Chernobyl’s Soviet parallels resurface as the host compares China’s January 2024 coronavirus response—41M quarantined, 25K-square-meter Wuhan hospitals—to its alleged cover-ups, like the Qingdao oil spill and Xing Woo-Chu’s secret transfers to China’s Level 4 lab. Meanwhile, Greta Inc. challenges Thunberg’s activism, exposing her privileged background and defensive "fuck off" threats to reporters, while questioning why media avoids scrutiny. The episode ties authoritarian crisis management to unchecked narratives, urging deeper investigative journalism. [Automatically generated summary]
Hey folks, today I make a comparison between how the Soviet Union reacted to their Chernobyl disaster and how Communist China is reacting to their coronavirus disaster.
I also play some clips from HBO's miniseries, Chernobyl, one of my favorite shows of the year.
To get the video version of this podcast, which I think is important for today's segment, especially the footage out of China, you got to be a premium subscriber.
No big deal.
It's $8 a month.
You go to premium.rebelnews.com and you get the video version of this podcast and Sheila Gunread's podcast, show, rather, and David Menzies too.
So that's premium.rebelnews.com.
Okay, here's my show.
Tonight, China responds to a massive virus outbreak by arresting people.
Yeah, it sounds about right.
It's January 24th, and this is the Ezra Levant 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'm publishing it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
You know, I don't get a lot of time to watch TV except when I'm on airplanes, which I am too often.
And so I clicked on HBO's Chernobyl mini-series, which I honestly thought was going to be very boring, but it wasn't.
I thought it was riveting.
In fact, I have to admit, I watched the whole thing twice.
It was so good.
And what I appreciated the most about it was how they depicted the Soviet system.
I thought it was filmed beautifully and the recreation, the recreation of the actual explosion scene was very well done.
I thought it was very dramatic.
I was so surprised by some of the things they depicted in the movie that I did some research afterwards, you know, in real life, not on the miniseries, to confirm the accuracy.
It was a pretty accurate show.
I really didn't know how massive a problem Chernobyl was.
Economically, logistically, literally, hundreds of thousands of people in the Soviet Union were pressed into service by the regime to try to fix the problem.
I think that Chernobyl, along with the costs of the Soviet war in Afghanistan and their attempt to keep up with Ronald Reagan's Star Wars Defense Initiative, I think that was really the cause of the fall of the Soviet Union.
And I think Chernobyl was probably a bigger factor than the war or the military arms race.
I just, that's my belief after watching the miniseries.
It was that incredible.
But the thing I found the most fascinating about the show was the theatrical depiction of how an authoritarian state, a totalitarian state in many ways, handles a crisis.
A crisis that involves danger, but also political embarrassment.
And how it prioritizes those two problems.
Can I show you two clips from the movie Chernobyl, the mini-series on HBO?
Here's one.
And this is set just hours after the explosion, the same night that the reactor exploded.
So the level of danger was not yet known, but the local Communist Party committee was having an emergency nighttime meeting.
And I want to show you their response, which is, of course, there's some artistic license here, but we know the elements are true.
Send in soldiers.
Cut off telephone lines.
Lie to the people.
This is a couple minutes, but watch it.
It's really incredible.
Detachments of military police to Pripyat.
How large of a detachment?
Between 2,000 and 4,000 men.
What's really going on here?
How dangerous is this?
There's mild radiation, but it's limited to the plant itself.
No, it doesn't.
Excuse me.
You saw men outside vomiting.
You saw men with burns.
There's more radiation than they're saying.
We have wives here.
We have children.
I say we evacuate the town.
Gentlemen, please, please, my wife is here.
Do you think I would keep it in Pripyat if it wasn't safe?
Burkhanov, the air is glowing.
The Cherenkov effect, completely normal phenomenon, can happen with minimal radiation.
I wonder how many of you know the name of this place.
We will call it Chernobyl, of course.
What is its real name?
The Vladimir I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station.
Exactly.
Vladimir I, Lenin, and how proud he would be of you all tonight.
Especially you, young man.
And the passion you have for the people.
For is that not the sole purpose of the apparatus of the state?
Sometimes we forget.
Sometimes we fall prey to fear.
But our faith in Soviet socialism will always be rewarded.
The state tells us the situation here is not dangerous.
Have faith, comrades.
The state tells us it wants to prevent a panic.
Listen well.
It's true.
When the people see the police, they will be afraid.
But it is my experience that when the people ask questions that are not in their own best interest, they should simply be told to keep their minds on their labor and leave matters of the state to the state.
We seal off the city.
No one leaves.
And cut the front lines contain the spread of misinformation.
That is how we keep the people from undermining the fruits of their own labor.
Yes, comrades.
We will all be rewarded for what we do here tonight.
This is our moment to shine.
Do you doubt that is exactly what happened in the first hours, first days of China's coronavirus epidemic that is sweeping across that communist regime?
Let me show you one more video from Chernobyl.
I really recommend the series.
The only two other movies I've ever seen that accurately, I think, reflect the tyranny of the Soviet Union was one called The Lives of Others, which was actually set in East Germany.
It was about a Stasi spy who listened to listening devices planted in the homes of, you know, dissidents, democracy activists, just normal people.
And then there was a movie in 2017 called The Death of Stalin, which was great actors, Steve Brascemi, Jeffrey Tambour, so many first-rate actors.
It was a dark comedy about Stalin and the Soviet Union after Stalin's death.
Now, it's a comedy, but it showed the brutality of Stalinism and the KGB.
Absolutely a must-see movie.
Anyways, let me show you one last clip from the miniseries Chernobyl.
This is when Moscow starts to think that maybe things are more serious in Chernobyl than they were first told.
A scientist managed to scare the Communist Party's Central Committee in Moscow into thinking that maybe it wasn't just nothing.
Maybe it was something really bad.
So in this scene, the scientist and a central committee member were sent from Moscow to Chernobyl, and they land in a helicopter, and that local committee, who you saw meeting in the bunker there, they all put on their best suits and they go out to meet the big bosses from Moscow.
And look at this.
I think it captures it perfectly.
Literally the first thing they say, and I know this is probably artistic license because I don't think anyone would have written down exactly what was said.
I don't think we know exactly the first thing that was said, but boy, it sure rings true.
It's why I like the show so much.
Dip Deep into Wuhan00:10:45
The first thing they said was, here's our list of people to blame.
Take a look.
Chief Engineer Fahmin, Bernadette Pagoloff and I are honoured at your arrival.
Dip, deep, dip, deep.
Naturally, we regret the circumstances of your visit, but as you can see, we are making excellent progress in condemning the damage.
We have begun our own inquiry into the cause of the accident, and I have a list of individuals who we believe are accountable.
And you know why I'm talking about this, China and the coronavirus.
China's first reaction was probably to ignore it, to cover it up, to downplay it.
Out of laziness, out of embarrassment, out of ignorance.
The incentives are all wrong in China.
There's no free press trying to sniff out problems.
There's no opposition party trying to catch the establishment making a problem.
There's no independent entities in civil society, even like a labor union.
Like there's no nurses union that might say, we're seeing a lot of things are nurses are in danger.
There's nothing independent.
There's no check on power.
There's no one with an incentive to make a fuss or make a problem.
It's actually all the opposite.
And then when things finally get so bad that no one can ignore the problem anymore, well then it's about blame, blaming others, scapegoating, saying, here's a list of the enemies, boss.
Speaking of which, look at this.
The Daily Mail reports, China spent the first few days of coronavirus outbreak arresting people for spreading rumors that SARS had returned.
That's a respiratory illness that started in China years ago.
New type of coronavirus began in China with first cases reported in December.
China quickly reported disease to world authorities so they could prevent spread.
Sure, they did quickly, eh?
But among its own people, China appears to have tried to repress the news.
Country spent crucial first days of outbreak arresting people who spoke about the disease online and journalists trying to report on him.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
That sounds like Chernobyl, doesn't it?
Look, there are cover-ups in Western open societies too.
Companies try to cover up problems.
Governments try to cover up problems.
I mean, look at Jeffrey Epstein or Harvey Weinstein.
Those aren't disease epidemics, but they're massive crime waves on an industrial scale over decades that were fairly well covered up.
So the West is imperfect too, but take, for example, an oil spill.
Now in Canada, those are reported immediately because there are severe penalties for not doing so.
Plus, there's a culture of ethics and transparency.
There's even whistleblower legislation in some cases.
There's a scandal-hungry media always looking for news, and there's crusading politicians and NGOs.
All the things that aren't there in places like China.
So look at these photos.
Now, these are shocking photos from the Xingang oil spill in China.
That's oil.
That's oil.
That's oily water.
It was as big a spill as that's oil.
It looks like water.
That's oil.
Look at that.
One of those guys died.
There's a picture of him dying.
I hope we don't show that.
That's how they try to clean it up.
It was as big as the Exxon Valdez, but I bet you never heard about it.
It's amazing that those photos even made it to the light of day.
Greenpeace took credit for those photos.
Of course, there is no Greenpeace campaigns in China that's not allowed.
They're not allowed to criticize China.
There was no grand reckoning in China, as there was with the Exxon Valdez.
The Exxon Valdez was a disaster.
Well, actually, by many measures, it wasn't.
No one died.
That's one measure.
It sure looked bad.
I mean, looked like that Qing Yang thing.
You know, there's a seabird or something.
Thousands of critters did die, it's true.
In Alaska, where there are billions of critters, and where the ocean and the currents wiped clean that drop in an ocean soon enough.
But still, the PR disaster, well, from that came new rules for double-hulled tanker ships and new emphasis on sailors not drinking and the need for tugboats in narrow waters.
My point is, good things actually came from that disaster.
Lessons were learned.
But not from China's disasters.
Unless, like Chernobyl, the disaster is so critical that it actually breaks the system.
As I believe, Chernobyl helped break the Soviet Union.
And maybe this coronavirus will, too.
China has now quarantined more than a dozen cities, including Wuhan, the center of the epidemic.
41 million people quarantined.
Shut down parts of the Great Wall.
41 million people.
That's more people than live in all of Canada.
Now, it's not even 5% of China's population, but do you really think this thing isn't spreading anymore?
I saw pictures like these, piles of dirt being put up on roads.
I'm not sure if that's supposed to stop the virus or stop people from traveling.
I'm not sure it's going to do either, but I'm sure the Communist Party Central Committee is proud of it.
It looks pretty bad over there.
Apocalyptic style hazmat suits.
I don't know if they actually do anything, but they're terrifying.
I saw a video of someone being put in a cart, like a pod, and wheeled around to contain him.
China is excited to announce that they're building a quick field hospital in Wuhan.
They released this footage.
The Communist Party did.
Look at all those diggers doing something.
Wow.
25,000 square meter mobile hospital.
It'll be done in six days, they say.
I bet it will.
That hospital, even if it works, will house a grand total of 1,000 people in one city.
Like I say, 41 million people have been sealed off.
Like the Soviets at Chernobyl, I think they might be lying about the size of the problem.
China lied about SARS II.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome.
Remember that one?
That was the last sickness that spread from there.
There have been stories about how this coronavirus started, how it spread, including theories that it came from bizarre foods eaten in Wuhan, like bats.
I'm sorry to show you something so gross.
The bats, they're, ugh.
If you've ever been to China and go to a real market, though, you will see that will not be the strangest thing you see.
I have to say, I will not show you absolutely stomach-turning images from Wuhan's markets of live creatures being eaten.
It's too gross and too disturbing.
I'm getting a gag reflex just thinking about what I saw.
Take it from me, folks.
Now, it could be that eating bats is a problem.
I don't know.
I'm not a scientist.
Could be.
But maybe there's something else about Wuhan.
Wuhan.
Have you ever heard of her?
Wuhan is where China has its biological warfare lab.
There's a story from just a few months ago about a Chinese national who was fired from a Canadian biohazard lab after sending secrets to this Chinese lab.
Look at this story here.
A Canadian government scientist at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg made at least five trips to China in 2017-18, including one to train scientists and technicians at China's newly certified Level 4 lab, which does research with the most deadly pathogens, according to travel documents obtained by CBC.
Xing Woo-Chu, who was escorted out of the Winnipeg lab in July, amid an RCMP investigation into what's being described by Public Health Agency of Canada as a possible policy breach, was invited to go to the Wuhan National Biosafety Lab.
I love how they call it a biosafety lab of the Chinese Academy of Sciences twice a year for two years, for up to two weeks at a time.
Yeah, that's spying.
But then there's Justin Trudeau just plain old giving them biological materials.
Look at this story.
Biowarfare experts question why Canada was sending lethal viruses to China.
You don't say.
I think the Chinese activities are highly suspicious, one expert said after it was revealed at Winnipeg Lab sent samples of Ebola and Henipah virus to China.
Why did Justin Trudeau approve sending Ebola viruses to China's government?
Taiwan would like to know.
Here's a story from Taiwan News.
Canada may have assisted China's biowarfare program with transfer of lethal viruses.
Canadian National Lab under investigation possibly tied to transfer of Bolette and NEPA samples to Beijing.
Yeah, I'd like to know, along with the Taiwanese, not a lot of Canadian media curiosity, though.
Now, I don't know if we'll ever know the facts about the virus outbreak in China.
We didn't know the facts about Chernobyl until after the Soviet Union collapsed.
And only then did the truth come out.
It'll probably be the same with this, about China and their virus.
Was it from bats?
Or was it from the Biological Warfare Lab?
What was Canada's role, if any?
In the meantime, hey, how do you feel about the fact that neither Canada nor the United States has banned flights from China to our countries?
Bit of Truth00:15:30
Stay with us for more.
I think you are.
I'm asking questions.
Yes, I want to ask Greta some questions.
Yes.
Don't touch me.
What are you doing?
You apologize for hitting me?
I can't see you.
Yes.
Bullshit.
You punched me in the gut three times.
Your hands on me wasn't a part of this.
You didn't need to be a part of this.
You could have left me alone.
Turned out fine, didn't it?
You could have left me alone.
You didn't.
And it's going to blow back on you.
How does a 15-year-old girl bewitch the world?
She doesn't, at least not alone.
Greta Tunberg's rise to fame over the course of several months is not nearly as innocuous as it might appear from the outside.
Rather, Greta's rise was facilitated by elites from around the world.
The campaign to canonize Greta as a saint in the eyes of the world's leftist Zoomers and boomers alike was coordinated.
It was orchestrated and executed nearly flawlessly.
Nobody has bothered to dig deep into the rise of her messiah until now.
I've just landed in Stockholm, Sweden to do just that, to expose the lies that Greta's handlers have built her movement on.
That is an excerpt from our new rebel documentary called Greta Inc., starring our friend Kian Bexty, who went all the way to Stockholm, Sweden.
He joins us now via Skype from Calgary.
Well, Kian, congratulations.
We launched your documentary three and a half hours ago at the time of our taping this right now.
I was just checking the stats.
We have approximately 50,000 views.
5.2,000 people, 5,200 people have liked it.
Only 138 don't.
And we've had over 1,500 viewer comments.
I think we got ourselves a hit.
What do you think?
I think so too.
And you can tell that Greta is a little bit worried.
Every now and then, when I publish something about Greta, you can always read her tweets and get some cryptic message out of it.
And what I find funny today is we've announced this documentary about 14 hours ago.
We announced it last night and we put it on YouTube.
We queued it on YouTube.
And since then, Greta has tweeted or shared tweets 18 times.
And that was basically just this morning when the documentary went live, which I think is hilarious because the mainstream media is going to eat up everything Greta puts out to her 4 million followers.
And she's kicking it into overdrive now.
Looks like a little bit of damage control.
Yeah, I mean, there was a moment in your documentary, and I just want to play this clip for our viewers.
Greta has been doing this climate strike for more than a year, and she's been one of the great media hounds of our time.
You went down to New York City when she arrived on that boat.
There were dozens of journalists.
Everywhere she goes, dozens of journalists.
I think it's modest and conservative to say that she has met 1,000 journalists in the last year and a half.
I mean, that's not that big a number.
That's three or four a day.
She probably deals with 10 journalists a day.
That's really all she is, is a PR front.
So for her to remember you based on one meeting in Edmonton, let me play that clip from the documentary.
Here, take a look.
Greta, would you be able to tell me what school are you actually striking from?
Yes.
Tell me a press column.
Yes.
So when you actually started your school strike, were you leaving the classroom or did you have a day off from your school that you were at?
You know, the school you go to, you have multiple days off a week.
You don't actually have to go to class nine to five.
Did you walk valiantly from the classroom like you've led the world to believe?
Or did you just have days off on Friday?
Nice to meet you again.
I remember you from Edmonton.
Yes.
I remember your Tesla.
It was full of plastic.
Well, it was not my Tesla.
I shared it with many others.
So there you are in Stockholm, Sweden, thousands of miles away from where she met you months ago in Edmonton.
But she still remembers you.
I don't think she remembers 99% of the journalistic stenographers who say, Greta, Greta.
But I think she remembered you, Kian, because you were the first and only journalist ever to ask her an accountability style question.
Yeah, I think you're right.
That's accurate.
After one question, I actually was asking her a few questions in Stockholm.
It triggered her memory and she remembered, oh, the only other time I've ever been asked a tough question is when I was in Edmonton and you're that guy.
And then I asked her about her Tesla, of course, and she said, oh, well, that wasn't my Tesla.
So it's clear that Greta is actually watching our content.
It's clear that Greta is aware of what we're putting out, especially that Tesla vid, Full of Plastic, when we asked her fawning supporters what they would think about someone's Tesla full of plastic, and then we told them that it was actually Greta's Tesla.
It shows that what we're doing is stinging.
It's stinging both Greta and the cabal of leftist eco-elites that are propping her up.
So I'm very proud of this documentary because I think that we're doing something that nobody in the world has really done, either reporters in Sweden or the reporters that happily followed her along the intercontinental field trip from the BBC, the ones that flew out to meet her in Edmonton to film that documentary.
I'm glad that we were able to release this one before anyone else has really bothered to look into it.
Yeah.
You know, sometimes I, I mean, for a couple of years, I've been covering the case of Tommy Robinson, and I've been shaking my head thinking, why am I in Canada flying all the way over to London when there's 60 million plus people there and there's tons of journalists and no one in London will just go and report it straight?
And it's always boggled my mind.
Well, Tommy is in some ways an obscure case.
I think it's an important case.
But Greta is a A-list celebrity, no doubt about it.
Person of the year at Time magazine, invited speaker at Davos, invited to the UN, where she says, how dare you?
So she's 10 times the news story that Tommy is, 100 times.
And yet you, a young lad in Calgary, barely a year into your journalistic career, have to schlep all the way to Stockholm because not one reporter on the European continent or one American that I know of has done that.
It's very strange that it falls to us, a low-budget online news source in Canada.
It's a puzzler to me, but I, you know, I guess if that's our job, we'll take it.
Yeah, you're right.
I mean, we look at this, the array of news stories coming out of the international media cabal, and we see, well, where's the one-sided coverage coming from?
And it tends to be from these high-level, high-interest people, Tommy Robinson, Greta Tunberg, Jonathan Yaniv, for the first little bit.
And then we just go and ask questions that the mainstream media doesn't.
We ask the questions that nobody seems to be asking.
And it's just, it's so curious to me, someone who didn't go to journalism school, someone who's kind of new at this, this isn't a hard thing to do.
I mean, it takes a little bit of grit and determination to try and shoulder past these security guards that she has.
And it takes a little bit to fly out there.
And there's a little bit of commitment there.
But in the practice of this journalism, it's not really that difficult to ask tough questions.
You just have to care enough to ask them, or at least not be paid off to be asking the other questions.
Yeah, I mean, I didn't go to journalism school either, Kian.
And in fact, the only on-air talent we have that did was David Menzies, and I don't hold it against him.
But just out of sheer curiosity, out of any skepticism, I mean, Greta's a powerful person.
Her trick is that she looks like a frail teenager, but there's all the security and PR agencies and capitalists and manipulators behind her.
You'd think that of the thousand journalists who have interacted with her, that someone would have just out of curiosity or skepticism or even the desire to be different.
Like what happened to the desire to make a name for yourself or to speak truth to power or just take a run at something?
That's what is so depressing to me.
The Greta story is fascinating.
You really nail it in the documentary.
But it could be a hundred things.
Why are journalists so docile?
Not just docile, partisan for Greta.
Like they're carrying her water.
I see online journalists tutting you for having dared to ask questions.
Isn't that what a journalist is supposed to be?
Not nowadays, Ezra.
The media-approved group, the approved media doesn't overstep their bounds anymore because if they ever ask any tough questions, well, they're going to lose their United Nations credentials like Sheila did when she asked some unscheduled questions.
And in Davos, we couldn't get media accreditation, and that wasn't even UN approved.
So it's clear that if you ask any questions that aren't completely complimentary or totally towing this globalist climate change line, well, then you're not going to have the access that you need to do your job.
Luckily, we do our job without the access.
We go to the interesting places on the ground.
We don't go to these scripted press conferences and press release, and we don't regurgitate these press releases that Greta Inc. releases.
We go to where the interesting stuff is happening, whether it's her political rallies in Edmonton or her sadly small rallies in Stockholm.
I was surprised to see it was only seven people.
There were seven people there and eight security guards there.
There were more security guards than actual people protesting, but somehow this is an international sensation.
It doesn't really click.
But we go to these interesting places and we ask questions, and that's something that the mainstream media just can't be bothered to do because if they do, they'll lose their cushy chairs at the press conference rooms.
Yeah, it's so strange to me.
There's one thing I want to bring to your attention.
I don't know if you noticed it.
I think it happened just yesterday.
Greta obviously noticed you when you talked to her a couple weeks ago in Stockholm.
We showed the clip of that already.
And then when you put your we announced that your documentary would be coming, we announced it earlier this week.
I think it might have been Monday or Tuesday.
So Greta would have seen that.
And she and her handlers would have remembered the questions you put to her in Stockholm.
Did you really go on a school strike?
Have you actually been on a school strike?
And look at this tweet from Greta.
She says she's finishing her gap year.
Now a gap year, for those who don't know, is when a student sort of takes a year off from school and, you know, goes backpacking or, you know, goes, takes a break, works a bit.
That's what a gap year is.
Typically, it's when you finish high school before you go on to college or university, a gap year, travel, sow your wild oats, run around a bit before you hunker down to something serious.
Greta saying, I've been on a gap year.
Sorry, a teenager in the middle of high school is not on a gap year at all.
That's just not a thing.
But more to the point, her whole shtick was, I'm not on a gap year.
I'm an enrolled student who is striking.
I'm standing up to power by walking out of class.
I think, Kian, that that was Greta's way of saying, yikes, Kian Becky and Rebel News are going to out me, that my whole school strike backstory is fake.
I better get ahead of that by saying, oh, no, it wasn't really a school strike.
I was on a gap year, so you guys didn't actually cast me in anything.
That's my theory, based on how closely she follows you.
That tweet was extremely odd.
You're not on a climate strike if you're on a holiday year, sister.
Yeah, that's what I was referring to when I said these cryptic tweets, these cryptic defensive tweets.
There's another one that I can't recall exactly what it was.
When I was in Madrid with Sheila Gunn Reed at the COP25 summit, we were putting out our news and on the other side of the coin, Greta Tunberg was releasing her damage control every time we released more and more info about her campaign and about her political involvement in rallies being staged across Canada.
So yeah, I think it's fair to say that Greta Tunberg is very closely following our coverage, especially when it comes to her plastic-filled Tesla.
She was very defensive about that too.
Greta's watching because, and I wouldn't say that we're a huge news outlet either.
We're not that large compared to many other news outlets that would consider themselves conservative leaning, but Greta is paying very close attention to what we're releasing because we're the only ones that are diving deep into Greta Tunberg's story and the lies that she's been releasing or have been released on her behalf by Greta Inc.
Yeah, I got to tell you, I wouldn't have predicted this.
I wouldn't have predicted that we're the only journalists asking accountability style questions.
I wouldn't have predicted that she would be so hypersensitive that she would follow this.
And I don't know.
I think it's sort of amazing.
And I congratulate you.
Like I say, in the first three and a half hours, the vid was watched 50,000 times.
It is a long video for YouTube.
The average YouTube video people watch for a minute or so.
This is a 30-minute documentary, but it's so well documented.
You're there on the ground.
I think that it is possible, Kian, for us to bend the narrative, to change the narrative here, to start bringing up the other side of the story.
That's our motto, you know.
Rebel News, telling the other side of the story.
That seems to me a pretty basic tenet of journalism.
I think it's sort of cool that we're doing it.
I think this documentary is going to go well, and I don't think it should be the end of our Greta coverage.
think that we should continue on it.
I'm not afraid to send you on journeys around the world.
I mean, it costs money.
Flying to Stockholm over Christmas, I just got your expense account.
We're going through it.
I think those tickets were around $1,600 each.
We had you and a cameraman go over, and we had a local helper on the ground, and we had a hotel.
I haven't looked at the whole thing, but I think the total cost all in of this documentary is about $10,000 Canadian dollars.
Importing Greta's Helper00:04:11
Now, there's no way we'll recoup that on YouTube.
I don't even know if they're going to monetize the video.
We don't have $10,000 to chuck around every month, but I think this is important work.
And if folks want to help us, they can go to gretainc.com.
G-R-E-T-A-I-N-C, like Greta Incorporated, GretaInc.com.
And if you want to chip in, I can assure you, Kian flies economy class to Stockholm.
And I'd like to do more of this.
You were in Madrid.
You were in Stockholm.
You were in Hong Kong covering the freedom movement there.
There's a lot of stories.
And I think you've got that style.
You're aggressive enough to get the questions, but you don't get in deep trouble.
I think you've got to keep doing this, Kian.
Yeah, I'm all in, Ezra.
I want to keep it up too, because nobody's holding these eco-elites, whether it's Greta Inc. or whether it's the communists in Hong Kong.
Nobody's holding them accountable.
And I'm honored to be able to keep doing it.
So you know what?
One last note.
I think that we've reached peak, Greta.
I think when Greta was awarded the person of the year, I mean, there's no topping that she was denied the Nobel Prize.
Well, you haven't heard about the Nobel Prize yet, my friend.
Well, she was snubbed on that last year, Lee.
Maybe she'll get it next year.
But I seriously think that you're right about us changing this narrative.
I think that people are finally waking up to Greta.
And I think this documentary is going to go a long way to exposing Greta for what she is.
She's a fraud.
And I think that the narrative is finally turning and shifting away from just this blank face, blank check buy-in into what she's putting out there.
Yeah.
Well, your video when you met her in Edmonton, I think that has 1.2 million views.
Sheila Gunreed also did a video when she came to Edmonton.
That video is closing in on a million views.
I think all of our Greta videos combined have several million views.
I don't know how many people will watch this documentary.
I think it is the authoritative documentary about Greta that's not just a love letter PR.
So theoretically, this could be the video that everybody goes to for the other side of the story.
I think we are going to debunk the myth.
And I think that that's a service to journalism.
And in our case, it's a service to the kind of things that we care about, the oil and gas industry, jobs, fighting against junk science and global governance.
So I'm pretty pleased.
Last word to you, and then I'm going to throw to another clip just to show people.
So give me your final thoughts on this.
It's been an exciting few weeks in Stockholm and then working on the edit.
Give us your final thoughts.
I was surprised with how much it takes to actually put this stuff together.
When I went there, I thought, oh, well, we're getting all this great footage.
And I mean, we put footage together from the fact that she's on a fake school strike to the fact that the person who found Greta, found in very large quotation marks, had to walk two miles accidentally to accidentally find her on the very first few minutes of her very first school strike.
We go to her childhood home, well, the home that she lives now, and document her community and show how privileged Greta Tunberg really is.
She's not, you know, she's not someone from Uganda or Bolivia or Bangladesh.
She's a rich elite.
We expose it all in this documentary at GretaInc.com.
And I really appreciate everyone who pitches in to help this kind of coverage because if we're not doing it, nobody else is.
And I think that it's important work, and I hope our viewers agree with me on that.
All right.
Well, that's great.
For folks who want to chip in, go to GretaInc.com.
Let's close this segment with another clip from the documentary that we launched today at 10 a.m. Eastern Time.
Take a look.
Hey, what are you doing?
Don't touch me.
Who do you think you are?
Don't touch me.
No, you're serious.
I don't care.
Get the fuck off.
Who do you think you are?
I'm asking questions.
Yes.
I want to ask Greta some questions.
Trump's Captivating Speeches00:06:38
Don't touch me.
What do you think people are going to say when it gets out that a security guard from Sweden punched a reporter three times in the gut?
Sure, I don't care.
You don't care?
No.
You know, this is communist contract.
Oh, don't touch me.
They're pushing.
Just larger frame.
Wide angle of this guy being an asshole.
My feet are planted here.
Oh, don't you?
Can you touch me?
I'll be reporting you to survive.
Sure.
What are you doing here?
Are you from Hong Kong?
What are you doing here?
What do you mean, what am I doing here?
I'm a reporter.
I'm asking questions.
I'm focused on you instead of Greta, who I should be focused on.
Fuck off.
Don't get so close.
Don't touch me.
I'm not touching you.
You're telling me I'm not.
I've been focused once.
I haven't moved once.
What are you doing?
Dude, I'm not aggressive for you.
And you are dangerous for us.
So get out.
I'm not.
Leave me alone.
Leave me alone.
Stop.
I'm allowed to do this.
Where are we?
Hong Kong?
China?
No, this is Sweden.
Do you have live in?
Do you have live?
Yeah, I do, and I'll show it to you.
Thank you.
No.
Fuck off.
Are you here illegal?
I think so.
Yeah?
You're double this one.
No, I'm not.
I don't think I am.
Huh?
Behavior.
Behave me, I will.
believe me hey welcome back on my monologue yesterday about donald trump's speech at the world economic forum in davos Justin writes, Trump's speeches are so captivating, I've never seen anything like it.
Well, that speech that I played for you was obviously a scripted speech.
It was written by a speech writer who obviously gets Trump's message.
But I have to say, if you've never watched Trump at a rally, that's what you got to watch because he's semi-scripted, but he riffs.
And I got to tell you, half the time it's like a stand-up routine.
He mocks Democrats, he mocks reporters, he just riffs on things.
Things he saw, a tweet he saw, a clip he saw.
He's a master entertainer.
He's got a message.
He's got a point.
I think you got to watch the unscripted rally speeches more than the scripted ones.
And that's half the reason why the media party doesn't run his speeches, because they are both informative and entertaining.
And I put it to you, persuasive.
PJ writes, what a concept.
A country's elected leader putting that country first.
Oh, yeah.
You know, I just see today that the new foreign minister, Champagne is his last name, is talking about the importance of Canada getting on the Security Council of the United Nations.
You know, the security game, there's a General Assembly where every country has a vote.
But then there's the Security Council that has the permanent members.
United States, Russia, China, France for some reason, and Britain.
Sorry, I almost forgot.
It's funny how France is on there, but India is not.
Anyways, they elect smaller countries for terms.
And Canada is, or Justin Trudeau wants to get on because it's a bragging point for him.
Is that really the point of foreign policy, to win votes from other little countries?
And what is Trudeau and Champaign, how are they tailoring their messages to win those votes?
Is that the reason why Trudeau was so gentle with China on our hostages there?
Is that the reason why Trudeau was so gentle with Iran after they shot down that jet?
I think it might be.
On my interview with F.H. Buckley, Ron writes, your guest said he was confident Trump would be re-elected.
I hope he's right, but I also agree with Michael Medved that the Dem candidate will not be any from the Clown Show, but one of the Obamas, most likely Michelle, and that's extremely dangerous.
Well, I've heard that theory.
I, you know, obviously it's a possibility.
I don't think so.
I don't see evidence of Michelle organizing.
You know, she does some speaking tours, but that's just to grab some cash and to feel special.
I just don't see it.
And I have to say, Obama had a certain charm to him.
I mean, I disliked him deeply.
But he had an affable look.
He had a nice face and a nice smile, and he could be a charmer.
Michelle Obama comes across as scowling and angry, and I don't think she ever clicked with people other than partisans.
This is my own view.
Maybe you thought she was charming.
I've never heard anyone call her charming.
Hillary Clinton, however, oh, she wants back in.
You can taste it.
On the conservative leadership race in Canada, Beverly writes, rumor has it that Harper will seek the nomination, so that is why Pierre stepped down.
What do you think?
We need someone who will be a true conservative, not just fiscal.
I got tired of the party wanting social conservative, but throwing us under the bus once they got our vote.
Beverly, I saw a tweet by Michelle Rempel-Garner, an MP from Calgary, who said she was in direct communication with Stephen Harper, and he's not running again.
And again, I see no evidence that he would run again.
Last I saw, he was giving some panel discussion in India.
Like he's doing international stuff, and I think he is glad to be done with the Hassla things.
He resigned from the Conservative Party's fundraising board.
They say it was so he could battle Jean Sharay, but who knows?
Maybe.
Maybe.
Is that why Jean-Chara quit?
Is that why Pierre Polyev quit?
If Harper did return, that would be an excellent reason for those two to quit.
But I have some trouble believing Harper would want to come back in.
Maybe I'm wrong.
We'll find out soon, I guess, because the election of that, the leadership contest is less than six months away.
Whoever's going to run, it better get going.
Folks, that's our show for today and for this week.
I hope you had a chance to tune in to Keen's documentary at GretaInc.com, or you can find it on our YouTube page.
Until next time, on behalf of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, see you at home.