David Benzies critiques Canada’s expanding use of publication bans, citing four recent cases: Ikar Mow (ISIS traveler deported Oct 2019), Samuel Opoku (human feces attacker with undisclosed citizenship), Mohamed Mohammed (62 child abuse charges), and Talya Davidson (leftist activist banned despite public questioning). He contrasts this with climate activist Greta Thunberg’s divisive rhetoric—blaming "white climate deniers" while her team flew to the UN’s Madrid conference, where African nations like Congo dominated delegate numbers for $100B fund payouts. The episode reveals how legal secrecy and performative activism both undermine transparency, exposing systemic contradictions in justice and environmental movements. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, does the public have the right to know what's going on in Canadian courts?
Well, thanks to publication bans being handed out like candy at Halloween, a growing number of judges don't think so.
It's December 6, 2019.
I'm David Benzies filling in for Ezra Event, and this is the Ezra Event Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Icar Mow of Guelph, Ontario was due to make an appearance in a Brampton courtroom this morning.
Now, if that name doesn't ring a bell, he's the genius who flew over to Turkey last July.
His ultimate destination was Syria.
Why would anyone in their right mind visit Syria these days?
Oh, well, Ikar Mao is allegedly one of those terrorism tourists you read about these days.
You know, the type who leaves a decadent Western nation in order to join ISIS so that he could have a gay old time in the Middle East.
But Ickar never got to fulfill his dream.
He was detained near the Syrian border and deported back to Canada in mid-October.
Oh, oh, lucky us.
However, I didn't go to his court appearance this morning, not because this isn't an important case.
It's actually very important.
It's just that yet again, a judge in his infinite wisdom has granted a publication ban regarding details pertaining to this case.
And that would severely hamper what I could report to you.
And I have to say, folks, I'm getting really tired of those accused of committing or trying to commit the most heinous offenses being consistently granted a media cloaking device.
Once upon a time, publication bans were relatively rare.
Today, judges are handing them out as freely as one does with candy on Halloween.
I'm not exaggerating.
Indeed, the last four court cases I've covered, there was a publication ban issued every single time.
That includes the case of Samuel Opoku, who made a brief appearance on Tuesday in a Toronto court.
He's the individual who allegedly threw bucketfuls of liquefied human feces on five people in three separate incidents.
Disgusting beyond words.
But for whatever reason, there is a publication ban on this case.
Luckily, Mr. Opoku's lawyer, Jordan Weiss, was gracious enough to conduct a media scrum outside the court, but I think the only thing that was accomplished by that was raising more questions than answers.
Here's a snippet.
Can you tell us anything about his background, perhaps?
Is he a Canadian citizen or on a student visa?
I can't speak about his background, but I can assure you that the case has nothing to do with immigration.
You know, I think that was a harmless query that I asked.
Is Mr. Opoku a Canadian or is he just someone passing through?
But the lawyer declined to answer that question.
Yet why?
How would his citizenship status affect Opoku in any way in terms of getting a fair trial?
Weird.
But from disgusting to deplorable, just consider the case of Mohamed Mohammed of Toronto.
He was in court recently too, and he faces 62 charges of sexually abusing at least five minors, both girls and boys.
Some of the charges include 14 counts of sexual exploitation of a youth, 12 counts of sexual interference, and 14 counts of sexual assault.
Now, the details are absolutely grotesque in terms of what Mr. Muhammad is alleged to have done.
But yet again, some of the information in his trial is under, you guessed it, a publication ban.
And then there's the bizarre case of Talya Davidson.
She's the hoaxer who back in August brandished a homemade sign encouraging people to vote for Andrew Scheer during her visit to Toronto's Nathan Phillips Square.
But she then went on to hur racial insults at visible minorities and even spat upon an individual.
Check it out.
I can't believe you're real.
You're actually.
You're real.
Get the f ⁇ home!
Go home!
This is the place of men, not for f ⁇ ing f ⁇ !
You don't belong here to get the f ⁇ home!
You can't sprit on my country!
Wow, obviously one of those hateful right-wing white supremacists, right?
Wrong.
Davidson has a long documented history of being a leftist.
She was obviously pretending to be a sheer supporter to smear conservatives.
And yet when she had her case heard in September, once again, a publication ban was issued.
That meant I had to seek answers outside the courtroom, which is where I confronted Davidson and her lawyer.
Ms. Davidson, what was the agenda you had in doing that song last month?
Okay, it was the bursting of the liberal bubble.
It was what?
The bursting of the liberal bubble.
It was a version of the liberal bubble.
What does that mean?
Tya?
Why won't you speak about your misdeeds?
Ms. Davidson?
Sir?
Yeah?
Who are you, sir?
There's a proper policy ban on the children.
Oh, I know, but we're not in court right now.
We're in public.
No, there's a publication ban that was clearly made out of court.
Yeah, that's right.
And you're violating it.
I'm not.
Gee, that's some lawyer, isn't it?
Did you see what he said at the end that I was violating the publication ban simply by asking questions in a public space?
Sorry, solicitor.
That's not how it works.
And let us not forget that esteemed gentleman, Jordan Hunt, who had this curious little habit of physically assaulting women who are pro-life supporters.
Remember this debate Hunt had with Marie Claire Bissonet, which ended with a despicable roundhouse kick to her torso.
Destruction of private property.
If somebody gets raped by somebody and they're like I'm a 16 year old and I can't have this baby.
Think you should keep it?
It's a baby.
It's someone who's raped and she gave birth and she decided to kill her three-year-old child.
Oh, way to go, Jordan.
What a big man you are.
But even this coward was granted a publication ban, meaning that during the trial, we had to resort to plan B, which was interviewing him outside the courthouse.
Jordan Hunt, do you have any words to say to Marie Claire?
Hold still.
Well, not quite a roundhouse kick, but what kind of a assault was that?
Looked like circus clown confetti.
Jordan, who's paying your legal bills?
Jordan, it doesn't seem that you're very tough when a man is asking you questions.
Like to ambush woman?
This is what those look like?
By the way, how come your hair isn't purple and you don't have a flower anymore there?
How come you have to use cameras like these to record?
How come you did the budget end at like the cheap suit?
Is it?
Well, yeah, it's cheap.
Well, you know, I mean, they're very touchy-feely, but um, why is it that you like to assault women so much?
You have no contrition, you have no empathy, it seems.
Really want to take your glasses.
I missed yep, that's the sort of cat that the judges are protecting from the glare of publicity these days, folks.
My final example is perhaps the most outrageous and egregious one of all.
You see, initially, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal granted Jonathan Yaneve a publication ban regarding his numerous complaints against female esthetians who rightfully refused to do a bikini wax on him because Jonathan is a male who is pretending to be a female.
He even still sports a penis and testicles.
Oh, here's a clip of the poor victim Yaneev in action back in August when I attempted to interview him.
Jonathan, why do you take, why do you send sexually explicit messages to young girls?
Go away. Go away.
Go away.
My iPad.
Go away now.
Go away. Go away.
Charming.
As you can see, folks, in addition to pretending to be a woman, Jonathan also appears to be pretending to be disabled.
But here's the thing.
As I mentioned previously, the BC Human Rights Tribunal actually initially granted a publication ban regarding the Yaneve case.
Can they even do this?
A human rights tribunal is not even a real court.
In fact, I'd call the BC Human Rights Tribunal a kangaroo court, except that I don't want to insult the marsupial community.
But I must add that in a perversely ironic twist, the BC Human Rights Tribunal itself actually revoked the publication ban.
Why is that, you ask?
Well, one individual out there continued to violate the ban.
That individual's name?
Yep, the one and only, thank God, Jonathan Yaniv, the very person the publication ban was originally meant to protect.
Welcome to Clown World, folks.
In the final analysis, the issuance of publication bans is out of control in Canada.
Once there had to be exceptional circumstances for a publication ban to be granted.
Now it seems that a defense lawyer merely has to ask for a publication ban, and a publication ban shall be granted, no questions asked.
This trend has to stop because the public really does have the right to know.
To bar the media from reporting the facts of a case, any case, makes a trial a secretive process.
To be effective, the justice system has to be open and transparent.
No reasonable person, surely, wants justice to be done via star chambers.
Especially given that in my experience, so many of the people who are receiving protection via publication bans just happen to be the very worst of the worst.
Greta And The Climate Debate00:08:59
Now, folks, while our rebel commander, Ezra Levant, is away on assignment today, he did pre-record an interview with Mark Moreno of Climate Depot.
Stay tuned.
That's coming up next.
Well, Greta Thunberg, or as she's more popularly known in the media, Saint Greta, has finally landed in Portugal after a bizarre journey by boat across the Atlantic during winter.
Never a wise idea.
But the whole point was that Greta could say, I didn't fly on a plane.
Now, fact is the skipper and all the folks with the boat jetted to America. to let her sail across so she could remain pristine.
She came to America by boat on the first place thinking that the global warming conference by the United Nations would be held in Chile.
However, anti-carbon tax protests.
Yeah, that's right.
The protests were sparked by rises in the price of fuel and transit.
They caused Chile to abandon the global warming conference, which was picked up by Madrid, Spain.
As you know, we will be sending two of our best to cover that UN conference, Kian Bexty and Sheila Gunrid.
And one person that we love talking to when we go to these global warming conferences, he's our expert to deprogram us in case our people start to, you know, fall victim to the global warming cult, is our friend Mark Moreno.
He's the boss of climatepot.com, and he joins us now from the United States.
Mark, great to see you.
When are you heading over to Madrid?
I'm heading over in two days and I'll be there for the whole week next week, dealing with the new, and it's new terminology, the climate emergency conference in Madrid.
Oh, the climate emergency.
And if the government says it's an emergency, well, we'd better listen to them.
We're sending Kian and Sheila, I think they're heading out on Sunday, so they'll be there Sunday and for the week.
I think it's going to be great.
We, as usual, are being kept out, but I find that we can do even better journalism from outside the conference, paradoxically, because we're not just being managed in spoon-fed press releases.
Absolutely.
Sheila, especially being locked out, does great work outside of those conferences because so much of the activity, first of all, there's a green zone, a blue zone, all kinds of areas.
And outside is where a lot of the NGOs are, and you get a lot of the wacky stuff.
And you can also get world leaders coming and going.
These conferences, this one in particular, I expect it to be a heavy dose of anti-Trump activism.
And it's going to be looking forward to the 2020, because in the United States, it's a 2020 referendum on the Green New Deal, the UN-Paris Agreement.
If Donald Trump loses, the U.S. is back in in a way that the Washington Post said President Obama is now a conservative.
He's considered a conservative by the Washington Post because they are going to go so far beyond what Obama did, particularly in climate and energy.
Any Democrat that wins, that this is going to be a phenomenal thing.
And the U.N. knows that.
So I expect the UN to be really ramping up the anti-Trump rhetoric.
Yeah.
Well, I'm going to ask you about Greta Tunberg in a moment because you've got a fun story on Climate Depot about her I'd like to ask you about.
But I remember in 2016, the global warming conference, that was right after Trump won.
Now, he had not yet been inaugurated, but it was like a funeral march there because everyone knew Trump had called it a scam, a hoax, a global, you know, a cash grab.
And Trump has actually served notice under the terms of the treaty that the United States is formally getting out.
So it's now or never for the global warming set.
If America absolutely leaves, I mean, that thing was a sham to begin with, but with America not even participating, it becomes really pointless.
Yeah, Trump's whole first term when it comes to the UN, he's only announced the intention to withdraw.
does not become official until after election day next November 2020.
So right now, this is the referendum coming up.
And I think a lot of these European leaders don't want to actually believe that the U.S. is going to officially pull out.
They don't even believe Trump will.
They think they keep hoping at the last minute he'll look for some concession and come in.
I don't see that.
I think Trump, if he's re-elected, we're out.
And that's another four glorious years where we're not going to be part of this.
However, you know, the United Nations is still going to continue, but I think it's going to be a lot harder without the United States in this.
And you could have a lot more defections, you know, leading the way with Brazil's Bolsonaro and possibly other developing world countries if they're not getting their money.
By the way, Ezra, an interesting side note here, they had a chart on all of the countries sending delegations to the UN summit.
Who do you think had the largest number of delegates per area?
And what countries do you think they were?
Well, it turned out it was African nations.
I was kind of saying that Congo leads the way.
And it's a simple reason.
Congo leads the way?
Well, I know.
The Democratic Republic of Congo.
These countries in Africa are the ones poised to get the $100 billion UN slush fund, the redistribution of wealth.
They're the ones that are going to get the money to keep their people poor, to ensure their re-election, build monuments.
So, of course, they're sending the most number of lobbyists, delegates, representatives to these conferences.
I was going to guess Canada, because, of course, in 2015, Trudeau had just won.
He brought the largest delegation.
And it was in Paris.
So literally everyone in cold, chilly Canada wanted a wonderful week in the city of Lights who wouldn't want to go.
Well, listen, my friend, I got one last question for you.
And we're going to see you there.
And you're our expert.
We love hanging out with you.
And you show us all the interesting things because you've been doing this for a while.
Give me one word on Greta Tunberg.
There's a great article in the Daily Wire written by Ryan Savedra.
The headline is, Greta Snaps, Change Everything, Climate Crisis, about colonial, racist, and patriarchal systems of oppression, fossil fuel literally killing us.
Now, she was on this boat for weeks, and I think she went a little mad.
Or again, maybe she didn't say a word of this.
Maybe this was all drafted by her managers and her beauty pageant mom back in Sweden.
But she's just gone full Marxist here, hasn't she?
Yes, and you're right.
I mean, the boat, absolutely, a trip like that could just sort of let down your inhibitions.
I mean, she's never said anything to this extent that I'm aware of.
But what this is, actually, it's an evolution of the climate movement.
I did an article about two months ago about how identity politics has overtaken the climate debate.
First of all, Greta's senior advisor is George Mambian, the UK environmentalist, who said that we have to go straight to the heart of capitalism and overthrow it.
He's a big supporter of extinction rebellion.
This is her sort of spiritual climate guru, if you will, aside from her parents.
And so it's not surprising she's gone down this route.
I was just sort of surprised that it came out of nowhere and now she's on record.
But this idea, the woke climate debate, if you will, it's been going on now for years and it's coalesced this year on every issue.
You have African scientists now blaming hurricanes and cyclones in Africa on white people, on the white man's science.
You have multiple instances of people basically saying that climate is now a racist thing where blacks and Hispanics are suffering created by whites, the climate crisis.
You have Bill McKibben saying that it's white climate deniers are to blame for the crisis because we voted for politicians who are climate deniers.
So Greta is just following the lead of this movement and it really has become identity politics.
Old people are being blamed for global warming.
We had young kids on Capitol Hill here the day Greta was in New York in front of the Capitol saying that mom and dad trashed the planet, their generation.
Thanks, mom and dad, for what you did, kind of sarcastically.
It's turning young against old, black against white, Hispanics against white.
This is what they're trying to do: divide and conquer.
And Greta is now fully willing to embrace that what I call identity politic agenda.
Yeah, it's very weird for a daughter of privilege, a white millionaire from Sweden, to be calling others racist or privileged.
Very, very, very strange.
Identity Politics Divide and Conquer00:00:53
Mark, we're glad you're on this file.
And I look forward to you connecting with Keen and Sheila in Madrid.
I think you guys, you on the information side, on the content side, and of course, Sheila and Keen are going to report the heck out of everything.
And you'll be their guide a bit as you have in the past.
I thank you for that.
Look forward to seeing your reports from over there.
Thank you.
Looking forward to seeing your team there.
Thanks.
All right, that's great.
There you have it.
Mark Murano.
He's the boss of climatepot.com.
And I regard him as the foremost expert on global warming politics.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Well, that's the Ezra Levin show for tonight.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
Have an awesome weekend.
The boss will be back on Monday.
And as Ezra likes to say, keep fighting for freedom.