Alberta Independence NEEDS Level Heads to Win
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Summary
In this episode of The Critical Compass, James talks about the Centurion Project, the Global News hack, and the ongoing investigation into the allegations surrounding it. He also talks about what to look out for when attending events in support of the movement.
Transcript
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Hi, it's James here with the Critical Compass. This week has been a very interesting week when
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it comes to Alberta independence and I thought I would come down to the River Valley here in
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Edmonton just to just to get a grounded perspective on things. I feel like people have been caught up
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with the drama and i feel like it's easy to lose our perspective along the way
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so what hasn't changed this week is uh we have dedicated people we have a decentralized movement
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we have very passionate people all pushing towards the same goal
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Unfortunately, what I've noticed this last week with the Centurion Project, with the
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allegations and with the ongoing investigation is that people have been quick to turn on
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Now the thing is, this is not going to be the only attack.
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This is not the only chance for the movement to become divided.
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This will ramp up as we go throughout the next six months leading up until the referendum.
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If all it takes for people to turn on each other are accusations and a mob mentality
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online, then we're not going to make it through the next six months.
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this is where it takes some cooler heads to push through and I think we can lose
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sense of ourselves when we spend too much time on these platforms and it is
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very heated so I think we need to keep our eye on the prize and that is
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educating, that is reaching out to friends and family, that is doing everything that
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we can to set this movement up for success. It's important that we wait for
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complete information before we lose ourselves in a frenzy. Especially with
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the movement being decentralized, there is a fear of being guilty by association
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of anything. And I know people get a little bit on edge, and it's easy to just default to
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smearing other people. That's what I've noticed a lot. So let's unpack this Centurion project.
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There's currently an investigation. What we don't know is the source of the information,
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the database. We don't know that yet. We also don't know the full details because the investigation
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is still ongoing. Mike and I went to the opening event, recorded some speeches and got a perspective
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there and that was on Wednesday. The core message, it's a really good one. Essentially apathy has
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taken hold and people are not taking responsibility and stepping up as active citizens that's the
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essence of the centurion project and that core message can exist with or without any app with
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or without any database because it takes you just reaching out to friends and family and
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stepping up to ensure that they are informed and that they will go out and vote as well
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So at the event, there's a few things I wanted to point out.
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So Global News is there, and they asked to be there,
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and David Parker had no problem with them showing up.
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Then there's also this citizen journalist, or so-called journalist, called Aaron Weeks.
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and he was there with um his friend Michaela who was also live streaming and they were recording
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and they have come to other events and uh like there was one in St. Albert recently um
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I think there's a creative minds event as well and they have been agitators in a sense um so
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They have not been reporting accurately, and they have not been portraying the moments.
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They've been asking questions to try to get a response.
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There was a question period at the end, and Aaron Weeks was in the lineup,
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And as Aaron got closer in the lineup, in the question line,
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global news turned their camera and walked in on the question lineup almost like he knew
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aaron was going to ask a question giving a good sound bite um so i don't know if there was any
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coordination there i don't know if aaron went up to the global news guy and said i'm gonna ask a
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a spicy question uh make sure you capture it but these are the things to be watching out for
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He asked, why do you guys not believe in freedom of speech?
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And a few people pushed back on him in the crowd
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And then they essentially let him have his full 30 seconds to ask the question
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But he blamed them for calling everybody liberals
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He would have engaged with the people who are all presenters.
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let it be for global news or on his own channel.
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so it doesn't take much to frame the movement and this is this goes back to my larger point
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about the attacks essentially any moment can be weaponized against the movement so we do need to
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be careful but at the same time you can't prevent everybody from taking every little thing out of
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context. It's, it's impossible at that point. So the other thing that happened is, uh, David
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Parker, he had a speech and then shortly after, uh, cops were, that's when the cops arrived to
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deliver the papers. That's seven cruisers, 10 officers, I believe, and one official from
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elections alberta i didn't uh i didn't know that was going on um i was filming i was focused on
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the stage and i noticed aaron and michaela and them went outside a couple other people went
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outside so i don't know how they knew that the cops were there right at the moment um
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like nobody else like most people in the crowd were just watching
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so for them to know exactly when to go outside to get that footage
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is concerning that implies that there's some prior knowledge of this
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um so that that was a strange piece of the puzzle as well
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it's also why did elections alberta need need seven cop cars there there is no need for that
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many cars or officers uh and i think it does a couple it serves a couple purposes
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one it's a show of force it's an intimidation tactic
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I think other events may be worried that, okay, well, are cops going to show up?
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The other part of it is it creates a great visual for headlines.
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And that kind of image now will be propagated ad nauseum on media.
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so that is no different than the flags that showed up at the convoy is like when you have
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somebody ready to take a picture and you have that event and now that picture defines an entire
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evening or an entire movement etc it's really easy and there's no way that this could have been
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avoided in the moment regardless of what the actual outcome of the investigation is in the
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moment there is no way of avoiding that photo op police showed up and there were bad actors to
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get footage take that photo and propagate that photo and now it's part of the
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it's part of the uh the media landscape so there's a lot of outrage with the data
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being released and i have not seen the same kind of attention put into the
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30 million phones that were tracked during covid or any of the number any of the numerous
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breaches, let it be from the private sector or government databases, leaking information of the
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public. There are those that are treating this like the end of the world and it's a hard thing
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to engage with and I think we'll have to wait until the investigation is over to be able to
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to be able to navigate this fully so the question is does this set the
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independence movement back I think it's not making it easier by any means but
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those that are caught up in Nahid Nenshi's rhetoric are not the ones that
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are going to be convinced anyways but we we do need to be mindful and we do need to be squeaky
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clean going forward have receipts for everything this is one of the reasons that we're trying to
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document some of these events and we also have like max from the freedom calendar he's doing
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great work and this is creating a record of everything as it goes forward so all these events
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we're reducing how much you can misrepresent one of these events
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but we cannot give easy ammo to anybody who wants to smear the movement
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so just to wrap up I think we need to take a stoic mindset on this
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we need to control the things that we can control
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and not let those things that we can't control bother us
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we need to not spend so much time on x or facebook or instagram or any of these places where
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you're just bombarded by messages all the time it can skew how much how common a certain belief is
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or how prevalent an idea is because you may see it pop in your feed and it's pushing that
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and it's aggregating that but I would one thing you could do is just go to a public place and
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ask a person what they know about this and I'm sure you will not get the same kind of rhetoric
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you'll get some misconceptions but it will not be anything close to what we're seeing on X
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Let me know if you'd like more kind of videos like this
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