Ezra Levant spotlights Avi Yamini’s book launches in Auckland, Wellington, and Melbourne, where Maori security guards defied cancel culture threats to host events. Yamini, banned by NZ authorities over false "inciting debate" claims, exposed media bias like Chantelle Baker’s unverified reporting while crowdfunding for victims of lockdown police brutality, including Renee Altacritty. A sitting Australian senator praised Rebel News’ impact, framing Victoria’s restrictions as a warning sign. Levant highlights Yamini’s global role in combating authoritarianism under Jacinda Ardern and Canada’s Five Eyes allies, urging crowdfunded expansion to unite free-speech resistance across time zones. [Automatically generated summary]
Hello my friends, I'm in Melbourne, Australia, just wrapping up a three-city book tour with my friend Abhi Yamini.
We were in Auckland and Wellington, New Zealand, and today we're in Melbourne, Australia.
I'll show you excerpts from all of those events, including an incredible demonstration of the Maori Haka.
Now you might not know what those words mean.
Maori are the Indigenous peoples of New Zealand, and the Hakka is a warrior dance that they do, and they did it for us in Wellington.
Absolutely riveting.
And that's why I want you to get the video version of this podcast.
Just go to rebelnewsplus.com and click subscribe.
It's eight bucks a month.
You get the video version.
You'll hear the Haka on the podcast, that's for sure.
But you have got to see this with your own eyes.
So just go to RebelNewsPlus.com.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, a report from Australia.
It's August 28th, and this is the Esther Levant Show.
Shame on you, you censorious boobug.
I'm standing in the middle of a beautiful city called Melbourne, Australia.
It's an ultra-modern city with skyscrapers.
It's a large city.
It's a sports city.
It loves its different tournaments and competitions.
It's on the ocean, a gorgeous beach.
But in the heart of the city, there can be no denying it.
The center of this city is the Shrine of Remembrance, which is behind me.
It was built to memorialize those Australians that fought in the First World War.
Obviously, other wars were added.
There's a pillar dedicated by Queen Elizabeth to the Second World War, those who had fallen, Korea and other battles as well.
Australia and New Zealand, too, were an enormous part of the war effort, even though the war didn't come to their shores, much like Canada was an enormous part of the war effort, punching above our weight.
As you know, Canada had a beach, Juneau Beach, next to the UK and the US in the liberation of Normandy on D-Day.
This is a, it's called a shrine of remembrance, and indeed it has a sacred feeling to it.
It's dominant in the city.
It's respected.
I see even, I'm speaking to you, I'm recording this on a Sunday.
There are groups filing in constantly to the education center, the visitor center.
And I tell you all this because Australia is a beautiful cousin of Canada, similar in many ways.
The reason I'm down here is because the head of our Australia Bureau, our friend Avi Yamini, had a book launch.
And I've been here for three days.
I was in Auckland, New Zealand.
And then the next day I went to Wellington, the capital of New Zealand.
And today I'm in Melbourne, where last night Avi had his sort of hometown book launch for his new semi-autobiographical manifesto called A Rebel from the Start.
And I want to give you a report on how that book launch went, but more importantly, on the things I learned along the way.
I had never been to New Zealand before.
And although I was coming in personal solidarity with Avi, he's one of our best reporters, best campaigners.
Trudeau's Heart Revealed00:10:20
He really is a one-man army, as I've taken to calling him.
I also wanted to see a little bit about what New Zealand was like, because like you, I'm sure, I've been fascinated by it.
It's a political oddity sometimes.
It's a small country, only about 5 million people.
So frankly, the same size as the greater Toronto area.
But in some ways, it's a laboratory of political ideas.
There was a point in time when it was held up as the free market, low tax, low debt exemplar.
In recent years, however, the prime minister, until she recently resigned, was Jacinda Ardern, who when she was younger was the president of the Socialist International Youth.
She's a World Economic Forum delegate, just like Justin Trudeau, a globalist, a censor, a global warming extremist, a gun grabber, and all of these ideas she could impose on a country the size of a big city.
And because of that, I fear that she was able to twist and transform that country more than she could, more than even Trudeau could in Canada, more than Rishi Sunak could in the UK, more than Joe Biden could in the United States.
The sheer size of those other countries makes it more difficult to turn a ship like a battleship can't turn on a dime like a little canoe can.
And so I was interested to see what New Zealand in 2023 was like after Jacinda Ardern.
Remember that she was one of the most vicious, I'll say, and authoritarian imposers of lockdowns.
I'll never forget this statement she made at a press conference where she told the reporters and she told New Zealanders to ignore anything else that anyone had to say.
The government of New Zealand would be their only source of truth.
Here, listen to her home words as she said it.
New Zealand, that in the midst of what is a global issue, as you would expect, there are a number of rumors that circulate.
I am present on social media.
I see it myself.
I cannot go around and individually dismiss every single rumor I see on social media, as tempted as I might be.
So instead, I want to send a clear message to the New Zealand public.
We will share with you the most up-to-date information daily.
You can trust us as a source of that information.
You can also trust the Director General of Health and the Ministry of Health.
For that information, do feel free to visit at any time to clarify any rumour you may hear, covid19.govt.nz.
Otherwise, dismiss anything else.
We will continue to be your single source of truth.
That's one of the most stunning things I've ever heard.
It's akin to Justin Trudeau saying that the country he most admired was communist Trudeau because of its basic dictatorship.
Here's a flashback of that.
Of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say we need to go green as fast as we need to start investing in solar.
I mean, there is a flexibility that I know Stephen Harper must dream about of having a dictatorship that he could do everything he wanted that I find quite interesting.
I mean that's a stunning revelation into Trudeau's heart and it explains a lot these days about why Trudeau will not have an independent investigation into CCP corruption of Canadian political institutions.
But what Jacinda Ardern said was not just a momentary flash and insight into her thinking.
It was a statement of her obvious and comprehensive policy.
She believed and still believes that the only source of truth is government, as if they have some higher moral and scientific understanding of the world and that you merely have an opinion, but they have the truth, that you may have a view, but it's misinformation.
The only reliable information comes from the government.
The most incredible thing about that statement by Jacinda Ardern was how accepted it was.
There was not an uprising by the media, by other institutions saying, what are you saying?
You do not have a monopoly on truth.
It's a dangerous thing.
You would think that church leaders would speak out against it.
You'd think that media leaders, you'd think law professors, lawyers, maybe even civil liberties groups, but no.
And I'm afraid that that will be Jacinda Ardern's legacy, cracking down on freedom in New Zealand.
And now with her position at Harvard and around the world to export the New Zealand model of censorship around the world.
And that's one of the reasons I went to see how Avi's book launches in New Zealand would go.
Because there's one more layer, and I alluded to it the other day.
When Avi sought to go to New Zealand about a year or so ago to do journalism, to meet up with New Zealand critics of the lockdowns, he was banned by the government.
It was actually a joint campaign against him between the left-wing media and the left-wing government to trump up reasons why Avi couldn't get in.
He was legally blocked.
Well, illegally blocked, as it turns out.
We lawyered up as we like to do at Rebel News, and they finally relented.
So Avi thought it would be poetic, and I agree with them, to have that first book launch in New Zealand, the country that sought to ban him.
By the way, this area of the Shrine of Remembrance, because of its central location, its wide boulevard, its large lawns, and its meaning that the people who died and who were remembered here fought for civil liberties.
So this Shrine of Remembrance area was a common place for anti-lockdown protests in Australia.
And it was also where riot police on horseback charged those peaceful unarmed protesters, perhaps a template for Justin Trudeau to follow later on during his invocation of a form of martial law to crack down on the truckers.
So we are standing on very interesting territory here.
Anyways, back to New Zealand.
We got into New Zealand.
For me, it was a very long journey from our office in Toronto, and we got through with no problem.
And you'll remember that Avi wore a shirt that he had made.
Kia Aura is a Maori greeting, and it's a welcoming greeting.
And he wore a shirt that said, Kia Aura, North Korea.
Here, here's what he looked like when he stepped off the plane, if you recall.
Kia orda, North Korea.
I am finally here in Auckland, even though the Communist Party tried their very best to stop me with the cover of their state born and paid for mainstream media.
Thank you to the New Zealand Herald for promoting my book.
For the rest of you, the same still left in this country, make sure to come on Friday night in Auckland or Saturday in Wellington, rebelfromthestart.com.
There are still some tickets left, I believe.
Rebelfromthestart.com.
I'd love to see you all there.
The smell of victory.
That was pretty funny because in a way, Jacinda Ardern was trying to turn New Zealand into a kind of hermit kingdom, banning free speech, banning outsiders with bad political ideas.
And remember, that's why he was kept out, according to the internal records that Avi was able to get from the government.
He was kept out because he would stimulate a debate, a public policy debate that the government didn't like.
That is not what the men of the New Zealand army or those in Australia, for that matter, fought and died for.
So we landed in Auckland.
I got there a day early just to get over the jet lag.
It was quite a long journey.
And I want to show you where we met because Abi Yamini, like the rest of us at Rebel News, is a little bit spicy, a little bit controversial, as the left would say.
Obviously, he's a peaceful debater, a man of ideas, but the left wants to de-platform him, wants to cancel him.
You might recall that a few years ago, that happened to me when I was launching my book, The Libranos.
We had booked two theaters, one in Calgary, one in Edmonton, paid in advance, but an online mob threatened the movie theater owner who canceled at the last minute.
Here's a flashback to that.
I know something about book launches being canceled by street thugs.
Remember this?
We got ourselves a street protest here what they've done to my car.
No threats.
No threat.
As you can tell, he's a majority.
He's a huge maturity.
All right.
What's our name?
Where is that in California?
That's right.
You were so good.
Shit.
I was wondering, Ezra, when do I get my book?
We have found another place around the corner that has agreed to let us in and we're almost signing it.
You guys want to say that?
We're always just down the place.
We only got one of them.
We'll all go march there together.
Get out of the cold and we'll sign the book.
Well, we thought that might happen.
And to tell you the truth, that's one of the reasons I was coming, not just to show solidarity with my friend Avi in his book launch, which was a very important book.
And by the way, I really recommend the book.
It's funny, it's revealing, it's passionate.
And if you like Avi as much as I do, I think you'll get a kick out of the book.
You can find it on our website, RebelFromTheStark.com.
Anyways, so I was coming to support Avi for his book, but I was also coming to see how New Zealand handled it, given that the government had banned him before for expressly political reasons.
Well, Avi was smart and he found an ally in New Zealand that wouldn't be easily pushed around.
You might know that Rebel News often has events in the greater Toronto area, which is sort of a woke place.
Avi And The Pastor's Heart-To-Heart00:13:29
But we have a friendship with Charles McVeany, the president of the Canada Christian College, and he's not pushed around by anti-foot thugs and he has refused to cancel our events at his facility.
And we're very, very grateful to him.
And it shows that he's a man of ideas and debate.
Well, we found a similar location in Auckland.
It was a large church, a largely Maori church.
And for those of you who don't know, Maori is the name of the original people of New Zealand.
They are often portrayed as warriors.
You may know the Maori Hakka, which is a fierce dance of friendship, actually, and welcome.
And there's many things that that dance stands for.
They have a very interesting Aboriginal culture, which we learned about when we were in Auckland.
We went to the large National Museum there.
It was fascinating to learn.
Maoris are an important part of New Zealand.
And this Maori church, it's a Christian church of an evangelical variety, I'll say.
It's called Destiny Church, and it is a positive church whose members are largely Maori.
And the leader of this church, Brian Temeke is his name, is no stranger to taking political stands himself.
In fact, he's the leader of a party called the Freedoms New Zealand Party.
In New Zealand, they have districts where people vote, but they also have sort of a system.
I think it's called MMP, where you have, if any party gets 5% of the vote spread out in any way, they get seats to their parliament as well.
So they have seats apportioned by district and seats apportioned by vote.
So, the thinking that Brian Temeke has is that he can get maybe 5% of the vote across the country.
He's an incredible man.
He's a religious leader.
There's not just one Destiny Church in Auckland.
There's churches around New Zealand.
He's also the leader of this political movement, and he's deeply involved with Maori men because Maori men are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system and in gangs.
And he works to bring those men out of the darkness and into the light to give them a Christian belief system, as opposed to, say, finding that community in a gang.
And what's so fascinating is how he is himself and his organization really provides a lot of the social services in that way to Maoris and others in New Zealand.
It was an amazing man, a charismatic man.
And I have to say, maybe I'm easily bowled over, but I just being in his presence, I could see why he inspires so many New Zealanders, especially Maoris.
The police and the prosecutors and the politicians hate him for the same reason that they crack down in Canada on Christian pastors who defied them during the lockdown, too.
And just like Pastor James Coates and Pastor Arthur Pavlovsky and other pastors in Canada were arrested, they arrested this Maori church leader.
And instead of standing up for him, the media party condemned him.
Despite the fact that normally the media would be very sympathetic to a Maori leader, it reminds me of the treatment in Canada where Tamara Leach, who is a Métis woman, normally a Métis woman in the world of public affairs would be treated with a great welcoming by the media who would say, well, let's listen to our native elders and let's be respectful.
They actually tried to deracinate Tamara Leach to doubt the fact that she's Métis.
In New Zealand, I think something similar happened.
They tried to condemn Brian Temeke because he wasn't the right kind of Maori.
He wasn't reading the woke script that was preferred by the white PhDs at the university.
It's interesting to me because the Destiny Church has been called a prosperity theology church.
And you see this sometimes in U.S. evangelical churches where the pastor doesn't say be a victim.
The pastor doesn't say be on welfare.
The pastor says raise yourself up, be prosperous.
And it's an amazing counter narrative than to the left-wing woke narrative that would say to Indigenous peoples in New Zealand, in Australia, and in Canada, no, no, no, you're perpetual victims and you need handouts.
Very interesting man.
And I think we're going to do some journalism with him in the future.
Anyways, back to my main story.
It was in the Destiny Church in Auckland that we had our first event.
And I want to show you this one tweet that Avi spotted and he retweeted it.
Look at this.
An antifa trans protester.
You can see that by their name and their flags.
A transgender antifa activist lamenting on Twitter that they wouldn't be able to cancel Avi's book launch because it was at a Maori church led by no one less than Brian Temeke, who wouldn't bend the knee to the government.
So obviously he's not going to bend the knee to some woke thugs.
Here, I'd like you to watch some footage from that event.
It was wonderful.
I want to give you a sampling of some of the different speeches there.
I gave a few remarks myself.
I also want to show you the people who were there.
And I want to show you a little bit about the church itself.
It is a glorious facility.
I don't know.
I found it inspirational and it was a surprise to me.
I did not know my trip to New Zealand would be so Maori-centric.
I thought it was just about Jacinda Ardern and her censorship and Avi's book.
Here, just take a few minutes and watch what it was like that first night in Auckland, New Zealand.
Take a look.
I thought, this is an opportunity to let people know who I really am.
Because yes, I'm in front of the camera and the first thing most people say when they see me on the street is, oh damn, you're shorter than I thought.
You look, no, no, they actually say you look taller on camera.
I'm like, yep, you're just one of those trolls.
You're exactly how you are in the comments.
And so they ran those smears.
And they encouraged the government to ban me.
And the thing I love about New Zealand is your freedom of information is so quick to respond that it was easy to see in black and white that everything they told the media and everything the media had published as to why I was banned was completely false.
In fact, in black and white, and I love it, and I'm a bit annoyed that it's not on the front cover of the book because I think we should add it, that they said that their reason, their real reason for banning me was not some conviction that they knew didn't meet the threshold.
It was my propensity to incite people with opposing views.
Holy crap, I wear that with a badge of honor.
That is exactly what I do.
And that's what you should do in an open, free, democratic state.
As we went further and further into these protests and as the police became more and more hardcore in their enforcement and as the numbers decreased in the amount of people that were coming out to the streets because, you know, obviously with what was happening, people were becoming more and more afraid to be out there.
You know, it was just turning out to be me and Avi there.
And through that bond that we built during that time, I really started to learn a lot about the type of work that I was doing.
Because when I went out there to do that work as an independent journalist, you know, I didn't really know exactly what that was at that moment.
But by seeing what Avi was doing, it really gave me that courage to take it to the next level and to feel like that I'm actually not alone out there.
There's one young man here who's being a citizen journalist right here and other people have their phones up.
You are as much a journalist as anyone from the Herald or from Stuff or anything like that.
What is a journalist other than someone who tells about what happened in that day?
That's where the word journalism comes from.
And Avi Yamini, who I've taken to calling a one-man army, is I think one of the great citizen journalists of our age.
My favorite moment was when Avi and Brian Temeke had a bit of a heart-to-heart and in some sort of foreshadowing, they talked about cancel culture.
Listen to the wonderful response by Pastor Temeke.
Don't you wish we had more people in Canada like him?
Take a listen to him threaten to cancel the cancellers.
Why don't they intimidate you?
I'm their worst nightmare.
And just like they've been canceling you and other people, I'm going to cancel them.
They know who I am and they know who we are.
And I think that's very important never to be afraid of the oppressor because they are more afraid of you and they know that you're not afraid of them.
Well, that's my kind of guy.
Anyways, the first night in Auckland went perfect.
And, you know, I was a little jet lagged and Avi had come in from Melbourne and we were feeling pretty great about how it went.
But then as we were turning in to go to bed at 2 a.m., you know, you just check your emails before you go to bed for the night.
At 2 a.m., Avi got an email from the venue that next day in Wellington, the capital city, that that new venue, we had the Destiny Church, the Maori Church event in Auckland, huge success.
came back at 2 a.m., found out that the next night, in fact, I guess you could say 17 hours later, it's called the Cathedral, the Wellington Cathedral of St. Paul.
They had signed a contract with Avi.
They knew it was Avi Yamini.
They knew it was the book.
They knew everything.
And yet they got the same threats from the left-wing thugs, from the transgender activists, from the antifug types.
And they're made of lesser stuff than those Maoris.
They're not warriors.
They're appeasers.
And so they didn't have the courage to phone Avi and say, mate, we're feeling threatened.
We're getting wobbly here.
To which Avi could have said, we'll add more security.
We'll have the police.
That church in Wellington caved and they did it in a cowardly way.
Not just with an email, but their excuse was laughable.
Here, let me show you a snippet from the email they sent Avi.
It was sent a little bit earlier, but we didn't see it till 2 a.m. because he didn't phone us.
And they said, you've just got to look at this language here.
Here, let me read it for you.
While we regularly enable a wide range of people with differing views and perspectives from our own to use our hall, we do need to review whether we allow a booking for a speaker who is known to hold contentious, potentially inflammatory, or offensive views.
And then get this line.
In this particular case, it seems that Mr. Yemeni's presence on our cathedral site may be considered by several in our community to be divisive and may lead, get this, get this, to attempts by others to prevent the event from taking place.
Did you get that?
So the church said, Avi, we've got to cancel your event because if we don't cancel your event, other people might try and cancel your event.
So we've got to cancel your event so the event's not canceled.
I'm deeply embarrassed.
Look, why don't you just say the same thing that the movie theater owner in Alberta said to me in 2019 when he shut down the two events?
He said, look, I'm scared.
I'm scared they're going to attack me.
I'm scared they're going to assault me.
I'm maybe even scared they're going to burn down my place.
That's what the guy in Alberta said to me.
And although I don't really accept it, I understand it because who could put up with that?
And the trouble is in some of these left-wing places like Jacinda Ardern's New Zealand, if Antifa threatens you, the police and the prosecutors don't jump to it.
And so that, I think it was an Anglican cathedral bailed at 2 a.m.
Well, at 2 a.m., Avi contacted the Destiny Church and said, can you please help us?
And they said, yes, we have a sister church in Wellington.
You can be there tonight.
Can you imagine?
The Maoris saved the day.
And we had six Maori security.
And I have to say, I have rarely in my life felt so protected.
And pity the fool in Antifa that would mess with those lads.
Here, I want to show you a little bit of that event.
So remember, we canceled the event.
We sent a bunch of emails telling people about the new venue.
Hopefully, I don't know if everybody got it, but most people found the new venue.
And I have to take my hat off to these Maori warriors who were not going to be pushed around like the Anglican church was.
Here's some excerpts from the night we had in Wellington.
So we're here tonight to listen to some of the rebel team and talk about their experiences on the streets in Melbourne, in Canada.
We've all been through similar things and we all sat there watching Avi and Rokshan and Ezra, you know, outlining the excesses of the regimes that we've all lived under.
Rebel Team Experiences00:10:14
And we're all here because we love freedom.
And freedom is important and you need, in order to have that freedom, you need to have free media.
And they need to be able to show both sides of the story.
And that's why it's so important to have people like Rebel News doing what they do.
People like Avi, small in stature, but huge, huge, huge attitude, you know, and bravery.
Rukshan.
Huge bravery to steer down those.
You know the scenes that came out of Melbourne were just appalling.
You know, um police in black uniforms with boots, all militarized with armored vehicles, to deal with people who just wanted to be free.
Tell the other side of the story these days is more difficult than it sounds, because so much of the media is controlled in some way by someone who doesn't want the entire story told.
I give you the example, the most obvious example recently, of lockdowns and the pandemic and vaccine mandates and things like that.
We've all learned that Pfizer and the other drug companies are enormous advertisers with the corporate media literally billions of dollars in advertising.
So is it really surprising that during the lockdowns and the vaccine mandates, the corporate media, which is the dominant media I call it the regime media is it really surprising that they weren't willing to tell the other side of the story?
There's so many things like that.
A lot of the media is government funded, so obviously they're going to run errands for those in power.
Corporate media is the same way.
You know they won't do anything that would jeopardize the corporate interests of their companies.
It was amazing.
It was a great night.
You'll see, our friend Rukshan Fernando was there.
He's another independent journalist from Melbourne who went to New Zealand to be part of Abi's book launch.
Obvi really has inspired other citizen journalists.
I should tell you that we met with about half a dozen fledgling citizen journalists in New Zealand and I I don't want to get ahead of myself because we have to expand carefully if we're going to expand.
We don't want to, you know, be rash, but I hope that we can find allies in New Zealand, maybe baby steps, maybe once in a while on a freelance basis, but I think there's enough news there and it's an interesting enough country and and people I think in Canada feel a kinship with New Zealand and it's an interesting place.
It's part of the Western Alliance.
Uh, it's part of the FIVE EYES, if i'm not mistaken, Us Uk Canada Australia, New Zealand.
They call it the FIVE EYES.
It's like uh, super friends um, you know, Canada is part of NATO, Canada is part of the, you know G20, Canada is part of the UN, but the five closest friends from a military and intelligence point of view are called the FIVE EYES.
New Zealand is one of those five eyes and yet it's sort of deviating towards authoritarianism, like Canada is.
So wouldn't you agree with me that it's sort of miraculous that twice in a row, Avi Yamini, who is not Maori, is not even a New Zealander, his freedom of speech was saved and he was physically protected by a Maori church in New Zealand.
My mind is still turning that over a hundred times, how wonderful that is.
But I want to show you perhaps the most emotionally powerful moment of the trip.
It was after the event was over.
Avi had signed a bunch of books.
Like I say, the Maori warriors were on guard.
Antifa didn't come near.
They'd pee their pants.
And then the Haka I mentioned at the beginning of the show, that's that Maori dance that you sometimes see before a rugby match.
They performed the Haka, which is a very spiritual act.
They performed it for Avi.
A look at this.
Are you
not moved?
Is that not amazing?
They truly welcomed him and his rebellious nature.
And look at these tweets from Brian Temeke.
He was back in Auckland watching things.
He said he stands with rebel news.
Would you believe it?
He is a man who believes in freedom and he is not going to bend the knee to a bunch of street thugs.
And I'm so pleased with that, but I'm also heartbroken that it has come to that.
I'm heartbroken that New Zealand is in a place where churches are, I believe, genuinely afraid they're going to be torched.
Because even though Jacinda Ardern has moved on, the new prime minister is a mini-me and just like Jacinda Ardern.
And so this church obviously felt they could not rely on the police to protect them, could not rely on the media and politicians to condemn the threats of violence.
And that's sort of creepy to me because we already know that the government of New Zealand tried to keep Avi Yamini out.
They failed because we lawyered up.
So maybe they were sort of winking at Antifunds saying, hey, guys, you're our street teams.
We can't accomplish this legally.
Can you maybe threaten anyone?
And we'll turn a blind eye to you.
We won't prosecute you.
Let me flip it around.
And you can see that others from the Maori church said this point.
If an event at a mosque had been threatened by some paramilitary group the same way Antifa had threatened the church, do you think that the labor government here, do you think that the police and prosecutors would be silent?
Do you think the New Zealand Herald or stuff, those are the two main media, do you think they would have been silent?
You know they wouldn't have been.
Well, that was New Zealand.
And we left and it was amazing.
And it's a fascinating country.
It's obviously a gorgeous country, as you may know.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy was filmed in large part in New Zealand.
Other movies where you need sort of an otherworldly, glorious sweeping topography and geography and geology.
Just amazing.
As I mentioned the other day, it's a volcanic place with still active volcanoes.
Just an amazing, amazing place, but so far away.
And I think that's one reason it's sort of isolated.
We don't think of New Zealand as much as we think of Australia, as much as we think of America or UK.
And so what's happening sort of out of our corner of our eye, I fear that New Zealand has become more unfree.
It's the kind of place that needs a rebel news, which is precisely why they tried their best to keep Avi out.
Well, as I mentioned, I'm now standing in beautiful Melbourne, and I want to show you some scenes from last night.
It was sort of a homecoming.
This is Avi's hometown.
And at his book lounge was his family.
His dad was there, other family members, old friends.
And I want to give you a sample of the beautiful words that were said about him and about the book and about how Avi gave people the courage and the confidence to speak up when everyone around was silent.
You know, it reminds me of that line from Yates' poem, The Second Coming.
The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
Remember, that's what it was like during the lockdowns.
All the worst people were rampant and all the best people were silent.
Avi, not alone, but almost alone, Avi and Rukshan and a handful of others spoke up in this city and it made all the difference.
Here's some of how that went last night in Melbourne.
Now, remember, this is the same Chantelle Baker that they've often targeted as the most unreliable source on the planet.
You can't trust anything she says because she's complete fake news.
She's a conspiracy theorist herself.
But suddenly for this one, this one rumor, this rumor that she posted, they believed it.
They didn't even come to me for comment to ask me if it was true.
They ran with it and they ran in this article without a byline.
So nobody put their name to it.
They wrote, so we're planning on coming, Chantelle Baker says it.
And these are the ways, these are the reasons and ways New Zealand immigration and New Zealand police can stop me from entering the country.
Basically telling them, hey, what are you doing?
Ban this guy.
You need to stop him.
The next thing we know is I was, of course, banned and they blamed conviction which they knew didn't reach the threshold.
And I talk about that whole story in my book.
And a lot of, you know, the reason that my book only came out now is because often the lies that they repeated in that article, they've said that about me for years.
A lot of people have said those things.
And some parts of those, they knew that I wasn't able to respond until now.
It says, judge not on the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.
And the tree shall be known by its fruit.
Now, he used different words, but it's the exact same principle.
It's a true principle, and he's a man of integrity.
Now, I'm very grateful for this man because he's backed me all the way.
And I hope that he'll continue to back me.
Well, now you have to.
He's committed now.
But he's backed me the whole way.
And he's done this without flinching.
He is a man of integrity.
And we need people that will stand for the truth in this world of lies.
Now, the enemy, they create their power from their ability to create a false narrative.
That's what they do.
And that's why their false narrative as it falls apart, changes, and it becomes a new false narrative.
That's where they get their power from.
Destroying False Narratives00:02:47
People like Avi, they destroy the narrative.
And very quickly do they destroy the narrative.
They have a lot of power.
And if we can support this man and continue to spread the love.
You know, it was incredible.
And there was an emotional connection that people had.
And actually, some of them even recognized me, even though I've never done any journalism in Australia.
But they started to look at the rest of the world through Rebel News.
Isn't that amazing?
Rebel News, based in Canada, was a source of information about the world to the world.
And that's what I said in my remarks last night.
I said that Avi told the Australian story to Australians, but he also told the Australian story to the world.
So we could see what was happening and what bad things could come.
Here's an excerpt of my own remarks last night.
We do at Rebel News.
The main thing that Avi and Roxhan, in his own independent spirit, does is they tell the other side of the story.
But every once in a while, it's not enough just to tell the story.
Sometimes that feels almost like being a voyeur or like driving by a traffic accident and rubbernecking.
Every once in a while, don't you feel that we have to stop and do something about it?
Yeah.
And I think that's the special part of Rebel News that Avi has excelled at.
And during the lockdown, when all the official civil liberties people and the champions of the working class, when they went silent, when all the checks and balances failed, Avi not only told the stories, he did, for those who know the Jewish phrase, a little bit of tikkun olam, which means to save the world, to build the world.
There's a Jewish saying, it's not up to you to save the whole world, but neither are you free to do nothing.
And didn't Avi live up to that so beautifully?
Well, it was an amazing trip, and it was a busy trip to go from town to town to town is actually more exhausting than it sounds, but it was a thrill, and I'll still be processing it for days to come.
I'm coming back to Canada tomorrow, but it's a 24-hour series of flights.
I have to go from Melbourne to Sydney to San Francisco to Toronto.
I'm tired just thinking about that.
And that's one of the reasons why we don't have as much interaction with New Zealand and Australia, the time zones and the distance.
Obviously, we have a lot more kinship with our neighbors and best friends, the United States, and even the United Kingdom is closer.
But I think that perhaps because of their geographical marginalization, the fact that they're at the ends of the earth, maybe that's why things have happened here that shouldn't have happened because the world wasn't watching.
I think Jacinda Ardern has taken New Zealand in a terrible direction.
And I hope that country comes back.
And I believe that having journalists on the ground who tell the other side of the story could make an enormous difference.
Worst Videos Ever Shown00:05:02
And that's the thing.
If you're one great citizen journalist in the United States of America, it's such a large place.
You can make a difference, but it's a huge place.
Whereas in New Zealand, one powerful, charismatic, confident citizen journalist can make a real difference precisely because it is smaller.
In the days ahead, we'll be contemplating what we saw, talking to people that we met and trying to think of a way to have a Rebel News presence in New Zealand that we can afford, because that's the thing with a small population base.
Can we crowdfund to support the journalists there?
We'll be working on those and other questions, but one thing's for sure, we made some great friends.
I'm going to come back to Canada now.
So for tomorrow's show, I want to remind you of the amazing work that Rebel News, through Avi Yamini, and actually some other friends that we've done in Australia.
I think, in fact, some of the biggest differences we made have been here, including some amazing fight the finds cases that were crowdfunded in Australia and just some shocking scenes of police brutality that we helped fight back for Avi Yamini himself, but even for others, like that terrible case of Renee Altacritty, who literally had her young boy ripped out of her arms.
Remember this?
I think that is one of the worst videos Rebel News has ever shown.
Whenever I hear that boy screaming, it upsets me for an hour afterwards.
But Rebel News covered that and Rebel News actually crowdfunded for Renee's legal case.
So that's our show for today from the beautiful Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne.
And I think it's appropriate to stand here when we talk about freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and the other diminished freedoms that were infringed upon during the lockdown.
Melbourne is such a visually beautiful place, but there was a tremendous ugliness in this paradise during the lockdown.
And the media party didn't want to talk about it.
And the political parties were complicit in it, at least the big ones here.
But Avi helped shine a light on that.
Now, there's some interesting and hopeful politicians in Australia too.
For example, if you can believe it, a sitting senator, an elected senator in Australia, actually attended Avi's book launch.
I was about to sign off, but I just, how can I not show you this sitting senator attending a Rebel News book launch and having some great words, including praise for Rebel News?
Take a listen.
I'm so thankful for that because just like you, I was sitting at home.
I was unhappy.
I was looking at everything that was happening in the world and I felt alone.
I felt alone.
And if I didn't have Avi and other people like Avi, but if I didn't have this guy here, I don't know what I'd be doing today or where I'd be today.
It would be a lot harder.
But he brought the world to us.
He brought everything that was happening to us.
And he took what was happening here out of Australia and into the world as well.
So everyone got to see what was happening here.
And like Ezra said, like Ezra said, you know, Victoria was a warning to the world.
If we didn't have this guy here in Victoria spreading the message of what was happening here, who knows what could have happened everywhere else?
We were like the canary in the coal mine because it was the worst here, in my opinion anyway.
It was the worst here.
The most locked down city that the world had ever seen, Victoria.
Victoria.
And we owe all of that to our best mate, Chairman Dan Andrews.
I am no fan of Chairman Dan.
I am no fan.
And I know Avi isn't either.
How great is that guy?
So don't let me tell you that it's all bad news.
You have amazing green shoots of freedom in this area.
And I hope so because, you know, they say Australia is the lucky country.
And I think one of the things that makes it so lucky is it's freedom.
It's something that we share in Canada.
And I believe that Avi is a fighter for that freedom.
I'd love to continue the fight for freedom in Canada, where my own home is.
But if we can help fight for freedom around the world, we will.
From all of us at Rebel News in Melbourne, Toronto, and around the world, to you at home.