"Are lockdowns going to be permanent?" examines Canada’s draconian measures—Quebec’s martial law curfews, even for tobogganing, and Manitoba’s hypocritical enforcement by officials like Brian Pallister—while questioning their effectiveness amid rising cases and false positives. Contrasting China’s bold demands under a potential Biden administration—five conditions to resume dominance, including Western collusion on Taiwan and Xinjiang—with the vanished fortunes of Jack Ma and Mikhail Khodorkovsky reveals a global pattern of unchecked power, suggesting lockdowns may mirror broader authoritarian trends if accountability fails. [Automatically generated summary]
Is it what they're doing in California or New York?
I think maybe what they were doing in the UK is a sign of what's to come.
I'll take you through that.
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All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, are lockdowns going to be permanent?
It's January 5th, 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 is government go wild is because it's my bloody right to do so.
I like to follow the news in the United Kingdom because in some ways it's a better predictor of what's going to happen in Canada than just watching the United States.
I think the UK is temperamentally more similar to us in some ways.
Our parliamentary system, I think they're a bit more reserved like Canadians are in comparison to Americans.
There's definitely many Americans who have a Canadian temperament, but America also has a significant personality trait defined by their Bill of Rights, especially the First Amendment and the Second Amendment, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to bear arms.
It just makes them a bit more stubborn and independent in the face of government bullying.
I mean, remember, they had their independence through a revolutionary war.
And it makes the government a little bit less likely to push too hard against the citizens.
We're all genetically the same.
But the way they limit their government in America has a way of shifting the balance in life away from the blob and the mob of the state and towards the individual.
I mean, it's almost impossible to imagine a Canadian province with the license plates, the motto that New Hampshire has, live free or die.
That's on every license plate of every vehicle in New Hampshire.
They look at those words every day.
Or the great seal of the Commonwealth of Virginia, it's in Latin, and people don't look at a great seal very much, but it says, sic semper tyrannis, which in Latin means thus always to tyrants, or to be more modern in the translation, up yours, tyrants.
We have friendly Manitoba on our license plates.
I think that's more Canadian.
So when a tyrant does arise, speaking of Manitoba, like Brian Pallister, and he starts bullying people and prosecuting churches and looking, you know, locking down businesses and defaming people he accuses of not being locked down enough, being friendly actually means being obedient, and that's not good.
There's a problem, though, because we see that in every lockdown province, and federally, of course, the lockdown elites, the ones who are enforcing the lockdown, they're not following the lockdown themselves.
Literally, the top civil servant in friendly Manitoba just went traveling and super spreading, as the lockdowners would say.
So I'm trying to look ahead and I'm trying to predict where we're going with all this.
And I think that there are some parts of the United States that are socialist enough to be templates for Canada.
I think California and New York meet those tests sometimes.
I mean, absurd lockdowns, the destruction of the entire hospitality industry, especially in New York.
I mean, thinking of New York without its restaurants is like thinking of Paris without its cafes.
Really, it's essential to its character.
What a bizarre official broadcast this was on New Year's Eve from Times Square, normally a hub of activity, life and excitement, and commerce and energy and entertainment and youth.
Just desolation.
Except for the Marxist mayor of that city and his Marxist wife dancing for the cameras in the deserted canyons of Manhattan.
It was like something post-apocalyptic.
How awful.
And yet they thought it was so wonderful.
So I think that's a possible template for parts of Canada.
But I think the United Kingdom is interesting and terrifying.
Their Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has just announced another total, total lockdown.
Remember, their lockdowns have weird rules like no singing.
Seriously.
And if you go out to drink, you have to have a meal because, of course, the virus checks first.
Total lockdown, insane, really absurd.
That's going to last for months.
Take a listen.
With most of the country already under extreme measures, it's clear that we need to do more together to bring this new variant under control while our vaccines are rolled out.
In England, we must therefore go into a national lockdown which is tough enough to contain this variant.
That means the government is once again instructing you to stay at home.
You may only leave home for limited reasons permitted in law, such as to shop for essentials, to work if you absolutely cannot work from home, to exercise, to seek medical assistance, such as getting a COVID test, or to escape domestic abuse.
Yeah, it's permanent now, isn't it?
Which is odd because it's exaggerated, the whole virus.
I mean, there are people indeed dying in the United Kingdom from the virus, and like here, they're overwhelmingly very old people who have serious underlying health conditions like diabetes and heart disease and dementia, all combined, by the way.
But in general, life is unaffected by the virus itself.
Speaking of viruses, this video has gone viral in the UK.
A woman went into a hospital in the United Kingdom, a hospital that was allegedly overwhelmed with cases, and she filmed it on her phone and it was practically empty.
There's actually no hospital bed crisis.
There's fewer hospital beds in use now than this same time last year in the UK.
And she was arrested for taking that video.
I'm not making that up.
Arrested.
They'll arrest you for anything in the United Kingdom.
They arrested this guy for hugging, hugging.
Take a look.
Are you hug sister?
Yes.
She's not concerned.
Exactly.
She's not concerned.
We're not concerned about an invisible fictitious virus.
I'm not really hurt.
Come on.
Brother, a hug.
Oh, thank you.
The hog system.
Come on.
Yes.
Brother, a hug.
Oh, yes.
Yes.
Human beings in contact with each other.
We are not scared of COVID.
Come on, brother.
Yes.
We're not scared of COVID.
Who wants a hug?
We're not scared of COVID.
Come on.
Come on, brother.
Want a hug?
Come on, let's go.
Let's go.
Let's show these lying criminal politicians.
We are not going to take this b anymore.
Come on, who else wants to hug?
I'm going to give you one.
Yeah.
Take care, I'm going to walk you.
No, do not, sir.
Please maintain social distances.
Okay, sir.
Have a good day.
Okay, now you need to hang out, sir.
What?
But you've clearly just been engaging with people, so you are not in the same house.
Okay.
I'm recording, officer.
And I'm recording as well.
You can see the red light going around on my camera.
That means I'm not sure.
So this is just evidence to you.
You're going up to people.
Do you know these people?
Oh, you do know them?
They're human beings, like me.
Still, man.
Sit up, man.
Who's been hurt?
Who's been hurt?
Who's been hurt by my actions?
You?
An officer of government officials.
Sir, there's God.
Human beings and government.
Government is inferior to human beings.
They are inferior to human beings, okay?
They are officers of officers of state.
They need to keep you scared, I think.
Otherwise, how are they going to get you to submit?
They came up with a UK mutation of the virus because the original one, I guess, was losing its scare factor.
That was an excuse to ban a lot of things, including flights between the UK and Canada, which is a very important flight route for both Canadians and Brits.
But I guess it didn't sound scary enough, this UK variant.
So they came up with a new South African mutation of the virus.
That's much scarier, I guess.
Maybe they'll call it the Ebola coronavirus if they need some real shock value and are running out of ideas.
I see that Quebec is going full martial law.
I know that martial law typically means soldiers in the streets.
They just use police these days.
I showed you this from Gatineau, Quebec just yesterday.
we're creepa hey get the f*** hey no, la-chelle la-chelle la-chelle la s'il vous plaît les gars là la-chelle la, ils sont trois dessus la no, i'm gonna come out hey, no, ils sont trois dessus la hey, ils sont trois dessus la hey, ils sont trois dessus la get the f*** get the f*** in there Jesus Christ!
Things worse!
No!
Yes!
What are you going to do now?
Stay there!
You have to shoot!
You have to shoot!
Hey, it's so bad!
Come on, George!
Hey, you don't have to shoot by the house!
I don't know what's going on!
You don't have to shoot!
I'm your sergeant!
No, I'm not shooting!
Don't shoot!
Don't shoot!
Wait, Antoine, Antoine!
You have to get your mandor!
Oh my God!
You have to get your mandor!
I'm going to get your mandor!
I'm going to get your mandor!
No!
You have to shoot me!
You have to shoot my son!
Excuse me, ma'am.
You have to shoot!
You don't have to shoot!
You have to shoot!
Thank you!
Close the door!
You know, no one really protested that.
Certainly not the official opposition whose job it is to oppose.
então, it is going to beado!
No, no!
No, no, no!
we do this!
So we have to see.
If we do this!
Okay, we have to shoot a finger.
So I'm going to do this.
Thank you.
So the Premier, he can read the reaction.
He's now going to bring in a brutal lockdown that might actually include UK-style curfews.
I mean, it's science.
The virus is particularly deadly after 10 p.m. at night, don't you know?
That's science, folks.
What are you?
Some conspiracy theorist.
And in the city of Toronto, they are literally dispatching police cars with cops with guns in their holsters to tell children where they can and can't toboggan.
You don't catch the virus outside on Toboggan Hills.
You just don't.
Sorry, there's never been a recorded case of that happening ever.
And kids, by the way, are the least vulnerable in society to this virus.
What on earth is going on?
I note that shootings in Toronto have nearly tripled under Mayor John Torrey's watch.
Tripled, but he's taking police off the gangland beats to patrol Toboggan Hills with their guns.
Are they going to shoot someone?
They're going to shoot someone.
They're talking about getting more brutal.
I don't know why.
Masks were not mandatory for the first six months of this pandemic.
Then they were, and cases went up.
Lockdowns have been tried once, twice, against end cases went up.
We know that cases can mean false positives, of course.
That's why the public health deep state insists on mass testing healthy people.
Remember this clip?
If you test somebody today, you only know if they're infected today.
And in fact, if you're testing in a population that doesn't have very much COVID, you'll get false positives almost half the time.
Why would you deliberately test healthy people en masse other than to find cases?
I say again, I'm not denying that some people really are getting sick and dying as they do every year from the flu.
And this is a particularly bad flu season, about twice as bad as the normal flu season.
But we are now killing far more people through the lockdown than are being saved by the lockdown, if indeed anyone is being saved by the lockdown.
Why are we shutting down restaurants full of 20 and 30 somethings, both customers and workers, when the virus targets people in their 80s and 90s?
Why are we doing that?
Well, it depends who we are.
Why are we doing it?
As we all saw this past week, the ruling class is leaving this monstrous mess they've created to go to Vegas or Hawaii or Palm Springs or Florida or Greece to get away from the mess that they have made, to get away from the police state themselves, to get away from cops busting into a house and dragging out someone because they were the sixth person in the room.
But not everyone can afford to fly away.
Not everyone gets paid whether they work or not.
Not everyone can afford to have a two-week quarantine off of work after their holiday.
So take a look at this kid.
Now he swears, which young people sometimes do.
Once in a blue moon, I've been known to swear.
You're Under Arrest00:02:36
But listen to the cops.
They're arresting him.
Well, just because, really.
Take a listen.
I swear to God, they're arresting this guy.
What the f**k?
What the f**k?
Oh, not what it was.
You gotta ask you.
That's fine.
Guys, dance behind your back.
I didn't do anything.
For what?
I didn't obstruct you.
I was going to Bonte.
He didn't like me to go.
Oh, yo.
So the cop asked him for ID and he said he should go f himself, which is not illegal.
And he punched me in the face.
Yeah, what the f.
Bro, he hurt you.
Oh, this guy just pushed him into the car, too.
You can't punch somebody in the face for that, sir.
You can't do that.
You're also not supposed to be out right now, eh, bud?
No, Just chill, just chill.
Let's go.
Can you listen to me, please?
I am listening.
I didn't do anything.
He didn't like it.
Why are you out right now?
I was going to Bonte.
I told him.
Oh, my God.
Can I start walking?
Can you let me walk?
Walk.
Literally dragging him by the neck.
Walk.
Are you the supervisor?
Sir, you're a fan of the car.
You're under arrest or obstruct your key stop.
You're under arrest or obstruct anything.
Try to have to keep your IQ as well.
Why do you buy IQ?
The Opening Ontario Act, sir.
Real thing Ontario.
Yes, sir.
Are you going to arrest me too?
You're literally going to arrest him.
We're literally here minding.
You can hand over your ID, or you're going to get arrested.
So he's saying if you don't ID yourself, he's going to arrest you.
He said, I'm going to get arrested if I don't give my ID.
You don't have to give your ID, bro.
It's not the law.
They have to ask.
They have to give you a reason why they're asking.
Exactly.
Rude kid.
Okay, we can all agree on that.
I think I'd probably be rude too if a cop busted my chomps for literally standing in a public parking lot outdoors doing nothing wrong.
So the kid got roughed up and he was assaulted, he says, and he was arrested and he was taken to jail.
And now he's dead.
Suicide.
He was taken into police custody for what?
And then they released him and he kills himself.
Why?
What did police say to him in custody?
What did they threaten him with?
What did they tell him?
Why would he do that?
He swore at them, so they arrested him and put him in his cell and told him things and he killed himself.
But it'll probably be marked as a COVID death, a bet and used to justify even more lockdowns and even more brutal policing.
China's Perspective on Biden00:15:27
Lucky Mayor John Torrey, he's got that gorgeous house in Palm Beach, Florida to go to after he's done destroying his own city.
Well, we knew even before Donald Trump became president in the 2016 election and 2017 inauguration that China would be a focus of his presidency.
It was certainly a focus of his campaign.
And if you looked at his historical tweets, and historical tweets sounds like a bit of a joke, but it shows what he was thinking about and talking about even before he formally entered politics.
Well, he was obsessed with China politically, militarily, geopolitically.
I always laugh when I listen to this mashup of him saying the word China again and again, but it shows what was on his mind.
Well, indeed, it came to color his administration.
Everything from trade and tariff barriers to trying to box in China, trying to get North Korea out of China's thrall, strengthening allies in the region like Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, and India.
But of course, it looks like Donald Trump, despite fighting to the very end, will not be reelected.
And Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will assume the presidency in short days.
So what is China thinking about this reorientation?
Well, there's a very thoughtful piece in Newsweek magazine of all places entitled Communist China is Preparing to Eat Joe Biden's Lunch.
And it's written by no one other than our friend Ben Weingarten, who joins us now via Skype Ben.
Great to see you again.
Happy New Year.
Let's put aside any lingering possibilities, however faint, that Trump might pull victory out of the jaws of defeat.
I don't think it's likely.
There are some people who are waiting to the last moment.
It's not going to happen.
Let's move on with the assumption that Biden becomes president.
He really is more under the sway of China than any president in American history.
Am I right?
Yeah, I think that's a great point.
And you can go back and look at, for example, Communist China's attempts to sort of compromise Democrats around Bill Clinton and perhaps Bill Clinton himself.
But there is nothing really like the ultimate swamp creature in Joe Biden.
And part of the swampiness is his lifelong, his career-long effort to cheerlead for greater integration, so-called integration, cooperation, accommodation of, in effect, communist China's rise.
And he's actually put it very explicitly that communist China's rise in the past.
He said it's a good thing.
It's a positive thing for America.
He was in charge, of course, of the so-called China portfolio under the Obama administration, which was completely toothless as China continued to expand its sphere of influence in its near abroad and beyond, engaged in the catastrophic office of personnel management hack.
And we can go through the litany of ways, including, of course, when he chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and during his career, cheerled for China being integrated into the world trade and financial architecture that was largely built by America and obviously the West more broadly.
At every turn, he has supported China's rise.
And this is to say nothing of at very minimum, the appearance of compromise and corruption associated with his family's dealings with Chinese Communist Party-tied individuals and entities.
So all of that adds up to, in effect, a national security disaster for America.
And what I write about in this piece is what China is saying.
And what Chinese officials are saying, including the foreign minister, is that they look forward to the end of the bad old days of the Trump era, where, of course, they use the same kind of rhetoric as CNN would use over here, isolationism and McCarthyism and the like.
And essentially what they say is now we can return to a period of normalcy and cooperation.
And they use sometimes those exact words.
And of course, that's exactly what the Biden camp is messaging itself in the realms of space, for example, on the environment and COVID-19 relief measures and a litany of other areas as well.
So what you see ultimately is China believes they have Joe Biden's number.
And I think it's in part because where the globalist transnational progressive elite stands in America is pretty much where China stands as well.
They're all in on the game together.
And ultimately, it's catastrophic for the West.
And I just point out, you can look at small data points like the New York Times today writing this article, a straight news piece, I guess, reporting on how great things are in China, that they have freedom from fear, whereas we're all stuck in lockdown here in America.
And you saw the media cheering on, in effect, the fact that in Wuhan, they were celebrating.
And, you know, of course, this is China putting out propaganda, but in Wuhan, they're celebrating.
And Times Square on New Year's Eve is completely empty and dark.
This is the world that they're all cheering on.
They're all in on the game because all of the Western elites think they're going to profit from it.
But in the end, they're going to be the first ones, maybe not lined up and shot, but figuratively at least, they will be the ones who pay the dearest price at the end of the day if we become satraps of China.
Yeah.
You know, it's interesting.
China has had a number of billionaires for a long time.
Sort of like when the old Soviet Union crumbled, you quickly saw these oligarchs who brutally carved up the assets of the former Soviet Union.
Some of them were truly phenomenal businessmen, but most of them were just sharp dealers who put together power.
In China, I think there was some of that, but they were actual innovators too, especially in the tech side.
One of them was named Jack Ma, Alibaba, and like he became one of the richest men in the world through his Communist Party connections, no doubt about it.
But I think he was genuinely a businessman and an innovator.
I mean, I think you could say he was the closest thing to, I don't know, the Jeff Bezos or the Steve Jobs of China, worth close to $50 billion.
But then he started talking a little too proudly, I think.
And China squashed his public offering.
And now he's gone missing.
He's literally gone missing.
It would be as if, you know, suddenly the CEOs of Twitter, Amazon, and Facebook just went missing after criticizing Donald Trump.
I think that's the most shocking story around about what China's really like.
And it should be a warning to the Western business elites who think they can outmaneuver the Chinese Communist Party when Jack Ma, the top commie, couldn't do it himself.
Yeah, several years back, Jack Ma came out as a member of the Chinese Communist Party because, of course, if you were a billionaire there, you would have had to have been a member of the Chinese Communist Party and probably literally and figuratively paid your dues.
And I think that was maybe the first sign that he understood.
He was self-aware enough to know that there's a problem here of creating the appearance of being maybe bigger than the party itself, maybe being bigger than I would call him Chairman Xi himself, General Secretary Xi Jinping himself.
You saw that he ran afoul of regulators in some remarks he made.
This is the diplomatic Western way of describing what happened in advance of this much bandit about initial public offering, which was supposed to be the largest one in the world.
And then essentially it was pulled and the reporting suggests that it was pulled at the behest of General Secretary Xi himself.
Why was that pulled?
I would say that's another example of the party imposing its rule, its dominance in general, and Xi imposing his strength in particular, showing that no man is above the party and no man is above the new Mao in Xi.
Now you see he's missing, and I think you have to put this in the broader context as well of the fact that there's been a significant, I don't know if I'd call it crackdown on quote-unquote private enterprise in communist China, but Xi has made it very clear that he believes that state-owned enterprises and state-backed companies need to play a much more significant role in the economy and that the Chinese Communist Party needs to play a much more significant role in the economy, which only makes sense because their economy,
in effect, is all about, at the end of the day, serves at the behest of and serves the aims of that party itself.
This could be a good thing for the West in some respects, to the extent that the central planning of the Chinese Communist Party ultimately destroys some of their ventures that might really undermine us strategically and from a national security perspective.
One of the apparent casualties, it seems, is going to be Jack Ma.
And I've speculated in conversations with friends and maybe on social media as well that Jack Ma will reemerge at some opportune time for the Chinese Communist Party, fully chastened and pledging his devotion and newfound passion for the party.
We'll see.
That may be the luckiest that he ends up.
We'll see how it plays out.
You know, it reminds me of a case more than a decade ago.
One of the richest men in Russia was named Mikhail Khodokovsky, and he was the head of an oil company called Yukos.
And he started to have political thoughts, and he was giving money to different political groups and civil society groups, and he had opinions.
And then one day his private jet touched down in Siberia.
It was stormed by security services.
He was thrown in jail.
And that's that.
And now, I should say, in reaction to that, there were some sanctions and business and other retribution that the West punished Russia with.
In fact, his arrest caused their stock market to fall more than America's did on 9-11.
I remember that detail.
But with Jack Ma just being unpersoned, I haven't seen any reaction politically, economically to that.
I mean, sure, people are maybe nervous, but I haven't seen, I mean, I think China is untouchable.
They can't do, there's nothing they can't do that would make the West retaliate.
Now with Trump leaving, I think they're going to be more brazen than ever.
Has there been any, like, maybe Jack Ma is a bad example, but I can't think of anything real and toothy that's being done to challenge China.
I mean, a few minor matters from the U.S. State Department in the last few months, but I think they're all going to be undone by Joe Biden in the first year.
Yeah, the Trump administration has imposed significantly more sanctions, I'm sure, than any administration to come before it on Chinese Communist Party henchmen, essentially, officials and Chinese Communist Party-tied entities.
And there's been several equities that have been delisted on American exchanges.
And there's a much broader push within Congress to push for the delisting of all the Chinese companies that do not adhere to the same regulatory reporting standards as every other company in the world that does business and gets access to our capital markets.
But leaving all of that aside, I think you're absolutely right.
First of all, that there will be no response from a Biden administration.
And if anything, a negative response in that they'll want to do even more business.
Second of all, look, just a week or so ago, the EU entered into that investment pack with China, which essentially rewarded them for all of their malign behavior over the last year.
So to put your statement a different way in question form, what would China have to do?
What pain would China have to inflict on the West or on its own people?
Of course, it seems that our woke capital doesn't really care about what it does with its slave labor and its own shores.
What would China have to do to cause a reaction, a concerted resolute effort front among the few remaining free powers in the West?
And it's a scary hypothetical to ponder right now, I'm sorry to say.
Yeah, you're right.
I mean, I do know that America has put some sanctions on, for example, companies using slave labor in Xinjiang.
I note that Nike, Nike, has opposed this.
Nike, that loves the woke reputation with Colin Kaepernick, is opposing any restrictions on letting it use slave labor.
I want to get back to your piece for a second in Newsweek.
You quote at some length this Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wang Yi, and he has five topics that he wants, five red line tests, as you call them, that China has, that it, five things it wants to accomplish with the Biden administration.
You know, the language is interesting.
We need to respect each other's choice of system and development path.
That's another way of saying don't criticize us anymore, no matter what we do.
Second one, respect our national sovereignty.
That's a way of saying don't talk to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang.
Like it's they're they're they're phrased neutrally, but when you think of what they mean, you know, on maritime issues, cooperation, not friction, that means let China dominate the seas and threaten Taiwan.
And the last one I think is the most terrifying, more people-to-people exchanges.
That basically means sending thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Chinese agents, operatives, the children of Communist Party officials into colleges, basically letting China walk into America and continue to take the levers of power and influence.
Essentially, what he's laying out is a roadmap for China returning to its rise without any sort of resistance from the West, because what's happened in the last four years has truly threatened their hegemonic march.
And so, again, I go back to return to normalcy and cooperation.
What does that really mean?
And I do believe that the foreign minister has used those exact words, at least as translated.
Return to normalcy means return to China's march to global dominance over the capitalist West.
And by the way, they talk about, when they talk about respect for systems, one of the things Xi has said in the leading philosophical journal of the Chinese Communist Party, which transcribed a speech he gave to the party's big wigs some years back, about seven years back when he started his reign, was he said that ultimately socialism will dominate capitalism and we need to end up essentially in an invincible position and seize the initiative.
Alberta's Resistance Lost00:04:55
So it isn't about two systems coexisting.
It's about their system dominating us.
So return to normalcy, return to China's march, inexorable march to be the hegemonic power.
And cooperation means with Western help, with the West colluding in that march, out of our greed, naivete, and the litany of self-loathing.
And we could run through all the explanations for it.
But I think it's just imperative to look at the words that they use.
Obviously, there's the communist double speak and the typical deception, but really what they're saying is hands off of us.
Don't you dare get in the way of our march.
And we should not accede to any one of these red lines.
In fact, we should accede to zero red lines that the Chinese Communist Party puts forth.
Because ultimately, if we don't resist it and they are fighting on every single possible prong, this comprehensive march, and we don't put up any fight to it, we will lose.
Definitionally, we will lose to them.
Yeah.
Well, as Gordon Chang always tells us, China says they are at war with us, not a shooting war.
They say they're at war.
Whether we admit it or not is rather irrelevant because that's what they say they're doing.
Ben, great to see you again.
Thanks very much for joining us.
Let me encourage folks to click on over to newsweek.com where you can read this essay, Communist China is Preparing to Eat Joe Biden's Lunch.
Ben, take care.
We'll talk to you again soon.
Thanks for having me.
All right, welcome.
Nice to see you.
Stay with us.
Hey, welcome back on my show.
Last night, Douglas writes, surprising to see Ezra so in favor of a cancel culture.
The biased media complain about hypocrisy and liberals chime in against the government.
And presto, certain key elements of Kenney's establishment are gone.
The ruling class in Alberta are following the rules, which say travel outside the country is not recommended, and even the federal advisory to avoid all non-essential travel.
Yeah, I'm not with you on this one.
It's not cancel culture.
These are the enforcers of the rules who are destroying lives by the thousand, causing mass unemployment, and then sneaking away to enjoy the things they're banning.
It's not canceled culture.
I have no beef against these people.
They haven't said a word incorrectly.
They haven't expressed an unacceptable point of view.
They've shown that while they'll jail their own citizens effectively, they'll sneak out the back and party and deceive.
I saw a memo that Tracy Allard allegedly sent to Jason Kenney saying, Premier, I'm taking three weeks off for personal time.
She even hid her plans from the Premier.
She's a deceiver.
And that's why she's gone.
I was shocked that Jason Kenney spent his own personal capital on these people.
Look, I want every single one of these MLAs to travel and live freely.
But last, not first, they have to free everyone else.
They, in fact, are going around locking down and fining and prosecuting.
You can't do that.
So I'm going to disagree with you on that.
Bruce writes, I'm sad to admit that you're right.
Ezra politicians believe that getting caught is the only crime.
They'll be more sneaky in the future, but this lesson of cabinet firings won't quell their desire to flout the very laws they make.
Well, the answer to that is don't make laws they don't believe in.
I think it was very clear that Alberta was trying hard to hold out against this lockdown mania, but the public health deep state and the media sort of wore them down.
If they didn't believe in the lockdown, they shouldn't have ordered it for the little people.
That's what insiders, elites, gravy-trained types do.
It's not what Alberta populist conservatives do.
Paul writes, always great to hear from Spencer.
Politicians will continue to do what they want until the people stand up to them.
Yeah, and obviously, I don't like being in common cause with Rachel Notley, who's been on the war path on this too, but it's not because I agree with Rachel Notley's ideology.
It's because the United Conservative Party of Alberta made some terrible decisions, terrible ethical decisions.
Again, I say I'm all for traveling, but you can't go for a jaunt to Hawaii while you are enforcing an emergency lockdown.
There is a state of emergency in Alberta.
I know this because that's what the law is called.
And they need that state of emergency to give them the power to crush businesses.
So if there is a state of emergency that's letting you crush lives, you can't skedaddle off to Hawaii for three weeks.
That's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters to you at home, good night.