Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Did you know there are still 423 people in Toronto city government alone working on the Covid file？

00:00:00.320 Hello, my friends. A couple of things I want to tell you about today, including the number

00:00:05.400 of bureaucrats still working on the COVID-19 file in governments across this country.

00:00:10.840 Thousands. What are they doing, by the way? I'll tell you the news out of Toronto.

00:00:16.500 I'll also talk to my friend Alan Bokhari about Elon Musk on Twitter. That's ahead,

00:00:22.120 but first let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus. That's the paywall version

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00:01:06.340 because we've got to make payroll around here. All right, here's today's show.

00:01:09.180 Tonight, did you know there are still 423 people in Toronto city government alone

00:01:30.640 working on the COVID file? It's November 3rd and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:01:35.820 I shouldn't be surprised by things anymore. I mean, I'm half a century old and is there really

00:01:56.720 anything new under the sun? I mean, come on. But this story surprised me. Toronto Public Health

00:02:03.400 wants to cut $9 million, 423 jobs from COVID-19 response. So that's just the city of Toronto.

00:02:12.800 One city in this whole country. And it's just Toronto Public Health. That's a public health

00:02:17.780 agency. That's not a hospital or a clinic. It's just bureaucrats. The busybodies, the city level

00:02:24.720 Theresa Tams and Anthony Fauci's. Every city in Canada has a public health agency and a public

00:02:30.740 health officer. And every province does and every regional health authority or whatever it's called

00:02:35.400 in your province. It's incredible, the number. Oh, and they are handsomely paid. I should remind you,

00:02:42.140 Theresa Tam alone makes a third of a million dollars a year. She doesn't have any patients. 1.00

00:02:47.920 She does not do medicine. It makes me laugh when people like her are called top doctors.

00:02:53.380 How are they the top doctor? Maybe in salary, but maybe in political power, but they're not actual

00:03:01.860 top doctors. The powerful, unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, that's for sure. They were never

00:03:08.580 elected to do anything. They have uniformly exceeded their legal authority. And Toronto alone had 423 of

00:03:15.820 them. But how are they in the top in anything? They're not the best in their field. Still, to this day,

00:03:21.300 there's 423 of these COVID bureaucrats, actually to be, to be more precise, that's just the number

00:03:28.400 that they're proposing to cut back. They're not cutting back to zero. Here, I'll read from the

00:03:34.100 actual story. Toronto Public Health wants to cut more than $9 million from its COVID-19 funding

00:03:39.660 and over 400 jobs next year as it transitions away from its heightened response at the peak of the

00:03:45.640 pandemic. Yeah, that's been over for a couple of years, folks. The city's health agency submitted its

00:03:50.860 2023 operating budget to the Board of Health Committee for consideration last week and is

00:03:55.500 proposing an overall budget of over $369 million and 2,309.9 positions. The budget is an overall

00:04:06.520 decrease of $1.2 million and 423.9 positions lower than the 2022 approved operating budget. So they still

00:04:15.440 have 2,309.9 positions. I'm not sure what the 0.9 position means, but still more than 2,300. These

00:04:23.600 are not doctors actually doing doctoring. They're bureaucrats. They're just cutting a small slice of

00:04:29.880 them. This line made me chuckle. It is not clear what the reduction in COVID-19 funding will impact.

00:04:38.100 Exactly. I mean, you know that even the professional scaremongers are no longer pretending that we're in a

00:04:44.520 pandemic, right? I mean, you know that, right? The chief grifter, Teresa Tam, she switched to global warming

00:04:50.480 fear-mongering months ago. This is back in April, I think. Climate change is affecting our health today

00:04:57.280 and will continue to do so in the future. Its impacts are broad and can range from heat waves to disruptions

00:05:03.140 to our food systems. Together, let's take daily actionable steps and invest in our planet, Earth Day.

00:05:09.200 She knows that no one believes the pandemic hype anymore other than the 2,309.9 people in Toronto

00:05:16.820 who are paid to gin up fear. So there's obviously no shortage of money. A third of a billion dollars

00:05:23.160 for bureaucrats at the city level in Toronto alone. Imagine what the total number is across Canada. But

00:05:28.100 let me show you another story about public health. What's the difference between public health, by the

00:05:33.040 way, and between actual medicine? Well, public health is another way of saying health politics.

00:05:39.440 Medicine is about helping a particular patient. It's private. It's between a doctor and a patient,

00:05:44.180 and no one else is involved. It's individualized care tailored to that person, their whole situation,

00:05:51.880 including mental and physical and their history. You get to know your doctor. He knows your story.

00:05:57.440 Public health is the opposite. It treats us all as interchangeable, like ants in an ant colony.

00:06:02.560 There's no privacy. You must disclose your information to the government. No personalized

00:06:07.620 care. You must all take the jab, no matter what. No freedom of choice. You could lose your job or

00:06:13.240 access to public life if you refuse to obey. What a disgrace it is. You know, look at this next story,

00:06:19.820 because it really, it's similar, and I'll explain the overlap. Canadian doctors encouraged to bring up

00:06:29.160 medically assisted death before their patients do. Oh, really? A guidance document produced by Canada's

00:06:37.160 providers of medically assisted death states that doctors have a professional obligation to bring up

00:06:43.340 made. Made. They use that word because it hides the meaning of what they're up to. Made.

00:06:48.540 Even spelling it out is politics. It's assisted suicide. It's euthanasia. It's culling the weak,

00:06:54.360 the old, the sick. It's not medicine. It's anti-medicine. It's anti-healthcare. It's public

00:07:00.080 health, not medicine. It's eugenics. It's the kind of thing that the Nazis did getting rid of 0.92

00:07:05.200 undesirables. I refer to the Nazis specifically and on purpose and not in an overheated way because it was 0.80

00:07:11.380 the Nazis who dressed up their radical racial and eugenics policies as public health. There were plenty 0.92

00:07:19.120 of doctors involved in their final solution. And after the Second World War, after the Holocaust,

00:07:24.260 there were the doctor's trials, the Nazi doctor trials, from which the West developed what was

00:07:28.960 called the Nuremberg Code, which were rules that limited what doctors could do to patients.

00:07:34.760 It involved informed consent. It was the moral and legal bulwark against the kind of atrocities

00:07:39.660 the Nazis had committed. It was expanding on the Hippocratic oath, do no harm. Do no harm. 0.87

00:07:45.020 That's the motto of doctors. Of course, we just detonated the Nuremberg Code and the concept of

00:07:51.480 informed consent during the pandemic, didn't we, with forced vaccines. Like I say, there's a big

00:07:55.520 difference between public health and actual medical care. I'll read some more from this latest story.

00:08:02.460 In most jurisdictions in the world with legalized euthanasia, doctors are explicitly prohibited or

00:08:08.460 strongly discouraged from raising assisted dying with a patient. The request must come from the

00:08:14.780 person. But a guidance document produced by Canada's providers of medically assisted death

00:08:20.980 states that doctors have a professional obligation to bring up MAID as an option when it's, quote,

00:08:26.540 medically relevant, and the person is likely eligible as part of the informed consent process.

00:08:31.800 But of course, just like Orwell called the propaganda ministry in the book of 1984, the ministry of

00:08:38.120 truth, and the war department was called the ministry of peace. You now have deaf doctors promoting 0.96

00:08:43.080 suicide in the name of public health. Who's promoting this? Who's behind this? I don't know.

00:08:49.060 Maybe it's one of the usual suspects like this guy.

00:08:51.620 It's an average of about five tons for everyone on the planet. And somehow we have to make changes

00:08:57.400 that will bring that down to zero. It's been constantly going up. It's only various economic

00:09:05.320 changes that have even flattened it at all. So we have to go from rapidly rising to falling and falling

00:09:11.840 all the way to zero. This equation has four factors, a little bit of multiplication. So you've got a thing

00:09:18.580 on the left, CO2, that you want to get to zero. And that's going to be based on the number of people,

00:09:23.900 the services each person's using on average, the energy on average for each service, and the CO2

00:09:31.980 being put out per unit of energy. So let's look at each one of these and see how we can get this

00:09:39.200 down to zero. Probably one of these numbers is going to have to get pretty near to zero.

00:09:44.840 That's back from high school algebra. But let's take a look. First, we've got population.

00:09:51.000 Now, the world today has 6.8 billion people. That's headed up to about 9 billion. Now, if we do

00:09:57.300 a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that

00:10:04.080 by perhaps 10 or 15 percent. Could be. He's always banging on about how there are too many people in

00:10:09.420 the world. We have to get rid of maybe a billion of them. Here's the chief eugenicist promoting this

00:10:15.380 suicide. Dr. Konia Trouton is a physician based on Vancouver Island. She has been involved in social

00:10:22.460 justice aspects of health care since medical school. Dr. Trouton is a founding member of the

00:10:28.360 Canadian Association of Maid Assessors and Providers and can used to be an active board member

00:10:33.840 promoting education to medical assistants in dying in Canada.

00:10:38.300 She would have fit right in in Germany in the 1930s. So many people needed coaxing towards 0.99

00:10:45.280 suicide, didn't they? Look at this logical pretzel. Not providing information about MAID in a timely 1.00

00:10:53.340 manner to someone who might be eligible can create harm, Trouton's group said. You see, it's positively

00:11:00.340 immoral not to tell someone they could kill themselves. And this is not theoretical. It is happening right

00:11:06.260 now. And why? Ideology, like anti-human extremists like Bill Gates. But of course, money. I mean,

00:11:13.560 treating someone who is sick, giving them actual medical care, especially if they're old, well,

00:11:17.380 that's just too costly. We need that money to hire more public health bureaucrats to tell us about 0.91

00:11:22.800 global warming or COVID-19, even though it's no longer 19, it's 2022. Look at this story just recently.

00:11:32.560 Another case of a sick Canadian offered death instead of treatment. This time, a veteran, 1.00

00:11:39.800 a veteran seeking help with PTSD and traumatic brain injury, was instead offered the prospect

00:11:46.560 of assisted death. Yeah, you bet. I mean, he's just a military veteran and you know how they are.

00:11:53.940 I was prepared to be killed in action. What I wasn't prepared for, Mr. Prime Minister,

00:12:00.420 is Canada turning its back on me?

00:12:08.860 So which veteran was it that you were talking about?

00:12:14.420 Thank you, sir. Thank you for your passion and your strength and being here today to share this

00:12:20.760 justifiable frustration and anger with me and with all of us here. Thank you for having the

00:12:27.640 courage to stand here and thank you for listening to my answer. On a couple of elements you brought

00:12:33.780 up. First of all, why are we still fighting against certain veterans groups in court? Because

00:12:41.620 they are asking for more than we are able to give right now. They are asking for more than we,

00:12:48.300 well, no. Hang on. You're asking. I think these two stories are linked. The public health 423 COVID

00:12:58.960 agents in Toronto and telling seniors and veterans just to kill themselves. I think they're linked.

00:13:05.680 I think it's because the government and the state is in charge of your medical care, not you and your

00:13:09.640 doctor anymore. Doctors were silenced during the pandemic. Anyone who dissented from big government

00:13:14.300 or big pharma was suspended if they were a doctor. Doctors are now agents of the state now. And

00:13:20.520 by the way, so is your body. They'll tell you what you can do with yourself and what you can't. And

00:13:25.920 they'll also helpfully tell you when they think it's more convenient and certainly more cost effective

00:13:31.680 for you just to kill yourself. I mean, it would be positively immoral and unethical for them not to.

00:13:40.140 So, stay with us for more.

00:13:54.260 Well, I'm addicted to Twitter, partly because it is the lifeblood of our company. Rebel News is a news

00:14:00.000 organization. Twitter is very useful for people in the news business. It's got a great search engine.

00:14:05.180 It's live status updates from around the world. It's also useful for politics and for sports and

00:14:11.200 for entertainment and even just for keeping in touch with your friends. But it has taken on

00:14:15.420 tremendous importance, which I think is why it is valued at more than $40 billion. The value is it can

00:14:23.660 shape and turn the national, international conversations, and it can move elections. We saw

00:14:31.200 that in 2020 when Twitter made the shocking decision to ban the New York Post, one of the oldest

00:14:36.740 newspapers in the United States, from tweeting about Hunter Biden's found laptop and the scandals

00:14:43.660 therein. Twitter put its thumb on the scale, and we later learned that through polling that a lot of

00:14:49.140 Americans would have voted differently in 2020 had they known. Well, Twitter is now out of the hands of its

00:14:55.100 former board, which curiously included a lot of people from the State Department and other

00:14:59.800 international politicians, which suggests they knew its true value was not financial, but rather

00:15:05.320 political. And it's now in the hands of Elon Musk, a man who is quirky, has some libertarian beliefs,

00:15:12.300 but also is exposed to communist China through his other company, Tesla. What will Elon Musk do? He says he

00:15:19.460 wants to make it more politically balanced, more politically diverse. He has said that he wants to

00:15:24.400 replace a woke ideology, which he calls a mind virus, with a set of censorship that is more in

00:15:31.280 accord with the law as opposed to radical PhD activists. So what is going to happen with Twitter?

00:15:38.460 I'm curious, because I care about the public query, and joining us now is someone who knows more than

00:15:42.880 most about this subject, our dear friend Alan Bocari, the senior tech editor at Breitbart.com. Alan,

00:15:47.920 great to see you. I didn't think it would happen. I thought for some way the deal would be scuppered,

00:15:53.680 but Elon Musk is now the chief twit, as he calls himself, of Twitter. I think it's incredible. I'm

00:16:00.380 very excited. Yeah, it happened very, very quickly, and there were so many ups and downs throughout the

00:16:05.660 process. You really couldn't know what was going to happen. You know, first Elon Musk made the offer

00:16:09.320 for Twitter, then he tried to withdraw it, and there was the court case, and then it all suddenly came to a

00:16:14.700 head at the end of last month. Sorry, go ahead.

00:16:21.060 So what he said is that he wants Twitter to go back to, he's compared, so his vision for content

00:16:29.080 moderation, he's compared it to movie ratings. You know, you can choose whether you want a mature

00:16:33.500 movie or a PG-13 movie, and that's really the way content moderation used to be done in Silicon

00:16:40.640 Valley with optional content filters like Google Safe Search with block buttons, all the choices in

00:16:47.860 the hands of users. And that only really changed after, in the mid-2010s, especially after the 2016

00:16:54.040 election. So what's being suggested is not particularly radical. It's just going back to

00:16:58.520 what's previously in the norm.

00:17:00.740 Yeah, and that's a great point. I mean, if you don't want to see a movie with sex and violence,

00:17:04.760 don't go to an R-rated movie or even an X-rated movie, it's almost moot these days because you

00:17:10.800 can truly find anything on the internet. I think there's some sense to Elon Musk when he says,

00:17:17.420 why should we be more censorious than the law of the land? I mean, why are these unnamed woke bureaucrats

00:17:26.060 at Twitter on their trust and safety department? Why are they wiser than the legislatures or the

00:17:33.380 police about what can or can't be said? I think there's something to that. But I see that Elon Musk

00:17:38.360 met with all these woke civil rights activists. I hate to even use that term because I don't think

00:17:43.720 they're about that anymore. And I'm worried that he's going to bend the knee to them. I'm worried that

00:17:49.040 he thinks if he doesn't play the game, they might try and destroy Twitter. They might try to have a

00:17:55.200 boycott of Twitter, an advertising boycott. They might try and get a ban from the Apple store or

00:18:01.580 the Android store. I think that Twitter is enormous and Elon Musk is clever, but it's not bigger than

00:18:08.600 the Borg. It's not bigger than the entire deep state, the entire big tech ecosystem. And he does

00:18:14.760 have to play by their rules to an extent, doesn't he? Yeah, that is the real challenge. There are lots

00:18:20.260 of pain points that can be used against Twitter. You mentioned advertisers. You know, that's a big

00:18:26.300 one. Almost all of Twitter's revenue comes from advertising. And I know, you know, there are plans

00:18:32.500 to, you know, Twitter did have this Twitter blue subscription service, but they didn't bring in much

00:18:37.900 revenue. And there's also plans to make the verified checkmark a paid service. You can pay to get

00:18:44.400 verified. Musk has been doing $20 and $8. But that will take a while. And then, you know, it's

00:18:51.560 questionable whether it would ever replace advertising revenue. And if it doesn't, then

00:18:55.580 that's going to be a way to pressure Twitter by having advertisers do their boycotts. The more

00:19:00.560 worrying thing you also mentioned is the app store censorship. Google and Apple control 99% of all

00:19:06.220 smartphone operating systems worldwide. So it's very easy for them to effectively exclude an app from

00:19:11.540 people's smartphones. And, you know, finally, there's, of course, web hosting, which, you know,

00:19:17.440 Amazon Web Services, Google, they control most of the web hosting market. And that's what got

00:19:23.360 Parler kicked offline. So there are many ways that you could take down Twitter.

00:19:27.700 Huh. I mean, Elon Musk was the world's richest man. I'm not sure if that's the case at this moment,

00:19:32.940 given the Tesla stock price. He has a certain charisma, or you could say anti-charisma to him. I mean,

00:19:39.780 he's, he's, he engages with people directly on Twitter, which is sort of startling for such a

00:19:44.680 public figure. I mean, he certainly is, is one in a billion. It, how much of this is sort of

00:19:54.220 performance art from a guy who, who has a quirky sense of humor? How much is a business plan, a guy

00:20:01.000 trying to get rich? And how much is someone trying to change the world? Like, I think there's elements

00:20:06.180 of all of them. Like, he's a quirky guy, and I love it. He obviously likes making money, even though

00:20:11.160 he, he personally doesn't live a lavish lifestyle, I don't think. And how much is his sort of utopian

00:20:17.400 belief in a place where everyone in the world can come to connect with each other? What, what do you

00:20:23.300 think is motivating him? Do you, do you know him at all? Have you ever met him?

00:20:27.200 Uh, no, I haven't. I've met people in his, in his orbit. I know people who have met him.

00:20:31.200 Uh, you know, that's, you know, that's, that's difficult to say. I mean, I'd say he keeps his

00:20:35.820 motivation pretty close to his chest. Uh, you know, even when he's talking to people, he trusts.

00:20:40.540 Um, but, uh, you know, one, one thing to consider is that a lot of, much of the, uh, the Musk empire

00:20:46.600 depends on retail investors. And, you know, he's really been at the forefront of this sort of retail

00:20:51.560 investing revolution, you know, the, the meme, the meme stocks, the, uh, uh, you know, Doe coin and all of

00:20:58.460 that. And, you know, that, that's, that's kind of like, uh, you know, we saw during the whole,

00:21:02.800 uh, um, uh, GameStop, AMC, Hullabaloo, uh, back in 2021, that, uh, uh, this is pretty

00:21:11.800 radically disrupted the system to have, you know, lots of people coming together to like, uh, to,

00:21:16.860 you know, do retail investing. And, you know, that's something that's been really beneficial

00:21:21.220 to Tesla. So I wonder if, you know, being in charge of a social media platform, you know,

00:21:24.800 there's a, there's a rational calculation behind that, that, uh, you know, much, if much of your

00:21:31.220 stock, your, uh, value depends on these retail investors and you might want to have a big social

00:21:35.840 media platform, but there's also the case that, you know, he did join the Republican party and

00:21:40.720 it's so obvious that social media is rigged in favor of the Democrats. So that might also be driving

00:21:46.940 it, uh, too. Yeah. Well, it, to, to see the outrage directed at him by the legacy media is quite

00:21:54.660 incredible. I mean, especially from the Washington post, which is owned by his tech rival, Jeff

00:22:00.260 Bezos. Like, it's just quite something to see these legacy media that are all owned by their

00:22:04.640 own oligarchs, whether it's Carlos Sleeman, the New York times or Jeff Bezos at the Washington

00:22:09.560 post to complain about a billionaire owning Twitter. It's, it's a bit rich. Um, what do you

00:22:17.580 make of what I said earlier about, uh, to use that phrase, the military industrial complex or the deep

00:22:23.060 state? When I looked at the old board of Twitter, I was shocked by the lack of tech experts, but the

00:22:30.820 ubiquity of former state department types, former CIA types. And I'm not saying this in a conspiracy

00:22:37.480 theory, speculative way. Like that's who they were. The people who were running Twitter, at least on the

00:22:43.280 board of Twitter had an expertise in geopolitics and military affairs. And, and I can't help but think

00:22:51.160 that that is really one of the real values of Twitter. That's certainly the, the subtext of

00:22:57.940 people who are complaining about Musk. Elon Musk is a skeptic on the war in Ukraine, for example. He

00:23:03.060 said that there ought to be a diplomatic solution, not just endless war that I think that should be a

00:23:08.920 mainstream position, but he was pilloried by the entire foreign policy establishment, including by

00:23:14.360 senior officials in Ukraine. Um, I, I really think that for a lot of important, powerful and rich

00:23:21.180 people, Twitter was about shaping attitudes around the world politically. And frankly, I think it was

00:23:27.500 an intelligence asset because just imagine tracking who said what to whom, who's going where it's got

00:23:35.240 GPS in it. So if you have, if you know the Twitter account of a political figure, you can physically

00:23:42.620 follow them. You can see what they look at. You can see their direct messages. Like it is a walking,

00:23:49.180 talking, moving intelligence agency. I think that's probably half the value of the thing, not just the

00:23:55.980 game, the source of news, the ad revenues. I think it's, I think it's a, a spy app of sort, just like

00:24:03.080 TikTok is for the Chinese. What do you think of that theory? A hundred percent. Social media 0.97

00:24:07.240 companies are intelligence assets for their, uh, for the country that the countries that produce

00:24:12.320 them. And social media companies have been an arm of American influence. That's why lots of, uh,

00:24:17.880 uh, nations that, you know, try and resist being in the American or NATO orbit often ban social media

00:24:23.880 companies, American social media companies. I know, uh, Russia has many other countries in the

00:24:29.200 Middle East have as well. Obviously China has too, because they see it as this, this arm of American

00:24:34.440 influence. I actually used to have a source at the state department on, in the Trump administration.

00:24:39.580 He said, uh, the deep state loved social media, free speech when it was helping them regime change,

00:24:45.920 say Libya or Egypt or helping, you know, whip up activism in Iran. But as soon as, uh, you know,

00:24:53.540 20, 25, as soon as Brexit and Donald Trump happened, they started to worry that free speech on social

00:24:58.680 media could mean, uh, they get regime changed. Um, and yeah, that's where you see that turning

00:25:04.400 point. Social media shifting from a, uh, user-led system of content moderation with block buttons

00:25:11.080 and optional, uh, maturity filters to this top down model where there's, where, uh, content filters

00:25:17.620 are imposed on everyone without any, uh, without any choice to opt out. Um, and again, like you said,

00:25:23.120 this is not really a conspiracy. There was a report recently in the intercept, mostly based on, uh,

00:25:30.880 public information, including some documents from lawsuits that showed the department of Homeland

00:25:35.200 Security did have regular meetings with Twitter and Facebook, uh, executives. Uh, they even had a

00:25:42.560 special portal that Facebook built for them that allowed them to flag content to be taken down or

00:25:48.200 labeled. So, uh, you know, Homeland Security, the anti-terrorism agency was working up with the

00:25:55.560 social media companies. And it gets even more sinister when you look at the kind of topics they

00:26:00.800 were focused on. They were, uh, you know, it wasn't just, uh, the things you'd expect. It was things like

00:26:07.460 racial justice, uh, topics like the Afghanistan withdrawal, like the Ukraine war. This, these were the

00:26:14.560 areas where they were looking to so-called misinformation. Mm-hmm. You know, it's funny

00:26:20.060 because, uh, you know, I go to the search bar of Twitter when I like to search things and they have

00:26:25.180 a list of suggested items, trending items. And every single time for me, one of them is the latest on

00:26:32.140 the war in Ukraine. I, I mean, I, I am somewhat interested in it, but it, but I think those are either 0.92

00:26:38.500 hand curated or they're sold as ads. And I keep thinking, who is selling me? Who's advertising the war

00:26:44.280 in Ukraine to me? Because literally every, no matter what else is trending, that war, and I'm,

00:26:50.300 I'm in Canada, you know, I, I really don't have a connection to Ukraine. I don't think Canada

00:26:54.660 does other than, you know, you know, Trudeau has the same narrative that other NATO leaders have,

00:27:00.980 but I, like, it's not close to Canada. It's not our neighbor. There are some Ukrainian Canadians,

00:27:05.880 of course, and so there's some historical ethnic ties, but it's very far away. And the fact that that

00:27:13.740 is pitched to me as hot news every single day, I feel like that war is being sold to me in an ad.

00:27:21.300 And I keep thinking bad is Twitter. It is a mind shaping machine that Elon Musk himself talks about

00:27:30.660 mind viruses. I think they're a thing. And I think that's Twitter's true value. It's not,

00:27:35.360 you know, the eight bucks a month or whatever it can make selling premium services. It's the people

00:27:41.960 for sale. I think that's what social media always has been. If you're not paying for it,

00:27:46.060 it's because you yourself are what's for sale. I mean, that's the obvious.

00:27:53.020 To, you know, newspapers and TV stations where they could just go to them and, you know, make them put,

00:28:00.340 you know, Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi on the head, on the front page every single day,

00:28:05.720 that people would actually care what's going on in these far-flung countries that don't have much to do

00:28:09.520 with America. And, you know, the modern day equivalent to that is the Facebook trending

00:28:15.200 topics. It is the Twitter trending topics. And, you know, we can remember, you know, it didn't

00:28:20.320 used to be the case. It used to be the case that what was in the trending bar on Twitter was hashtags,

00:28:26.080 what's popular on Twitter. And you just see slowly over time, they've replaced this with this top

00:28:31.680 down model where they're just feeding everyone the same kind of content, the stuff they want you to

00:28:37.420 care about, the stuff they want you to see. And, you know, like the number one thing right now is

00:28:41.960 Ukraine.

00:28:43.760 I want to ask you one more question. I appreciate your time, Alma. It's great to see you again.

00:28:48.380 One of the founders of Twitter, his name is Jack Dorsey, and he's an interesting character,

00:28:53.500 a little quirky, too. I think you have to be quirky or you become quirky when you're at that level

00:28:58.340 of life. He has a libertarian streak to him. And his successors certainly did not.

00:29:07.580 He justified, he tried to explain Twitter's decision to ban that Hunter Biden laptop story,

00:29:15.340 which I think really moved the 2020 election. He engaged with Elon Musk. I think he encouraged

00:29:23.400 Elon Musk to buy the company. I think he he doesn't like the way the company is going and he

00:29:28.380 had some vision to fix it. What what's his role? Is he going to be involved in the new Twitter? Does

00:29:35.240 he have another rival project? What do you think about Jack Dorsey? Do you think he's still relevant?

00:29:42.940 Well, I know he rolled over his stake into Twitter, so he still owns part of the company,

00:29:47.100 even though it's private under masks, as far as I know. He also just came out with what he's been

00:29:53.940 talking about for a very long time, even while he was at Twitter, he was working on this, which is

00:29:57.660 Blue Sky. Blue Sky is a decentralized protocol for social media. It essentially what it essentially

00:30:04.440 does is it allows, you know, it separates content from from clients. So, you know, it it gives

00:30:14.700 theoretically it gives users control over their content so they can take all of their, you know,

00:30:20.480 tweets, for example, if, you know, Twitter were to be using Blue Sky, you'd be able to take all of

00:30:24.700 your tweets and all your account info and just port it to another platform, if you like. And

00:30:29.180 that's something Dorsey has been talking about for a long time. I do think he generally believes

00:30:34.460 in decentralization. He generally believes in in free speech, who is just, you know, obviously a

00:30:40.560 total failure as CEO of Twitter in making sure in, you know, championing those principles. You know,

00:30:47.420 I know from sources inside the company, he tried to hold back the worst instincts of the trust and

00:30:52.860 safety department, trust and safety department being the the one that has always pushed censorship,

00:30:57.640 especially on the Vijaya Gad, who was head of trust and safety and is now gone. She was the first 0.98

00:31:03.280 people to be fired on the mask. But yeah, Dorsey does seem to believe in this stuff. He just wasn't

00:31:09.280 very good, I think, as CEO at actually implementing it. Well, I'm very interested in it, not just because

00:31:16.440 I'm an addict of Twitter, but and because it is the lifeblood of Rebel News, but because I see it as a

00:31:22.540 larger force affecting us. I mean, it tells you what is happening in the world. But but through their

00:31:29.280 own lens, and I think it shapes more minds than we care to think. Last word to you. Do you think

00:31:37.700 do you think that Twitter can become this this place that Elon Musk talks about where you do more

00:31:45.140 commerce, where everyone can find like like he has this utopian vision where it can be a home for

00:31:51.460 everyone and a real commercial hub to he compared it to the Chinese app WeChat, which I think he clearly

00:31:58.580 believes is superior. I think it probably is. Do you think he's going to succeed on the tech side,

00:32:03.360 I guess? Do you think what do you think this is going to work is what I'm saying?

00:32:07.940 Well, I know he's brought in dozens of people from from Tesla to help out with Twitter. That's a good

00:32:13.020 sign. It suggests they're going to be radical product overhauls, which is what Twitter really

00:32:17.240 needs. I mean, Twitter's product needs to be overhauled. It needs to be less dependent on advertising

00:32:22.600 revenue. And just needs to get better at generating revenue. And you know, which WeChat is a good

00:32:29.720 example of a successful app. I know he's talked about building the everything app. So you know,

00:32:35.860 maybe we'll see things like video as well. Certainly, there's something with

00:32:41.720 Facebook option, Facebook has a chat option, move beyond simply having a timeline of posts.

00:32:50.740 So maybe we'll see Twitter move in that direction, as well. The real thing I think will be, you know,

00:32:55.620 can you can you replace that ad revenue model that it's been dependent on for so long? That's

00:33:00.620 always been the main pressure point against social media platforms that that to attach to free speech.

00:33:07.440 Great to chat with you, my friend. Thanks very much. And keep up the great work at Breitbart.

00:33:12.000 Good to be on. All right, there you have it. Alan Bocari, senior tech editor. Stay with us more ahead.

00:33:28.600 Well, that's the show for today. You know, I was thinking to myself here, if you're not on Twitter,

00:33:32.300 you probably don't understand what all the kerfuffle is about. But Twitter really is the real

00:33:37.580 time national international conversation about a lot of things, sports and comedy and entertainment

00:33:44.940 for sure. But its value is on politics and geopolitics. And, you know, Facebook is fun for

00:33:50.900 sharing photos of your family with friends and getting updates. But Twitter is where all the

00:33:55.620 political leaders, the political staff, the journalists, the military goes to shape the world

00:34:01.140 and to have your own mind to be shaped. And I think that's the real battle. Elon Musk has taken

00:34:08.200 that away from the deep state and they either want him to bend the knee to them or they probably want

00:34:13.440 to destroy it. It'll be interesting to see how that goes. That's our show for today. I'm going to be in

00:34:18.560 Calgary in Lethbridge tomorrow doing a special report on a terrible prosecution of peaceful truckers from

00:34:26.660 the Coutts blockade. It's astonishing to me that they're still prosecuting these things. But I'll

00:34:31.460 tell you the details tomorrow. Until then, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters,

00:34:35.940 to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.

00:34:41.720 Bill C-11, the law concerning internet censorship, is coming to us faster than we think. And the

00:34:49.560 crackdown on people speaking their mind is already happening like the story I'm about to tell you.

00:34:55.960 To help us, visit stopthecensorship.ca and sign the petition. Elon Musk officially became

00:35:06.520 Twitter new owner on October 27th, a $44 billion acquisition. Many people were pleased to learn that

00:35:17.180 Twitter will become a platform for free speech. Despite this, there was concern by other people

00:35:25.180 that have benefit from all that censorship that Twitter will be fluted with misinformation and

00:35:33.880 disinformation. Well, Deirdre, there's growing concern about misinformation and hate speech on

00:35:39.780 Twitter since Elon Musk took over after reports of a spike in racist posts on the platform. On Sunday,

00:35:46.660 Musk himself spread misinformation. He tweeted out a link to an anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theory about the

00:35:54.020 attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband. He deleted the post, which fact-checkers called fake and defamatory,

00:36:00.100 but after it had drawn more than 86,000 likes and 24,000 retweets on the platform.

00:36:06.260 Early Friday morning, October 28th, 82 years old, Paul Pelosi, husband of Nancy Pelosi,

00:36:15.620 the Democratic head of Congress in the United States, was attacked on his property in San Francisco

00:36:23.780 with a hammer. The presumed suspect in this instance is David DePape. This tragedy has been the subject of

00:36:34.980 several Twitter interactions. First, in a tweet, Elon Musk replied to Hillary Clinton that

00:36:42.340 there is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meet the eyes. He linked a Santa

00:36:52.260 Monica Observer article which he withdrew. Many people then shouted at misinformation and conspiracy

00:37:01.620 theory. Matthew Goetz, in a series of 16 Twitter posts, described the situation of a far-right controversy,

00:37:12.980 spreading misinformation about this story. In response to Matthew Goetz, YouTuber Viva Fray made a

00:37:22.260 number of a number of points. One of the main publications say, a 16-tweet thread with himself

00:37:30.020 explaining everything that happened before police released body cam footage or disclosed where they

00:37:37.940 found the pap clothing. And Matthew Goetz accused others of conspiracy theory disinformation massive event

00:37:47.700 will generate massive discussion period. For this post, Viva Fray has received a warning of violating

00:37:55.940 Twitter rule. The platform request to remove the tweet and in addition, it was locked out of his

00:38:04.340 Twitter account for an indefinite period of time. Of course, Viva Fray refused to delete the post because

00:38:12.420 he proved the platform right, which he mistakenly believed. Viva Fray got back his account after 24 hours without

00:38:22.980 deleting the tweet and no explanation. But the question remained. Shutting down people who question the main story,

00:38:32.180 who make people think for themselves about the situation, can only raise concern about the legitimacy of the

00:38:41.780 the story by people. To learn more, let's join Viva Fray. Can you just explain a little

00:38:49.700 bit for the people who don't know what happened, what happened to you? Yeah, absolutely. So I presume

00:38:55.220 everybody knows what happened to Paul Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi's husband. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House,

00:39:01.220 third in line to the presidency of the United States of America. Her husband was, I won't say allegedly

00:39:08.260 attacked by all accounts, attacked by an intruder at two in the morning, Friday night. Apparently,

00:39:13.860 the intruder broke in at two o'clock in the morning. Unclear if he was in his underwear when he broke in

00:39:20.180 or if he got into his underwear after having allegedly broken in all sorts of questions. It's

00:39:25.460 been making the news left, right and center. I have been tweeting about it. I mean, I've been looking into it,

00:39:30.980 talking about it, covering it, trying to get the info. And yesterday, I respond to the tweet of an

00:39:37.620 individual named Matt Gertz, who works with Media Matters, which I didn't really appreciate at the

00:39:44.740 time. It's a left wing, I forget what that's called, a watchdog. It's called a watchdog. He put

00:39:49.940 out a tweet talking about Elon Musk's tweet, because Elon Musk is like high school gossip. Hillary Clinton

00:39:56.580 tweeted out, this attack on Paul Pelosi is the direct result of right wing extremism,

00:40:02.180 political rhetoric that motivates crazies to carry out their political retribution. Elon Musk,

00:40:09.300 in response to her tweet, says, it's not clear if it was a joke, if it was serious. He says,

00:40:14.260 there might be a tiny bit more to the story, and links to an article in a publication called the

00:40:19.620 Santa Monica Observer, which published an article written by, I forget the guy's name,

00:40:25.540 that this was a gay hookup gone wrong at two in the morning, that Nancy Pelosi's husband is known to be

00:40:34.180 of a certain nightlife, and that this was a hookup gone wrong. Then Elon Musk deletes the tweet and the

00:40:41.380 referenced article. It's not clear if Elon Musk knew that the author of that article and that publication,

00:40:47.700 yeah, they published conspiracy theories or fantasy or fan fiction. In 2016, the same author of that

00:40:53.540 article wrote a piece that Hillary Clinton died on September 11th, I don't know what date,

00:41:00.180 and that it's a body double in her place. So that type of news. So it's not clear if he was joking,

00:41:05.540 if he did it as a troll, or if he accidentally believed that Santa Monica Observer was a legit

00:41:11.300 source, but he deletes the tweet. And then this guy, Matt Gertz from Media Matters comes out in a 16

00:41:16.900 tweet thread with himself, and says, now there's going to be a ton of right wing conservatives that

00:41:22.180 are going to believe this baseless conspiracy, because Elon Musk tweeted it out. And then he goes

00:41:27.140 through like, it's a rant with himself. And so I responded to one of his tweets. And I said, yeah,

00:41:34.100 a total lefty in quotes. But yet you guys are blaming it on the right. Don't let facts get in the

00:41:40.020 way of a good narrative, because the guy by all accounts, is either left, right, total wacko,

00:41:44.100 who knows. I retweet one of his tweets, and then I retweet a third tweet. And this is the one that

00:41:49.940 got me locked out. And it basically says, an individual engages in a 16 tweet thread with

00:41:57.300 himself. What did I say? You know, presumes to know all the answers. And I, you know, before the

00:42:04.660 evidence is in before we've seen the body cam footage before we know what happened to the

00:42:08.020 attacker's clothing. And he calls other people conspiracy theorists. Within 30 seconds to a

00:42:13.700 minute of that tweet, I'm locked out of my Twitter accounts, as I have, what time is it now, almost

00:42:18.740 for 24 hours. So I don't know what it was about the tweet, because it's an innocuous, factually

00:42:24.580 correct, nothing of a tweet. I don't know what happened. You know, I get the email from Twitter saying,

00:42:31.300 delete it, if you want to get back in, but deleting it is an acknowledgement that you broke the

00:42:36.100 rules. And I'm like, F you, you didn't even tell me what rule I broke yet. So I've contested it.

00:42:41.380 We'll see what happens. No news yet. But I hear hashtag free Viva Fry might be, you know,

00:42:46.900 on Twitter somewhere. Well, I'll tell them this. If that got flagged, that tweet, because it promoted

00:42:52.660 misinformation and conspiracy theories, it didn't. But whatever. Well, what do you think silencing a

00:42:59.540 voice? And I will say I'm a reasonable voice. What does anyone think silencing a voice is going

00:43:06.020 to do? It's going to make people question this even more. You know, there's a thing called the

00:43:09.620 Streisand effect. If they didn't hear about it, I mean, I don't know who has not heard about the

00:43:13.940 Streisand effect in modern day social media. That tweet didn't get me in trouble. It was only the one,

00:43:20.500 you might be able to find it, but it was only the one where I referred to the 16 tweet thread

00:43:24.340 with himself. But it's nuts. It's just weird. You know, you said Elon Musk took over the company,

00:43:31.540 so there should be less censorship. He specified last week, nothing has changed. So it's not like

00:43:37.140 they've implemented or changed the algorithm. It's still the same old system. He hasn't made

00:43:43.620 any material changes yet. He hasn't brought back the banned accounts yet. So it's the same old Twitter,

00:43:50.100 just under new management until he implements changes. But, you know, I suspect that this tweet

00:43:56.660 was locked or got flagged. So there was a brigade and I don't know, 100, 200 people flagged the tweet.

00:44:02.660 Twitter does what it does like, oh, this tweet is generating a spike. We don't know what it is.

00:44:06.820 We're going to, we're going to lock the account and see. I suspect that's what happened, but I don't

00:44:10.500 know yet. As of the time of this interview, I haven't gotten a word from Twitter, you know, just,

00:44:16.260 but this is just going to make more people aware of the problem. It's going to make more people aware

00:44:20.820 of my Twitter feed. They're going to undo this because there's nothing in the tweet that can

00:44:24.660 possibly justify it. And in, in having done what they've done, they're going to have amplified

00:44:30.260 everything, everything that they wanted presumably to suppress through this action. People create the

00:44:35.700 conspiracy theories because this is one of three things within variations, a random attack on Paul

00:44:42.020 Pelosi, a politically motivated attack on Paul Pelosi, in which case you still have to figure

00:44:46.660 out from which side it came, if any, or a personal thing with Paul Pelosi, but the immediate reflexive

00:44:53.860 attempt to politicize it and, and equate it or, or draw analogies, link it to January 6th. That's when

00:45:00.420 you get people saying, whoa, we haven't even seen the body cam footage from the cops. We don't know where

00:45:05.700 David DePop's clothing is. And yet people are definitively claiming this is right-wing radical rhetoric that

00:45:11.540 it motivated it and linking it to January 6th. That's going to cause people to become very,

00:45:15.620 very suspicious and think that somebody is maliciously politically weaponizing what might

00:45:22.180 otherwise have a, a political or even a personal matter explanation as relates to Paul Pelosi,

00:45:28.820 Nancy Pelosi and their lifestyle, but whatever. All that to say, the more people politicize it, 1.00

00:45:33.220 the more suspicious people are going to get, and the more, uh, conspiratorial they're going to get.

Rebel News Podcast - November 03, 2022

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Did you know there are still 423 people in Toronto city government alone working on the Covid file？

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