, and then suddenly shot up on a

00:10:03.140 graph that's shaped like a sideways hockey stick. So McKittrick proved that was a laughable, unscientific

00:10:08.680 fake, you know. Everything was fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, then boom. So McKittrick is smart,

00:10:14.080 he's well regarded, and he's a critic of the theory of man-made global warming. And as you can see in that

00:10:18.560 tweet there, he says, which is very interesting, put it back up on the screen just for a moment.

00:10:22.200 He said that the government's latest statement on global warming, do you see it there? It says it's not

00:10:28.240 what you might expect from the alarmist media coverage. Instead, it's measured, rooted in data, and

00:10:33.280 interesting. So you can even say that's a bit of a backhanded compliment to Trudeau and his government.

00:10:40.640 And Lisa Raitt simply retweeted Ross McKittrick saying it's not as bad as the media says, and she adds

00:10:47.360 lots to read in this thread. In some, data don't lie. Now, I'm not going to take you through all

00:10:53.380 of what Ross McKittrick said, but it's moderate and thoughtful and scholarly, and just for saying

00:10:59.340 read what this guy is saying, she takes down her tweets and issues a self-denunciation, and by the

00:11:04.820 way, says, don't argue with me, argue with other people. She basically throws anyone else who's a 1.00

00:11:10.040 skeptic under the bus. There was one more tweet by her, and this was the one that surely irritated the

00:11:14.740 left. She says, bottom line is there's no solid connection between climate change and the major

00:11:21.340 indicators of extreme weather, despite Trudeau's claims. To the contrary, the continual claim of

00:11:26.100 such a link is misinformation employed for political and rhetorical purposes. And you can't

00:11:30.600 quite see it there, but she was actually quoting from an article in the Financial Post. Oh my God,

00:11:35.400 well, you can't do that. I mean, obviously, that quote is true. How could it not be true?

00:11:40.640 Justin Trudeau and Catherine McKenna literally blame fires that were started by

00:11:44.320 arson. They blame arson on global warming. By the way, you'll note that tweet by rate doesn't

00:11:51.020 even question that global warming is happening. It just says there's no proven link between weather

00:11:55.820 on any given day and global warming, which is pretty obvious. I mean, we're pretending to

00:12:00.560 believe in science here, right? I mean, we don't actually believe that if you throw a virgin into 0.93

00:12:04.640 a volcano, you'll change the weather or something, right? I mean, please tell me that Catherine

00:12:09.160 McKenna and Justin Trudeau aren't actually saying that if you pay me a carbon tax today,

00:12:14.080 I'll guarantee to change the weather tomorrow. I mean, please tell me you don't believe that.

00:12:19.420 Well, actually, as you know, Catherine McKenna sort of does believe that. She calls herself

00:12:24.620 the minister responsible for weather. She really, really says that. What's my point today? My point

00:12:31.620 is that the conservatives have lost their nerve again. We know that people in both Canada and the

00:12:36.580 United States simply don't care about global warming. It's way down the list there. If you

00:12:44.800 ask them unprompted what they care about, if you say, if you lead them and say, do you care about

00:12:51.920 global warming, they'll all nod along so as not to seem unfashionable. But no one brings up global

00:12:57.220 warming unprompted. That's not a normal thing people worry about. Even liberal MPs in Ontario say no one

00:13:03.820 cares. And they're begging Catherine McKenna to give it a rest. They actually say that the economy

00:13:09.760 and unlimited immigration are the two top issues. So you would think that fighting back on global

00:13:16.380 warming, especially the carbon tax, would be a good issue for the conservatives. I mean, no global

00:13:21.640 warming fanatic would ever consider voting Tory to begin with. So why not irritate them a little bit,

00:13:29.740 but win over the countless Canadians who either don't care or are actually sick of these jet 0.96

00:13:35.680 setting hypocrites telling us how much they care about reducing your carbon footprint, but we have 0.96

00:13:41.400 to pay more from their private jets. They tell us how much they care. How about speaking out with 1.00

00:13:45.480 some courage about the hypocrites? It worked for Doug Ford, didn't it? It just worked in Australia 0.98

00:13:50.700 where the conservative leaning party, ironically called the Liberals, the anti-carbon tax party came from

00:13:55.780 behind on one. That's why the liberal leader in New Brunswick, Kevin Vickers, is excited by Lisa

00:14:01.800 Raitt's collapse here. But my point is, whenever you blink like this, whenever you score a goal in

00:14:09.360 your own net, whenever you give up an unforced error, whenever you give something away to your

00:14:13.780 political opponents for free and renounce yourself, denounce yourself, denounce everyone who is on your team

00:14:20.480 and who hasn't yet caved in in the same humiliating way, what you do is you demoralize your base

00:14:26.440 and you thrill your opponents. Read her tweet again. Look at this. Well, I've learned my lesson

00:14:33.560 in tweeting anything about climate change. Huh. I'm going to be transparent and let you know I'm

00:14:37.720 deleting the earlier tweets. I'm not the one to fight with on this. As in fight with my colleagues or

00:14:44.820 any losers out there still holding the line. I'm not the one to fight with on this. Because like

00:14:52.380 most, I believe the emissions cause climate change and we should reduce emissions. Okay. So anyone who

00:14:59.220 hasn't caved in is now the enemy. So Lisa Raitt says she's learned her lesson. And this will be put in

00:15:07.360 the face of any conservative MP across the country, including from Alberta, of course. And what are they

00:15:11.600 going to do? Contradict publicly the deputy leader? Oh, don't talk to me about it. Why don't you talk

00:15:16.820 to those Alberta MPs? Yeah, don't fight with me. And you're an Alberta MP. You're going to contradict

00:15:21.300 your deputy leader? Have you learned your lesson yet? Why are you still saying what Lisa Raitt has

00:15:27.080 disavowed? Do you believe? I mean, believe like a belief system, like a faith, like a religion. Do you

00:15:34.460 believe in your heart that emissions cause climate change? You need to believe people. This isn't science

00:15:41.080 anymore. How deep is your belief? Will you renounce the evidence of your lying eyes that arson is

00:15:49.060 caused by people and that it's always been warm in the winter, warm in the summer? Will you renounce

00:15:53.840 what your lying eyes tell you? And we'll go with your belief, like Lisa Raitt has gone with her belief

00:15:58.580 here. Yeah, not a way to win an election. But really no different than the conservative party losing

00:16:05.100 their nerve on half a dozen other issues recently, including free speech, which they no longer seem to be

00:16:10.340 concerned about based on their conduct in recent weeks. And all of this losing, all this surrendering

00:16:16.280 before the election campaign even begins. Stay with us for more.

00:16:22.080 The intensity of this four months is quite unprecedented for a bill proposed by the government to have this

00:16:43.540 intensity of discussion. So I would say that while we will continue to do the communication and

00:16:50.920 explanation, there is very little merit to be gained to delay the bill. It will just cause

00:16:57.520 more anxiety and divisiveness in society.

00:17:00.800 In what some are calling the largest protests ever in Hong Kong, by some reports, more than one

00:17:23.320 million citizens taking to the streets out of a total population of just seven and a half million to have

00:17:29.800 one million adults out. I've never heard of a protest so large. But as you can see, Carrie Lam,

00:17:36.020 the chief executive of Hong Kong, seems dead set on plowing forward with a bill, a bill, a law if it's

00:17:43.980 enacted that would allow the extradition of people from Hong Kong to mainland communist China, which would,

00:17:52.360 of course, put the liberties of Hong Kong at even greater risk than they are now. Well, there's one man who

00:17:57.900 knows more about this subject than anyone else I know. In fact, he wrote the book called The Coming

00:18:03.480 Collapse of China. His name is Gordon Chang. You can follow him on Twitter at Gordon G Chang. And he joins us 0.70

00:18:11.160 now via Skype. Gordon, great to see you again. What do you make of these protests? They looked enormous.

00:18:16.660 I can't believe literally one seventh of the population. That's got to be like a quarter of

00:18:22.680 the adults in that in that city came out to protest. That's amazing. It is amazing. And it was whole

00:18:29.340 families and people who have never protested before. People did this because there's a thought that this

00:18:35.420 is really Hong Kong's last stand. Beijing had promised autonomy for Hong Kong for 50 years, starting in

00:18:42.300 1997, when the city was handed back, as they say, from Britain to China. And really right now, what

00:18:51.360 we're seeing are people just understanding that if they don't take a stand, then clearly Beijing will

00:18:58.740 just control the city completely. Carrie Lam, the chief executive, says she's doing this on her own,

00:19:04.580 not on instructions from Beijing. But that's not to be believed. So right now, we're in a little bit

00:19:11.620 of a standoff. Carrie Lam has the votes in LegCo, the legislature, to be able to push this through. 1.00

00:19:18.320 We'll just find out what the people of Hong Kong are made of and what they're going to do next.

00:19:23.060 Yeah. I mean, I remember back in 1997, when the handover from the United Kingdom to China happened,

00:19:29.280 and it was a very Canadian story, Gordon, because a lot of Hong Kong citizens were granted Canadian

00:19:36.100 passports as sort of a safety valve. The promise was, if I recall the motto, one country, two systems.

00:19:44.140 And that meant a different economic system. And everyone thinks of Hong Kong as perhaps the most

00:19:49.580 capitalistic place in the world. Well, the rest of China's caught up a bit on the capitalism side. But 0.85

00:19:54.660 the more important system was the rule of law, the independent judiciary, the freedoms. I think that

00:20:01.760 China's becoming more capitalist, but they're trying to make Hong Kong less civilly free. 0.74

00:20:07.100 What do you think happened to one country, two systems?

00:20:10.220 Well, one country, two systems is in real danger. Because in China itself, you have Xi Jinping,

00:20:15.920 the ruler, really believing in a state-dominated economy. So he's pushing China back to something

00:20:21.440 that Mao Zedong would be more familiar with. Also, you know, we speak of China being authoritarian,

00:20:27.380 but it's really becoming semi-totalitarian and probably on its road to full totalitarianism with

00:20:34.840 the social credit system, with much more censorship, with all the rest of it. So China is moving in

00:20:41.180 directions that no one except Xi Jinping really wants to see. At this particular time, you know,

00:20:48.280 as businesses look at Hong Kong and the business community, it's not just dissidents who are against

00:20:53.540 the extradition bill. It's also businesses, because they realize that they're at risk as well.

00:20:58.580 I think that we could see some of them actually go return to the United States, for instance,

00:21:05.500 in the financial sector, but also, you know, regional headquarters going to Singapore, maybe Taipei,

00:21:12.580 Tokyo, because businesses understand that they just cannot live in an environment where you've got

00:21:19.400 Beijing being able to pick people off the streets of Hong Kong.

00:21:23.520 Yeah, it's incredible. I mean, Hong Kong is such an amazing city. I know you surely know it intimately.

00:21:29.660 Last time I was there, I remember landing at the airport, and there were all these signs

00:21:33.360 against corruption. And I thought, this is one of the ways Hong Kong, and this is my amateur analysis,

00:21:41.000 I thought, this is one of the ways Hong Kong is trying to distinguish itself from mainland corrupt 0.53

00:21:45.920 communist China. They're trying to say, we're not like them. We are clean, rule of law, independent

00:21:52.020 courts. At least, like, there was interesting pro-freedom, pro-rule of law posters at the airport.

00:21:59.300 I just have never seen that sort of thing before. And you're right, it's, yes, of course, freedom.

00:22:05.380 But all that money, all those Wheeler dealers, all that regional trading stuff,

00:22:10.300 that can't happen without freedom, too. So it's not just personal freedoms, it's economic freedom.

00:22:17.660 The whole miracle of Hong Kong is at risk here. Am I being too melodramatic? I mean, it's just such

00:22:23.620 an amazing city. Would Xi Jinping kill the goose that lays the golden egg? Like, it's the most amazing

00:22:30.260 city in the world, really, on par with a London or a New York, but in its own way. Would they kill it? 0.86

00:22:37.760 I think Xi Jinping actually would. I mean, he doesn't want to, of course. But for him, 0.53

00:22:44.060 control is more important than anything else. So he will kill off Hong Kong if he needs to do that 0.99

00:22:50.600 in order to control it. You know, I was there just a couple of weeks ago with my wife, Lydia.

00:22:56.240 And, you know, everything that you just said about Hong Kong is certainly true. And there really is,

00:23:01.900 you know, there, the fear that things are going to go very bad, badly, if the extradition bill goes

00:23:07.400 through. You know, we talk about what happened on Sunday. But if we go back to April, there was,

00:23:13.200 you know, the organizers of these events were thinking, well, they couldn't really get anybody

00:23:17.940 out on the streets for this. But they actually held a demonstration, and they got 130,000 people

00:23:24.380 onto the streets in April. And that's why they decided to go ahead with yesterday's event. And,

00:23:30.560 you know, even though people were expecting a big crowd, nobody expected, you know, more than a

00:23:36.100 million people. The organizers say 1,030,000 people showed up. That is just astounding.

00:23:42.900 Yeah. Well, I have a question for you. I remember a few years back, first of all,

00:23:47.920 it's quite something to watch a protest of a million people in Hong Kong. The, I'm not going

00:23:52.800 to say politeness, but the orderliness, and there were no riots, there was no, I mean,

00:23:58.320 I understand there's a handful of arrests, but you have a million people, you're going to have

00:24:01.440 anything happen anyway. Just, I've never seen such a law abiding, unified, like talk about a

00:24:07.800 sense of harmony and communal identity. It was quite amazing to me to see that. I don't think

00:24:13.060 you could have a million people in Washington, DC or Paris, France in such an orderly way. In fact,

00:24:18.340 we know you can't. What happened the last time with the umbrella protests? And, and could it,

00:24:25.040 could they win? Like, could they make Carrie Lam blink? Well, that's a great question. And if you

00:24:33.120 go back to 2003, which is sort of the analog, where the government, Tung Chi Wah, who was chief

00:24:39.280 executive at the time, wanted to push through what's called article 23 legislation or national

00:24:45.120 security law. And he couldn't do it because in LegCo, the legislative council, you had a group of sort

00:24:53.960 of legislators in the middle who decided to defect from the government and side with the Democrats.

00:25:00.560 This time, that's probably not going to happen. But, you know, when you have a million people in

00:25:06.860 the streets, anything can happen. And so I tend to have a little bit of optimism, but, you know,

00:25:14.700 when you count votes in LegCo, it doesn't look good. And so most people suspect that the extradition

00:25:20.840 bill will go through before the current legislative session is over next month.

00:25:26.060 Wow. It sure is happening quickly. If you, I mean, that's measured in weeks. Sounds like it.

00:25:32.960 I've seen news lately about how Hong Kong's, when you mentioned Singapore, Hong Kong's woes could

00:25:40.480 become an economic benefit to other regional capitals. You mentioned some of them. Of course,

00:25:45.780 there's the people themselves, like the ordinary rank and file Hong Kongers. I don't, I mean, 0.99

00:25:52.160 I don't think Singapore could take a hundred thousand people from Hong Kong. I don't know.

00:25:56.020 Maybe they would. Is any of this related in some way to Donald Trump and his trade battle with China?

00:26:04.220 I'm not trying to make a stretch here. I'm just saying, is that adding pressure to Xi Jinping?

00:26:08.920 Is that part of this? I'm just so curious because things are happening between China and America

00:26:15.200 that we haven't seen in decades. Yeah, that's, that's a great question. You know, I tend to think

00:26:21.200 that, you know, certainly President Trump is pressing the Chinese on trade and intellectual property

00:26:26.540 theft. And that, those are different issues, of course. But for Xi Jinping right now, you got to

00:26:32.120 remember the guys in battle. He's not only got Trump pressing him. And in senior circles in Beijing,

00:26:40.300 the question's being asked, like, who lost America? And the answer, of course, is Xi Jinping.

00:26:46.100 And all, because Xi Jinping is so powerful, he has taken responsibility from senior leaders. It's no

00:26:52.340 longer a consensual system. So that means he is really nobody else to blame for the problems with

00:26:57.520 the United States. Well, you add on to this, it's his policies that are causing the reaction in Hong

00:27:03.100 Kong. So this is something else for people to blame Xi Jinping for. And, you know, you have restiveness

00:27:09.700 around the center, the periphery of China. So, you know, I think that Xi Jinping at this particular

00:27:17.100 moment does not need another crisis on his agenda. And he's getting one.

00:27:22.960 You know, I got to tell you, Gordon, I have an emotional reaction when I see a million people

00:27:27.360 standing up for liberty, because I wish that we in North America were not as complacent. Maybe we're

00:27:33.960 not in the same jeopardy. But to see a million people united in purpose, and we see the police

00:27:39.100 pushing some young men and women around here, I'm showing this on the screen as we talk, Gordon,

00:27:44.000 I really feel affectionate towards them, because, of course, they've learned from the lack of it.

00:27:50.800 And they've learned from observing their neighbors in the rest of mainland China,

00:27:53.640 the heavy price of not having freedom. Of course, Tiananmen Square would be still deep in their

00:27:59.300 memory, even though it's been decades now. I don't know. Is anyone coming to their aid?

00:28:04.780 I see Chris Patton, the last British governor, has weighed in a little bit. I don't know how much

00:28:11.260 moral authority has. Have foreign leaders spoken out? I don't see anything yet from Justin Trudeau or

00:28:17.080 Chrystia Freeland of our country. Has anyone from the State Department speak? Has the Queen? I think

00:28:22.000 there's still affection in Hong Kong for the British years. Has there been any moral support

00:28:28.120 from around the world for these one million brave protesters? There is moral support on the extradition

00:28:35.020 bill. And clearly, there's one country that does have a direct interest, and that is Britain,

00:28:40.360 because of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration. It does give Britain some rights to comment on this.

00:28:47.140 Now, Beijing says that the Sino-British declaration is of no force. But this is another example of

00:28:53.680 Beijing signing an agreement and then repudiating its own obligations. But clearly, Britain needs to

00:29:00.880 speak out more forthrightly. The United States, of course, needs to do that. And yes, Trudeau would be

00:29:06.440 good to do that, because I know that Canada is involved in the Meng Wanzhou-Huawei extradition matter.

00:29:12.820 But, you know, right now, I think Canadians have to understand that they're in a long-term struggle

00:29:18.860 with China. There's no appeasing Xi Jinping. And this is a match for the rest of the world where we

00:29:25.580 just don't have the choice of losing, because this is where he's attacks our societies. So we're all very

00:29:32.080 much got an interest with the people in Hong Kong. Yeah. You know, I know it'll never happen, but I have this

00:29:38.300 secret wish, the Queen Elizabeth, who has spent so much of her life as the monarch of Hong Kong. I just

00:29:44.320 have a wish that she would, in a quiet, dignified way, indicate her support, which I'm sure she feels

00:29:49.940 for the citizens of Hong Kong. And of course, Donald the Strong, which is one of the nicknames they have

00:29:56.080 in Beijing for Donald Trump. Those two people, just through some moral suasion, I think that their help

00:30:01.880 is needed now. Who knows? Maybe if we tweet this interview to the president, he might retweet it.

00:30:07.760 There's always a hope for that, Gordon. Well, thanks, Ezra. That's a great suggestion. I mean,

00:30:13.380 we do need to talk to our leaders to draw the connections between the common interests that we

00:30:19.280 have as victims of China, and of course, the people in Hong Kong who are directly affected,

00:30:25.540 you know, this very day. Yeah. Well, our hearts are with them. I thank you for bringing some of the

00:30:31.760 background, the history, and the politics behind it. Gordon, we always rely on you because I know of

00:30:37.740 no one who is as better briefed, as well briefed on you, and who cares about freedom in China as you

00:30:44.160 do. I'm in your debt. It's great to see you again. Let me just give one more shout out to your book,

00:30:49.320 very prescient, called The Coming Collapse of China. And we'll have a link to Amazon in the

00:30:56.900 description if folks want to get that. And of course, people can follow you at Gordon G. Chang on Twitter.

00:31:02.060 Great to see you, my friend. Thanks for taking the time.

00:31:03.900 Thanks so much, Ezra.

00:31:05.700 All right. There you have it. Well, we'll keep an eye on that situation

00:31:08.320 in the weeks ahead. Sounds like it'll move quite quickly. Stay with us. More ahead on The Rebel.

00:31:23.480 Hey, welcome back on my monologue Friday about YouTube demonetizing and silencing thousands of

00:31:28.780 independent content creators, including Stephen Crowder. David writes, Carlos Maza planned this and

00:31:34.240 YouTube just needed an excuse. Oh, absolutely. And by the way, Carlos Maza, a writer for Vox,

00:31:41.940 formerly a Democrat activist at Media Matters, he didn't do this on his own. Don't tell me a company

00:31:47.640 owned by Comcast does this kind of corporate meddling. Let's a junior staffer do this kind

00:31:55.620 of corporate meddling on his own. He's a savvy, experienced writer, absolutely operating with

00:32:03.120 the approval of his managers. You don't go after a rival company. You don't go after YouTube with

00:32:08.440 the approval of Comcast high ups. Don't kid yourself. John writes,

00:32:13.100 Haven't thought a lot about corporate censorship. Sounds like Comcast is a big player in the

00:32:17.920 censorship of conservative thought. Yeah, well, I was just pointing out that Comcast is huge. I think

00:32:22.240 it's like the second largest media company in America. But it's no different up here.

00:32:28.580 Rogers and all the other telcos, they're happy to have a cozy oligopoly, a handful of tycoons,

00:32:35.840 lots of corporate cronyism, corporate, you know, links. There's no true independent

00:32:42.120 telecommunications companies in Canada. They're so heavily regulated. Their cell phone business,

00:32:47.760 their cable business, that if they also happen to own content journalism, don't think for one second

00:32:53.840 they wouldn't throw that journalism under the bus to get a better deal for a cable rate or a cell phone

00:32:59.580 rate. Through the cell phone and cable regulation of Canadian media companies, every word they say is

00:33:06.540 regulated too. And that's before you even introduce the $600 million bailout. Bruce writes,

00:33:13.120 Ezra's monologue and David's videos show that we really are headed, heading towards the UK's condition.

00:33:19.380 I know you're talking about a variety of things regarding censorship, the politicization of police,

00:33:24.200 and frankly, even Islam. I've been thinking about that viral video David did at the Al-Quds Day

00:33:29.640 March. That's the artificial Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran holiday that is in Toronto and cities around

00:33:37.700 the world. You saw that guy. I think he was from Pakistan, judging from the accent. And he was saying,

00:33:43.400 yeah, absolutely, Sharia law would kill gays. And David said, do you want Sharia law? I said, 0.98

00:33:47.900 it's not even do I want it. It's coming. We're going to be a majority in 2060. It's coming. And 1.00

00:33:52.540 absolutely, that's the punishment for being gay. That was fine. Police were right there. No problem 0.99

00:34:00.520 with it. Compare that light touch to police investigating any politically incorrect comment

00:34:08.360 on the right that doesn't even come close to that kind of threat of violence. So yeah,

00:34:13.000 the kind of political selective policing you see in the UK, I believe it's coming here. I believe it's

00:34:18.740 already got a toehold here, and I think it's only going to get worse. Well, folks, that's the show

00:34:24.100 for today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home,

00:34:28.560 good night, and keep fighting for freedom while you still can.

Rebel News Podcast - June 11, 2019

Conservative Party “has lost its nerve,” this time caving to left-wing mob on global warming

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