Rebel News Podcast - November 23, 2019


Meet the anti-oil lobbyist attacking fossil fuel and meat consumption in Canadian schools

Topics
Mentioned
Prosecuted for being rude: British Columbia's socialist government wants to ticket “hateful” behaviour Calgary academic apologizes, pays up after falsely calling a Rebel reporter a “Neo-Nazi”

Episode Stats


Length

42 minutes

Words per minute

164.31

Word count

7,013

Sentence count

579

Harmful content

Misogyny

10

sentences flagged

Toxicity

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

19

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Why are Alberta schools allowing an anti-oil lobbyist unfettered access to children? Why should others go to jail when you re the biggest carbon consumer in the world and you won t give them a chance to ask for forgiveness?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hello, my Rebels. Today, I talk about a curious case of a Greta wannabe. His name is Steve Lee,
00:00:06.140 and he's 26, so he's not 16, and he doesn't really have any charisma or passion or knowledge,
00:00:11.760 but he's a plugger. He plugs away, and he's going school to school scaring children about
00:00:17.060 global warming, and he's no dummy. His charity, quote-unquote, that he runs made $760,000 last
00:00:26.380 year. So my question is, how come schools are letting this propagandist in? I'll go through
00:00:32.640 the details and tell you more of who he is. Before I do, let me invite you to become a premium
00:00:36.940 subscriber. Go to premium.rebelnews.com, and you get access to the video version of this podcast,
00:00:45.120 which I like to think adds an extra wallop. That's premium.rebelnews.com. It's just $8 a month.
00:00:53.560 All right, here's the podcast.
00:00:56.380 Tonight, why are Alberta schools allowing an anti-oil lobbyist unfettered access to children?
00:01:16.440 Why are any schools? It's November 22nd, and this is The Ezra LeVant Show.
00:01:21.420 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
00:01:27.260 There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
00:01:31.320 The only thing I have to say to the government, the why I'm publishing, is because it's my bloody
00:01:36.200 right to do so.
00:01:42.280 I'm looking forward to Jason Kenney's oil and gas war room to be launched. I don't think it's
00:01:47.740 been launched yet. They've announced this budget, a whopping $30 million a year, and its boss,
00:01:53.900 a former journalist and political candidate named Tom Olson. So I'm hopeful, but I'm getting old,
00:01:59.700 and it's almost 2020, and there hasn't been a lot of wars fought by the war room yet. Wars have been
00:02:07.060 fought against the oil patch. Greta Thunberg, the child actor who has been weaponized by anti-oil
00:02:12.900 lobbyists. She came to Alberta, and other than our own Kian Bexty, who scrummed her here in Edmonton,
00:02:19.380 as you can see, really no one in the whole province pushed back against her. I think they were afraid
00:02:24.540 because she's young and that might look mean. Well, yeah, that's why she's so effective. She's young, but 1.00
00:02:32.440 she's just a sock pocket pet being controlled by others like a ventriloquist dummy. If you can't
00:02:38.960 even bring yourself to say that, you're not really fighting a war, are you? You're losing a war.
00:02:46.180 I hope the war room lives up to its name whenever it's launched, and I hope it can be the bad cop
00:02:51.160 to Premier Jason Kenney's good cop. You know what I mean by that, good cop, bad cop, that the war room
00:02:56.900 will be tougher, that it'll do things that might raise an eyebrow if it were to be done by the Premier
00:03:02.060 or a cabinet minister or even a bureaucrat instead. But if it were done by an arm's length war room,
00:03:07.300 would be excusable because that's at arm's length and that's what war room means. If it's just going
00:03:13.980 to be a tame and meek public affairs branch of the government, don't expect anything to come from it
00:03:20.480 other than $30 million going to more bureaucrats and ad agencies who will do more useless feel-good
00:03:26.700 ads about how you really shouldn't hate the pipelines, you guys, because you see it employs
00:03:31.980 female engineers or something. I mean, look, thanks for that, but that's not a war room. 1.00
00:03:37.100 That's not going to stop someone from hating the oil patch. A war room is the kind of thing that,
00:03:42.340 for example, does deep opposition research against anti-oil sands proponents.
00:03:47.580 So the kind of people who should have dug up Justin Trudeau's blackface videos when he first ran in 2015,
00:03:54.620 for example, that's what a war room should be doing. It doesn't just publish thoughtful op-eds in
00:03:59.960 the Globe and Mail. I mean, we've been trying that for four years of Rachel Notley and Justin Trudeau,
00:04:04.540 and a decade before that, a war room sues protesters who commit trespass or vandalism.
00:04:09.960 Just for one example, a war room challenges the charity status of charities that engage in illegal
00:04:15.980 behavior, for another example. A war room would ask Greta Thunberg's handlers why they're in Canada 0.87
00:04:23.120 during an election campaign, but not reporting their campaign expenditures to the elections
00:04:29.120 officer, like this. Will you be disclosing your finances, and will you be registering as a third
00:04:34.440 party operative? Will you be registering as a third party operative?
00:04:41.420 I mean, if I were running the war room and had 30 million bucks, I'd probably have spent 100 grand
00:04:50.740 running a short TV ad in front of every single YouTube video featuring Greta Thunberg. You know
00:04:57.280 that little skip now video that appears in front of YouTube vids? I'd probably spend 100 grand just
00:05:03.160 showing a clip of this. So when I was 11, I became ill. I fell into depression. I stopped talking,
00:05:12.220 and I stopped eating. In two months, I lost about 10 kilos of weight.
00:05:20.160 Later on, I was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, OCD, and selective mutism.
00:05:26.920 Yeah. I mean, you get 10 million people to see the truth about this mentally ill child actor being 0.99
00:05:32.280 abused by her handlers. They're going to react differently when her beauty pageant crazy mum 1.00
00:05:38.840 pushes her in front of a microphone. I mean, I'd probably spend 100 grand promoting 0.74
00:05:43.240 a videoclip about her pageant crazy mum. This one. 0.89
00:05:47.460 Now I'm going to go down and handle a little food. It's nothing strange at all. No, no, no. And it's not a
00:05:56.000 lot of assistants or so that people may think. No, no. Just me and my dancers. I handle just as normal people do.
00:06:06.020 Mmm, tacos and pizza. And I have no Russian kaviar here. It's not what people may think.
00:06:14.580 No, no, no. It's not a coincidence at all.
00:06:18.580 Yeah. That's how you do it war room style. The thing about life, though, is there's always
00:06:24.420 something else, isn't there? And so here comes a lame Greta wannabe. He's not that compelling,
00:06:32.500 to be honest. He doesn't have the crazy eyes. He doesn't have Greta's flair for the mentally ill
00:06:39.540 dramatic like this. How dare you? How dare you? This new guy is named Steve Lee. He's not
00:06:47.540 a 16 year old who looks 12 like Greta. He doesn't have her fake purity of, for example, only sailing
00:06:54.660 across the oceans. Steve Lee jets around endlessly. His name is Steve Lee and he's not even a child.
00:07:01.380 He's 26 years old, though he looks a little younger. And whereas crazy leftists are saying that
00:07:07.620 Greta has some mystical stature. Well, Steve actually says that about himself.
00:07:15.140 Here's his official biography. I love to administer justice and mercy,
00:07:21.460 and I invite others into the work of justice as well. I restore cynical, bitter, and ultimately
00:07:29.540 self-righteous hearts to loving, graceful, and indignant hearts. I try to live right and make
00:07:38.420 things right to uplift the human personality. Climate change is happening right now, mainly
00:07:43.220 caused by human activities, and we are the final generation who can solve it. Holy Messiah complex,
00:07:51.140 much you administer justice and mercy. I think that's what Jesus says, not some UN spokesmodel.
00:08:02.980 You make us graceful and loving. You try to change the human personality. We're in the
00:08:08.820 end of times. This is the final generation. Oh, just get over yourself. I guess maybe Steve's a little
00:08:17.220 bit crazy too, but in a different way. But here's the thing. Greta came for a few days to Alberta to do
00:08:23.780 some photo ops, and she was accompanied by her reality TV show producer. See, I bet most people
00:08:29.860 didn't even know that the whole Greta thing is a reality TV stunt. She's accompanied by her film crew. 1.00
00:08:36.020 Why didn't Albertans know that? I mean, we reported that here at the Rebel, but I didn't see it elsewhere.
00:08:40.180 Anyways, here's the news, and it's reported by the Edmonton Journal's David Staples.
00:08:44.740 Give him credit. The news is that Steve Lee is bringing his propaganda mission into Canadian
00:08:50.100 schools, school by school. He's going through the schools, having unfettered access to school children,
00:08:56.020 no parental consent, no other opinions to rebut him. He's crazy, and he's coming with the I'm here 0.96
00:09:04.020 to heal you with global warming semi-religious BS talk. It's being allowed into the schools. 0.99
00:09:10.020 Here's a story by David Staples. Oil and gas and cattle industries under fire at Canadian schools.
00:09:18.100 The Canadian oil and gas and cattle industries are under fire at schools across Canada. Climate
00:09:23.460 activist Steve Lee is taking aim at fossil fuel and meat consumption as part of his crusade to turn
00:09:29.220 students into fellow activists. Lee's crusade, known as the Three Percent Project, is funded in part by
00:09:35.140 green groups like Environmental Defense and Equitair, which are part of the ongoing campaign to landlock
00:09:40.020 Alberta oil, backed by major US foundations. Good for Staples. He says that Lee refuses to do an
00:09:47.460 interview with him, of course. So Staples publishes his interview questions to the world, questions he
00:09:53.620 would ask Lee if Lee could answer them. Here's some of them. Do you want to landlock the oil sands? Are you
00:09:59.940 aware that if we can't export Canadian oil, this will have no impact on climate change,
00:10:04.100 as world demand will be met by the United States, as well as by various dictatorships with atrocious
00:10:09.780 human and women's rights? Are you aware that fossil fuel use is the main driver that has pulled 0.99
00:10:15.620 billions of people out of poverty and into prosperity? You warn of a possible apocalypse and
00:10:21.380 have said that we burn greenhouse gases into the atmosphere so much that it's equivalent to
00:10:25.140 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs blowing up into the atmosphere every single day. That's an insane 0.59
00:10:31.380 amount of energy. Apocalypse? Hiroshima? Why use such fearsome and unrelated imagery to describe fossil
00:10:37.220 fuel use? Those are just a few of his questions. They're good points. But the bigger point is,
00:10:42.260 why is an anti-oil lobbyist, why is any lobbyist being given unfettered, unfiltered access to minor
00:10:49.620 children without parental consent? That's how Staples ends his column. He makes a really good point. He says,
00:10:55.220 in the end, some might well ask, why should Lee be granted any access to impressionable young minds
00:11:00.580 on our public schools? To that, I'd simply ask, isn't it best that young people be exposed to
00:11:05.060 many viewpoints on numerous topics? Of course, if Lee is given this platform at schools, there's a moral
00:11:11.060 and educational imperative to give equal access to resource and industry groups to present their case.
00:11:15.940 The most productive response here is to counter bad ideas and information with good ideas and better
00:11:20.340 information. Right, that's a good journalistic point of view. That's a pro-debate point of view.
00:11:25.940 David Staples knows his stuff. But again, where's the government here? Where's this 30 million
00:11:32.180 dollar war room? Because these are mainly government schools, right? So why is the government school that
00:11:39.380 is operating in loco parentis? That's the law speak. That's Latin for in the place of parents.
00:11:45.300 When you give your kid to a school, they have a fiduciary duty to take care of your kids in your
00:11:50.980 place. Why are schools letting in a lobbyist into these government schools and given access to your
00:11:56.420 kids? Is it because some local activist teacher or some teachers union is anti-oil and lets them in?
00:12:03.940 Well, they don't have constitutional control over the schools. The province does. The provincial
00:12:08.020 government. Jason Kenney as premier does. Isn't this something that a war room should fight against?
00:12:14.020 If you're having trouble understanding this, how would you feel if another kind of lobbyist wanted
00:12:18.500 to recruit young children to his cause in the schools on school time without parental consent?
00:12:24.260 How about a lobbyist for Exxon? How about a tobacco lobbyist? How about a foreign diplomat
00:12:29.380 lobbying, say, for Iran's dictatorship or Cuba? As in, why is a lobbyist allowed in at all?
00:12:36.820 Why doesn't Jason Kenney or his education minister simply ban such lobbyists? Especially weird,
00:12:42.500 know-nothing, working for the green lobby, UN lobbyists like this Steve Lee. Why don't you ban
00:12:47.940 them and tell any schools it's against policy to let them in? And then if they want government funding,
00:12:53.780 if they want independent management control by principals and superintendents,
00:12:58.260 they better abide by the rule. And if not, they'll be cut off or fired or replaced or whatever.
00:13:03.780 Why won't they do that? Because the CBC will squawk? So what? The CBC has had a registered
00:13:08.740 lobbyist, David Suzuki, on staff for decades. They're not one to talk. They should just
00:13:13.300 stay out of this one. They'd never give a show on the CBC for decades to a pro-oil lobbyist like they
00:13:18.820 did for Suzuki. And here's the facts about Steve Lee. He's a child actor in his own way, like Greta,
00:13:25.140 even though he's now 26. Listen to this crazy man tell kids that using oil and gas is like 0.65
00:13:31.220 detonating atomic bombs. That's what David Staples mentioned. Listen to this rambling, 0.93
00:13:35.940 fact-free rant. I'm going to let about two minutes roll so you see that I'm not taking it out of
00:13:40.020 context here. Take a look. When we consume at a rate that we're doing so now, we burn greenhouse
00:13:48.340 gases into the atmosphere so much that it's equivalent to 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs
00:13:56.740 blowing up into the atmosphere every single day. 400,000 atomic bombs every single day, 365 days a year.
00:14:06.980 That's an insane amount of energy. And our planet is protected by a surprisingly thin layer of atmosphere.
00:14:13.700 It's so thin that scientists say it's comparable to the skin of an apple. But it looks so vast from
00:14:19.140 our perspective looking up into the sky because it looks endless. But it isn't. But because our
00:14:25.380 perspective is different, we dump all the greenhouse gases with no responsibility. And when the greenhouse
00:14:32.180 gases go up, it thickens the atmosphere, it warms the atmosphere, so the temperature rises. When
00:14:38.100 temperature rises, we experience heat waves. Here in New York City, we're going through a bit of heat
00:14:43.540 wave. It's an inconvenience to us. But to people in India and Pakistan, this is a matter of life and
00:14:49.300 death. Last year alone, 1,200 Pakistanis died from the heat wave. So this year, they dug 2,500 graves in 0.96
00:14:56.660 advance. And every one of them found its owner. The heat waves really are an impediment to the global
00:15:03.700 agenda. And it's not just the heat waves. When the heat goes up, 90% of the heat goes into the ocean.
00:15:11.380 So the ocean temperature goes up. Then the ocean water evaporates. What goes up must come down. So all
00:15:18.260 this water that's going up needs to come down at some point. And all this comes down at the same time.
00:15:23.940 That's why you experience the downpours that are so great, the hurricanes. And those who came from the 1.00
00:15:29.540 Philippines, those who came from the East Coast of North America, we experience and understand the
00:15:35.220 power of the downpour that we experience. And we cannot afford those crises anymore. And we really
00:15:43.780 are the final generation who has a fighting chance to curb climate change, to avoid its most extreme
00:15:51.860 measures against us. We must take action on climate change.
00:15:58.340 Pure propaganda, no authorities cited whatsoever, made up stories, extreme analogies.
00:16:05.780 Hiroshima, the problem with Hiroshima wasn't the energy. It was the nuclear radiation. Imagine telling
00:16:11.220 children that it's like nuclear bombs detonating. Imagine letting such a freak show into a school. 0.86
00:16:19.220 Cool. He's such a strange one, this kid. Luckily, he has no charisma. He's not like Greta that way.
00:16:26.180 But you still give this kid one hour's unfiltered access to your children. Don't be surprised
00:16:32.580 if they start to mimic him. Now look at this next clip. I love this next clip. This is at a children's
00:16:38.260 meeting at the UN. So there are kids from other countries. They're mainly, obviously, from the Third World.
00:16:43.860 And they're poor. And some countries still have famines. But he's telling them to stop consuming so
00:16:54.180 much, to stop eating so much, especially meat. Seriously, take a look at them.
00:16:58.660 Anyone here from outside of North America?
00:17:03.140 All right. All right. Awesome. Yeah. So welcome. Welcome to this chamber. Happy International Youth Day.
00:17:10.660 Yeah, Steve. Those are kids from countries that don't have enough to eat. I don't think they need 1.00
00:17:19.220 to eat less, buddy. For their own health, they probably need more meat, not less.
00:17:25.860 Here he is hating steaks. I'm guessing he looks like he's eating his share. Oh, and I love that
00:17:32.340 all of this is while there's a plastic single-use water bottle on the table behind him. Look at the top
00:17:37.940 right of the screen. He's railing against that sort of thing. And he's got his water bottle right there.
00:17:42.980 Take a look. A pound of beef would require so much water that if you didn't take shower for six months,
00:17:50.580 you would have saved a pound of beef that takes the water to make. So really, to make an effective
00:17:57.860 change and really contribute to solving the problem itself, it's no-brainer that you reduce your meat
00:18:04.020 consumption, that you eat less meat. And it's not just the meat. When we are looking at all the
00:18:10.100 different products, whether it's the chocolate you buy or the plastic bottled water you buy,
00:18:15.140 every time you're buying something, you're saying that I care more about just what I'm buying.
00:18:21.780 I care about how it was made, how the workers were treated when it was made,
00:18:26.500 how it was delivered to me, and how it's going to be thrown away after I use it.
00:18:32.500 So who is this guy? This fact-free, weird messiah complex, Greta Knockoff, who's coming up on 30.
00:18:43.300 Oh, he's not a scientist. He has a bachelor's degree in global health. That's what his LinkedIn page says.
00:18:52.100 And that's it, actually. Since he got that bachelor's degree, he's been a globalist
00:18:58.740 UN child spokesman. Listen to how he describes himself on his LinkedIn page. He says,
00:19:04.740 Steve Lee is a 26-year-old climate change activist, a policy advocate to the United Nations,
00:19:10.340 and a global speaker. He is the executive director of FES, Foundation for Environmental Stewardship,
00:19:17.140 and its 3% project. Hmm. A globalist UN speaker. Gee whiz. I'm shocked that he's pushing a global warming
00:19:27.460 line. Let me read a little bit more. Steve is a voice to the voiceless youth globally,
00:19:34.740 voice to the voiceless youth. That's perfect. Globally in policymaking and is currently serving
00:19:39.060 as the capacity building officer in the Secretary of the United Nations major group for children and youth.
00:19:44.500 The UN General Assembly mandated space. He has moderated and drafted policy outcome documents,
00:19:51.220 lobbied diplomats and businesses, and negotiated deliberations with UN officials, heads of state,
00:19:56.100 and industry leaders. Steve is personally trained by Al Gore. Yeah, I could sort of tell. I could sort of tell.
00:20:05.460 But what Steve doesn't show on his LinkedIn page or in his propaganda in the schools
00:20:11.460 is that he's bought and paid for. Now hats off to the guy. This is from the Canada Revenue Agency
00:20:19.140 website for that Foundation for Environmental Stewardship, of which he's the boss. They raked in
00:20:27.460 $762,000 last year, of which the overwhelming amount was gifts from other charities.
00:20:36.020 So good for him for raising the money, but also not really. I mean, do you really think
00:20:42.820 just a kooky guy who says he thinks he's Jesus, he's going to heal the world, do you think he could
00:20:49.060 raise $760,000 on his own? No, no. Just like Greta has handlers, so does kooky Steve. Here's the board of
00:20:55.540 directors of Steve's charity, again taken from its Canada Revenue Agency disclosures. I don't know if you
00:21:01.220 can see on there the name Devin Page. That's the executive director of an anti-oil sands lobby group
00:21:08.260 called Ecojustice. They're anti-oil sands litigators. And then there's Maya Danjal, another Al Gore
00:21:17.300 acolyte, so she says, who works for a carbon trading scheme. There's a Tesla lobbyist on his board. It's
00:21:25.860 important that they keep their government subsidies coming, and Audrey Depot is their lobbyist in Canada.
00:21:32.740 And there's also Dvorka Svitkovic, who runs another electric car marketing firm. This one called Plug and
00:21:41.780 Drive. Look, if you want to buy a Tesla, go for it. I hate the fact that I have to subsidize it, but you
00:21:49.940 want to buy a Tesla, you do it. If you want to sell things, electric cars, go ahead. If you're a
00:21:54.660 propagandist, go ahead, free country. But this Steve Lee, he doesn't disclose that he's a bought
00:22:00.500 and paid for propagandist in his talks. He doesn't disclose that he's paid by lobbyists. He doesn't go
00:22:06.340 in like a race car driver with all the logos of his sponsors on his jacket. He pretends he's just a guy
00:22:14.720 who has these thoughts himself, but he's not. He's literally funded and directed by a bunch of anti-oil
00:22:22.500 sense lobbyists and pro-electric car corporate lobbyists, most of them foreign funded. Which
00:22:29.780 brings me back to Jason Kenney and his war room. You don't need to spend 30 million dollars stopping
00:22:35.620 this. You actually don't need to spend a dollar. You just ban lobbyists and child actors and their
00:22:43.460 puppets from coming into schools with children of tender years to tell them wild stories about
00:22:50.420 nuclear bombs. This Steve Lee is not a scientist. He's not an expert. He's a bought and paid for
00:22:57.380 propagandist who talks like he thinks he's the Messiah. He gets 760 grand a year for his propaganda
00:23:03.780 agency and he's walking right into school and scaring children. Stop it. And if teachers and
00:23:11.940 principals won't stop it, stop them. You don't have the right to terrorize children. Stay with us for more.
00:23:32.740 Hey, a little bit earlier in the day when I was dressed a little bit differently, I got a Skype call
00:23:38.820 from our own Kian Bextie who has safely landed in Hong Kong. I didn't want to announce his visit
00:23:44.580 before he got through into Hong Kong through the border and customs because I just didn't want any
00:23:50.900 chance he'd be kept out. So he's there and as soon as he got through customs he Skyped me and I want
00:23:57.540 to show you a little bit of our conversation. Here take a look. We managed to make a connection with
00:24:02.180 Kian Bextie who is now in Hong Kong. There he is right now on the screen. Hey Kian, how you doing?
00:24:08.420 Good. How are you? Good. Le ho ma. I think that's how you say hello in Cantonese.
00:24:12.740 That is, yeah. Well, can you hear me all right? I can hear you great. Can you hear me?
00:24:20.340 Yeah. Okay. Well, give us an update. First of all, what time of day is it in Hong Kong?
00:24:26.180 It is about, it's almost 1am. We had, we just landed, myself and my cameraman landed here
00:24:35.140 in the Hong Kong International Airport after layover in Tokyo. It was a very, very long flight,
00:24:40.340 but we finally got to our hotel and started exploring the streets. It's pretty quiet right
00:24:45.860 now where we are, but we can see the signs of the protests pretty much wherever we go. I don't know if
00:24:52.100 you can see right behind me. I'm going to try and show this on the screen. Can you see that? Yeah.
00:25:00.500 It's a picture of Winnie the Pooh and Xi Jinping, Xi Jinping as Winnie the Pooh, which has become a
00:25:06.580 common theme in this protest. The protester, well, Xi Jinping himself has said online at least that he
00:25:13.220 really dislikes that image. So it's been posted on a lot of polls around the area. And what's
00:25:19.300 interesting about right now, we came at a really good time because on Sunday are the general
00:25:24.500 legislative elections. So there's actually campaigns going on throughout Hong Kong amid the protests.
00:25:31.140 We've seen one of the, one of the actual council candidates had lost his ear from a rubber bullet
00:25:42.100 just earlier last week. So things are quite tense here. People are on edge. And it's sad to see Hong
00:25:50.820 Kong like this, actually hotels are dirt cheap right now, which is good for us coming here. But you can 1.00
00:25:56.660 see, we were talking with the hotel agent as we checked in and he said, business is just dead.
00:26:01.220 The Hong Kong dollar has dropped. And for the people of Hong Kong, it's just really upsetting. We were
00:26:07.220 talking to some more at the airport and they said that they've never been so sad about Hong Kong and they're
00:26:11.700 thinking about leaving. In fact, they're actually going to visit family in Canada and they figured
00:26:16.420 they might just stay there. Wow. Now, if I'm not mistaken, you say it's after midnight there. So
00:26:22.580 that's, you would be there very early Saturday morning. So it's, it's late Friday night there.
00:26:27.380 Am I right with the date zone and what the international date line? Yes. Yeah. Now, if I'm not mistaken,
00:26:33.380 the weekends are generally when the big mass demonstrations happen. Is that correct? Are you aware that
00:26:40.420 there will be mass demonstrations this weekend? That's what we expect. Last weekend, the large
00:26:47.700 demonstration was at the university. People were firing, flaming bow and arrows and throwing Molotov
00:26:53.140 cocktails to defend against police who were aggressively coming in with what looked like live rounds.
00:27:02.580 So I'll just go through right now what the Hong Kong protesters are demanding. There's the five demands
00:27:07.380 and the metaphor is the five leaves on that Hong Kong flag. The first one is that they want the full
00:27:14.180 withdrawal of the extradition bill. Right now, the bill is claimed to be dead, although it's not been
00:27:19.140 totally pulled and claimed to never be brought back. The chief executive here has committed to never
00:27:25.780 bringing that bill back. And that has some protesters upset. That's what originally brought the protesters to
00:27:30.580 the street was the fact that they could be extradited from Hong Kong, the city of Hong Kong,
00:27:35.780 which is a special administrative region, as per the agreement with the United Kingdom during the handover.
00:27:41.940 They could be extradited, political dissidents, media personnel, political opponents of Beijing.
00:27:47.860 They could be extradited to the mainland and sent to gulags, basically, which they're not happy about.
00:27:52.820 That bill is quote unquote dead, but it's not been fully withdrawn. The second demand is a full inquiry,
00:28:00.820 open inquiry into police brutality. We've seen right now over 4,000 protesters be arrested
00:28:07.620 for for various things from gathering where they're not supposed to,
00:28:12.820 to actual vandalism and things of that nature. The third is
00:28:16.980 Don't worry about it. You've been traveling nonstop for 18 hours and you're jet lagged.
00:28:29.300 I'm not trying to quiz you on all the five points. We have heard them before. They're very modest.
00:28:33.460 One is to, the government had said it's criminal to protest. They wanted the decriminalization of the
00:28:40.500 protests. They wanted an investigation into police brutality. Very, very modest. I should point out,
00:28:46.660 none of the five demands were for independence or separation or for the overthrow of Beijing.
00:28:52.820 And I say that because these are not actually radicals. A radical would say Hong Kong should
00:28:58.020 be independent. That's not one of the five demands. But the thing is, it's got, I think I was saying
00:29:03.540 before you hooked up with us, I was making a comparison to the Roman Empire. If they had an
00:29:09.860 uprising in some far flung province, they would throw everything at it. Not because they cared so
00:29:16.660 much about a little uprising, but because if, if it became known that little Judea could have an
00:29:22.260 uprising, well, maybe they'd have an uprising in Gaul. They had to, and same here, if you could have an
00:29:28.420 uprising in Hong Kong, maybe you'll have one in Tibet or Xinjiang where the Uyghurs are. So that's my 0.99
00:29:34.260 theory. What do you think about that? Is this now about China proving that it's tough?
00:29:42.420 Well, I know that, and hopefully you can hear me over the sirens, a bunch of police vans are actually
00:29:46.900 driving, actually their entire semi-trailers driving right by us right now with sirens on full blast.
00:29:54.420 No, I think you're right about that. And what's been said about these elections that are coming up
00:30:00.020 here on Sunday is that it's a referendum on the protests. And if some key councillors are elected
00:30:06.020 to a few of the seats that are actually electable seats, it's going to be seen as a major blow to
00:30:11.140 Beijing and Xi Jinping, especially in Hong Kong. And you're right in that they said that this isn't a
00:30:16.900 plea for separation. They don't want to return to the British Empire. They don't want to become a
00:30:21.060 city state on their own. They simply just want to maintain the liberty that was given to them from
00:30:29.620 the British Empire when they were handed over. They want the agreement to be respected at least
00:30:35.060 for the next few decades until it eventually expires, which has protesters on edge, I'm sure, because
00:30:42.740 if you knew that your rights were going to expire in 23 years, I think it is, well, you would be
00:30:50.180 protesting too, I would imagine. Yeah. All right. Well, listen, I'll let you get going there because
00:30:56.420 you probably want to snooze because tomorrow is going to be a very big day.
00:31:03.300 Be careful. I mean, obviously, we want you to cover the news, but we don't want you to be
00:31:08.420 hit by a rubber bullet or God forbid, a real one. But we do want you to cover the news and we want you to
00:31:14.340 champion democracy because I think that other world events have distracted the mainstream media.
00:31:21.540 And especially in Canada, there's such a love for communist mainland China. I don't think they're
00:31:27.460 giving proper attention to this democratic uprising in Hong Kong. I really think it's important that
00:31:32.500 you do this work. Our friend Avi Yamini is back in Hong Kong, too. I hope you can hook up with him and
00:31:38.340 just, he did great work for us last time. For our viewers at home, people can see all your reports
00:31:45.940 at hongkongreports.com. And you and our cameraman, we flew you there. You're staying in hotels. You need
00:31:52.180 ground transportation. I don't remember what the total bill is, but I think between your flights
00:31:57.620 and the hotels and other costs, we're probably looking at about $5,000 Canadian. Is that about right?
00:32:03.140 Yeah, that's about right. We tried to cut costs as much as we could. And the Hong Kong dollar is cheap
00:32:10.980 right now. But when it comes to, I mean, for example, to get from the airport to our hotel, it was about
00:32:16.180 $50 Canadian. And you've, I mean, I don't want to give away secrets, but I don't think it's a problem
00:32:22.580 to mention that you've brought gas masks to deal with the tear gas. Is that right? Yeah. How much did
00:32:28.980 those costs? Gas masks, helmets, they're about 150 bucks a piece. All right. We just want to make
00:32:35.540 sure our brains stay in our skull here. You know, reporters, we've seen videos of reporters being
00:32:40.820 arrested, reporters being hit with, you know, the elbows of police officers and thrown to the ground.
00:32:47.380 So we're not going to take any chances when we go to the actual protests to get footage
00:32:52.340 and interview the protesters. We're going to make sure that we're as safe as possible.
00:32:57.700 Yeah. I mean, I don't think they're going to come for you. I don't think they're doing that. And of
00:33:01.300 course, taking on a foreign journalist from Canada would be very bad PR from them. So I don't want 1.00
00:33:07.780 to scare you off. And it sounds like you're taking good precautions, obviously. I mean, I'm not going
00:33:12.500 to call it a war zone yet because it's, it's not quite a war zone, but Tiananmen Square turned dark
00:33:18.500 pretty quickly. So how long are you going to be there for? We'll be here for about a week. And then,
00:33:25.780 uh, then we come home. Hopefully, uh, if we're not in a gulag in Beijing by then we'll be,
00:33:33.060 we'll be back on Canadian soil by probably Wednesday next week.
00:33:36.340 Well, let me ask you one last thing yesterday. I, I, on my, on my evening show,
00:33:41.380 um, I talked about an idea. I mean, Canada takes refugees from all sorts of places,
00:33:47.380 many of whom don't speak English or French, don't have a modern education, don't have any modern job
00:33:54.020 skills and frankly are a poor cultural fit for Canada. I'm referring obviously, uh, to Justin
00:34:00.980 Trudeau, Syrians five years later, 90% of whom are unemployed. And I, you know, obviously Canada 1.00
00:34:07.540 can't take all of Hong Kong. And the idea is to fight for Hong Kong and keep it free. But God forbid,
00:34:12.740 if they go full Tiananmen square, part of me thinks those protesters, they love liberty. They
00:34:19.060 love independent courts. They love democracy and they're willing to pay a price for it. They speak
00:34:25.540 English as all Hong Kongers do. They're well-educated. I mean, it's all students who are leading the
00:34:30.500 battle. Uh, they're not welfare state people. It's an entrepreneurial culture. They're smart.
00:34:34.900 And frankly, here in Canada, we could use some Hong Kong Chinese to be a counterweight to the 1.00
00:34:41.540 pro mainland Chinese, which I think are the bulk of Chinese Canadians who are political these days.
00:34:48.100 Part of me thinks that, God forbid, if things turn sideways, we should have real refugees that 1.00
00:34:54.900 would be great Canadians. I don't know what the number would be, if it would be 5,000 or 10,000 or
00:34:59.220 whatever. But if you're a student leader in Hong Kong fighting against communist China
00:35:04.900 for free press, freedom association, rule of law, you're my kind of person. That's my thought.
00:35:09.860 That's what we set up a website called realrefugees.com. We've got a bit of a petition going
00:35:14.820 there. Um, I don't know. Why don't you ask people over the course of your week there,
00:35:20.820 I bet most of them are going to say, no, no, we want to stay and fight. But if,
00:35:25.780 if it goes to the full Chanaman Square, would they be interested in coming to Canada? I mean,
00:35:30.500 I, when was the last time we had refugees come to Canada who were freedom-loving
00:35:35.860 democracy activists? We could use, I think, people like that. 0.99
00:35:40.740 Yeah, you're absolutely right about that. Because you know, as well as I do, our prime minister is
00:35:44.740 a big fan of the basic dictatorship in Beijing. So as many Hong Kongers as we could have come over
00:35:49.780 to Canada to offset our prime minister who loves authoritarian regimes, that would be awesome.
00:35:55.300 You know, you said something about the protesters being smart, well-educated, employable. And,
00:36:01.060 you know, the first time I realized that these protesters were like nothing I've ever seen before,
00:36:06.020 that they were actually really high IQ people, was when I saw a student come out onto the street
00:36:12.340 and take a can of tear gas and solidify the toxins with liquid nitrogen. I don't know if you have the
00:36:18.260 video. And I'm sure people have seen it because it went viral. But these people, they deserve to live
00:36:25.380 in a place like Hong Kong used to be under the British Empire, back when freedoms were respected,
00:36:31.860 when you could protest against the governments, when you could do business without fear of police
00:36:38.500 brutality happening right outside of your business doors. I think it would be great to have Hong Kong 1.00
00:36:43.380 protesters come to Canada, especially and specifically the ones who are at risk of being
00:36:49.220 extradited should the extradition law eventually pass. And you probably have seen this as well as I have,
00:36:56.500 the videos of protesters being put on trains to go to places where it's not been released. Those trains
00:37:03.780 very well could be going to mainland China. And every every Hong Konger that is sent to a gulag in China 0.53
00:37:10.100 is one that we should be bringing to Canada to keep safe, I believe. But these Hong Kongers are loyal to
00:37:16.820 their country, they're loyal to their city. And I imagine they don't want to leave unless it's a
00:37:21.140 worst case scenario kind of thing. Yeah, we're I think we're showing right now that clip of them grabbing
00:37:27.380 the tear gas, grabbing it, putting it in a cone, pouring the I think I think that's liquid nitrogen
00:37:36.500 on it. I think that's what they're doing. We're watching it right now, Kian. And yeah, I mean,
00:37:41.380 it's just a very, very interesting what they're doing. All right. Well, listen, my friend, stay safe.
00:37:48.420 Give us as much news as possible. They don't have to be long reports. If there's some very short thing
00:37:54.340 that you think is remarkable, I don't care if it's a 30 second video, our people want to see it
00:37:59.700 because they sure won't get that kind of information from the CBC.
00:38:04.340 You're right. We're going to be trying to post things live and very quickly and very frequently
00:38:08.980 on our Instagram channel. I believe that's rebel.news on Instagram. So people should check
00:38:15.620 that out so that you can see what we're doing live as it happens. I'll also be posting on Twitter
00:38:19.940 quite frequently as well. Great. And of course, your longer pieces we'll have on YouTube and on
00:38:25.220 our website as usual. And we'll post all of these things at Hong Kong reports dot com. And I'd like
00:38:32.340 to invite people to chip in. I mean, there's the airfare, there's the hotels, there's on the ground
00:38:37.620 costs and there's the cost of your gear. I think I'd have to do the accounting, but I think it's about
00:38:43.220 five grand all in for you and the camera and stay safe, my friend. And I look forward to the updates.
00:38:47.940 This weekend's going to be a lot of big news. So I look forward to your news over the weekends.
00:38:54.180 Absolutely.
00:38:55.060 Okay. You take care out there. Thanks for making the journey.
00:38:58.500 Yep. No problem.
00:38:59.400 Okay. There you have it. Kian Bexty joining us live via Skype. He just got off the plane. They went
00:39:05.660 via Tokyo and then to Hong Kong. And there they have it. They checked in their hotel and they were
00:39:15.540 already on the streets and they saw some evidence of the protests to come.
00:39:26.660 Hey, welcome back on my monologue yesterday about BC wanting to ticket hateful behavior. Wendy writes,
00:39:32.260 so sick of the left pushing their hate to control the masses. Well, that's the thing. I mean,
00:39:36.980 when liberals are pouring over with their hate, I mean, look at how they hate Donald Trump. It's
00:39:42.900 truly deranged. They hate Doug Ford in the same way. They hated his brother, Rob, even more. They
00:39:47.940 hated Stephen Harper. They hate Jason Kenney. That's not called hate. I mean, you just type in any social
00:39:54.260 media, the search term assassinate Trump. You'll get a hundred such comments a day. That's not the subject of
00:40:02.100 hate investigations. But someone says up yours to Catherine McKenna and it's a week-long teachable
00:40:11.060 moment in Canada. The left hates as much or more than the right. But for some reason, it's never
00:40:16.980 discussed, let alone targeted. Peter writes, Callan is being incredibly vague about the hate crimes in
00:40:24.820 groups organizing in BC communities. I demand solid statistics on exactly what's going on here.
00:40:29.460 Exactly. I mean, look, if there's a terrorist group, let's find out. If there's some crimes,
00:40:35.540 let's find out. But just saying ban people in yellow vests, yellow vests isn't even a brand or a
00:40:43.020 corporation. It's a style. It's really like saying ban the pink pussy hats group. It's just a hat. 0.79
00:40:51.080 On my interview with Sue Ann Levy, Brett writes, when you bring in 80 single unemployed men from
00:40:56.600 Nigeria into a Toronto neighborhood and spend $5,000 a head per night, there's no need for a 1.00
00:41:02.900 gender-based analysis. That's only for Canadians who move in to do work. Yeah, it's a million bucks 0.97
00:41:09.000 a month for 200 people, so it's $5,000 a head per month. But I take your point about the gender 0.99
00:41:15.560 analysis. You know that old clip I always show you of Catherine McKenna saying if you have a big
00:41:21.040 industrial project, you bring a couple hundred men and you need a gender analysis before it's 1.00
00:41:25.360 approved, releasing that many men in the community. Yeah, it's a very good point. You release a hundred
00:41:30.520 single men into a neighborhood. Men who don't necessarily know our cultural mores, how to 0.93
00:41:37.600 handle yourself with women who are uncovered. Yeah, where's the gender analysis there? That's a very 0.73
00:41:43.700 perceptive point. Well, that's our show for today. I'm really excited that Kian and our cameraman are
00:41:50.640 in Hong Kong. I think they'll be safe. They've got some gear, like some tear gas masks in case things
00:41:59.740 get a little rough. I think they've got good judgment and a healthy enough dose of fear in them
00:42:05.120 that they won't put themselves in jeopardy. I expect we'll get some amazing footage. You can tune in at
00:42:10.400 HongKongReports.com. And by the way, our friend Avi Amini is over there now too. He's on his own
00:42:17.160 this time, but hopefully we'll meet up and have a chance to talk to him and get that on tape. So
00:42:21.700 very exciting weekend. So make sure to tune in to HongKongReports.com. I sure will be. I'm very
00:42:27.140 excited about what Kian's doing there. If you want to help chip into the cost of that flight, you can do
00:42:31.420 so too at HongKongReports.com. All right, that's our show for tonight. Until Monday, on behalf of all of us
00:42:36.900 here at Rebel World headquarters to you at home. Good night and keep fighting for freedom.