Marty Gold, independent Manitoba journalist and J.C.A. editor-in-chief, exposes how Premier Brian Pallister’s early 2019 election call—just before Manitoba’s 150th anniversary—coincided with Facebook censoring his reports on harm reduction failures (e.g., Winnipeg’s 92.9% rise in St. Boniface property crimes) and BDS-linked anti-Semitism, including threats against The State of Jewish Hate event. Bernie Bellin’s Jewish Post-In News misreported attendance (4,200 vs. 1,800), dismissed corrections from Matt Ostrove and IDF veteran Richard Weiss, and escalated confrontations, revealing a pattern of suppressing conservative Jewish voices amid progressive dominance. Gold’s work highlights systemic bias in media and policy, where dissent—like his election coverage or critiques of harm reduction—faces disproportionate suppression, undermining democratic discourse. [Automatically generated summary]
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A looming election, Facebook censorship, and an attempted deplatforming of a Jewish speaker, all in Manitoba.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
The writ has just dropped in Manitoba.
The 42nd general election in Manitoba has been called by Conservative Premier Brian Pallister.
Manitobans go to the polls on September 10th, 2019, a full year and one month sooner than scheduled, with the Conservative government saying they have already fulfilled their promises from the last election and now they're seeking a new mandate from the people.
What does this election in Manitoba mean for the rest of the country as we approach a federal election?
Then, what happens when you're a small independent journalist doing the work the mainstream media just completely refuses to do?
And it's happening during the Manitoba election cycle.
And then Facebook arbitrarily censors you and calls you fake news.
What sort of recourse do you even have?
Then, in Winnipeg, a controversial pro-Israel speaker was very nearly deplatformed.
And the near-de-platforming came from a surprising place.
Amazingly, one reporter in Manitoba was on the beat for all of these stories.
My guest tonight is independent Winnipeg journalist Marty Gold to break down the Manitoba election and so much more.
in an interview we recorded yesterday afternoon.
Joining me now from his home in Winnipeg is Marty Gold.
Marty Gold is the editor-in-chief of the J.C.A. Hey Marty, thanks for coming on the show.
We've got a ton of things to talk about spanning off all sorts of different issues, issues that are important to our Rebel viewers and I'm sure to J.C. readers.
But first, big news out of Winnipeg.
Big news out of Manitoba.
Elections been called.
I think this is important for Canadians as a whole because Manitoba was the first, I guess, swing back to conservatism.
It started the pendulum coming back the other way.
And so I'm a conservative.
I'd love to find out that Manitoba stays conservative.
Why don't you give us a little bit of analysis on what some of the issues are in Manitoba in this next election?
Sure.
Well, I'll start off with the campaign kickoff.
It was a waiting game.
Premier Palister's going to the polls more than a year early.
It's somewhat controversial.
His reasoning was that next year is Manitoba's 150th anniversary.
He did not want an election to seem like it was a government in power was catapulting itself by using the pedestal of anniversary celebrations.
I don't remember what the phrase is for 150, but it's something I'm sure I can't pronounce.
And so he went early.
And he announced well in advance, he actually went to the lieutenant governor and the writ was dropped yesterday afternoon.
I just came, as we take this, I came back from the Liberal launch, which is the Liberal Party led by Dougal Lamont.
I've written a couple of articles about him lately in my secular life where I'm still covering politics, in fact, both elections here in Manitoba.
And their major announcement today for their campaign was like all green all the time.
They want to put grass, natural grass on the Red River floodway so that you can then seed the grass.
They want every Manitoban to plant five trees.
I just came from this.
It's not like I'm not remembering properly.
It was a very unusual because what they're doing is they're trying to outgreen the Green Party.
Without having talked analytically with anybody there, with Lamont or any of the candidates that I know, some of these people I've known for a number of years, campaign workers, et cetera.
But it seems to me that they've decided the room for growth is not trying to bash the NDP necessarily or take on the NDP.
There's only a certain number of conservative voters they think that can move.
And so they've decided they're going after the Green Party.
The Green Party, although it would be very uphill for the Green Party to elect members here, their leader, James Badome, is running against NDP leader Wab Canu in Fort Rouge.
It's the fourth different riding Badome has tried to get elected.
And they, of course, are running an entirely green campaign.
But they haven't put out an actual platform, costed things out.
DougalMont, the Liberals, thinking this is an opportunity, put out a platform today that included, of course, carbon tax, Manitoba being carbon neutral by 2030, the usual federal line.
Not any mention of the presser about business, small business, taxation, vague passing reference to education.
But they think that the only room for them to grow votes and steal some seats beyond the three they have.
And one incumbent up north has left.
I don't know if they're going to hold that seat, is to go after the green vote, which is now somewhere probably, I think probably around 12%, maybe.
I haven't seen a recent poll, but I guess about 10, 12%.
Certainly in some ridings, Wolseley, they came very close last time against the NDP.
The incumbents quit, so they might take a seat, a green seat here in the legislature.
The Liberals are aiming in that direction, aligning themselves with the federal government.
I'm not sure that that is the smartest move, but this is right now how they're steering the ship.
The NDP, it's interesting in that the frontrunners, the opposition, Her Majesty's loyal opposition, the New Democratic Party, led by Wab Canu.
Canoe is, you know, he's very realistic that he's got a tough time.
There's so much negative said about him, about his past, about the difference between what he wrote in his book and what he made in other statements.
Some people think that it's kind of mean-spirited, that you don't believe somebody can change.
But ultimately, it was just a year or two ago that his former spouse asserted domestic violence that he outright denies.
Nobody's ever talked to the other couple that was there that night about the mood and such.
He can't get past it.
Immediately at the start of the campaign, it's all about him, his wife, who's a doctor, and they're two small kids.
He's got, I believe, older kids from his previous marriage.
So they're trying to recast the misogynist rapper Wob Canu is an erudite academic, former academic, family man.
And ultimately, there are some people that aren't going to buy it.
The liberals know that.
I don't know really where they think they have growth.
The NDP is looking mostly to recapture seats that they lost in the last election.
Thompson, one of the ridings in Brandon, I apologize, I don't remember if it was Brandon East or Brandon West.
They think they can scoop back.
There's also been some redistribution.
The Tories have had to move candidates around like fish out of water.
One example, Shannon Martin, who represented Morris, which is 40 miles to the south of Winnipeg, and a very, I think, Mennonite and maybe Ukrainian kind of old white, old stock white, rural riding in Manitoba that probably would fit in Alberta, frankly.
And he's now running in a new riding they've carved out that's kind of pie-shaped, called Kildonin.
That's half traditional Jewish Ukrainian Polish, I think Filipino Garden City, one of the first suburbs in Winnipeg, and sort of north endish.
And then there's all this rural area.
That's not farmland, it's just like old country roads with big, you know lots, and there's, there's so much.
It's all discordant in terms of the what's important in the riding.
And then you're taking a guy from the other side of the of the world as far as Winnipeg is concerned and dropping him in.
And Shannon's a great guy and a good MLA, but very tough for the Tories to hold that.
That number count.
I think still though, no sense that the NDP, that the Tories, could possibly lose enough seats for the NDP to gain traction.
The question is, will the Liberals win more than four seats, get party status and added funding, and will the Green Party have a breakthrough early in the campaign?
I've already begun my coverage and I've continued to stay focused on.
You know Lamont has said some interesting things about the conservative government and he's caught on to problems that I've identified about the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, all the dirty needles around Winnipeg, the he Lamont was very complimentary to my story.
Actually, when I interviewed him saying that proper data collection is important for policy, that it doesn't surprise him the WHA was out by 1200.
And how many used needles will be found on the streets of Winnipeg?
1200, they estimated last year.
They told me in an email last October between five and ten thousand.
The BEAR KLAN alone in public service says they're.
They're going to be picking up $140,000, $180,000 this year, whatever.
So I've made some news with that.
In fact, last week, that probably is something finding a city councilor, an NDP counselor, who agreed with Dougal Lamont.
The city is suffering because of poor data collection and poor free needle practices, harm reduction practices.
So I had a North End counselor, Ross Edi, chiming in along with Dougal Lamont, St. Boniface.
I just published a story on my secular location.
I guess we're going to talk about that St. Boniface had a 92.9% increase in property crimes in the last five in five years, from 2014 to 2018.
And it didn't impact the civic election in 2018.
That number wasn't known.
But it will impact, I think, it's very possible that people are going to look around, ask what that number was the last five years, the previous five years, and make it a provincial election issue at the doorstep.
And probably federal too.
One of the federal candidates chimed in on my story today.
So I've been digging away at that.
And there are a lot of economic issues.
There's a lot of disparity issues and education issues.
But ultimately, health care, meth addiction, the disposition of a building.
It's in a contract dispute and sitting mothballed, and it's got like 10 detox beds at 800 Adele.
Liberals agreeing that this should be looked at.
And I'll have a story coming out that there's an elected MLA who also agrees with that.
So these things are things that are motivating people to ask questions.
Not enough, I don't think, any of at the swing of government, but it might make the conservative government uncomfortable about some of their policy positions.
They may have to loosen up, change their thinking a little bit on a few things.
Premier Pollister, not famous for that, but it could be that he's going to hear the music to some extent.
Yeah, you're really digging into these issues that are affecting, like, especially meth and opioid addiction.
They're affecting city centers all across the country, and especially with regard to supervised injection sites.
Which we don't have here yet, and which has been a battle both provincially and at the civic level.
The mayor wants it, and the premier is very entirely resistant.
Well, and your reporting is digging up some of the problems around supervised injection sites, and you don't even have them yet.
For example, needle collection.
You don't even have the supervised injection site.
People are pushing for supervised injection sites, and yet you're still exhibiting the problems that are caused by supervised injection sites.
Really, you have a de facto supervised injection site where there's people gathered.
What you said is that the harm reduction is failing in the collection side.
And I'm going to have a story coming up in about a week or two.
I still have material from the Regional Health Authority about their data, their processes, where they didn't even meet their own standards, their own criteria to provide what's called medically proper surveillance on this subject.
But, you know, whereas my coverage has gotten attention, I've been on this for a year, starting with Manitoba Post and now with an old blog that I revived, the acronym for the Great Canadian Talk Show, tgcts.blogspot.com.
And I've been on this case like a beat almost for like almost a year now.
And people are realizing that there's, you can't just Lottie Dodd away.
And it seemed last week that story about with the city councilor now chiming in with the liberal leader that I pushed some of the wrong buttons, so to speak.
And I'm in the middle of a bit of a battle now because of my reporting, which I'm not happy to be put in that position.
It's really unfair, but sometimes that's what happens to us independent types that are on the libertarian side of the equation.
Yeah, that's the next thing that I wanted to talk to you about.
Boy, it's so funny how just talking with you, we can go from A to B and C, and all these issues seem not really remotely connected, but they end up being connected that way.
Because of your reporting, you and I suspect, on the issue of needles and crime, you've been censored by Facebook.
And your stories are really making a difference.
They're garnering political attention.
And yet, because you're being censored by Facebook, that information can't get out to the voters that need it and the voters that need to press those same politicians at the door for solutions.
This is a very weird circumstance.
Facebook Censorship Impact00:08:35
The story that I referenced with, again, Councillor Edie from Winnipeg, he's a blind guy that I've known for many years.
We're on very opposite sides of the fence politically.
We're both North End boys, and we have very good, frank discussions about our neighborhood, our traditional neighborhood, and what goes on in the city.
The story last week was North End Counselor echoes liberal leaders' skepticism about WRHA harm reduction free needle program.
I definitely believe Street Connections has not handled their program very well over the years on the collection side.
And then I went into some numbers and spoke with or revived some comments from Dewey Lamont, the liberal leader.
An hour, as I'm sitting at my desk at this desk, an hour after I put the story up, I'm on the Great Canadian Talk Show Facebook group page, and I take a look, and it has a flag on the PIN post, which is, there's two elections, so we're coming back, which is, you know, the main fundraising driver post I put out explaining the background of our citizen journalism, the kinds of stories that we've broken, why it's important that there's fewer reporters employed in Winnipeg than ever.
And so it makes sense to have somebody independent and see if the public, I've looked for 100 donors at $50 each, which I thought was easier than $50 to $100, but basically $5,000 to try to raise, pay the rent, put gas in the car, pay the internet bill, and go meet politicians face to face, go to events, talk with the people on the street, ask the candidates tough questions.
This is what I did on radio, and this is what I did on TV too, within studio interviews.
The picture with the story with Ross Edie is from City Circus TV.
And this flag says, this violates our community standards.
Please, you know, you can delete it.
And I'm like, maybe there's some way that a fundraising, but I know people do it all the time.
So that doesn't really make any sense.
And as I scroll down, I see every post.
Only you can see it.
Every post was flagged.
Now, my posts, I posted on Facebook.
I joined Facebook 2008.
That was my main location as a website, was a blog spot location.
I kept things simple.
So anything from 2008 to 2011, when I then start a new website for my TV show, none of those posts are objectionable.
This can only be the eight or so stories that I filed since the end of June.
Well, they're all about drug policy.
They're about political stuff.
They're about City Hall in the Manitoba province.
There's nothing obscene.
There's no bad language.
There's no calling people names.
There's no getting into debates about the BC Human Rights Commission.
This is all local issues, none of which are genuinely controversial in the broader context of people's touchy fee's.
And if you think this is wrong, click here and it click.
Why do you think it's wrong?
I am filing news stories.
I've been doing this for years.
But then you read that they won't actually respond to you.
This helps with their algorithms.
This helps their processes.
So I'm shut out from my main identity site.
You know, this is my identity.
And when you type it in, as I had somebody do today, to Facebook with our messenger window or whatever, it comes up that it is not a permitted URL.
I've been banned.
Now, the federal liberals have made a big deal about fake news, right?
And they want fake news banned from Facebook and other online platforms.
But what nobody's thought of, what happens when real news gets banned.
And that's what's happened.
And so where I am, my office is and has been for many years in St. Boniface.
One of the reasons I end up doing a lot of stories about St. Boniface, and especially because crime rate and needles here and the liberal leaders represents here, et cetera.
And I go to the MP's office.
Now, the MP here is Danny Van Dell.
He's a former professional boxer.
I've known Danny before he got into politics in the kind of rivalry that wrestlers and boxers will have.
We were in a documentary together about the Canadian champion Al Sparks a few years ago.
Danny's the kind of guy that, even from when he was at City Hall, I do not have to agree with people politically on everything and can still have a good relationship with them and be friends with them.
And this is the first time I've ever to go to Danny Vandell's office.
And I've gone with him with community organizations with regards to victims' rights and some other initiatives and try to move things along with the feds.
But this is the first time I've gone for me and said, my business and your riding, I need your help.
He wasn't there.
One of his assistants was, it's very familiar with me and my work and knew about the stories I'm doing.
They said, well, we've never heard about this.
And yeah, Facebook is kind of tough to talk to.
And okay, we'll see what we can do.
Well, I told them that I'm going to talk with all the Winnipeg liberal members of parliament.
I know, I met all of them.
I know four of them particularly well.
Kevin Lamru, I've known for 30 years.
I'm coming.
Robert Falkland Loud, I know, reads my stuff.
He's been in my stuff.
He's been on my TV show.
He's getting a call or a visit.
Marianne Mahaichuk, I've known since she was in Gary Dewar's government and did a number of stories about her when she was in the mining industry.
She's going to get a call.
But today I called, I try to figure out how do I get to Jim Carr.
He's very busy.
I can't just walk up to him and say, hey, Jim, I've been banned from Facebook.
He's not going to.
But I knew somebody that's one of his important key people from back in the Red River College days with Kick FM.
And I contacted this guy.
He called me immediately.
He knows I'm not calling for nothing.
And I explained to him the problem that the liberals can only focus on fake news being banned.
They have to focus on real news being allowed, given the ability to be in the public square, that Facebook can't operate on the premise that there's no appeal, no warning, no nothing, and that this is injurious.
Well, I'm covering two elections covering liberal candidates and liberal leaders as well as others.
And I got a commitment from that individual that he is going to look into this.
I mean, they're perplexed because nobody's ever thought of this.
And I'm very concerned.
I'm wondering who else in the country that does what I do.
I know there's not a lot of us, but that file independent journalism stories somewhere between the realm of their mom's basement and bloggers in Minneapolis.
Somewhere in the middle there, there's people that maybe get the rent paid.
Maybe they have a better business going.
Maybe they don't imagine.
Maybe somebody, the rebels have been banned from Facebook on the same premise.
I don't know.
But I'm very disturbed about it.
You can see that I'm disturbed.
I've gone through this once where I was censored in Manitoba and where it was backhanded and where it was completely unfair with no process.
And I'm not going to put up with it.
I'm absolutely not going to put up with it.
So the other liberal MLAs will be hearing from me.
I'll be a little less worked up.
And I'm encouraged that the office of Dan Vandell and the office of the Honorable Jim Carr recognized immediately the importance of the kind of journalism that I do, the kind of reporting and investigations I do.
And I'm hoping this is resolved.
In the meantime, I've had to resort to a backup blog that Facebook hasn't banned yet to get my stories out.
Otherwise, I'm still posting on my original blog spot location and I'm going to keep it coming.
I'm not giving up.
No, of course not.
And you know, it is funny that the liberals didn't think of the flip side of their promises to censor fake news.
And that is that everybody can get caught up in being accused of being fake news because it seems to me that fake news these days is just news you disagree with.
And in your instance, the people who are probably flagging your work are likely far-left-wing activists.
Oh, the harm reduction crowd.
Who claim to care about the poor and poor neighborhoods.
This petrifies them because the harm reduction community, they've never, they say the most outlandish things, which again, I'll be getting into in the next month.
This includes people that want the federal government to pay to supply clean drugs to everybody, including heroin.
Now, listen, when they start including meth and say they say that all drugs are equal, it's moral relativism.
The biggest, the bane of our modern times is moral relativism because we know cultures aren't equal.
We know people's conduct when they're dropped fish out of water is not going to be equal.
Security Threats Canceled Event00:15:15
We know there are not equal outcomes in sports.
And this is another example where the harm reduction crowd, they don't want to be accountable for handing out 2 million needles in Winnipeg.
And, you know, 20,000, well, that's only 1%.
That's 21,000 damn needles on the street.
What kind of morons are these that are dictating health policy and getting away with it?
And I'm the first person, I think, that's challenged this locally.
I know I am.
I'm the only person who's dived into the numbers.
And so you, when we talk about this privately, and there are others that agree, that, you know, I get that story up where a city councilor whose ward is affected is saying, there's something wrong here.
And an hour later, my story's banned from Facebook.
What garbage.
And isn't that convenient?
Now, we've talked about your secular work.
Let's talk about the other work that you do at the J.C. You've got some news breaking over there.
I'm proud to say that I was one of the first people who sort of caught you on your upswing at the J.C.
It's been a lot to us.
Yeah, and you've got some news happening over there.
As we've just illustrated, I spent many years doing what we call secular reporting.
I wasn't very involved in the Jewish community.
I may be on radio or TV.
I interviewed my sister on TV once.
She runs a Jewish funeral chapel, and I did a half hour with her on that.
I was very proud to.
But generally, I didn't do a lot of stories about Judaism, stories about Israel.
If something came up, especially when I was on radio, something on a campus, Israel apartheid week, of course, I'd get whoever on from the campus, from Hillel or whatever.
But I've not been a very, just like my rest, so-called wrestling career, I've not been, you know, emphasized my Jewish background.
I just want to point out the Macho Man shirt.
I did a couple of shows with the Macho Man's brother, Leaping Lanny Poffo.
And I do have a surprise coming out for Jewish New Year for Rosh Hashanah, the first ever interview with Lanny Poffo about being raised in a half-Jewish family.
Him and Randy had Jewish grandparents.
Nobody had ever talked to him about the Jewish influence in their lives.
So I just wanted to mention that.
Anyways, that's where I managed to, again, combine hanging around wrestling, being secular, and with something that was unique.
And I hope it's going to attract a lot of positive vibes from people.
But about six months ago, I, and of course, again, just secular work, discovered the infiltration, the attempted infiltration of far-left radical Marxist activists into the Winnipeg community by planting speakers and what's If Not Now.
Well, I had to tell them what If Not Now was, and they're even more vile now than they were five or six months ago.
And so I've gotten deeper and deeper into this with my publisher, Ron East.
Ronnie's father trained me and Ron in media, in journalism, and in matters relating to Israel and international affairs and counterterrorism and all that stuff.
And so now all these years later, I've been called back into service for my own community because anti-Semitism is running at high rates all over the country.
Toronto, there's been like three incidents lately of children being assaulted.
A woman was accosted by a pro-Palestinian, really, really aggressive BDS guy just yesterday.
Toronto's taking over its own security.
There's all these things going on, and we're trying to figure out in Winnipeg where there's no security service.
There's no awareness of this.
There's no counter.
There's been four or five straight information pickets, protest marches, anti-Zionist, anti-Israel, pro-BDS, with no response from the Jewish Federation at all, nothing at all.
In the course of this, and trying to create awareness in our community of what the dangers are and in the general community too, where the threats are coming from, we brought in Lauren Isaacs, who is the director of Heirut Canada out of Toronto.
And Lauren is a 23-year-old girl who became famous in April, internet famous, for posing on the Temple Mount with her Israeli flag looking Heirut flag.
Lauren came in.
She is unbelievable.
If there's a guest that I can recommend, you or one of the other hosts the Rebel have on sometime.
And writing it down.
She knows her stuff.
And so we brought her in for a seminar in River Heights, a Jewish neighborhood in Winnipeg, called The State of Jewish Hate.
And the focus was on how the radical, the progressive left, who are entirely radical, progressive is a misnomer, that progressive Jewish activists are fueling anti-Semitism.
We see evidence of it all the time.
Even in scheduling the event, my publisher, Ron East, gets a phone call one morning from somebody from the community center who says, yeah, your event.
I need more information.
Well, it's a meeting about Jewish med, you know, Jewish community matters.
Yeah, but what's it about?
Well, it's about anti-Semitism.
Oh, yeah, okay.
We'll have to refund you your deposit and we'll have to cancel it.
And Ron says, well, what do you mean?
You got complaints?
And she goes, well, yeah, we got complaints.
And blah, blah, blah.
He says, well, I get to see the complaints.
I need this in writing.
We're not canceled until now, of course, he phones me.
I get a hold of the city councilor, John Orlico, who's in terms of where my residence is, that's my counselor.
And John Gerard, former liberal leader that represents the riding.
Ron goes on Facebook.
A number of people phone and email this community center.
She phones him back two hours later, as we had a video of this on the J.C. website, and says, listen, you aren't canceled.
It's just under review.
Tell people to stop calling.
He said, so we're not canceled.
We're under review.
I'm not going to tell people to stop calling.
At this point, it becomes famous on the internet.
And now Nazis and neo-Nazis and BDS Nudniks and haters start diving in on this.
In the meantime, Ron never got a call from anybody about the disposition of this due diligence.
You got one more message.
It's a dude, the club's doing its due diligence.
Now, listen, there's an event at a community center in goddamn Winnipeg, okay, in the summertime.
Now, what's the due diligence for any other event that doesn't involve Jews discussing anti-Semitic threats in a Jewish neighborhood?
Let's say Sheila was in Winnipeg and therefore was going to have a wedding social.
Do you have those in Alberta?
Socials?
Sure.
We just sit on a tailgate and get drunk, but whatever.
So what's the due diligence for wedding social?
Are you having salami or bologna?
Are the pickles going to be in spears or in chips?
You know, are you going to have one hot mustard two or just regular mustard?
What due diligence?
We're bringing in a speaker.
She's a national figure.
She's a leader of Jewish youth.
And we're talking about things that worry us.
We showed up in this building having alternate plans with a powered speaker system to do it outdoors.
We go there, the door is open, it's all set up.
Nobody told us we were in.
We were in.
So the event was set up, not set up for huge attendance because there was another event.
I can't say competing.
It was a pre-scheduled event, a memorial for the bombing in Argentina of the community center there that night.
This is when Lauren could come in.
So 200 people, whatever, 250 Jewish people go to the Jewish Community Center.
30 come to ours, and about 50 more came after the other event.
But we set it up with our partners, the Winnipeg Jewish Business Council, for a Facebook live stream.
It had 1,800 views.
This was the point, was to get the message out.
And, you know, it's a different game nowadays.
It was successful, but some things are going on in the background.
After the event, a couple of articles were written in the Jewish Post-In News.
That is what Ron calls the Schneetl newspaper.
There was a column and an article.
Now, neither story mentioned the Winnipeg Jewish Business Council as a sponsor.
They both implied that the only audience was the 30 people in attendance when it started, as opposed to the 1,800 that watched.
And so the president of the Jewish Business Council, Matt Ostrove, he wrote a very polite email to Bernie Bellin, the publisher and owner or part owner of the Jewish Post and News, saying, look, you left us out.
There's details you got wrong.
Lauren's speech addressed these important points, including the dangers of BDS.
And Bernie's a leftie.
He's got BDS friends, right?
The response, the official response from the Jewish Post-In News was, your letter's too long and you aren't a subscriber.
Buy a subscriber and I'll consider publishing it.
Now, I've been around journalism for a long time, but I've never heard where printing a correction depended on whether somebody paid you.
Holy.
I know.
Now it got better.
That was, you know, with regards, I don't remember specifically, I think Matt sort of referenced both Myron Love's story and Bernie's column in terms of, and neither of them mentioned the Winnipeg Jewish Business Council that their name was right on the event, right?
Get your tickets in advance thing.
I mean, you couldn't have missed them if you're paying attention.
And I understand why they would be displeased.
Here they are, Bray.
They do events from time to time, and here they are helping us present on a crucial topic where there are teenage girls who spoke in the Q ⁇ A talking about being intimidated in schools.
God knows what schools are doing about this in Winnipeg and Manitoba anyways, or in Canada, about being intimidated by kids that have this very left-leaning or pro-Palestinian or whatever perspective, and they're aggressive about it.
Now, our security chief, a former IDF veteran, Richard Weiss, he sends his own email specifically about Myron Love's story to Bernie Bellin that left out the co-sponsor.
This wasn't accurate.
That wasn't accurate.
It was about more so based on not just Lex Rothberg and if not now, that's where this all started.
But this was about all these other things that have gone on, including the attempt by independent Jewish voices, the Jewish market, the mostly Jewish far-left Marxists that pretend to be able to speak for the Jewish community with no more than 2.5% or 400 people that are on their side of things.
They wanted, they opposed the Canadian government adopting the Definitions for anti-Semitism, the IHRA definitions, because this precludes BDSNICS.
First of all, it precludes BDS because it's an attack on the Jewish state, no different than Nazi Germany prohibiting trade with Jewish businesses.
So this cuts into their game really bad because now they got to zip their lip about a lot of stuff.
Right?
Anyways, Richard writes his letter.
He says, Yo, you got some things are wrong.
It should be corrected.
And the first response he gets is, oh, so you read something in the Shettle paper.
Go shove it.
Now, Richard, this is from Bernie Bellin.
So, Richard, and again, I did a video interview with him that's now on our site.
And Richard said, Kid, are you sure it's your answer?
Because you're asking for corrections to articles in a newspaper, and you're telling a guy who was there, who was an IDF veteran, who, and we needed security, added security precautions because of threats from neo-Nazis beaking their gums about Lauren Isaacs and not just neo-Nazis.
Some of this came again from the pro-Palestinian side because she's rather unpopular with certain Islamist extremists.
So we have to arrange our own security and position in the room and everything, which we're glad to do and competent at doing.
But you'd think the IDF veteran says, hey, I'd like a correction.
This topic of anti-Semitism was addressed in a certain manner and very important.
Don't leave out details and don't get the details wrong.
He says, Are you sure?
Shove it?
You sure?
And Bernie Bellin's response was, Can I say it?
Can I say it?
Oh, yeah.
You, you, and all your idiot friends.
So this is how the Jewish Post publisher addressed the pro-Israel community in Winnipeg.
What hasn't come out till basically now is what was going on behind the scenes as we were trying to get the event run.
You see, part of the problem is the articles that were written in the Jewish Post and news and the column by Bernie Bellen, where he said that he tried to undermine that there was any attempt to cancel the event, that it was done as a publicity stunt, because he went and mentioned, all of a sudden, there's publicity worldwide on United with Israel because of this claim that it was canceled.
And he said, well, there's no proof it was canceled.
Can we anybody say?
Nobody really knows.
But the whole way he approaches it, he's trying to undermine Run's honesty.
Well, that's ridiculous.
And his basis of his story was never talking to Run, never talking to me.
And Ron talked with Myron Love at the event and told him the story.
So the Jewish Post and Entity knew.
He said, Well, I talked to the director from River Heights, and she said that you were never told it was canceled.
She never told you it was canceled.
And Ron's never talked with her.
She's never phoned him.
She's never called me.
To this day, she's never spoken with us.
She's never told us what happened with the due diligence.
She's never revealed the complaint.
She's never called him.
But she's saying what Ron was or wasn't told.
And Bernie, not realizing, she's not there.
There's an administrator at the site that was the one that made the phone calls.
He doesn't realize he's made another bad journalistic error.
And he's using it to try to say, well, we don't really know it was canceled, a publicity stunt.
Screw off.
If you want a publicity, we'll show you guys publicity stunts.
That wasn't one.
That was a genuine threat from some anti-Semite trying to stop the Jewish community in Winnipeg from talking about the rise of anti-Semitism in our own community.
Anyways, there was a few problems with what Bernie wrote, but really there were problems with what led up to what he wrote and what he said to people.
Before the event, he nudged me a bit.
He had a few questions.
That's normal part for the course.
Then he said, oh, your event wasn't really, you know, why did you write that it was canceled when it wasn't?
Well, I hadn't written an article.
It's somebody else's article.
Go complain to them.
Leave me out of it.
By the time he was done, he had at 11 o'clock at night Israeli time tried to quit, as I understand it, tried to contact the major, major pro-Israel organization that had covered, written a story about this attempt to silence Lauren Isaacs and the J.C.A. at 11 at night to tell them, oh, your stories is not accurate.
And as I am told, as I am told, 11 o'clock at night, tried to get them in Israel to get Lauren Isaacs to call him, going behind my back as the media coordinator for the event to talk with our speaker without our knowledge the night before the event.
Okay?
That's you know, pretty unusual.
Then, you know, in the events before it started, Myron came up to me, said, I have a few questions.
Bernie talked to community center general manager, and she says the event was never canceled.
Rabbi's Apology Interrupted00:08:07
I gotta stop right there.
Ron Ron sits down, tells him the story.
So you can see there's this mischief, this misinformation going on.
Regardless, the event was successful.
The next day, we had arranged for Lauren Isaacs, myself, and Ron East, in the Jewish Community Center in the Rady Center.
There's a cafe, Schmuzer's Cafe, delicious food.
I've known the person who operates it, the owner, since I drove cab for her dad.
I've known her since she was a child.
It's great there.
Nice open area.
And we're sitting there, Lauren, Lauren, Ron, me on one side of the table on the other side, two officials from Jewish Federation.
I can't tell you, I know their specific jobs.
I recognize them, but I don't know exactly what they did, but they're younger, involved in programming, no doubt, for younger people.
And a rabbi from one of the congregations who grew up next door to my grandparents.
I've known him since he was, probably since he was born.
He might have been two years old when they moved here.
So here we are, the pro-Jewish media, and Lauren Isaacs, who can name off every affiliation between left-wing Jewish activist groups, what they say, how they use the same language as Hamas, as Hezbollah, the same language as Palestinian authorities, how they desecrate Jewish traditions, try to subvert birthright trips, people who are learning about their own country.
I mean, they're real, real characters.
She can go up and down all of them and can talk about how dangerous it is and how it can affect Jewish students trying to go to campus just to learn things.
Never mind to try to act out their Jewishness.
As we're having this conversation about anti-Semitism in Winnipeg and frankly, Nationally, and what can be done in behind Rabbi Rose, like in my field of vision this way, here goes Bernie Bellin.
And he's walking with somebody, and I didn't care enough to even check who.
And he walks past.
He looks, you know, backwards.
Now I go back, so I'm like looking at Rabbi Rose right across from me.
All of a sudden, looming in behind Rabbi Rose, standing in behind him, he's like, come back, and then walked in a couple of feet, is Bernie Bellin.
And he's pointing.
And he's red in the face.
But he's not pointing at me.
He's to my left at run.
Now he doesn't come up to the table and say, hey, excuse me, everybody.
Sorry, I got to interrupt.
Hey, you guys.
He barges into a meeting between the director of Heirut Canada and our newspaper and Jewish Federation officials and the rabbi of the second largest congregation in the city.
And his opening line is, let me tell you something, Ron East.
Now, I'm really happy that Bernie Bellen got to live out his lifelong dream of pretending to be a wrestler.
But he didn't stop there.
You better watch yourself.
When somebody says, you better watch yourself, and they aren't going, hey, listen, you better watch yourself.
And they're saying it to you or they're pointing their finger and they're red in the face.
That's a threat.
So Ron rises up and he proceeds to unleash a combination of words that I'm sure this is 10:45 in the morning on a Friday in the summer with no school, you know, school's out.
So it's full of never mind Baba Zinzeta's great-grandparents and kids and families and people going to their swimming lessons and probably the odd Orthodox person wandering through to go to who knows the library, the library, the Jewish historical museum or something.
He's in the complex.
And Ron let loose with a few words that admittedly I'm sure some of those people have never heard either individually or frankly with a hyphen in between them.
And Bernie doesn't back down.
He doesn't back down.
Ron lets him have it again.
And finally, this dissipates.
Now, this is, of course, the end of the meeting.
Ron pretty much immediately, when he calms down, sends an email apologizing to the people there for his language.
But clearly, this is provocatory.
And there's no two ways about it.
Somebody walks up, interrupts a meeting.
I mean, really, this is the story.
Left-wing publisher disrupts meeting about anti-Semitism between Jewish officials and activists.
It's a terrible look.
It's just such a bizarre kind of behavior.
And nothing I would expect.
Bernie Bellin's not some firebrand 25-year-old full of piss and vinegar.
He's older than me.
He's somewhere probably put.
And I'm not saying it's to sound mean.
He's probably, you know, he's well-preserved, but he's probably pushing 65, I think.
Old enough to know better.
He, as of our conversation right now, and I have written Federation officials and Rabbi Rose, and I know Ron corresponded with Rabbi Rose about this.
Bellen has not apologized, not to the Federation officials, not to Rabbi Rose from Itzaim.
He has not apologized to Lauren Isaacs.
This is, you know, really acceptable in the eyes of a lot of people that a 23-year-old student who is a rising expert in the subjects of anti-Semitism and pro-Israel activism and countering BDS, that she, early in her role, it's not like she's been around for a decade doing this, having a meeting with officials in what used to be called the Jerusalem of Canada.
She's meeting with the officials here and with a rabbi who's, you know, got some schlep in terms of the size of his contingency there, his congregation, and no apology to Lauren Isaacs or to Heirut Canada.
Just Heirut North America, actually, because it's a subsidiary of Heirut Canada is.
Just unbelievable.
And this is what's gone on, that he would have done that.
And we've kept quiet on that, waiting to see if there'd be apologies to anybody for anything.
Ron apologized for his language.
He didn't start it.
But these attacks on the pro-Israel community, these slights, being told that your opinion doesn't matter, anything can be written about businesses or advertisers.
And your recourse is, well, if you're not an advertiser, you're going to have to buy an ad.
Like, what?
It's a very bizarre approach.
It's not my style of Jewish journalism, as I've indicated to our audience, but it's disturbing.
And it makes Ron and I know that we're on the right path, that this is disrupting the status quo, that we've done nothing wrong by exposing this stuff.
And the notion that anyone else can defend Linda Sarsour as a matter of free speech.
And again, the Jewish Post, you never read that 4,200 people signed that petition that Ron Easton's wife Shirley organized.
And you will always hear about it from anybody else that knows what really went on.
But he says, oh, these guys are troublemakers.
And this is the attitude.
And even coming over to Ron in front of the Federation and in front of this rabbi, you better watch yourself.
Blah, trying to make him look bad and discredit our business operation.
The Jewish community needs unity, both from right and left.
And the left is to understand that the game has changed.
The right has a voice.
And the right has strong opinions and is not just going to be bullied around because the left owns a printing press.
And it's disturbing.
I've known the people involved for a long time, but in my wildest dreams, I never thought I'd see a meeting about anti-Semitism, A, somebody try to prevent it.
And then B, a meeting with community leaders after that meeting is successfully held, somebody trying to interrupt that.
It's just a very bizarre and disturbing pattern coming almost certainly from the political left.
There's no other candidates for, no other way really to describe what's gone on to us in the last month.
It shows that for certain members of the community and a small minority of the community, they think that the only Jewish voice that should be out there is the left-wing one.
Selinger's Legacy: A Disturbing Pattern00:03:10
And, you know, just the very fact that they're so threatened by what you guys are doing only speaks to the necessity of the work that you're doing.
It shows that there's another side of the story to be told.
It shows that they don't want the other side of the story to be told.
And I don't know about you, but I do a lot of things just out of spite because somebody told me not to.
That's as good a reason as any some days to tell the other side of the story.
And I guess, you know what?
Being a left-winger means never having to say your story.
That's, you know, I'll tell you, in Winnipeg, I want to take this back to what you talked about at the beginning, that Manitoba was the beginning of the turnback towards conservative governments in this country.
And it shows you how bad the NDP failed here under Greg Selinger.
I can't say it about Gary Dewar, a lot not to like, but Selinger really hurdled the province towards the toilet.
And of course, in 2015, how many of these NDP staffers migrated to Alberta to help Rachel Notley ruin that province, right?
So I think what was going on in Alberta really reinforced the resolve of Manitobans there was going to be a change and the NDP Tories took 40 seats.
The NDP is reduced to 14.
It's not really recognized that the swing to conservatism that you have mentioned, it's not really recognized nationally that this is where it started and the reasons why it started here, which when things go too far to the left, when there's too much favoritism towards the union's agendas, when there's laws that are counterproductive to the cause of human rights, when there's, you know,
some things are allowed to slip through and other people become prosecuted and persecuted by the practices of government departments.
Part of the concern here is that the Paliser administration has failed people who were counting on the change in government to turn around a lot of those bureaucratic behaviors, a lot of those administrative behaviors within the government departments.
Pauliser did not come with a broom the way I believe he should have and gotten rid of some of these characters because let's again let's look at health policy.
It's the same brainiacs that have been behind this policy going back in terms of needle return rates and everything else.
The same people, whether it's the WHO, these other programs, they've been involved in this harm reduction for 15, 20 years.
And trying to be like a, I don't want to say a caretaker government, but they had a lot to deal with.
They were very hands-off when it came to a lot of administrative and bureaucratic matters.
And there are Tories that, frankly, are considering staying home.
You can decline a ballot here.
And there is concern that the people that brought Palliser to the dance, they weren't as recognized as the people that were his regular dance partners, so to speak, from his own circles of support and people he knew in business or party business or whatever.
But ultimately, this province has learned a hard lesson, as did Alberta.
Look at Ontario, never come close to going back NDP again.
Why People Find Marty Important00:07:23
And what you said about the left is true.
Wabkanu is trying to say he's sorry.
I give him credit.
It's just he's not saying he's sorry about everything.
And that hurts him.
But in general, yes, it's a shame that the left has drifted so far from the principled leftists like Stanley Knowles, even Joe Zukin, who's a Winnipeg City Council, who's a communist, David Orlico,
who is a distant cousin of mine who was an NDP member of parliament for years, that these were honorable people that philosophically believed something but weren't doctrinaire and that kind of, you know, perhaps more genteel, cooperative, you know, where nationalism meant everybody together and not my kind of nationalism from the left.
It's a startling change.
And to see it reflected in the kind of behaviors that we've seen, the J.C.A. and that I've seen with the Great Canadian Talk Show blog, it's, you know, getting up every day, I don't want those surprises.
I want to be able to focus on the kind of work that I do and the kind of work that you appreciate.
Investigative stories, proving that policies aren't working, making the voice of people that are affected by bad policy heard.
That's my raison d'être in the secular side.
And I really rather focus on it.
And instead, what my lawyer used to call skirmishes.
And sometimes the skirmishes turn to battles.
And then every once in a while, you never know when a war can break out.
But luckily, sometimes you just use a lot of funny swear words instead of coming from the other side of the table, I guess.
Gabe, Marty, you've been so generous with your time, as you always are with me.
What are some of the best ways that people can find your work, even though Facebook doesn't want people to find it?
And how can people financially support you in your efforts to tell the other side of the story during the Manitoba election and to shine a light on anti-Semitism and the Jewish community west of Toronto?
And increasingly, a lot of our stories have been about Toronto because there's so much action there.
The best way really is, honestly, if people are pro-Israel, pro-Zionist, anti-BDS, but believe in the, you know, the Judeo-Christian values that Canada is based on and don't want to see that, you know, those values threatened, those values assailed, the J.C., there is a page there set up for advertising and for sponsorships.
And one way or the other, that benefits me and keeps me going in all my work.
And we're looking certainly towards the Jewish New Year.
So people are thinking it'd be good to put up a banner ad that says, I stand with the Winnipeg Jewish community or anything like that.
Those traditional ads you'd see in print.
Those little box ads, we'll do it for you digitally at a much cheaper rate, as well as traditional advertising campaigns for goods or services or products.
And as I said, there's also donations possible through there.
So the J.C., the J.C. has a Twitter account.
And if you type in the J.C.A. it'll end up coming up.
We interact with you, Sheila, and a number of people.
It's a different audience over there with what we do, but there is some crossover that I very much appreciate.
And we appreciate the support and the thumbs up and the retweets that you give the J.CA.
For my other reporting, sometimes I write the odd story still for Manitoba Post, mostly there about sports and bands, the entertainment side of Marty that never goes away.
It's where I show up someplace and it's like, wow, this is a good, you know, this is a good set.
And I'm going to get some good pictures of the singers and of the bands.
And I'm going to show what the other side of Winnipeg is like.
For the other more general reporting and analysis and commentary that I do, TGCTS on Twitter.
And from there, you'll find links to both the Great Canadian Talk Show blog on Blogspot, as well as the alternate location where I'm posting stories that can be posted on Facebook.
And there's a link actually right in my profile for donations that way.
But again, if you go through the stories, you'll find every story has a link to the original premise.
There's two elections, so I'm coming back.
And all support, we got about 25%, about 30% of the goal of 100 donors of $50 each to cover the two elections, the Manitoba and the federal election in Manitoba.
And I'm very hopeful that that'll get topped up.
Nobody's getting rich here, but I think there's a lot of value in what I do and what I've been trained to do.
And I don't relish the idea that there's nobody like me who in this market and in this region can tell these stories, has the institutional knowledge, can work with people like Sheila on trends that are happening across the West.
So, anyways, that's where you can find the J.C. on Twitter, at TGCTS on Twitter, Great Canadian Talk Show group on Facebook, even if the blog can't be locked there.
And any support you folks can direct our way would be very appreciated.
And believe me, put to good use because I got lots more work to do this fall and into the winter.
I think we all do.
Marty, I want to thank you for being generous with your time.
Hopefully, we can check back in with you before the election is through.
The Manitoba election?
Yes.
Because I think, yeah, please, because I think we'll have some interesting developments there.
And even just a media critique.
You know, I think you're going to experience a lot of the same, you know, bizarre attacks just for the sake of attacking conservatives from the mainstream media during an election campaign.
I think that'll be fun to see.
We'll see.
And I can do something like that.
The election's on September 10th.
So sometime maybe right around September 1st-ish, you know, going into the, what would they call it? The home stretch.
The home stretch.
We can do that.
And then perhaps a more fulsome seminar with Sheila and Marty in time for Jewish New Year, which is around the end of September this year.
I don't remember the exact date around September 26th or 27th or 28th as Russia shown up.
And maybe we can do something for Jewish New Year.
Sure.
It's a date.
Awesome.
Okay.
Thanks, Marty.
Have a great day.
Thank you.
and thanks everyone out there.
As you can see, Marty's doing valuable work in Manitoba.
He's covering the election, and he's covering things that are elections issues, like the failure of harm reduction strategies and how harm reduction strategies are actually the thing harming low-income neighborhoods.
And yet, Marty's being censored by Facebook, I suspect because a bunch of so-called poverty reduction advocates reported his work for telling the truth.
Facebook doesn't want you and I to see Marty's work, and that's as good a reason as any for me to share it with you.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thanks so much for tuning in.
I'll see everybody back here in the same time in the same place next week.