Ezra Levant compares the 2022 Coots border blockade conviction—three protesters (Van Herck, Van Hugenboss, Janssen) sentenced after a packed courtroom and jury deliberation—to Canada’s "Reichstag fire," questioning Justin Trudeau’s Emergencies Act misuse. Defendants, facing up to two years for mischief over $5K, vow to protest again, citing moral opposition to COVID mandates; Johnston’s blocked jury nullification argument underscores legal vs. ethical conflicts. Rebel News crowdfunded their defense, mirroring support for other protests like Calgary’s carbon tax resistance, while Levant critiques Australia’s censorship of Ian Maos Chong’s video as part of a broader trend replacing religious conviction with "synthetic" ideologies—highlighting how governments weaponize law to silence dissent. [Automatically generated summary]
The three men charged with mischief for their role in the Couts border blockade two years ago have been convicted.
We'll spend the show talking about it with our on-the-scene reporter, Robert Krachik.
That's ahead.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast.
Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe, eight bucks a month.
You get the video content, which is great.
And you'll also get the satisfaction of knowing that you're supporting Rebel News because we do not take any money from Trudeau and it shows.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, a guilty verdict in the trial of the Cooch Three.
It's April 17th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Shame on you you censorious bug.
Well, you may have received an email from me this morning Late last night, we had bad news out of Lethbridge, Alberta.
Lethbridge, of course, is where the courthouse is that has been hearing the case of the Crown versus three men called the Coots III, Alex Van Herck, Marco Van Hugenboss, and George Janssen.
The three men were called the leadership group by the prosecutors, the leadership group of the Coots blockade in 2022, the very momentous blockade at the Alberta-Montana border that set in motion a number of important events, including the resignation of Jason Kenney as Alberta Premier, the lifting of COVID restrictions in the same province.
It was also used as a Reichstag fire, a kind of pretext by Justin Trudeau to bring in the Emergencies Act, which was a gross overreaction later deemed illegal and unconstitutional by the federal court.
And if you look at the polling, that marked, I think, a watershed.
And people saw what Justin Trudeau was like when the mask slipped.
And in fact, if you track the polling from that moment on, Justin Trudeau has become more and more detested by ordinary Canadians.
However, all those things said, all those political fruits from the protest, yesterday was Judgment Day, and the three men were convicted by a jury of their peers.
I was there to see the jury selected, and I cannot doubt that.
These were grassroots, ordinary people from southern Alberta.
You wouldn't find a more sympathetic jury anywhere in the country.
I was startled by this news.
Joining us now live on location from outside the Lethbridge courthouse is our friend Robert Krachik, who's been out there reporting on the trial every day.
Robert, thank you, and thanks for staying up late last night.
What time, mountain time, did the jurors finally render their verdict?
I put out a tweet, I think, at 8.34 p.m.
And that must have been just moments after the verdict was issued.
Got it.
So they had been deliberating for, what, about three or four hours, perhaps?
About that little bit more than three, I think three to three and a half hours it took them to decide.
And what was it like?
Were you in the court?
Did they call the jury in and a jury spokesman read out their ruling?
I've actually never been in a court when that has happened.
What was it like?
Well, I've come to know the defendants.
I was sort of hanging out with some of them waiting for this judgment to be issued.
We were out sort of getting a coffee at the malls, chatting with some of them.
And the way it works is you get a text message, you get a phone call back.
The jury had, at this point, a question.
They had a question for the judge about the instructions.
We returned to the courtroom.
The question was some sort of particular about how to convict on the charge of mischief.
At that moment, there was some sort of, in my mind, at least, let's say reprieve.
Oh, if you got a question, that indicates uncertainty, I thought.
No.
And then about 10 minutes later, there was a verdict that was issued.
So the jurors all come into the courtroom to your question.
They take their seats.
There's an attendance asked of them.
The court clerk asks the juror one, attendance, two, three, goes and listens until number 12.
Actually, 14, then two are dismissed because they only need 12.
And they issued their verdict on a defendant-by-defendant basis.
How do you find defendant Marco Van Hoogenboss?
How do you find on Alex Van Hurk?
How do you find on George Jansen?
At one moment, Michael Johnston, who is still representing Alex Van Hurck, asked for all the jurors to sort of state it on their own.
There was sort of this individual poll, and they each said guilty, guilty, guilty when asked by their number from the court court to do so.
Wow.
And I presume, even though it was late at night, by regular court standards, that the courthouse was full, these three men have a lot of family members in town or nearby.
I imagine the courtroom was packed.
Yeah, it was.
The whole day was actually much busier.
You just noticed the increased foot traffic, so to speak.
The court benches were filled all day.
And these men have big families.
They're not really typical Canadians in that regard.
They've got lots of siblings.
They have lots of children.
They've got lots of cousins.
And I saw probably, let's say, about a few dozen people at a minimum, probably approaching 100 people at total in the courtroom, virtually all supporters of the defendants.
And that's not even the entirety of all the families.
I, I mean, because I think with my head, but also with my heart, sometimes I blur what I hope will happen with what I think will happen.
And I was hopeful that the men would be acquitted.
I thought, based on your live tweets and some of the things I had observed firsthand, that there really wasn't sufficient proof that these guys blocked a road or were malicious.
In fact, there was evidence that they were working cooperatively with the police to assure that certain things went as best as possible to keep the temperature down.
So I was surprised.
In fact, I had a one-word tweet when I saw your new.
I just said, wow.
What was it like in the courtroom?
Were there gasps?
Were there sighs or cries?
Or were people sort of almost expecting it?
What was it like in the courtroom at that moment?
Okay, well, prior to the issuance of the verdict, prior to the jury being brought back into the courtroom, Justice Keith Yamauchi, the presiding judge over the trial, issued a specific instruction to people in the gallery because he knows that the people there are family members who love and care for the defendants.
And he said specifically that we must maintain courtroom demeanor.
I think the word he was looking at, he said, was decorum.
Decorum must be maintained.
And he issued a caution, a warning that anyone who would act belligerently or lose composure would be removed from the courtroom.
And people adhered to that.
There was composure.
And also, I'm sitting at the front of this, you know, ridiculous media row, as we sort of joked about you and I before, but together.
So I didn't get to observe them until after we exited the courtroom.
And a lot of the women, you know, daughters, you could see they were cheery.
There was an emotionalism there, but the courtroom itself was, let's say, well-composed.
Maintaining Courtroom Decorum00:11:02
As far as your question about expecting it, I think they were.
I'll tell you, I mean, I had almost a certainty about it because you mentioned the lack of evidence as I was reporting on.
I actually made, I don't know if this is silly, but I made a bet with Marco Van Hugenboss.
I bet him $20 he would be not guilty across the board.
Obviously, I lost that bet.
He sort of had a confidence that he would be convicted.
So he had a better assessment of what was going on than I did.
And just, you know, a couple of questions, a couple of notes about the evidence.
There was no specific evidence.
There was not one moment of testimony or video in which you actually see any of the defendants obstructing the road.
They were not in a vehicle obstructing it.
They were not putting objects into the road, obstructing it.
You can draw an inference that they partook in that blockage because they were there.
There's tons of video of them in this smuggler saloon, but there's no actual testimony from any of the witnesses or any video evidence, which again was all rebel news video that shows them actually doing the mischief.
So, I mean, I can go on and on about that, but that was my assessment.
Isn't that interesting?
Now, in terms of next steps, I understand that there will be a sentencing hearing in July.
So, I mean, we've seen this before, for example, in the case of Arthur Pavlovsky, who was convicted in the same court for giving a sermon to these men.
The different sides look to case law for precedence.
What do other mischief convictions, what have they yielded in the past?
And of course, the debate is, well, that case is different because of that.
And that case we should rely on because it's more factually aligned.
So that's the haggling.
And the judge has to look to what the precedents are and also look to these particular defendants.
I want to play some clips that you recorded in your conversations with the men last night.
I won't play too much, but I'm going to let it roll for a few minutes.
I want to show Alex Van Herc and Marco Van Hugenboss talking about would they do it again?
And I think it's a fascinating insight into their hearts and minds.
And Alex Van Herc in particular, I think, has taken it to heart that his peers have found him guilty.
And none of these men are scoff laws.
None of these men mock the justice system.
I think they actually are listening to the jury of their peers, but I don't think that has convinced them that what they did was morally wrong.
And these men have been talking for, I mean, they talked their way through the protest.
And then for the last two years, they've been talking.
It'll be interesting to see how the judge processes these public statements that the men have made to you and to others, because, you know, although they're chastened by the fact that their peers have said what you did was against the law, I think they believe deeply that what they did was moral and that what they did helped save the country.
And Alex Van Herck's comments about that are particularly poignant.
Let me play a couple of minutes from Marco Hugin Van Hugenboss and then Alex Van Herc, because I found these very touching, very authentic, very heartfelt comments, but they're not comments of people saying, sorry, I'll never do that again.
You know, I touched the flame once and it's too hot.
I mean, these are men who are saying, I stand by my convictions.
I'm willing to suffer the penalty.
I'm willing to accept the justice meted out to me.
Sort of like Gandhi, when Gandhi had his passive resistance, he accepted the punishment.
He didn't try and squirm out of it, but he didn't deny that what he did was moral.
Enough talk from me.
Without preamble, here is Marco Van Hugenboss.
Take a look.
I'm thankful that this chapter has just turned the last page.
I expected this.
The evidence was significant and substantial against me.
And again, I don't think it did any favors to my co-accused by being co-accused with me and some of this evidence, even though they were there as well.
They participated.
I'm human.
I'm human.
And this is a decision that will set in.
But I've made my peace with it.
And that goes back to the fact that there is a difference between the legality of what we did and the reason why we did it, which ties into the morality of it.
The guardrails, the charge that the justice issued was detailed, but it brought the guardrails closer together in relation to the letter of the law.
What isn't taken into account in this court, but is the reason why we were there, is the fact that a oppressive and tyrannical government needed to be reined in.
And that's why this is not the decision we're looking for.
There's a lot of questions that people could ask in relation to appeal, things like that.
We're not there yet.
Those things will be determined once censusing has commenced.
But what I want to leave people with is the fact is the reasons why we were at Coots.
We were there for children.
We were there for our seniors.
We were there for the veterans.
We were there for Albertans and Canadians.
At that time, little did we know the impact and the information we now know in relation to unlawful, unconstitutional mandates and COVID restrictions.
We were there as conscientious objectors to a brutal, tyrannical, multiple levels of government.
And that doesn't change anything for me.
The question is asked, would you do it again?
I hope I never have to.
But the reality of this world will force somebody to at a given time.
And I'll say this, if I had to do it again in the context of this, I would say yes without a thought.
I'd do it better.
We made mistakes.
And it's not about the mistakes.
It's about the successes of the blockade.
I hope to write a book.
And people, I hope you hold me to this, to tell the real story of Coots and those brave men and women and the people that supported us across this great province and this country in sync with heroes such as Chris Barber, Tamara Lich, and others.
So here we are, not the decision we wanted, but I'm at peace.
Thank you, Robert.
I really appreciate you being here.
All right, here's Alex Van Herck, the second of the three defendants.
Listen to him.
Well, I guess I'm somewhat shocked, I guess, after hearing that verdict.
I felt what we did was right down in Coots, along with thousands of others that participated.
We are participants in it, and I guess the jury deemed us as leaders.
They come to that conclusion, and we have to accept that verdict.
I mean, if that's what they deem us to be guilty of, then I guess I'm proud of it, because I feel what was happening in our country at that time was wrong, and we needed to stand up.
And we weren't alone.
There was 35 kilometers of traffic that was going down the couch that agreed with what was or didn't agree with what was happening in our country that wanted to change.
And I think of the thousands that came down there that supported us in the financial support, in the food, everything that happened down at Kutz.
Good things happened in Kutz.
And I have no regrets of going down the Kutz.
I hope. that there will be accountability to those that forced us to go down the couch, forced good citizens.
Thousands of good citizens go down the couch.
And I hope the ones that were in charge leading our country, you know, with these illegal mandates, these wrong things that were happening, that there's accountability to them one day.
We got held to account for the mischief that they deemed us, that we created in Kutz.
And I'll accept that as my accountability because I feel we saved lots of lives.
We've changed the dynamics of what's happening in this world.
We sparked, I feel, other countries to rise up against their tyrannical governments across the world.
And I feel proud of that.
So if that's what I have to do, that's in our sentencing, I guess, will be at a later date.
And I hope that the judge may have some, I guess, how do you want to word it?
Some passion on us, I guess, to compassion or discernment.
Yeah, discernment to realize why we went there and what we went there for and understand.
And you know what?
We might get house arrests.
We don't know yet what the outcome is.
But whatever the outcome, I'll accept it.
But I hope and pray that everybody may get involved and hold their politicians to account and continue to do so.
Because if it doesn't, then our world is going to continue the way it's going and it's not going in the right direction.
I'm actually touched by what those two men say, especially Alex Van Hurck, the way he talks about it.
I know he's got a large family.
I forget, I think seven or eight kids or something.
And he's got, everyone in the court is a Van Herc or a Van Hugembos when I was down there.
I don't know.
I think they believe that they lived up to the, that they were a fit for the time and place, that it was a historic moment and they had a role to play and that they had to do it.
And if that meant getting convicted of mischief and even paying a price, I think these men accept that.
That's what I'm hearing from them.
Yeah, I've actually been hearing that from them for a while.
They were sort of ready to face the music, so to speak, if they were found guilty.
Now, you used two terms in the past few minutes.
You mentioned morality and you also mentioned legality.
And of course, we need to make a distinction between the two because they're not synonymous and they're not always one and the same.
Render Unto Caesar00:06:12
I'll go even further that sometimes you can have laws that are passed or orders or edicts that are immoral.
And there's an impulse, there's a need for justice to oppose them.
And I think that's where peaceable assembly and civil disobedience comes in.
And like you said, these men were not reading these sort of contrived, disingenuous statements of, oh, I'm so sorry, I'll never do it again.
They stand by, as you put it, their convictions.
They're men of principle.
Now, maybe this is me disclosing my bias, but I've come to get to know these men over time.
And I actually very much admire them.
They're men of principle and they're men of courage.
I think courage is a character trait much lacking.
It's probably the rarest but most important character trait out there.
And they demonstrated that.
And of course, they were not belligerent or condescending or acrimonious towards the jurors or the system itself.
They're not speaking obnoxiously.
They accept the consequences.
And at the same time, they still told me and others that they do not have regrets about what they did because they believed and continue to believe that it was a moral endeavor, moral imperative to oppose all of these so-called public health mandates and orders and edicts issued by our ostensibly benevolent government.
You know, it reminds me, listening to them reminds me of the phrase, render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and render unto God that which is God's, which is a Christian way of saying you're a citizen in a country in this world, Follow the laws and do what the Caesar says.
But while you're in this world, you're also, you know, God has dominion over you.
And I think most people in modern times don't have that second part.
Most people just render unto Caesar.
Most people are either atheists or not particularly religiously observant.
They don't think about religion a lot.
And I don't think it's a coincidence that so many religious people were defiant dissidents during the COVID lockdowns.
I think of Arthur Pavlovsky.
I think of the Hildebrands in Ontario.
I think of Grace Life Church up in Edmonton.
So many of the people who engaged in peaceful resistance said, all right, I'm willing to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, but Caesar is not my God, and I have a higher authority.
And just because Caesar, Justin Trudeau, Jason Kenney, Teresa Tam, is saying you can't visit your family, you can't, you know, go out without a jab.
I mean, that doesn't make it right.
And I think what's so interesting is, and I think it was the same way in other authoritarian times, under the Nazis, under the communists.
It was often religious leaders who were the dissidents because they believed in something higher than the state.
That's one of the reasons why Marxists try and destroy religion, because they don't want a higher authority than communism, Mao's little red book.
The Bibles in Communist China are not the same as the Bibles that you and I would know because they're censored and they're altered and they're subject to the Communist Party.
I say all that because the three defendants in this case, Marco Van Hugenboss, Alex Van Herck, and George Shansen, are each Christian men.
And I think that motivated or at least informed their willingness to stand up to tyranny in civic form.
And I think it also makes them accept the judgment of Caesar, accept this jury's denunciation without quarrel.
They say, yeah, okay, you're right.
I did it.
You say what we did is wrong legally.
Fair point.
But we still hold to our belief that what we did was morally right.
I think it's very interesting.
And I think the fact that all three of them are Christian men is not a coincidence.
I think that's where they found their courage to take a stand morally, as you say, even if it's against the legalities of the day.
Yeah, I agree with everything you said, except one point.
You hedged twice.
You said, I don't think it's a coincidence.
I'll go further.
I know to a certainty it's not a coincidence.
And that very feature of these men, the Christian ethos, that religious conviction is not an accidental component of their conviction in opposition to these abusive, coercive, extractive mandates marketed as public health.
It's absolutely fundamental to the recipe of their character that drove them and continues to drive them in opposition to these immoral, yet perhaps legal orders, edicts, laws, regulations, whatever you want to call them.
I actually asked that exact question of those men the other day.
It was in one of the reports.
And all of them acknowledged that religious conviction is a part of why they are the way they are.
And you're actually touching on what I think is a massive theme, a massive issue in the modern era that I'm sure many Rebel News audience members have contemplated or researched.
And it's how the decline of religiosity in the West, particularly Christianity, to a lesser extent, Judaism, perhaps Judeo-Christianity, if people prefer that term.
And yet people still have an innate need.
Pardon me while I just speak about the human condition for a moment.
People have a need for transcendence and purpose and meaning.
And in the absence of traditional structures through which that meaning is provided, typically the Christian or Jewish religious observance, as that goes down into, let's say, secularism, people will find some substitute for that.
And that substitute can be, in my view, a sort of fake or synthetic endeavor, like so-called environmentalism or being obsessed with getting injections and wearing masks or pretending that there's this boogeyman of racism under every rock.
So people will find a way to fill that void one way or the other.
And I think we should all be very careful that we fill that void with something legitimate, something meaningful.
And yeah, this is a big topic that we're touching on.
Well, as they say, nature abhors a vacuum.
So if you drive Christianity out of the public squares, something will replace it.
Maybe you'll have a false child prophet like Greta Tunberg.
Lawyers and the Void00:07:48
I haven't had a chance to talk to the men.
I had a very brief text exchange with one of them.
We know that in 90 days there will be this sentencing hearing.
And I have to say, I have no idea how it's going to go, but it would not shock me if there was a brief custodial sentence, as in some jail, even though it's a first offense.
I don't know.
I don't know.
It'll be interesting.
And again, the fact that these men say, I do not think I did something morally wrong.
I broke the law and I'm ready to pay the penalty, but morally, you have not convinced me, Your Honor, that I was wrong in my heart.
Some judges will say, all right, well, thank you for saying that.
Others will say, no, you have not submitted to the law.
You're still defiant.
You're remorseless.
You caused this whole trial.
You caused this whole thing.
And they'll go harder on a man.
And of course, that's very appropriate if it's an immoral crime, a murder, God forbid, a robbery.
And if someone is a remorseless killer, of course it should redound to their discredit.
But in a peaceful, victimless, nonviolent offense, politically motivated, if a man says, I do not show remorse, it'll be interesting to see how punitive the judge is.
We'll find out in 90 days.
Rebel News has been interested in this file for two years.
We sent a lawyer down while it was happening to give the men advice in real time to negotiate with the police.
Rebel News has crowdfunded the lawyers for this trial.
There were four lawyers in the courtroom.
Rebel News will crowdfund the lawyers at the sentencing hearing.
And I understand that actually today you switched over to cover a different Coots trial.
Is the trial of the so-called Coots IV underway?
Yeah, it is.
So the two remaining men of the Coots IV, Chris Carbert, Anthony Olinic, they're in the courtroom right now.
Their pre-trial hearing is continuing today and also tomorrow.
So there's a publication ban there.
Just for those that need a reminder, the publication ban is to prevent the public disclosure of information or evidence that may either be unlawfully obtained and therefore illegitimate in the trial or perhaps lacking veracity.
And you don't want to have that information communicated via publications through a news media outlet like Rebel News that could potentially contaminate the jury pool from which jurors will be selected.
But I can share some general info with you that doesn't violate that.
It's just some interesting things that take place are the disputes between the crown and defense attorneys over the legitimacy or admissibility of evidence.
They may contest the accuracy of the evidence.
They may contest the ways through which that evidence was obtained or procured.
They may also even dispute the legitimacy of particular experts that are sought to be introduced as witnesses by the crown.
Now, we can't talk about these things now.
At some point, we can't.
And by the way, there's actually one thing.
If we can just go back to the Coups 3 for one moment, because Ezra, you were here with me when this issue came up, and it was so interesting.
And I think now that the trial is sort of over, at least in terms of the verdict, it's so cool to remark upon.
The defense attorney for Alex Van Hurk is a man named Michael Johnston.
I don't know, maybe you even want to speak to him on the Ezra Levant show.
I think it could be a great tutorial on what I'll just touch on very briefly.
He discussed the issue of jury nullification, and I came to learn that jury nullification is sort of a circumstance in which jurors may acknowledge the illegality of a particular act that they are convinced was committed by a defendant or defendants, but they don't accept the morality of it.
And in so doing, they issue a not guilty verdict.
So, what they end up doing de facto is rendering illegitimate a law or unenforceable a law.
So, why am I bringing this up?
Because during the pre-trial deliberations, Johnston requested permission to advise the jurors of this capability.
Because, remember, the audience must know this.
If you're ever selected as a juror, no one can go in there into the jury room to police your mind.
You're in there, you're your own man, you're your own woman.
No one can then say, Well, you came up with the wrong reason because it doesn't work like that.
You've sort of got final authority.
And if something is immoral to you and unacceptable to you, you can still come up with a decision that you want.
You are not bound by anything but your own conscience.
And the fact that the judge did not allow Michael Johnston to inform the jurors of this, and indeed, this sort of information is not provided to jurors at all.
By the way, if Johnston would have convinced this judge of that, that would have been sort of a breakthrough moment that would potentially change criminal proceedings across the country forever going forward.
And I thought that was an interesting thing that got mentioned that now we can finally talk about, given that the verdict was rendered.
The fact that jury nullification is a real thing and jurors have that power, but they're not advised of it.
If anything, they're sort of conditioned to believing they don't have that.
They're sort of bound by these parameters in their minds.
Interesting stuff.
Well, we'll let you get back to covering the remainder of the Coots 4 hearings.
And I understand you're going to be out there for the duration of that.
Let me sum up for our viewers what Rebel News is doing.
As I mentioned before, Rebel News has crowdfunded for the legal defense of the so-called Coots 3.
That's what we've been talking about in the main.
That was the verdict that came out last night.
Donations to cover the lawyers there are eligible for a charitable tax receipt from the Democracy Fund, which is a registered CRA charity.
So if you go to Coots3.com, you can contribute to the lawyers.
If you want to help the Coots 4, we have a special website set up for one of them called helpchris.ca.
And his name is Chris Carbert, and he's on trial right now.
And Robert, who's been doing a great job out there in Lethbridge, he's actually from Ottawa.
You may know that because he's been covering the Tamara Leach trial out there.
That trial is on a hiatus.
It's not done.
So Robert had agreed, which I thought was great.
I mean, he uprooted his life.
He moved to Lethbridge.
He's been down in Lethbridge for weeks and he's going to continue covering things.
If you want to help us cover the cost of his economy class, airfare, car rental, Airbnb, you can do that at truckertrials.com.
So that's a bunch of websites.
But I just wanted to show you the many ways the rebel news is involved with these stories, not just reporting on them, but helping them.
Robert, great to see you.
Thanks for spending so much time with us.
And I'm really glad that you got to know the defendants.
And the story's not over yet.
Yeah, it's not.
Like you said, there's going to be a sentencing hearing scheduled tentatively for July 22nd.
The story is not yet finished.
And of course, the sentencing for a guilty verdict of mischief over $5,000 can be very broad.
It can range from something like fine to probation, also including incarceration, I think up to two years.
And just to repeat what you're saying earlier, I definitely want to thank Rebel News and the Rebel News contributors, the donors, even though, yeah, it's not easy to come after your home.
I've actually had a very good time here.
I've been treated very well.
I've made some good friends here, and it's really been an amazing, interesting project to be a part of.
And I'm actually very grateful to be a part of it.
Well, I tell you, you're in Alberton at heart, and I know you've enjoyed being in southern Alberta, which is a very different place than Ottawa.
And you've also, when you're out there, you've taken the time to go to the carbon tax protest west of Calgary on the highway.
I visited that a few weeks ago.
Shocking Imagery from Australia00:04:04
I thought it was very interesting.
Robert, keep up the great work.
Thanks for your help.
Thank you.
Bye.
All right.
There you have a Robert Kraczyk reporting live from outside the Lethbridge courthouse.
Again, the headline, the Coots III convicted by a jury of mischief for their role in the 2022 blockade.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me.
Philippians 2 says there seems to be very little about this on the mainstream media.
Now, you're talking about the attempt by Australia's government to censor one of our journalists, Ian Maos Chong, from showing the video of the Muslim extremists attacking a Christian priest, Catholic priest, I think he was Catholic or Orthodox priest, with a knife in Australia.
And I think one of the key facts I heard was that Ian marked the video sensitive.
So if you were a kid or if you weren't expecting it, you wouldn't be shocked with that dramatic imagery.
Why would Australia's government want to censor that?
I think it's because it violates the narrative and it embarrasses radical Islam, I think.
And I think that that's the Australian government being selective in their censorship, being political in their censorship.
In the past, I'm sure that Twitter would have gone along with it.
Not this time.
Dave Casero says that type of censorship is both potentially dangerous, but it is grossly offensive.
I think it's both.
I mean, one of the things that I've had to get used to is the shocking imagery on Twitter, but the world is shocking.
What's happening in Israel?
What's happening in Gaza, to be candid, to what's happening in Russia, the shooters there.
I don't know if you remember a few weeks ago, the shooters at that concert.
The world is a shocking place.
And if you don't want to see it, that's fine.
Don't surf Twitter or put your settings so you don't see dramatic things.
But I guess I've made a personal decision, not for reasons of titillation or excitement, but because I really want to know what's going on in the world and I don't want to delegate that judgment to someone else.
I don't want to outsource my own political judgment to someone else because there's really almost no one else in the world I would trust to read the news for me and make up their mind for me about what I ought to be able to see or not.
Now, I'm sure there's other people who don't feel that way.
They're not very political.
They don't really care.
And they say, yeah, just tell me if something's important.
But those people are trusting a middleman.
I don't.
In fact, the whole point of rebel news is I don't have to trust a middleman anymore.
Another comment from Life for Dummies.
It's time for Australia to step up and ban all semi-automatic knives.
Yeah, I mean, you can kill someone with anything.
You can kill them with a rock.
You can kill them with a brick.
You can kill them by throwing them off a roof, which is the preferred style in Gaza when they find someone who's gay, by the way.
The problem, of course, is not with the tool.
We all use knives to eat, to cook.
The problem is not with the tool.
The problem is with the wielder of the knife.
And if it isn't a knife, it would be something else, even a car, for example.
I think we have a crisis.
I think that the whole action by the Australian government is to cover up the nature of the crisis, which is we have many people in the West who do not subscribe to our culture of life and nonviolence.
They believe in violence and religious supremacy and violent solutions to problems and the inequality of people.