Jack Buckby reflects on his 2018 reporting from London, where Anjum Chowdhury—arrested for inciting ISIS violence—was released after half a five-year sentence despite an 11,000-name petition opposing it. In Poland, he covered nationalist resistance to EU refugee policies and Polish-Jewish WWII solidarity, facing media smears as "racist." France’s Gilets Jaunes protests saw police escalate violence with water cannons, tear gas, and rubber bullets, possibly on Macron’s orders, while Brexit loomed despite establishment fears of shortages—like the British Sandwich Association’s exaggerated warnings. His coverage reveals populist movements clashing with elite disinformation, questioning whether democracy can survive when referendums are ignored. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, the heart of the rebel is here in Canada, but our hands and arms are around the world.
Tonight, we sit down with our reporter in London.
It's December 27th and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
You come here once a year with a sign, and you feel morally superior.
The only thing I have to say to the government for why I'm publishing is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Welcome back.
Well, as you know, our world headquarters are here in Toronto, and I say that almost every day, and I say it with a bit of a chuckle because it's a grandiose thing for a little company to say, but it just happens to be true.
Not only do we send our reporters on adventures, whether it was to, for example, the Marrakesh United Nations Conference on Global Migration, or sending David Menzies down to Mexico to track the migrant caravan, well, we have permanent staff around the world too.
We've got a whole bunch in Los Angeles.
Kurt Schlichter, Amanda Head, Ben Davies.
We've got Rob Shimshock in Washington, D.C.
And we have a very lively presence in the United Kingdom too.
And I'm delighted to spend the course of the next half hour with you with Jack Buckby, our reporter on the scene in London, England.
Nice to see you again, Jack.
Cheers, Ezra, for having me.
Well, thank you.
And our goal today is to go over what you think were the three most exciting stories that you covered in 2018, and then to look ahead for 2019, talk about what you think the big stories are.
And I think I'm just going to go ahead and make a prediction that Brexit is going to be your answer.
But we'll save that discussion for a few minutes from now.
I want to talk about some of your journalism.
Being in London, it's an exciting city.
It's a world capital.
It's a great city of the world.
There's a lot going on there.
It's also a quick hop, skip, and a jump to things on the continent.
So you've really covered some interesting things.
I want to start with Anjum Chowdhury.
And he's a name that's very famous in the United Kingdom.
He's not quite as well known here in North America, but I think people over here recognize him because he's such an irritating guy who was so ubiquitous in the media.
Why don't you tell us a little bit about Angel Chowdhury?
Refresh our memory about who he is.
I interviewed him once, believe it or not.
And then tell us about your campaign to put him, to keep him in jail.
Sorry, go ahead.
I interrupted you.
No, I was just amazed that you've interviewed him.
I didn't know that.
It's quite impressive.
Well, I should tell you, give me just a second on that.
And he was via Skype.
I wasn't in person with him.
And you know, sometimes you do a sound check, one, two, three, testing one, two, three.
That's what you do on a microphone.
He's got this move, and he did it on me, where he, instead of saying testing one, two, three, he said 91177.
That's the British equivalent of 9-11.
So even in his sound check, he's an ISIS sympathizer.
It was sort of shocking.
I had to handle myself carefully because I didn't want to just attack him in the interview.
I wanted to pull out statements about him, about what he would do to Queen Elizabeth.
He'd put her in a hijab.
Anyway, sorry, I don't mean to distract, but I did have an interaction with him.
Enough from me, Jack.
Tell me about what Angel Chowdhury has been up to lately and then your campaign, and then we'll show a clip from that campaign.
Yeah, I mean, as you just say, he's a really, really terrible man.
I mean, so he was arrested for incitement to encouraging people to join and support ISIS, basically.
So, you know, you could say he's a convicted terrorist.
We could be more safe and say he's a supporter of terrorists.
Dangerous man.
And he's been involved in this kind of activity for many years.
Now, many people like to use the excuse of this freedom of speech.
They say, well, you're right-wing, Jack.
You're conservative, Jack.
You're in favor of freedom of speech, but not for Anjum Chowdhury.
And it's, well, hang on a minute.
I mean, this guy's done more than just said a few mean things.
His own followers have gone on to murder people on the streets of London.
Lee Rigby being one of the victims of that.
This guy's encouraging other people to go out and do the dirty work for him.
That's what he does.
And it's what he's been very good at for many years.
It finally caught up with him.
He was sent to prison, but he was released after serving only half his sentence.
So that's why we started the Jail Angel campaign.
And we went out in the streets with the big billboard.
We had the great petition.
They even went to 10 Downing Street with it.
And the response was great, but that was expected.
People are terrified of this man.
And honestly, we should be.
This guy's back on our streets.
He's living taxpayer-funded in a place in London, which probably most people couldn't afford to even live in.
It's in Camden, which is a fairly sort of costly and trendy place to live.
Yeah, and of course, he has around the clock police protection up.
The idea that he gets police protection is so absurd, the public needs to be protected from him.
My interactions with him were in his role as a propagandist because he's eloquent in English.
He's a lawyer by profession.
He used to be very secular.
He used to womanize and drink.
And then he found the jihad, and he's, but he has kept all of his modern secular Western skills.
He really is silver-tongued.
So he woos the English language media.
But when he's talking to his own community, he uses those same persuasion skills to actually weaponize ordinary British Muslims and turn them into terrorists.
He actually is incredibly effective as an evil man.
I think he's terrifying, although charming.
Yeah, absolutely.
And as I say, that the man behind the people that go out and kill people is just as terrifying as the people standing there with bloodied hands and knives, you know.
The guy is extremely dangerous.
And the fact that, you know, people say, well, the government, you know, they can't step in.
He's served his time because technically in the UK, you only serve half your time when you're sentenced to prison.
And my response to that is, well, maybe this is the sign that the government needs to realize that the system doesn't work.
Maybe this is what they should, you know, they should be learning from this and thinking, well, how can we change this so that when people are sentenced to prison, they serve that full sentence?
And hey, maybe we should also be considering the sentencing.
Because if this guy was sentenced to only five years and he's going to be back out on our streets encouraging more people to go out and kill us, I mean, maybe five years, well, definitely five years ain't enough.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, here's a clip from some of your work on Jail Angel.
It wasn't just one video.
It was a whole series of videos as part of the campaign.
Let's take a look at those now.
Islamist hate preacher, extremist, and convicted terrorist supporter Anjum Chowdhury is due to be released from prison imminently.
He was sentenced to five years, but he's been released after serving only two and a half.
You thought that was wrong.
I thought that was wrong.
And that's why 11,000 of you, more than 11,000 of you, signed this petition to Jail Anjum.
That's why we started the jailanjim.com campaign.
And I'm here at Downing Street today to tell the government that we think he's dangerous and should be put back behind bars.
You might remember we also commissioned a public opinion poll from reputable opinion polling company Wompole, who worked with Sky and ITV.
I have those results with me here today.
I'm handing it into the government to tell them that we think he's dangerous.
We want our streets to be safe and we think he should serve his full sentence at least.
Let's go.
So we went through the gates, the security checks of 10 Downing Street.
Walked up and knocked on that historic front door, the front door of a home that's seen some of the greatest historic British prime ministers.
And in recent years, some not so great British prime ministers.
And I handed them a petition that more than 11,000 of you signed saying that you want Andream Chowdhury to serve his full prison sentence.
At least.
We did this because of you.
Jack, I have to tell you, seeing you approach that historic residence, that office, 10 Downing Street, so well known, that's the equivalent of 24 Sussex Drive in Canada, or the White House in Washington.
That's really the equivalent of the White House, isn't it?
Yeah, absolutely.
And to be honest, I never realized you could just go up to the door like that.
But if you have a petition, it's your right.
I mean, it's like the White House is the people's house.
I mean, she's there to serve us.
So they let us in.
I kind of suspected, actually, that maybe once they learned it was us, rebel media, they, oh, we can't let these people in.
But no, they let us in.
We got the petition in.
We handed it in.
And it was an amazing thing to do.
Really amazing thing to do because it's something.
It's very exciting.
And it's confirmation.
I mean, we do a lot of petitions.
And sometimes people say, why am I signing this?
It's just some email thing.
And obviously, when people give us their email address, we talk to them by email.
But to actually see 11,000 names delivered to 10 Downing Street, I got to say that's a proud feeling.
I felt great about it watching you.
You must have been excited.
Have you ever been to 10 Downing Street before?
No, never.
Someone like me definitely never a conservative in Downing Street anytime soon.
No, it was an amazing, amazing experience.
It really was.
And just the very fact that I was doing it on behalf of the people that put their faith in us was what was so great about it.
Pride at 10 Downing Street00:04:13
Yeah, that's for sure.
You weren't just going there on your own behalf.
You had a lot of names in your hand.
Now, you mentioned the poll.
If I recall, the name of the company is One Poll.
And, you know, there's a lot of people who claim to be pollsters, and I'm sure there are good ones.
But this is a pollster who does work for tier one legacy media journalists.
So, and the reason I mentioned that is because this is a real, legit, reputable pollster.
What were the stats?
Do you remember offhand what the numbers were?
I think we got it on the screen here.
Yeah, I can't remember, but it was a significant majority.
We got to hear on the screen.
How much do you agree or disagree with the decision to release Adam Chowdhury from prison early?
And strongly agree was 4.65%.
Somewhat agree is 7.75%.
So the people who agree, if you total those up, that's about 12%, 12.5%.
And those who say disagree, somewhat disagree, 17%, and strongly disagree, 50.9%.
So I'm just going to add up the somewhat disagrees and the strongly disagrees.
And you're looking at 67%.
I wish it was a little higher, but 67% of Brits saying they disagree with releasing him.
I think that's a good sign that Britain still cares.
Yeah, I think so.
And what we've also got to remember is actually a lot of people tune out of the news because why would they want to listen to the news, especially these days with politicians constantly arguing and talking in language they don't understand?
Honestly, a lot of people actually haven't heard of him.
So, you know, I mean, I think we see that in this poll.
If everybody knew exactly who this man was, pretty much everyone would be against it.
But you've also got to remember there's a contingent of far-left activists, far-left extremists, Islamist extremists here in the UK that, of course, are not going to want Anjum Chowdhury back in prison.
And again, that's represented there in the poll.
Well, let me ask you one more question about that because here in Canada, we have a case.
It's not quite the same, but there's an al-Qaeda terrorist named Omar Khader who actually committed a murder himself.
He murdered a U.S. Army medic with a grenade.
He blinded another U.S. Special Forces soldier in one eye.
He planted IEDs that may have killed others.
His name is Omar Cotter.
And the entire establishment in Canada, the politicians, the press, the prosecutors, the courts, everyone is completely pro-Chotter.
Like you would think he is a saint.
He is portrayed as the victim.
They never talk about the man he murdered.
And if you can believe it, and I know you'll find this shocking, you probably don't know this, Jack, but in Canada, Justin Trudeau gave a public apology to Omar Cotter and a $10.5 million check.
I know that's, you're probably thinking that am I hearing it wrong?
No, that's true.
But there's a huge chasm between grassroots Canadians who hate that terrorist murderer, hate the fact that he got 10.5 mil, hate the fact he's on the streets, hate the fact he got a public apology.
But the entire media political industrial complex thinks he's a victim hero saint.
Is there the same establishment love for Anjum Chowdhury as there is for Omar Cotter?
I said the word charming before, and I don't mean that in a substantive way.
I mean just his slippery.
You wouldn't take him home for dinner with your family.
Yeah, and I don't want people to misunderstand what I mean.
I meant he's slick, he's glib, he's quick with a word, he has a sense of humor, he understands the British mind.
So he's not like a Pakistani mindset when he's talking to Brits.
He's like he knows how to push the buttons.
Has he been successful in turning, let's say, the Guardian or the BBC in his favor?
No, but that doesn't mean there isn't a problem still.
Everybody pretty much universally hates the man.
Yellow Vests Protests Intensify00:15:11
But what here?
Yeah, because go ahead, Jack.
But what they say is that he, of course, doesn't represent Islam.
Yeah.
That's the lie.
So he's used it as an example of...
Actually, they use him as an example to show that, well, you know, there's this far-right threat in the UK and there's this far-extremist Islamist threat in the UK and they try and conflate Anjum Chowdhury with people like me and it's a mess.
Well, I'm really pleased that we did that and I know you've said it was a moment of pride for you.
It was a moment of pride for us too to have you there on the steps of 10 Downing Street.
It just looks so good, by the way.
I don't know.
I mean, it's just wonderful and I'm glad we showed that clip.
All right.
I want to talk about two other things you've done.
The first was a few months ago.
Poland.
I mean, we just had our friend Sheila Gunreed go to the global warming conference in Katowice, Poland.
But Poland was the secondary part of that.
She goes to the UN conferences wherever they are.
Last year it was in Germany.
The year before it was in Morocco.
But while she was in Poland, she did some other things.
Poland's a very interesting country that is pro-Western, pro-Trump, pro-conservative, pro-nationalism.
It's like a natural ally, but it's smeared by the mainstream media, I think, because of all those things, right?
Yeah, all I see about Poland are these relentless smears about this historically neo-Nazi and racist and extremist country.
And I'd been there a few times before we decided to do this Rebel Poland series.
And everything the media said about them was just so wrong.
I know the media lies all the time, but it was really an extreme difference to what the media says.
It's this beautiful, safe, homogenous country that they know who they are, they're proud of who they are, and they're not afraid to say that we want to remain who we are.
And what's so bad about that?
I have a theory, and I'm not the only one who believes this, that these newer democracies, the ones that were under Soviet domination until 30 years ago, because they have not yet grown complacent or bored with their freedom, and because many people there actually lived under Soviet domination, they value the right to be Polish, the right to be free, the right to be sovereign, the right to be Catholic in their case.
And so they're less likely than complacent democracies in Western Europe, France, Holland, I'd even put the UK in there sort of, who yet say, oh yeah, the EU, fine, you can make decisions.
Or oh yeah, open borders.
There's no such thing that makes a Frenchman French.
We're all the same.
It's just an address.
So I think that Hungary, which is also, I think, in the same mold, and to a degree, the Czech Republic, and I think a lot of those Eastern European countries, in some ways, are better with freedom because they haven't grown bored with it as we have in the Far West.
I think there's a really apt analysis.
And also, you know, the fact that communism is still fresh in the memory of so many people.
And what was so amazing as well is it's not just fresh in the minds of the people that experience communism.
It's also there in the minds of the people that never experienced it themselves, but their parents did.
Young people, I mean, one of the videos I did was I got this opportunity to interview a 10-year-old boy, a really young lad outs at a church during a Sunday service.
And he really knew his stuff.
He knew way more about Polish history than the average 10-year-old British lad.
And it's just that knowledge, that connection to his past is what means this country's, Poland, is going to survive.
Young people there really, really value what they have because they've heard the horror stories.
Yeah, well, and Poland has been invaded and attacked from all sides for so long.
We'll throw you a clip in a few seconds, but I mean, I've never been to Poland, and watching your reports from there and others makes me want to visit.
I do know that the Polish Pope, John Paul II, was so instrumental in bringing down the Soviet Empire by going to Poland, having that massive outdoor mass, telling people be not afraid and giving them something else to believe in besides communism.
I truly believe that he, along with Thatcher and Reagan, were critically, he was critically important to breaking down the Cold War.
I think he really did.
And like 350 years before him, another Pol named Jan Sobieski helped save Europe from the Turkish invader.
Let's take a look at one of your Polish vids now.
I've just landed in Warsaw in Poland because I think there's a story here that we need to tell.
It's not the story that the mainstream media wants to tell you.
They've been lying about Poland for years.
About three years ago, when the Law and Justice Party took control of the Polish government, the media began a smear campaign saying that the Polish people and the Polish country was racist and nationalistic.
Even the EU got involved and called Poland racist for not wanting to take in millions of Syrian refugees, so-called Syrian refugees.
The story here isn't that Poland is racist.
The story is that the people are waking up.
After years of communism, they're waking up and realizing that the way forward is being proud in one's own nation state.
And specifically, it's the Polish youth.
The Polish youth are voting in bigger numbers than ever.
They're voting for conservative and right-wing parties.
And actually, political polls are showing time and time again that the Polish youth want to vote for right or center-right parties.
And I want to find out why.
I want to show you the real story, not the story that the mainstream media is peddling.
And that was sort of your introduction to the series, which is sort of a repetition of what you said a moment ago.
But I do encourage our viewers to go to rebelpoland.com because you did have such a variety of interviews.
Some people will think, well, all you do is cover the world.
Well, the great thing about London is there's so many cheap flights from London to the continent.
I mean, there's so many airports.
I mean, the famous ones that people over here would know about are Heathrow and Gatwick.
But you've got lots of little airports, including one at Luton.
There's some really, really cheap flights from Luton airport to the continent, right?
Yeah, and I guess it's the price you pay for going to Luton airport.
It's the worst in the country.
But yeah, there's loads of places we can go quite easily.
And, you know, Poland, it was a few hours away.
We head over there and, you know, we do it as modestly as we can.
And as you say, the variety of videos I was really happy with.
We did one about Polish-Jewish solidarity to try and dispel the myth about neo-Nazism.
We did, you know, we spoke to young people about conservatism.
We found out about the faith of the nation.
I mean, there's so much we could have done, and there's still so much more that we can do.
I want to show a quick clip from that Polish-Jewish one because, of course, Poland is where Auschwitz is, and the Polish-Jewish community, which was quite large, was almost completely decimated at the hands of the Nazis.
And although there were certainly some Poles who were complicit in that, to project onto the Polish people the crime of Nazism, I think is a double sin.
It falsely imputes many innocent people and it falsely exculpates many guilty.
So here's a quick clip from that video you did.
Let's take a look.
And I'm here for a reason.
I'm here to dispel the myths and the lies that are peddled by the mainstream press that Poland is a racist anti-Semitic country.
It's simply not true.
Now, the discussion started among the press about Poland being anti-Semitic when a piece of draft legislation was being pushed that criminalized the use of the term Polish death camps.
Now, it's worth mentioning that that's changed since.
And I'll go into that in a minute.
But it's also worth mentioning why it's important because Poland wasn't a willing participant in the Holocaust.
It was tragic for all people in Poland.
There was a Polish government operating in exile in London that controlled underground states still in Poland.
And within these underground states, it was punishable by death for people to essentially snitch on Jews.
For anyone who revealed the location or the hiding places of Jews in Poland, it was punishable by death in those states.
On the other hand, in Nazi-occupied Poland, those who took in a Jew during this period, they were punished with death too.
So people were living in fear.
If they got a knock on the door from a Jewish family, please take us in, help us, they had to instantly decide whether they could help these people, whether they could risk their own families being killed.
The Polish didn't want this to happen here.
And it's worth mentioning that there were Eastern European states that willingly took part in the Holocaust.
Poland didn't.
Well, Jack, thank you so much for doing that.
Now, just before Christmas, there was a phenomenon that just took off like a rocket in France.
And it was called the Gilet Jaune.
And we speak a little bit of French here in Canada.
We have to take it in grade school at least.
And I knew that meant yellow jackets or yellow vests.
Can you explain to us why these protesters were wearing yellow vests?
And then we'll show some of the most gripping footage I've seen anywhere of these protests.
You were right in the heart of it.
But first, before we throw the video, tell us what the yellow jacket's all about.
So the yellow vest was this movement that just seemed to appear out of nowhere.
And one thing most people missed because all they saw is boom, suddenly it's on the news.
There's people out there wearing these high-viz jackets, we call them the yellow vests, out there on the street protesting against Macron.
And people think, well, where the hell did this come from?
Well, it started actually from lorry drivers and people who have to use their car all the time protesting the carbon tax.
And the reason they wore the high-vis yellow vests is because they're required to have them by law in their car.
So they put them to good use for once.
And so it escalated from there.
It went from being about the carbon tax and the price of fuel to suddenly hundreds of thousands of people all over France, not just Paris where we went, all over France protesting on the streets.
For many people, a very peaceful protest, but for some people, a more angry, violent one, protesting against Macron's high taxes.
They can't do it anymore.
People aren't being paid enough and they're being taxed too much.
Let's take a look here now.
I have to say this was some of the most exciting footage we have ever done.
It was so dramatic.
Here, let's take a look.
Things have gotten pretty intense pretty quick.
I think it's safe to say that Macron's carbon taxes and all the other taxes really aren't popular.
There's a few things I've learned from today.
One is that apparently last week, two people died allegedly as a result of the police.
There's quite a lot of aggression here.
Really, it doesn't seem to be what the media is painting it to be.
This isn't right-wing.
This isn't left-wing.
This isn't racism.
This is a huge group of French people who are concerned about their future.
More tear gas.
Can you blame the French people for being upset?
Can you blame them?
People are living off less than a thousand.
Some people are living on less than a thousand euros a month.
They can't get by.
And every time they introduce new taxes and more taxes and more taxes, people are struggling.
And to top it off, the straw that broke the camel's back is the carbon tax from Macron.
All in the name of global warming.
People can't afford to run their cars.
The price of diesel is going up, even though they've been told for years they should get diesel cars.
It's atrocious.
The people are angry, and I can't blame them.
You were literally right there.
Did you actually go under the Arctic Triomphe or were police sort of blocking that?
No, the police were blocking that.
The funny thing is, we turned up at the Arc de Triomphe just to do some sort of quiet filming that morning.
We didn't expect it to kick off that soon.
And to be honest, we were still waiting for some calls for some local people to tell us where it was going to be.
And so we turned up at the Arc de Triomphe ready to film peacefully.
And suddenly we got this stinging feeling in our eyes.
I'm like, what's going on?
And we looked and suddenly, boom, this protest just appeared out of nowhere.
And yeah, it was really dramatic and kind of exciting until the tear gas really hit us.
And then our friends got hit with rubber bullets.
It got pretty intense.
The police really, really went out strong with it.
Wow.
Now, I have, you alluded to this, and I've watched your videos.
Very interesting.
Most of the yellow vest protesters are angry and rambunctious, but I wouldn't say that they were the rioters.
Would you agree with me that the rioters were more opportunists?
Yeah, on the most part.
Go ahead.
Yeah, absolutely.
On the most part.
I mean, we can't say that no regular Gilet Jean went out and did it.
I mean, I'm sure some did.
But the vast majority, from the evidence that we saw in which we presented on the Rebel France series, the evidence we presented showed that it was the anarchists, typically far-left anarchists and Antifa that were out there destroying things and setting things on fire.
And we know that simply because they tag it with their own graffiti.
And also the regular Gilets Jean protesters, the people who are non-political, came up on camera and spoke to us and said, this isn't us, this isn't what we're doing.
All we have are yellow vests.
We don't have guns.
We don't have violence.
So we know who was doing it.
And it was, as you say, the opportunists.
And we know that the people who did the looting after the shops were destroyed by the anarchists, the people doing the looting were very, very poor people and indeed migrants as well.
Yeah.
Now, I saw one of the most incredible images I saw.
I can't remember where I saw it.
It wasn't in your footage.
It might have even been from some freelancer working for RT.
I saw what looked like tanks.
They were armored vehicles, at least.
They didn't have tracks on them.
They had wheels.
They were armored vehicles sent in, and they had the European Union, the EU flag on them.
And these were paramilitary.
Like, you could use these in a war, these armored vehicles.
And I thought, my God, that's over the top.
And I thought, and I want to ask you this, because I saw videos of police just beating people.
I saw videos of police fighting with a guy in a wheelchair.
I saw some incredibly shocking acts of police violence.
And I want to ask you, are those anecdotal?
Like, you know, if you've got a thousand police interactions, maybe 10 of them are going to look really bad.
Police Violence in a Traffic Circle00:03:56
Was that accidental?
Or do you think Macron instructed the police, make this so unpleasant for the protesters, tear gas them for no reason, just to hurt their eyes, shoot rubber bullets at them just to give them pain.
Even if they're not violent, even if they're just being noisy protesters, punish them physically.
That's a dark thesis.
Would you say that thesis is valid or that's just speculation?
From being on the ground and talking to people, I think you're right.
That's not to say that most of the police officers are sort of mean-spirited or, you know, doing this.
I mean, they're doing what they're told, effectively.
It's not always an excuse, but that's what's happening.
What was interesting is that the Arct de Triomphe is a traffic circle.
So we're within this traffic circle and every exit is blocked off.
We're stuck inside this circle.
And what kept happening is the police would throw gas canisters from this side, gas canisters from that side, essentially just pushing people around this circle.
We're bouncing around.
There was no purpose for it other than punishment.
And that's what everybody there was saying.
They're punishing us, they're punishing us.
And it got to the point where there was that much gas, they did it from every side.
There was no way you could escape.
I mean, we were lucky.
They let us through because we were pressed and we were so desperate.
But these people couldn't escape.
It was pure punishment.
I think so.
I've been to the Arctic Triomphe, and it's a huge structure, by the way.
In fact, I don't know if you know here's a little trivia for you, is that a Frenchman flew a biplane through it.
He took the biplane, tipped it sideways, and went through the Arctic Triumph.
Like, it's huge.
And it's such a symbol, other than the Eiffel Tower.
I think it's most certainly the second Most iconic structure in France.
And it is in this huge traffic circle with probably six or seven streets radiating out from it.
So if you've blocked everyone off, and if they're all in there, we saw some of the footage there.
People were sort of rambunctious and yippy and yappy, but I didn't see them fighting amongst themselves.
I didn't see them taking sledgehammers to the Arctic Triomp itself, for example.
So to kettle people in and then to basically tear gas them and rubber bullet them when they're just there.
That seems, I mean, if that were to be done in Turkey or Iran or Russia, you would have Reporters Without Borders, Amnesty International, all these groups saying police brutality, why did you do that?
I mean, I saw in your clip a bunch of noisy people, but they were not violent, but physical pain was being meted out to them.
Yeah, that was it.
I think the police actually, under orders from Macron, made things way worse than they needed to be, at least on that day.
Because what I saw from the very beginning, you might remember the first video of me, me doing a selfie from my phone, and there's water cannons.
That was right at the beginning where a lot of the roads weren't even cornered off yet.
No violence had happened.
People had just turned up and suddenly here's the water cannons blasting people.
It was completely unnecessary.
And there was a bit of violence, but I have to say that it only started after the environment became so extreme.
I think the police, if anything, kind of provoked it to get that bad.
Incredible.
Well, just like all your Polish videos were at rebelpoland.com, all your videos, and Martina was with you and she did some videos on camera too.
Those are at rebelfrance.com.
So those are some interesting trips.
Of course, most of your work is not on trips.
I mean, just tell our viewers, because here in Canada, we only have a couple of airlines in the country.
It's so uncompetitive, anti-competitive.
Prices are so expensive.
It can cost $1,000 just to fly across Canada.
How cheap is it to fly from Luton to Warsaw or from Luton to Paris?
Brexit's Sandwich Dilemma00:05:16
It really depends.
If you book well in advance, which is hard to do when you're covering the news, I'll be honest.
If you book well enough in advance, it's going to be £20.
But really, actually, if you're doing it last minute, like we always do, 100, 200, you know, a few hundred max.
It's so good.
Yeah, I mean, that's still just so incredible.
The idea that you could board any airplane for 20 pounds, that's about 35 bucks Canadian, is shocking.
Like, that's an Uber ride.
I mean, the idea that you can get on a plane for $35 Canadian.
But even, as you say, when we do reportage, obviously we can't plan that far ahead.
It's really amazing.
And the fact that you're based there in London makes it so, I mean, for us to schlep from Toronto or to send Sheila for Emmonton or David, I mean, it's great having you there.
But I think one of the biggest stories, obviously, is right there in your backyard.
The Brexit vote in 2016 was a premonition of the Trump populist wave.
The tactics of Brexit's win, grassroots people on social media, were also foreshadowing how Trump would beat the Hillary machine.
And also, the resistance of the remain side, the side that lost, to accepting the validity of the result, was also a premonition of how Donald Trump's win would be delegitimized by the establishment.
Tell me what's going to happen.
I mean, things are still somewhat fluid, but it is a fact that the United Kingdom will leave the European Union in the spring of 2019, one way or another.
Like, it is leaving.
It can't stay, right?
Well, yeah, we're leaving at the end of March.
We're leaving the European Union, and now the question is how it's going to be done.
Theresa May's had a really difficult time of it.
She's been trying to pass a withdrawal bill.
So the question is, will people accept the withdrawal agreement or not?
And if the bill isn't passed, then I guess we'll see whether this referendum happens or we'll see whether we leave on a no-deal basis.
Everything's up in the air.
It's changing every day.
There's a few options there, and I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
It's going to be a big issue throughout the rest of the year, though, because regardless of what happens at the end of March, we've still got to negotiate a future trading agreement and all sorts with the European Union.
So throughout the rest of 2019, we're still going to be talking about the EU a lot.
You know, I remember the Remain campaign came up with an idea called Project Fear.
I think that's actually what it was referred to internally.
And they were designed to scare people into how their lives in the UK just couldn't even continue if they weren't part of the EU.
The craziest thing I saw was the head of the British Sandwich Association.
And that's just what it sounds like.
These are sandwich makers.
There's a lot of great sandwiches in the UK, I must say, having visited there.
And he was saying that British sandwiches will suffer.
I'm not even kidding.
Here's a quick clip.
Just because I know viewers are saying, Ezra, you're talking about a Saturday night live skip.
No, just take a quick look.
Here's the British Sandwich Association boss saying, you know, say goodbye to good sandwiches.
What does no deal mean for you, for the sandwich industry?
I don't think it means absolutely no sandwiches because our industry is very creative and clever at coming up with new recipes.
But certainly there would be serious problems in terms of some of the fresh ingredients we bring in from the European Union and also from overseas, particularly if we have problems at ports and we can't get ingredients through because they're all fresh and don't have a very long shelf life and we've got no chance of stockpiling fresh ingredients.
So I think the answer from the sandwich industry is going to be that it's going to limit the amount of choice that consumers have if we suddenly crash out Brexit in the way that it's being talked about.
I don't think anyone believes that's true.
I think sandwiches are named after a Brit, the Earl of Sandwich.
I'd have to check my history on that.
But if they're willing to say your sandwiches, are you going to lose those delicious sandwiches?
I think they've gone into parody mode.
And I don't think anyone should ever trust the establishment on Brexit ever again because they've been lying since the first day.
Absolutely.
This is part of the con.
The people that want a second referendum just so happen to have power in parliament as well.
So they spend all this time working with these different organisations saying, why don't you tell them that they're going to run out of sandwiches, right?
Scare them for us.
And as soon as the people are scared, once they start proposing a second referendum, which may still happen, people are going to be terrified.
So, you know, but I think it's backfiring because they told us we'll run out of sandwiches.
They told us we'll run out of cheese.
They told us that cancer patients will die without the right drugs.
We're told that people with diabetes are not going to have access to insulin, despite the fact that I listed three insulin manufacturers here right in the UK.
All these lies have been seen through.
People realize that they're being lied to.
And, you know, they're very angry.
And I don't think they're ever going to trust them ever again, especially if they then betray them on that vote from 2016.
People will have no reason to vote ever again.
Scaring The Public For Votes00:01:17
Yeah.
What it would be like if somehow Donald Trump's election were negated and maybe technically, legally, they could have some sort of soft legal coup like that, but it would do permanent and I mean century-long damage to the democratic institution itself.
And I sense that it's similar in the UK on Brexit.
And I think that it's along the same fault lines, the insider elites versus the upstarts who aren't supposed to have an opinion, you know, aren't supposed to think so much.
Well, Jack, you're in an interesting city.
There's a lot going on.
I appreciate your work and Martinez, not just in London, but on the continent.
And I wish you good luck in 2019.
Thanks so much, Ezra.
Yeah, there's plenty of us, plenty more for us to do throughout the year.
Yeah, you bet.
All right.
Well, there you have it.
Thanks, Jack.
What do you think of that?
From Jail Angem to traveling to the continent and watching this wave of populist nationalism sweep out the Angela Merkel version of Europe and bring in something a little more Brexite, a little more trumpy, if I may say so.