Ezra Levant argues Florida’s $2B BlackRock divestment reflects a Republican pushback against ESG’s left-wing agenda, framing it as profit-killing political interference. Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover—meritocratic hiring, reinstating COVID critics, and clashing with Apple over free speech—spurs industry debate, with Netflix praising his democratic role despite controversies like Neuralink. Meanwhile, a "Simons" pro-suicide ad exposes hypocrisy in death advocacy, and Alberta’s Danielle Smith gains traction amid federal overreach fears. The RSV surge in kids, linked to pandemic immunity disruption and vaccine side effects per FDA filings, highlights pharmaceuticals’ endless intervention cycle, questioning whether vaccines worsen respiratory risks. [Automatically generated summary]
Boy, I got two stories today, both of them involving Elon Musk.
I guess I talk about him a lot, but I really think not only is the world's richest man, one of the most interesting men, he's such a consequential man.
He's a man of action.
And boy, some news today about him and a discussion with one of our writers who daily goes back and forth with Elon Musk on Twitter in real time.
It's amazing to watch.
We'll interview Ian Miles Chong.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast.
We make it with the video in mind.
The fact you're listening in audio, it's great.
But we actually put a lot of effort into the visuals.
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We show you pictures.
We show you stories.
We show you videos.
Consider subscribing to the video version.
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Go to RebelNewsPlus.com, $8 a month.
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All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, if we had 20 Ron DeSantis's, we'd be winning this battle.
It's December 1st, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Take a look at this Reuters headline.
There's a little bit of jargon in it.
Florida pulls $2 billion from BlackRock in largest anti-ESG divestment.
Florida Divests from BlackRock00:14:50
What does that mean?
Well, ESG stands for Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance, which is just a buzzword for left-wing political values infiltrating into businesses.
We know the long march through the institutions of left-wing radicals, universities, the media, Hollywood.
But now they're in formerly conservative territories, big technology, the military, even NFL football and NASCAR, and now big business.
Here's how the CFA Institute defines ESG.
CFAs are chartered financial analysts.
They're people who run companies.
They're the numbers guys.
See, that's your problem right there.
Companies are run by making financial decisions based on numbers, but ESG tells businesses they have to place other political values higher than making money in their company.
Like fighting climate change, whatever that means.
You're not going to change the weather by spending shareholder money on stupid things.
Here's the CFA Institute's website.
They define ESG this way.
They say, what is ESG investing?
ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance.
Investors are increasingly applying these non-financial factors as part of their analysis process to identify material risks and growth opportunities.
ESG metrics are not commonly part of mandatory financial reporting, though companies are increasingly making disclosures in their annual report or in a standalone sustainability report.
Numerous institutions such as the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, the Global Reporting Initiative, and the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures are working to form standards and define materially to facilitate incorporation of these factors into the investment process.
So it's like when Trudeau says he'll apply a gender analysis to things like building pipelines.
It's a laugh.
It's a joke.
There is no gender analysis to building pipelines.
Pipelines don't have a gender.
They're made of steel.
But it's just Trudeau's way of smearing the oil and gas industry is misogynistic or whatever.
Of course, it's not true.
Try doing a gender analysis on oil from Saudi Arabia, where women actually are not allowed to work in those companies at all.
Canadian oil and gas is gender neutral, if you want to use that word.
Anyone can work in an oil company, any race, any sex, gay or straight, whatever.
None of those things can be said about OPEC oil or Russian oil even.
But Trudeau used gender analysis to block Canadian pipelines.
It's a scam, of course.
It's purely designed to infiltrate companies.
You'd think that one of the highest-rated ESG companies, by the way, would be Tesla, Elon Musk's electric car company.
I mean, he's finally doing that leftist dream, building an electric car for the mass market.
But of course, Elon Musk has gone rogue these days, gone crazy by talking about free speech and all that.
Look at this exchange on Twitter.
I'm on Twitter for fun and for business these days.
You learn so much.
Carol Roth wrote, remember when Elon Musk wanted to bring free speech to Twitter and then Standard and Poor's removed Tesla from their ESG 500 index, but kept Exxon?
ESG is business social credit.
It's a means to control capital, keep business people in line with the narrative, and ultimately control you.
She's exactly right.
Elon Musk wrote back and said ESG is the devil.
Pretty blunt.
He's funny.
Some other podcasters chimed in and said, what objective standards are used to determine an ESG score?
To which Christina Peshawar, a senior aide to Ron DeSantis, replied, there are no objective standards.
If Exxon has a higher ESG score than Tesla, it's all about ideological conformity, not sustainability or whatever the virtue signaling word of the day is.
And then Glenn Beck jumped in to the same conversation.
He said, well, well, a couple of my favorite people talking about one of the West's most insidious villains.
I have a feeling there is a Chinese Communist Party-inspired public-private partnership behind Apple's App Store threat.
Elon, you're welcome on my podcast anytime.
You know, Twitter can be pretty interesting.
I like a number of those people in that conversation, but Christina Peshaw was the most consequential, at least as far as my news story today is concerned.
There are 50 United States, and each of them has a governor and a budget and investments.
28 of the states are run by Republicans.
But of course, Ron DeSantis of Florida is clearly the most active leader amongst them.
Which brings us back to the news of today, that Reuters story I read the headline to.
Florida's, let me read a little bit more.
Florida's chief financial officer said on Thursday his department would pull $2 billion worth of its assets managed by BlackRock Inc., the biggest such divestment by a state opposed to the asset manager's environmental, social, and corporate governance ESG policies.
The move will hardly dent BlackRock's $8 trillion in assets and drew a strong response from the company, which said the action put politics over investor interests.
What a laugh that is.
Now, it's true, BlackRock is bigger than pretty much most governments in the world.
It probably controls more of your life in certain spheres, at least, than does the government.
$2 billion sounds like a lot to you and me, but it's less than 1% of 1% of the funds that BlackRock controls.
But still, it's finally someone taking on the Death Star, even a little bit.
I should note that two other governors have done this before DeSantis did.
Louisiana's governor pulled $800 million out, and Missouri pulled $500 million out.
Maybe Florida is just a bigger state and their governor is better at getting national media, but that's three states that I know about.
That's not a blip then.
That's a trend, you could say.
Like I say, there are 25 other U.S. states run by Republican governors.
If they all followed Missouri and Louisiana, Florida, it would surely be an 11-figure divestment.
Still not enough to dent BlackRock, but enough to get a counter-narrative going.
What is ESG?
Who decided we have to follow it?
How is it hurting us?
And how can we stop it?
Let's get that discussion going.
As the CFAs tell us, ESG is making political decisions instead of business decisions.
Now, I suppose we believe in that sometimes, right?
I mean, we wouldn't want to buy something made in slave labor factories in China just because it was cheaper, right?
Of course, we do that every day.
I mean, everything in Walmart's made in China.
Everything in Best Buy is made in China.
We wouldn't want our computers made there, or our clothing, or our running shoes, right?
Except they all are, right?
In fact, there are massive protests going on right now.
I'd call it an uprising at Apple's big factories in China right now.
Why is Apple making its phones in China?
Look at this story in the New York Times.
Nike, the clothing company, actually lobbied against a proposed U.S. law that would stop them from using slave labors in China's Muslim province of Xinjiang.
They literally lobbied against the anti-slave labor law.
So how do they do on this ESG score business?
Well, let's check.
There's a lot of rankings out there.
Nike has an ESG score of 17.
They call it low risk.
Do you see that?
Really?
Low risk?
They are literally using slave labor in China and lobbying to stop rules against slave labor in China, but they're so cool and woke, right?
I think that was Colin Kaepernick's company, right?
And look at this, Apple.
Apple has almost the identical score.
They are building their machines in China where there's having an uprising.
But Elon Musk, the free speech guy, building literally electric cars, he's a higher risk, according to ESG.
Look at this story on CNBC the other day.
Standards and poors literally kicked them off their index saying, I can't even believe this.
Tesla's lack of a low-carbon strategy and codes of business conduct, along with racism and poor working conditions reported at Tesla's factory in Fremont, California, affected the score.
Tesla's handling of an investigation by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration also weighed on this score.
Really?
A low-carbon strategy.
They're lacking a low-carbon strategy.
They make electric cars.
They are the strategy.
And poor working conditions in California, the most pro-worker jurisdiction in America, I mean, could be.
They're being kicked out, but companies actually building things in China are just fine for ESG.
Yeah, I'm not sure if there's an objective standard.
I just got to show you this one more thing.
There's a company in Alberta called Meg Energy, M-E-G.
They're a large oil sand operator.
So they're under Canadian environmental laws, Canadian social responsibility, civil rights, workers' rights, gay rights, women's rights, aboriginal rights.
They are called high-risk.
Do you see that?
They have a 38 danger, danger, high-risk, danger.
They're operating in Alberta, the most ethical jurisdiction in the world.
But Sinopec, a Chinese oil and gas company that operates in China and OPEC dictatorships, no human rights, no freedom, no environmental, they get 35.7.
They're better?
They're better than Meg Energy?
Seriously, imagine the bribery behind the scenes here because it's all loosey-goosey, right?
This would be like the corruption of the Olympics Committee, different cities trying to bribe the commissioners to get the Olympics in their country.
Well, back to Rhonda Santis.
Here's more from that Reuters story.
It underscores how a backlash among many Republican leaders, such as those in Florida, against ESG investing, which they see as promoting a woke agenda, is gathering steam.
Republicans are set to assume control of the U.S. House of Representatives in January.
This will allow them to hold hearings on ESG and grill the chief executives of BlackRock and other major asset managers about their ESG policies and also pressure regulators to scrutinize them.
Exactly.
See, if you are managing someone else's money as an investment firm, or if you're running a company on behalf of shareholders, you have a duty to the shareholders, to the investors.
Obviously, a duty to be honest, don't steal, don't cheat, but you have something else called a fiduciary duty.
You have to look out for their financial interests.
You have to be cautious for them.
You have to be smart for them.
You have to make the most money for them that you can.
You can call it greed if you're negative about it, but you can call it being prosperous if you're positive about it.
And given that so many investments are people's pensions, people's life savings, or endowments for universities or hospitals, employee pension funds, whatever.
It is highly moral to get the best rate of return possible under the law.
Now, business people might be greedy for themselves.
I guess that's human nature, right?
But fiduciary duty says you have to be greedy for others, which I suppose you could call, well, not quite charity, but frankly, you're looking out for your fellow man.
You're forced to do the best for your fellow man.
I don't even think you can call that greed because it's not for you.
We know that people will take care of themselves.
That's human nature.
But businesses must take care of their investors too.
They must do the best thing for the grandma who has their pension with the investment firm.
But ESG changes that.
It makes political errands more important than earning money for grandma's pension.
It's diverting people's money to the pet causes of the ESG activists.
Hey, here's an idea.
Let businesses make money and then let the shareholders who get the dividends decide whatever they want to do with the profits, whatever they want.
Well, BlackRock not only uses ESG to push its left-wing policies on its investors, but it forces companies that want BlackRock money to agree to this ideology.
It literally injects politics into non-political businesses as a kind of condition, almost an extortion.
We'll invest in you, but only if you go woke.
I think regulators should take a look.
How much money is BlackRock frittering away on its political pet projects instead of earning money for investors?
How much money is it bribing?
And how are they pressuring companies to become political to get BlackRock money?
In a statement, I'll read some more.
Florida CFO Jimmy Petronas said the state's treasury, which he oversees, would remove BlackRock as manager of about $600 million of short-term investments and have its custodian freeze $1.43 billion of long-term securities now with BlackRock, with an eye on reallocating the money to other money managers by the start of 2023.
Petronas accused BlackRock of focusing on ESG rather than higher returns for investors.
Florida's Treasury Division is divesting from BlackRock because they have openly stated they've got other goals than producing returns, Petronas said in the statement provided by his office.
Well, BlackRock's response was just incredible, by the way.
Just amazing.
They said, asked about the move, BlackRock said in the statement that we are disturbed by the emerging trend of political initiatives like this that sacrifice access to high-quality investments and thereby jeopardize returns, which will ultimately hurt Florida's citizens.
Fiduciaries should always value performance over politics.
They said that.
No, no, no, no.
ESG is the politics part.
Investing to make money is the fiduciary part.
BlackRock is literally lying.
It's opposite.
They're accusing the state of Florida of doing what they're doing, which is putting politics into business.
Here's an interesting end to the story.
I thought this was neat.
Other companies also face Republican scrutiny.
Earlier this week, Republican attorneys general from various states asked a federal regulator to limit Vanguard Group Inc.'s activities over ESG concerns and asked United Parcel Service and FedEx Corp to clarify their policies on tracking firearms shipments.
Exactly.
Do massive companies get to simply ban people from doing legal things to follow some political agenda?
How about when Rebel News, when we applied for a mortgage and the Royal Bank of Canada approved us financially, said we were worthy of a mortgage, but then canceled it because of our politics.
BlackRock's Political Lying00:15:12
Remember when they told me that?
That's a form of Chinese-style social credit.
It's bad enough when governments do that, but now big companies are doing it in partnership with government.
BlackRock's the worst.
I fully support Ron DeSantis.
I wonder if, say, Alberta Premier Danielle Smathers, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Mo, I wonder if they might do the same.
I mean, why should Alberta and Saskatchewan invest public money in funds that defame and abuse Alberta's oil and gas industry, but don't raise a peep about OPEC or Russian oil?
Imagine obeying a junk science eco-cult that says a Chinese oil company operating in OPEC regimes is more ethical than a Canadian oil company operating here at home.
Yeah, the only question I have is: will Canadian Conservatives join Ron DeSantis in finally doing the right thing?
Stay with us for more about Elon Musk.
Welcome to a day in my life as a Twitter employee.
So this past week, went to Essa for the first time at a Twitter office, badged in.
Honestly, took a moment to just soak everything in.
What a blessing.
Also, started my morning off with an iced matcha from the punch.
Then I had a meeting.
So quickly scheduled one of these little pod rooms, which were so cool.
They're literally noise-canceling.
Took my meeting, got ready for bunch.
Look how delicious this food looks.
Oh, my goodness.
I was so overwhelmed.
Then made my way down to this log cabin area.
I don't know what this is, but it was really cool.
Played some foods with all of my friends to kind of unwind a bit.
Also, found this really cool meditation room that I thought was super neat.
I didn't do any yoga, but they have this yoga room if you are a yogi.
So I also thought that was really cool.
Had a couple more meetings in the afternoon, had a ton of projects that we needed to knock out.
Say hi to my teammates.
Went to the library to kind of get some more work done.
Obviously, had to have our afternoon coffee, so made some espresso.
And then before leaving for the day, had some red wine that's on tap.
Went up to the rooftop and just honestly enjoyed the beautiful weather.
So awesome trip.
What an incredible video.
It felt more like it was an all-inclusive resort or a cruise ship.
All the breakfast bars and lunch bars and the yoga room and the wine on tap at an office.
You don't normally see that.
You know, I once visited the Twitter HQ here in Toronto, Canada, and it was luxurious.
It was nothing like what we just saw there.
Apparently, they spent $13 million a year just on food.
It's just incredible.
Needless to say, that employee is no longer there, according to Elon Musk.
He gave her and thousands more, the Heave Home, people who were sort of like barnacles on the ship.
They weren't computer engineers who built the code.
They were part of, you know, the engagement teams or the community standards teams or the UN policy enforcement team.
There were all these political barnacles that were slowing down the ship of Twitter.
Well, what's interesting about Elon Musk buying Twitter and taking it private, he's the boss, and he doesn't have to answer to the SEC or to a board in the normal way that a publicly traded company would.
He can make bolder decisions that would have a rebellion amongst shareholders if he was publicly traded.
But I think the funnest thing about Elon Musk is not only that he is a true disruptor, but that he is tweeting it in real time.
He's using his forum, Twitter, to talk about Twitter and how he changes Twitter.
There's so many layers to it.
It's amazing.
But we have a small connection to this story.
Not only do we love to use Twitter, and, you know, I think we love it too much sometimes.
It's a bit addictive.
But one of our rebels, who is extremely online, as the kids say, has established a personal rapport with Elon Musk himself.
I'm not saying they're close friends, but when our writer, Ian Miles Chong, tweets about Twitter and Elon Musk, well, more often than not, Elon Musk personally replies.
It's actually very exciting.
And joining us now via Skype is Ian Miles Chong.
Ian, great to see you again.
And congratulations, not just on your work for Rebel News, but you are engaging with one of the richest, smartest, most consequential men in the world right now.
Absolutely.
I mean, it feels like a privilege in a lot of ways.
I mean, I wouldn't say this about just anyone.
I've had a lot of celebrities interact with me.
I couldn't care less.
They're just anybody, you know.
But Elon Musk, he is a once-in-a-lifetime human being.
And I know I sing his phrases a lot.
Some people have called me out on it.
They're like, oh, why are you cheerleading him so much?
I'm like, well, have you ever met anyone at Elon Musk?
I mean, look at what he's doing for humanity.
You know, you may not agree with all the things he's doing.
You may not agree with his handling of Twitter, which some might say is very disorganized.
But let's face it, he's getting results.
I mean, it took Twitter how long to crack down on child sexual exploitation?
I mean, like, they never did, right?
10 plus years, they didn't do anything.
And Tifa, five years, they didn't do anything.
And he steps in within two weeks.
He gets rid of all of this.
Well, that's a good point.
And he may look chaotic, but he's always had sort of a controversial style.
But look what he's built.
SpaceX, the most successful space company is not NASA.
It's a private company.
Look at Tesla.
I mean, I have my opinions on electric cars, but as he repeatedly says, he never asked for grants.
That was GM and his other competitors.
He's made his patents open source.
Like the guy is an ideas man.
Like you say, some of his ideas might be a bit unusual.
He wants us all to go to Mars.
He's got a Neuralink plan that I don't quite understand about transhumanism.
So, you know, I have, I want to be careful of blind spots too, but the man is, he is a decider.
He is a doer.
And it would be foolish to bet against him.
And here's what I like about your engagements with him.
You're not fan, you're not turning into a fanboy.
You and I sort of are friends of his, but you are, I can see what you're doing.
You're actually trying to make substantive suggestions, arguments.
Like you're not just, hey, give me a high five.
Let me give you an example.
Here's one tweet that I thought was interesting.
As you know, everyone's trying to fight Twitter now.
Celebrities are noisily saying they quit.
Some companies say they're going to quit their advertising.
I think it was NBC who briefly quit using it as a form.
Oh, you know what?
Let me play a really great clip from the White House.
A Fox reporter asking the White House, well, you're criticizing Elon Musk and saying you're keeping an eye on Twitter.
Do you plan to stop using Twitter?
This was a great exchange, and of course they don't plan to stop using it.
Here, take a quick look at this.
On another subject, when are you guys going to delete the White House Twitter account?
Why would we do that?
Well, you're saying that you're keeping an eye on Twitter because it might not be a suitable platform.
So why use it?
Look, I want to be very clear here.
The president has always said, and he has been very, very clear in his belief that it is important of social media platforms to continue to take steps to reduce hate speech and misinformation.
And he will continue to say that.
But media platforms make independent choices about their information that they present.
And so, look, I don't have anything to share on any policy or any changes that we will be making.
We have multiple platforms, as you know, that we utilize to communicate with the American people.
What a great question.
People who say, I'm quitting Twitter, it's like those Democrats when Trump moved and said, I'm moving to America.
I'm moving to Canada.
That's exactly right.
Anyways, let me read your, this is one of your tweets just a few days ago.
Let me read it and his reply, and I'd love you to talk a bit about this.
So Ian said, the establishment media is angry at Elon Musk because Twitter is no longer under the control of the establishment and its activist allies.
He implemented meritocratic policies and fired their friends who worked at Twitter.
The public can now openly question the narrative.
Now, that tweet was very popular.
And Elon Musk just wrote one word back.
He said, yep.
Now, I'm not saying that's a deep discussion, but he's obviously reading you and paying attention and thinking about things.
And he's saying, yeah, what that guy said, that's pretty cool.
It sums it up, right?
Because, I mean, that's exactly why they're afraid of him.
They have lost control of the narrative.
They've lost control of a platform that they use to organize, that they use to push their views.
And they've, quote unquote, fact-check anyone who disagrees with it, including us.
Yeah, I mean, that's the thing is I think Twitter's main purpose was not as a channel, but as a filter.
It was not as a medium, but as a lens in the medium.
I think that that was its value to the left is not to have a free conversation, but to have it seemingly free, but actually controlled by them.
Once that control is removed, I think the left is revealed.
Let me read another one.
Yoel Roth, who was the head of trust and safety for years, he quit after Elon Musk came aboard, and he wrote an op-ed saying, well, maybe the Apple store, the Apple App Store, and the Android store for Android phones, maybe they will ban the Twitter app to make it harder to get.
And here's what you wrote.
You said, if anyone can fight Apple with an actual chance of winning, it's Elon Musk.
He needs allies, though.
Who will stand with them?
And he wrote back simply, support is greatly appreciated.
Again, not a long reply, but it shows that he's thinking along the same lines as you.
Absolutely.
I mean, look at, I mean, they had a meeting with Apple yesterday, right?
Like, he actually went there and Tim Apple, or, you know, whatever his name is, since Donald Trump called him Tim Apple, I just can't get it out of my head.
So they had a conversation and Tim was very clear to Elon that he had no plans to remove Twitter from Apple.
So it seems like somebody at Apple, somebody high up, decided that they didn't like Elon's approach to free speech and they wanted to remove it.
And this was at the behest of the media.
If you, you know, if you paid any attention at all to journalists like Tila Lorenz, I mean, she went on the BBC, she went on different news stations, podcasts.
And a whole bunch of other journalists, especially the NBC News guys, they were quoting activists who said that Twitter needs to be removed from these app stores in order to secure democracy, right?
In order to secure liberal freedom.
It's like, okay, like they just clearly want him banned.
But the backlash to it was so immense that you had congressmen, you had Kevin McCarthy come out, and as well as Ron DeSantis said that Congress needs to do something about this if Apple decides to exercise its monopoly powers.
Yeah, you're right.
You know, I love Ron DeSantis.
I think he's an excellent governor, and the people of Florida certainly seem to think so if the midterm elections were anything to go by.
But I love how he judiciously weighs into national affairs.
And I, you know, you would think, well, there's 49 other governors.
There should be some ambitious ones amongst them.
But Ron DeSantis, he just nails it.
Here's a quick clip of Ron DeSantis saying: if Apple tries to do this, it should have congressional oversight.
Take a look.
Very concerning.
And then when you also hear reports that Apple is threatening to remove Twitter from the app store because Elon Musk is actually opening it up for free speech and is restoring a lot of accounts that were unfairly and illegitimately suspended for putting out accurate information about COVID.
That's like one of the main things that's being reinstated.
So many things these experts were wrong at.
And you had people on Twitter that were calling that out.
And Twitter, the old regime and Twitter, their response was to try to just suffocate the dissent.
And Elon Musk knows that's not a winning formula.
And so he's providing free speech.
And so if Apple responds to that by nuking them from the app store, you know, I think that that would be a huge, huge mistake.
And it would be a really raw exercise of monopolistic power that I think would merit a response from the United States Congress.
And so don't be a vassal of the CCP on one hand and then use your corporate power in the United States on the other to suffocate Americans and try to suppress their right to express themselves.
Well, I think that's spot on.
You know, I saw the claim that Apple is not advertising as much in Twitter.
And I know that Apple used to advertise all the time.
It would certainly come up in my feed.
So hopefully they're not boycotting.
It's one thing for them to ban, but hopefully they're not boycotting.
You wrote one more tweet on this theme.
You said they're basically asking for a ban because they want ammunition to justify their continued attacks on Twitter and your management of the platform.
And someone else weighed in and then Elon Musk said, this is messed up.
Now, again, I'm not saying that these are heavy and deep conversations, but I think that we know for a fact that Elon Musk is reading your analysis, reading what you are choosing to highlight.
And he's saying, yep, like he's basically signaling that your take on things is accurate.
So you don't need him to go on a great length because you just went on at great length.
He reads and he said, yes, that's it.
Much appreciated.
Yep, it's messed up.
So it's a very interesting way of him being the CEO and owner of a mega company to have that kind of interaction.
But frankly, that's what's so fun about Twitter in the first place: you get to talk to the highest and the lowest people.
They can be in the same conversation.
You could have a master of the universe talking to a kid.
And it doesn't matter.
You're on Twitter.
You're part of the conversation.
He's leading the charge.
I think that more CEOs, more executives, more politicians need to do exactly what he's doing.
And he's showing that Twitter is an even playing field.
Before, you know, it was the elites versus the plebs.
You had, you know, the aristocracy, the blue check marks.
They were the ones in charge and they wouldn't talk to anybody else.
Now, he's democratizing Twitter and he's using that, you know, that new sense of democracy to actually interact with just anybody.
He's showing people that this is how it's done.
And a lot of CEOs, people like Mark Zuckerberg, they'll never interact with the public.
Zuckerberg's Democratizing Twitter00:08:03
But he's saying, you know, maybe you should.
Maybe you should.
And I think they should.
Zuckerberg comes across as awkward.
I mean, there's a reason there's so many lizard memes about Mark Zuckerberg.
He's just socially awkward a bit, which is fine.
I mean, listen, he's obviously a tech genius.
Elon Musk is quirky too, but I think he lets it all out there and he's got a self-deprecating sense of humor.
Let me show you a fun meme, a video.
I can't remember who made it right now.
It looks like it was digitally altered a little bit.
I think the eyes and certain things.
This is Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who's a congressman from New York who's a huge critic of Elon Musk and Twitter and Elon Musk.
And someone mashed up these two interviews, making it look like they're like they're in love with each other.
I've watched this three times.
I think it is so funny.
Well, Elon Musk watched it too, and he loved it.
That's what I like about Elon Musk.
For one of the richest men in the world, he still pokes fun at himself sometimes.
Take a look at this homemade mashup video that I, I mean, it's just funny.
Take a look.
I apologize.
That was perfect.
I'm breaking all the rules.
I'm breaking all the rules.
I guess we might make some mistakes.
Who knows?
I think one of the biggest problems we have in D.C. is that everyone's egos are too big.
Go ahead.
I actually prefer to have no titles roll.
You're opening yourself up.
just being me.
Let's go.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Well, that's really funny.
And look, here's the point: Elon Musk is not shutting down people who are poking fun at him.
So when he says he believes in free speech, I think he's living it.
I mean, that was obviously very lighthearted and frankly, it was flattering towards him.
But he puts up with a lot of tough stuff.
I think he might do it.
Last clip, here is the boss of Netflix, which is a pretty left-wing organization, judging by their editorial output.
Here's the CEO saying he rather admires Elon Musk.
He thinks Elon Musk is operating in good faith.
He wants to save the world.
And don't bet against Elon Musk.
He's got his quirky style, but he gets her done.
Take a look at this.
You're on there all the time.
What do you think?
What's going on?
I'm excited.
I'm excited.
Elon Musk is the bravest, most creative person on the planet.
I mean, you know, what he's done in multiple areas is phenomenal.
You know, his style is different than like, I'm trying to be like a really steady, respectable leader.
You know, he doesn't care.
He's just like out there, you know.
But think of a guy who's spending $44 billion.
He could have built the biggest, he could have built a mile-long yacht for $44 billion.
Okay.
But it's like not good for the planet.
He's not interested.
He's in for a bunch of people.
You think what he's doing is good for the planet?
I'm 100% convinced that he is trying to help the world in all of his endeavors.
Okay.
And he's trying to help the world in that one because he believes in free speech and it's power for democracy and that there's an option.
Now, how he goes about it, again, you know, it's not how I would do it, but I'm deeply respectful.
And I'm amazed that people are like so nitpicky on him on that.
Sure, the blue tech market's making a mess of some things or not, you know, but it's like, give the guy a break.
He just spent all this money to try to make it much better for democracy in society to have a more open platform.
And I am sympathetic to that agenda.
What I liked about that, Ian, is that, you know, like I say, Netflix is obviously a bit big tech rival to any other company.
It's a competitor.
It's left of center, but they respect a doer.
They respect a builder.
And, you know, maybe Elon Musk will get other people in the industry talking about freedom again.
Last word to you, Ian.
Oh, it's got Zuckerberg, of all people, talking about freedom.
Zuckerberg actually spoke at the same conference yesterday, the New York Times thing, the book deal thing.
And he said that, you know, he wants to see where Musk goes with this free speech stuff and that it might work.
So, I mean, if anything, Elon Musk is leading the way and he's showing people that he's willing to be experimental.
This is something that Silicon Valley has forgotten about.
I mean, I remember when they used to be disruptors back in the 2000s, right?
Back when Twitter and Facebook were first founded.
So Elon is bringing it back to these days.
And I'd love to see other people follow suit.
It'd be really nice to, you know, if this actually works, and I think it will, Facebook might actually see the same changes happening to it.
Wow, that would be incredible.
Here's that clip of Zuckerberg.
Take a look.
If you look at all the major computing platforms that have existed, Windows, Android, iOS, hopefully the future ones around the metaverse that will get built, Apple's stands out as the only one where one company can control what apps get on the device.
That wasn't the case in Windows.
That isn't really the case on Android phones.
I mean, Google might control what goes in the Play Store, but they've always made it so that you could sideload and have other app stores and work directly with phone manufacturers.
I do think Apple has sort of singled themselves out as the only company that is trying to control unilaterally what apps get on a device.
And I don't think that's a sustainable or good place to be.
The reality is, is that the vast majority of the profits in the mobile ecosystem go towards Apple.
I think the majority of people in the U.S. have iPhones.
Certainly the majority of the economic activity on phones goes towards that.
So I do think it is problematic for one company to be able to control what kind of app experiences get on the device.
Well, it's an interesting time to be alive.
And we are quite strong on Twitter.
I think in many ways it's our strongest medium, or at least least censored.
A lot of our traffic comes from Facebook.
That's just the nature of it.
But in terms of censorship, I think they have the lightest touch on Rebel News and our personalities.
Ian, you're certainly one of our Twitter warriors, always out there.
And I really enjoy watching you interact with the man of the hour.
And I like the fact that you're putting interesting ideas to him.
And he's saying, yes, yes.
I find it riveting, frankly.
And that's, I guess, part of Elon Musk's strategy, too, is he wins when we're all watching this unfold.
Thanks for taking the time and keep up the great work.
Absolutely.
Thanks for having me on.
Right on.
There you have it, Ian Miles Chong.
And you got to follow him online.
His Twitter account is spelled still gray, G-R-A-Y.
Stay with us.
more ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me.
Aztec 01 talks about that creepy Simons pro-suicide ad saying his increasingly histrionic wandering avalanche of meaningless buzzwords shows how desperate he is to monetize depression, sadness, pain, and death for clout.
This idiot is a monster.
Yeah, like It was so weird.
And he talked about how brave he was and that he was, I'm really good.
I don't want to take all the credit, but I'm really good.
Really good would be helping someone who's sick, not helping them die.
Vic Bohr says, these are the same people who claim we should let children transition because otherwise they'll off themselves, yet they support suicide.
Yeah, it's a cult of death.
Rsv Surge and Vaccine Controversy00:05:30
It's terrible.
On Danielle Smith, Honor 234 says, once again, the federal government of Canada overextends its constitutional powers into provincial areas of responsibility and authority.
Another power grab from a dictator in Ottawa.
Well, let's see.
I mean, according to Lauren Gunter, the Alberta government is united behind Danielle Smith, which is a bit of an accomplishment, given that she was an outsider.
But still, we'll see what the province in general says.
She will be in an election in the spring.
That's our show for today until tomorrow.
On behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, see you at home.
Good night.
And keep fighting for freedom.
Reporting for Rebel News, I'm Tamara Ugolini, bringing you a report that attempts to bridge the gap between the RSV surge currently being seen in children's hospitals with the fallout of the experimental pandemic responses and the vested interests of pharmaceutical companies.
In Canada and abroad, children's hospitals are in crisis over respiratory syncytial virus or RSV.
Yet health officials fail to recognize why this may be happening and instead are resorting to what could have caused it in the first place, which are the unscientific, knee-jerk pandemic responses like masking, novel injections, and socially isolating the healthy by way of indiscriminate lockdowns.
Dr. Earl Rubin from Montreal Children's Hospital acknowledged the risk all of this had to children during an interview with CTV recently.
Listen for yourself.
Speed flu is here, so we anticipate that the numbers will go up.
For COVID, right now, we are relatively stable.
The majority of kids who are admitted with COVID are admitted for another reason and found to be COVID positive.
But with PQ1 and 1.1 and VA 4.6, we don't know what's coming.
So that's where that triple threat really is.
But at this point in time, it's really RSV that is the issue.
So to answer your question, there's kind of that perfect storm that's brewing.
We have easy transmission of these viruses.
We have a population that is not immune because they've been wearing masks and distance and not going to school in the last couple of years.
So you get increased numbers who are vulnerable.
And on top of that, you have kids who are not only vulnerable, but because they don't have immunity are getting sicker.
So all of these things are coming into play.
As analyzed by the infamous health data dissector Twitter account Golden Pup, who sources all of his information directly from government sources, RSV cases surged in 2021, but we barely heard a peep throughout the COVID hysteria.
His graphs repeatedly show that a term known as seasonality is the likely explanation for surges in respiratory viruses and that mask mandates did next to nothing to stop or break that cycle.
Using more broad Health Canada data, he shows how the average number of pediatric hospitalizations of those age 16 and under has skyrocketed in just one week from November 6th to the 12th, 2022.
The dotted black line details average hospitalizations from 2014 to 2020.
The blue dashed line is 2021 and 2022.
And then, wow, look at that solid blue line just going straight up.
Pup further pointed out this a few weeks ago that RSV incidences were exponentially higher last year, yet surprisingly, there were fewer kids in the ICU at the same time.
67 compared to 87 this year.
And his post dated November 15th, there have been 70,000 doses of the COVID-19 shot administered to children.
Now, of course, correlation doesn't equal causation, but what is important to recognize here is that both Pfizer and Moderna's FDA filings show that seasonal syncytial virus is a documented adverse event.
Here's an FDA submission on emergency use authorization amendment by Moderna.
On page 161, they clearly note that within 28 days after vaccination, some respiratory tract-related infections were reported with greater frequency in the mRNA group compared to the placebo group, including CROOP, respiratory syncytial virus, and pneumonia.
And one of Pfizer's emergency use authorization amendments says something similar.
On page 35 here, vaccine-associated enhanced disease, including vaccine-associated enhanced respiratory disease, is included as an important potential risk.
If that weren't enough, Pfizer's own analysis of post-authorization adverse events reports acknowledge that respiratory syncytial virus is a documented reaction.
So, what is our governing health body doing now?
Well, they are reviewing a new RSV vaccine, of course.
Health Canada said it received a submission from GlaxoSmithKline on October 25th for an RSV vaccine for adults 60 years of age and older.
In addition, Pfizer has notified Health Canada that it is planning to submit two RSV vaccine candidates for consideration: one for seniors and one for pregnant women.
The revolving door of injections continues, and when that injection causes an unintended consequences, surely there will be a vaccine developed for that too.