Ezra Levant warns Canada and the U.K. are sliding toward authoritarianism, citing China’s aggressive naval tactics—like ramming Philippine ships in 2023 and seizing Mischief Reef—that may push Manila back toward U.S. alliances after Duterte’s anti-American shift. The 2001 EP-3 collision and 2022 Australian P-8 incident show Beijing’s escalating provocations, while Canada’s pro-China leadership weakens Arctic security against Russian and Chinese threats. Bills C-11 and C-63 risk stifling free speech like the U.K.’s "extreme misogyny" terrorism redefinition, which targets dissent while ignoring real violence, such as an ISIS-linked priest stabbing in Ireland. Trudeau’s Senate appointment of Charles Adler, a former critic turned loyalist, underscores systemic erosion, mirroring broader global trends toward state overreach. [Automatically generated summary]
Did you see what China did to the Philippines Navy the other day?
They rammed their boats again and again.
And then, even though it's all caught on tape, they said, no, no, the Philippines rammed us.
I think they're trying to pick a fight.
They're trying to pick a war.
We'll talk to Gordon Chang about the details.
And I'll also give you my thoughts about Charles Adler, the former conservative, now Trudeau maniac, who was just elevated to the Canadian Senate.
Super gross.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to what we call Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast.
I'd like to show you those naval escapades between China and the Philippines.
I really want you to see it because I know you won't see it anywhere else.
Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe, and it's eight bucks a month.
And not only do you get great content every day, but you really help us stay afloat because we get no money from Trudeau and it shows.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, both Canada and the UK lurch towards tyranny.
It's August 19th, and this is the Answer Levant show.
Shame on you, you sensorism bug.
Hey, great to see you again.
A lot's going on in the world right now.
In Canada, our friend Tamara Leach is back on trial again.
It's endless, but it's finally coming to a conclusion.
It is closing arguments.
Last week was closing arguments by the Crown prosecutors, and now it's the defendants.
I'm hopeful, though, it's the longest mischief trial in Canadian history.
But when I was there last week, oh my gosh, the judge was so cranky with the prosecution.
I don't think that's that judge is cranky that way all the time.
Like, I don't know if anyone could keep up that energy all the time.
It was fascinating to watch the judge slap down any BS by the prosecution.
It really felt like she had lost her patience with them.
I sure am hopeful.
Again, though, just because a judge expresses certain things in a courtroom doesn't mean that their verdict will reflect that.
I am hopeful, though.
Some bad news on the opposite side of the country for truckers.
You'll recall that there were a bunch of truckers from Coutz who faced a variety of charges.
Some were just tickets.
Some were very serious matters.
In the end, Rebel News and the Democracy Fund actually crowdfunded the legal defense for 55 truckers, but seven of them, other than Tamara Leach, were very famous out west, at least.
I'm talking about the Coots three, who were called the leadership team behind the Coots blockade, and the Coots four, who were charged with an extremely serious crime, conspiracy to commit murder of a police officer.
They were immediately jailed and held, it's two and a half years now.
Now, two out of those four made a plea bargain several months ago to get out for time served for a lesser conviction.
The last two of the Coots four, they decided to run the trial.
And indeed, they did with a jury, and they were acquitted of the more serious charges, convicted of more minor charges.
But here's the bad news.
Despite the jury acquitting them, I understand that the crown prosecutor wishes to appeal.
The crown wants another go at things.
Absolutely outrageous.
And as I mentioned the other day, these criminal laws, and in some cases, the arrive-can laws and things like that, they meet maybe Justin Trudeau's orders.
But pretty much everywhere in Canada, the prosecution of these is done by the provincial government.
The provincial prosecutors are run by the premiers and the attorneys general.
There is another big trial in these matters coming up next month.
In Calgary, Arthur Pavlovsky will appeal his conviction of mischief for giving a sermon to the Coots men during the blockade.
I'll personally be in court live tweeting that.
And tomorrow, I'm going back to Ottawa to live tweet.
I want to let you know that even though I'm not in Ottawa today, and obviously I can't be at all these trials all the time, we typically have people there.
In the case of Tamara Leach, every single day, a lawyer from the Democracy Fund has been live tweeting the cases.
Of course, the Democracy Fund has paid for, has crowdfunded Tamara Leach's excellent legal team led by Edward Greenspawn, Lawrence Greenspawn, excuse me.
But we also have a Democracy Fund lawyer tweeting.
Very interesting.
What's so strange to me, though, and it was brought home to me last week, was that here we are, four years after the COVID mania, years after various rules about gathering and distancing and masking and that ArriveCan scam.
Amish Exemption Crisis00:04:27
And it was just last week that I discovered, and I probably bet the same is for you too, that there are hundreds of thousands of ArriveCan tickets out there, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of ArriveCan tickets out there that we didn't even know about.
In particular, I'm talking about the case of the Amish community.
You know what the Amish are.
They're an old order religious sect who actually lived like it's in the 18th century.
They use no electricity, no phones, no email.
They don't even drive in cars or trucks.
They farm with horse-pulled equipment.
They ride a horse and buggy to church.
No electricity.
They read by the light of oil lamps.
This community was hit with ArriveCan fines for not downloading the ArriveCan app on their cell phones when they crossed back into Canada after they went on their little journeys to the other Amish communities in the United States.
But what does download an app mean to someone who doesn't have a phone, doesn't use electricity?
They might not even know, they probably don't even know what those words mean.
And yet these Amish would come back and they would go back and forth for family reasons or whatever.
And every time they would be dinged $6,000 in COVID fines.
And they didn't pay it.
They didn't go to trial.
They aren't really part of our world that way.
And so these $394,000 in fines that nobody knew about.
I mean, these folks don't have press conferences.
These folks don't phone into talk shows.
They don't have phones.
When they didn't pay their tickets, their farms and homes were hit with a lien.
So they can't use their homes for collateral to take out a loan to run the farm anymore.
Imagine how many other people are suffering in silence like that across the country.
Well, maybe the answer is none.
Maybe we now know every single person who was hit with a COVID fine and a lien, or maybe there are dozens, maybe there are thousands more out there.
But imagine the cruelty and the heartlessness and the inflexibility to do that.
You're a bureaucrat.
You see the Amish look different.
I mean, they're they even the men have that very distinctive beard.
They dress like it's you know the olden days.
The men wear those distinctive hats.
You know they're Amish.
You know that if you're on the border because they don't carry regular passports.
They have a different kind of paperwork.
You know they're Amish.
You've probably been, if you're a border guard, you've probably seen them coming and going your entire career.
And then they don't fill out an app.
And imagine the cruelty and the stubborn stupidity to put them down for a $6,000 fine every single time.
And then the second order of cruelty and stupidity to actually put a lien on their house.
If you didn't see my show on that last week, may I encourage you to do so?
But here's just a one-minute refresher of how insane this was.
Just one minute.
I know we've already talked about this last week, but here's a minute.
What's so incredible is I sat down for a meeting for about 90 minutes with the head of the community.
He showed me that in the 74 families in this community, they have $400,000 in fines.
And here's what's new.
Here's what I have never seen before in all of our stories involving the ArriveCan app.
Because these folks here are not getting emails.
They're not getting phone calls.
Collections agents, they have nowhere to phone.
So what they've done is they have attached a lien on the title deeds of these homes, a kind of legal encumbrance, without telling the folks here.
That's the crazy thing.
I was told about a young Amish farmer who went to the bank to get a bank loan to buy some cattle.
He was told by the bank officer, I can't do that.
Did you know that there is a lien on your property for thousands of dollars for the ArriveCan?
And the Amish man said, what?
So not only were they harassed into using this app that they couldn't use, not only were they persecuted because they have a religious exemption because of their religion, but I've never seen this before.
The province of Ontario went ahead and tagged homes, not this particular home, but homes in this community, stopping families from changing the title from father to son on a farm, stopping families from using the farm to get a loan to operate their farm.
ArriveCan Controversy00:10:07
I've never seen such a punitive, bureaucratic, bullying example in my life.
And as you know, the Democracy Fund has fought 3,000 cases, many of them on the ArriveCan issue.
It was challenging to set up today's meeting.
Like I say, we just physically showed up, but we found a friend of the community who lives, who's not Amish himself, but he does some business with the Amish.
He heard about the Democracy Fund.
He knew that the Democracy Fund would take cases of people from any background, any religion, any station in life, and he contacted us.
All right.
Well, really what I wanted to talk about were two things.
The first was the appointment to the Canadian Senate of Charles Adler.
Now, if you're over 50, definitely if you're over 45, I think, you've probably heard of Charles Adler.
And you probably thought, well, where is he now?
Because 20 years ago, he was the king of conservative talk radio in Canada.
He was based in Winnipeg, but his show was carried pretty much coast to coast.
He had a beautiful voice, perfect for radio and storytelling.
He had a big heart, and he was very effective at making the conservative case.
Plus, he had a bit of a knack for discovering talent.
Our friend David the Menzoid Menzies was a regular appearer on Charles Adler's radio show, The Menzoid.
And typically, he just told funny stories, not even particularly newsworthy ones.
Charles Adler even had a very young Ben Shapiro on his show once.
Adler was the boss of Canadian conservative talk radio.
And I would say I would consider him a friend.
Back then, when the Sun News Network was started about 15 years ago, well, all of us were hired.
Myself for the Ezra Levant show.
Charles Adler was hired for his show.
Even David Menzies had some appearances.
The whole gang got together and it was wonderful.
And Charles lived up to his billing as a conservative commentator, but he didn't last that long there.
And soon, after the Sun News Network went away, well, things changed in Canadian talk radio that used to be the staple of Charles Adler.
Basically, the word went out, because of course most Canadian radio is owned by massive networks, massive chains.
There's really only about three companies that control the bulk of all the radio in Canada.
And the message went out: no more right-wing talk.
Just like the message had gone out in YouTube and in social media after Trump's victory, no more right-wing social media.
The same thing happened in Canadian radio.
And if you think about that, the truly conservative voices were either forced into retirement or told to tone it down.
But Charles Adler, he adapted.
He became slightly conservative.
He became conservative with a lot of water poured in to water it down.
And then one day, I think he just flipped.
He just switched sides completely.
Charles Adler became Trump deranged, Trump derangement syndrome.
And then soon enough, Pierre Polyev deranged too.
And by deranged, I don't just mean being critics.
Every politician deserves criticism.
I'm talking about weird swears and weird insults and weird name-calling, extremely personal.
And it wasn't just against big shots like Trump and Polyev.
They don't need me to defend them, but ordinary people.
For example, his raw hatred for the unvaccinated or people who didn't want to go along and follow orders of the state during the lockdowns.
Charles Adler had enormous hatred for them.
It was shocking.
Some of the things he stood for in recent years were 100% or 180 degrees opposite of what he used to stand for.
Here's an example.
Charles Adler, like the rest of us, knows that the CBC is a state broadcaster.
That is literally what it is.
It is a broadcaster owned by the state whose mandate is written by the state, whose board of directors is appointed by the state, that is paid for by the state.
There is no way in which the CBC is not a state broadcaster.
And I don't even really think that it's a matter of opinion to say so.
It's a matter of fact.
Charles Adler, of course, used that phrase, as you can see here on Twitter.
But in recent years, he decided that to do so is small-minded and partisan.
I guess what I'm saying is Charles Adler spent until well into his 60s.
He was an enemy of the left and the CBC until something happened in the last couple of years.
He started associating with other crazy people like Dean Blundell, who was so atrocious that he was fired from his radio show over sexually inappropriate comment about minors.
What was it that caused Charles Adler to become more and more disconnected from his entire life's work?
Why did Charles Adler, who I would have called a friend back then, become an atrocious, appalling, hateful leftist?
What was it?
Well, I think we found out the answer over the weekend.
Justin Trudeau appointed Charles Adler to the Canadian Senate.
Adler railed against that too back in his day.
Oh, he hated the Senate.
He called it a barn or a farm.
He despised it, talked about abolishing it.
Yeah, that was before he got a patronage gig from his buddy Justin Trudeau for it.
Even the Toronto Son that used to employ him as a columnist was grossed out and put it on their front page, even though he's their alumnus.
And then I learned that Charles Adler actually applied for the job.
He wasn't tapped on the shoulder by an angel and elevated to that heaven of patronage.
He actually applied for it, begged for it, wrote for it, asked for it.
He communicated with Trudeau and said, give me that job.
And the entire time he was waiting for a reply, you could say it was fairly described as an audition.
So every strange tweet attacking Pierre Polyev suddenly looks different, doesn't it?
Knowing that for months, perhaps years, Charles Adler had in his mind impressing Justin Trudeau.
Frankly, Trudeau should have waited longer because Adler was an asset in the field.
He was a secret liberal partisan, didn't tell anyone he was angling for a job.
Trudeau could have probably gotten another four years out from him.
But now we know why Charles Adler made the flip-flop, why he became so vicious.
You know, it's actually a bit of a tradition in Canada for politicians to appoint the odd journalists.
Think about it.
Pamela Wallen was put into the Senate, Mike Duffy, etc.
Sometimes you want a journalist in there because they're effective communicators, sometimes because they have a public reputation, and sometimes because they care about freedom of speech, but that's unfortunately not the case with Charles Adler.
Oh, he used to.
Oh, he used to very much be in favor of freedom of speech, but now he's an embarrassment to free speech and journalism.
He specifically trashed people who criticize Justin Trudeau for censorship.
He actually came out positively to support Justin Trudeau's takeover in the internet in Bill C-11, which not only gave Trudeau domain over the internet by giving the CRTC the power to regulate the internet, but it also specifically gives Trudeau the power through the CRTC to throttle certain YouTube channels and boost others.
Now, I was looking at some of the worst stuff that Charles Adler has said over the last few years.
I was searching for keywords.
It was just incredible to see who he was calling a Nazi, for example.
And I thought to myself, well, maybe Charles Adler's going to grow up now.
Maybe that was just him messing around in social media.
I know what that's like.
You're having a little bit of fun.
And I thought of that phrase from, you know, that passage from 1 Corinthians.
When I was a child, I spoke as a child.
I understood as a child.
I thought as a child.
But when I became a man, I put away childish things.
Maybe that's about to happen.
Maybe Charles Adler is about to put his childishness away and rise to the occasion of being a senator.
Yeah, no, I think that's exactly the opposite.
I think his childishness is specifically why he was appointed to the Senate.
His vicious attacks on Pierre Polyev and Republicans in the States is exactly why he's so gross.
And I think it's a constitutional crisis because we now have a Senate that is so overwhelmingly and so lopsided with Trudeau's appointments.
I don't know what's going to happen if and when Pierre Polyev finally wins office.
Remember, Trudeau took over the Senate and it had, if memory serves me correctly, about 30 vacancies in it because Stephen Harper refused to appoint people to the Senate on principle, thinking, oh, he'll just sort of starve the Senate out of existence.
Well, that's sort of a foolish approach because Justin Trudeau inherited an empty Senate.
He immediately stacked it with a bunch of buddies.
So I think that we're in for a real constitutional crisis when Pierre Polyev wins what I think will be a massive win.
And the Senate simply says no.
And I think Charles Adler will be a conservative smearer.
I mean, he's already shown he'll sell his beliefs for some cash and a pension.
I think he is eager to be the face of Trudeau in the Senate.
I think it'll be his biggest audience yet.
And I think the viciousness he's shown in recent years will be meted out against Trudeau's opponents.
What could this look like in Canada if we go another five years down the road, if God forbid, say, Justin Trudeau were re-elected, which I don't think will happen, but it certainly could.
Well, I think the United Kingdom is a vision of that.
Terrorism and Trauma in Ireland00:08:43
I don't know if you saw this over the weekend, but incredibly, the Home Secretary, which is basically their minister in charge of domestic affairs, it's a very, very powerful position, announced that extreme misogyny will now be considered terrorism.
Just to clarify, misogyny means people who are anti-women.
Now, the first and obvious question is: the Labour Party in the UK hates to answer the question, what is a woman?
So, I mean, it's sort of a joke.
They don't know how to say what a woman is, but they're certain that if someone is anti-woman, that that's terrorism.
Is it transphobic to say only women have a cervix?
Well, it is something that shouldn't be said.
It is not right.
But Andrew, I don't think Rosie Duffield should not have said that.
Can you explain to people watching why she should not have said that?
Andrew, I don't think that we can just go through various things that people have said.
Rosie Duffield, I spoke to Rosie earlier this week and told her that conference was a safe place for her to come, and it is a safe place for her to come.
And I spoke to others to make exactly the same principle.
We do everybody a disservice when we reduce what is a really important issue to these exchanges on particular things that are said.
But how is even the worst misogyny, how is someone who despises women or is prejudiced against women or is disparaging of women or disrespectful of women, how is even the darkest feeling like that, how is that terrorism?
I know what terrorism means.
Terrorism is violence or the threat of violence in pursuit of a political outcome.
Terrorism is not a hard feeling in your heart.
You can be an extremist.
You can be a hateful person and not commit terrorism.
Terrorism is when you take that hatred in your heart and you express it in some threatening way and say, if you don't change the world in the way I want it, I'm going to do something awful to you.
That's terrorism.
Simply having hurtful feelings.
It's not terrorism.
They're redefining terrorism to basically criminalize their opponents.
It's not a fix.
It's a trap.
We showed you earlier that the British Labour government intends to clear out prisons of actual violent criminals.
Take a look at this clip just from this morning.
We will guarantee a prison cell.
We will make sure that those people who need to be in prison will be in prison.
Not necessarily in the area where they live.
They may be two, 300 miles away from home, but we will guarantee people a prison cell.
The numbers are so tight that how can you make that guarantee?
They are tight, and that's why we've initiated Operation Early Dawn.
So basically, the easiest way to describe it is one in, one out.
So as people get released, we can then pick up people from police cells and take them to court.
And we will triage that three times a day.
They are taking people who are in British prisons, which means they're the worst of the worst, because like Canada, most criminals don't actually serve any time in the UK.
So if you've been put into prison, you are bad.
You stabbed someone.
You raped someone.
Perhaps you even committed terrorism to be released for that violent crime to make room for people who tweeted their support for the riots.
And sometimes not even necessarily that.
Here's a judge saying that merely watching the riots with intentful curiosity, that's a crime in itself.
Take a look.
I find it remarkable how quickly hundreds of Brits have been tried, convicted, and thrown in prison in the UK.
They've set up 24-hour courts, and these trials must be minutes or at the most hours long.
Certainly not the year-long process with Tamara Leach.
I've never seen it this fast before, and I've certainly never seen it this fast before for the industrial scale rape gangs in the UK or the knife crime.
I talked to my friends over there, and it feels like they're drowning under a tidal wave.
They're scared to speak out.
There's more rapes and more stabbings all the time.
People are scared to even talk about it, because if they talk about it, they could be the ones going to jail.
I saw this astonishing story in the Times in the London Times, which is one of the most prestigious newspapers in the world.
You've probably heard of The Times.
It was founded in the 1780s.
You know, on your word processor, the font, the typeface, Times New Roman.
Times is the typeface named after that newspaper.
That's how authoritative and impressive it is.
It really is one of the best newspapers in the world.
And yet they did this story about a rape victim who wasn't just raped once, she was raped dozens, if not hundreds of times, and is now campaigning against migrant rapists.
She's a saint.
She's a victim.
She doesn't want to be victimized.
She's a crusader against rape.
And the Times did a hit piece on her because she was criticizing migrants and working with Tommy Robinson.
I'm shocked that a newspaper of the caliber of the Times would do that.
And that's why my friends over there are so scared.
If the Times of London will do an attack piece on a rape victim and try and make it so the Labour MP in her district is ashamed and are embarrassed to meet with the rape victim, if that's the level of hatred and extremism in the mainstream media, you can imagine how terrifying it is to be an activist in the UK right now.
I have friends who I've worked with before, alumni of Rebel News, who've called me up and said they're worried about being jailed.
It's not just the UK across the narrow sea there in Ireland.
I don't know if you saw the news the other day, but a priest, a chaplain in the Irish Army, was stabbed repeatedly by a teenager who's an ISIS supporter, an Islamic extremist.
That detail that this was an Islamic extremist radicalized by ISIS has been completely hidden by the media other than in one report.
Absolutely shocking.
And here's the British Prime Minister Kirstarmer giving a speech in Northern Ireland saying not a word about the stabbing in Ireland, but a lot of words about the far right.
Take a look at this.
I'm in Northern Ireland here today for three purposes.
Firstly, to meet the PSNI officers who've been on the front line during this disorder.
Many of them have been injured.
And my purpose was to say to them, thank you for what they have done.
We make big asks of them.
They step up and they deserve our thanks.
I've also had the chance to speak to the PSNI senior leadership about the challenges that they face and the support that they need.
And then third and very importantly, to speak to some of the communities most impacted about the fear that they have, the anxiety that they have about the recent disorder.
The disorder is intolerable.
It is incapable of justification.
It's clearly racist.
And it does not represent the modern, forward-looking Northern Ireland that I know that this place is.
So I'm very pleased to achieve all those three things today and to work with all communities, to work with the PSNI and others to ensure that we handle this situation, not just the immediate disorder, but also the longer-term work that's necessary to ensure that we have that one Northern Ireland approach that I know represents the Northern Ireland, the modern Northern Ireland of the future.
I'm really worried about what's going on over there.
We're seeing with our own eyes what it means to have Trudeau's Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, put into place.
That online harms act, Bill 63, that's what it's called in Canada, that's very similar to the law they're using in the UK to put people in jail for tweeting about riots.
It's the same, very similar in its structure to similar laws, one that was recently passed in Scotland and one that is proposed for Ireland.
I fear that if we don't change our course in Canada, we're going to have what's going on in the UK with the jailing of dissidents happen here in Canada too.
Let me ask you this.
We see the viciousness with which they're going after Tamara Leach and the various Couts defendants, and that's with the existing laws as they are.
Imagine what they do when merely tweeting now becomes a crime.
Stay with us.
More ahead with Gordon Chang.
Chinese Naval Activities in the South China Sea00:14:17
It was navies that ruled the world.
That's certainly what made the British Empire dominant for centuries.
Since then, America has taken over the mantle.
There are 11 U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups, any one of which could reasonably be argued to have more naval power than any other country as a whole.
But I'm not sure if mere size of ships and tonnage of ships is the measurement.
I point out, for example, in the war between Ukraine and Russia, that Russia by far has the dominant naval force.
I don't even think Ukraine has much of one at all.
Russia essentially seized it and that stick along with Crimea.
But look at what Ukraine has been able to do with sea drones.
It's been able to sink ship after ship in the Russian Navy, including the mighty ship Moskva, which means Moscow.
It would be like sinking an American ship called America.
My point is that navies are measured in different ways these days.
And so it comes to China's Navy already by far the most numerous Navy in the world, measured by sheer number of ships.
I think they only have three aircraft carriers, two of which are basically test beds or training vessels.
The third hasn't fully been deployed as far as I know.
But what they're doing with their little boats is asymmetrical, is powerful in any event.
Let me point out a shocking story that just happened earlier today, Philippines time.
The headline, China says Philippine vessel, quote, deliberately collided with Chinese vessel in the South China Sea.
Now, do you believe that Reuters headline?
Do you think that the Philippines rammed a Chinese ship?
Or do you think perhaps just a chance it was the other way around?
Here's some footage showing the smashed up Philippine ships.
And joining us now to help make sense of this is our friend Gordon Chang, who you can follow at Gordon G. Cheng on Twitter.
Gordon, great to see you again.
China is flexing its muscle in the seas against everybody these days, isn't it?
It certainly is.
And it's not just the Philippines, although it's primarily the Philippines in the last month, but of course, against Taiwan and against Japan.
So we're talking about South China Sea, East China Sea, Taiwan Strait.
And that means that Beijing is just looking for a fight.
We can't say that Xi Jinping has decided to go to war, but what we can say is that Xi Jinping has made the decision to risk war because today, on June 17th and many other days, he has, in fact, risked war.
Now, if I understand what happened, these were Coast Guard vessels of the respective countries, the Philippine Coast Guard and the Chinese Coast Guard.
They collided.
It's a neutral way of saying it.
Now, China is saying the Philippines caused that, but it looks from the imagery like it was the Chinese boats doing the ramming.
And I understand from reading your work that China actually builds its ships with a ramming potential, that this isn't some accident.
This is one of the ways they use their Navy.
Is that accurate?
That is accurate.
We have seen that video, and it shows that in both instances, it is the Chinese boats that rammed the Philippine vessels.
And you're right.
China has been building its Coast Guard vessels and others with rams.
So clearly, this is an engagement that they have talked about and they've undoubtedly have practiced.
The Soviets did this during the Cold War.
And we're seeing basically China do the same thing.
And it's not just done today.
I mentioned June 17th.
That was where we saw some extremely aggressive Chinese activities at Scarborough Shoal.
I'm sorry, Second Thomas Shull, which is very close to Sabina Shall, the location of today's events.
And we saw the Chinese on that day not only cause collisions, but also seize Philippine vessels and injured Filipino sailors, one of them seriously.
So this is a regime in Beijing that has decided to use force, intimidation, and ramming to get what it wants.
You know, it reminds me, the idea of deliberately bumping up to another country's vessel.
That is a move that, of course, during the Cold War.
And I even think of about 20 years ago, there was a U.S. spy intelligence aircraft that was bumped by China and had to make an emergency landing.
And the idea of bumping or damaging or colliding with an American or other vessel near China's territory, that's not a new trick.
That's something even Russia would do in the past.
That's something that, you know, to knock it out of the sky as a warning, or in the case of that spy plane, to capture it and inspect it.
Am I right?
You're right.
That was April 1st, 2001, where a Chinese jet accidentally hit a U.S. Navy EP-3.
The Chinese jet fell into the South China Sea.
The pilot was killed.
And our plane made an emergency landing at a Chinese field on Hainan Island, where the Chinese helped the crew and they stripped the plane, a violation of American sovereignty.
Now, since that time, we have seen some pretty dangerous Chinese flying in the last couple of years.
So for instance, on, I think it was May 26, 2022, a Chinese fighter crossed a Australian P-8 operating international airspace in the South China Sea.
And the Chinese jet not only fired flares at the Australian craft, it dropped chaff, which is aluminum foil intended to confuse radar.
And that chaff was actually ingested into one of the P-8's engines.
Now, fortunately, the Australian crew was able to land their planes safely, but that was an act of skilled airmanship because they could have lost that plane.
Now, you mentioned the Philippines.
I wouldn't mind talking a little bit more about that because I know historically the U.S. has had one of their largest foreign bases in the Philippines, Subic Bay, a large military presence.
Now, sometimes these American bases are causes of conflict and friction with the local community.
And sometimes politically, they're asked to leave.
I know that was the case in Saudi Arabia, which eventually said goodbye to the U.S. What is the status of the mind, of the political mind in the Philippines now?
Like it's easy to chafe against Uncle Sam if you feel safe.
That's sort of a luxury you can indulge in.
But if you are now scared of a strategic rival like China, and if they're seizing and actually injuring Filipino nationals, has that changed the temperament in the Philippines?
Has that government and has the general populace become warmer to Americans?
Do you know if this has had any, like sometimes the consequences are not what China might want.
Maybe it's pushing people more towards an American orbit.
And that certainly has been the case with the Philippines, because the current Philippine president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., has moved very close to the U.S. and is actually chasing the U.S. to have a closer military relationship.
And we have stitched up an agreement or two, which are really important.
We are now exercising with the Philippines, which is important.
This is a big change from the previous administration of Rodrigo Duterte, who was very anti-American.
And you mentioned Subic Bay.
We were turfed out of Subic Bay and Clark Air Force Base in the 1990s when there was that attitude in the Philippines that we don't need the United States.
But what happened right after that was the Chinese seized Mischief Reef from the Philippines, which is very close to the Philippines, very far away from China.
And now we're seeing these very provocative moves at places like Scarborough Shoal, Second Thomas Shoal, Sabina Reef, Whitson Reef.
These are places where are very close to the Philippines and again, more than a thousand kilometers from China.
You know, isn't that interesting?
I sort of remember that the Philippines wanted the Americans out and then there was, I think it was a hurricane or something.
The Americans were first to respond.
I mean, when there's a natural disaster, having a U.S. military base near your home is a wonderful thing because no one is quicker and better in disaster relief than the U.S. military.
Kicking out the U.S. military made me think of an idea called Chesterton's Fence, named after G.K. Chesterton, where he said, if you buy a piece of land and there's a fence on it, unless you know what that fence is for, don't take it down because someone put that fence there for a reason, even if the reason is no longer apparent.
And I think of that, you know, Clark Air Force Base, Subic Bay, these were major, major military establishments.
And of course, it was in America's interest to have an outpost in the Philippines.
But it was only when they were removed, when the fence was taken down, that everyone was reminded about its purpose in the first place.
Is there a growing coalition like there is maybe in the Middle East with the Sunni Arabs realizing that Iran is a threat?
So you see a new coalition of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and even Israel is in there.
Is there a similar coalition building in the East, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Philippines?
I don't know where Vietnam would stand in this.
Is China the big bully making all the little countries sort of join together?
Well, that's certainly been the case.
So for instance, under the Biden administration, we have seen the formation of the AUKUS PAC, which stands for Australia, UK, the US.
That's primarily involved in providing nuclear attack submarines to Australia to replace their Collins class.
There's something called Jeropis, which is Japan, the United States, and the Philippines.
And there's something called Jerokis.
which is Japan, Republic of Korea, South Korea, and the United States.
So these are groups that have formed together, and they come after the Trump administration was instrumental in fortifying what's known as the Quad, which is Japan, the United States, Australia, and India.
So these groups are coming together.
And the reason why they're there is because China has frightened everybody in the region and realized, made them realize that they've got to band together to protect themselves.
Wow, that's very interesting.
I hadn't heard of those ones in the region.
I'd heard of AUKUS.
And mainly because of my sorrow that Canada is no longer included in those decisions.
We're just not relevant.
Our military is so small.
Our leadership is likely compromised by Communist China.
There's been hearings into interference.
And I think Justin Trudeau is not quite trusted as Canada once was.
We had something called the Five Eyes Intelligence Agencies.
I feel like Canada is being left out.
Maybe Canada shouldn't be a busybody in the Far East.
Maybe we're too far away, but we are a Pacific nation.
And we did used to be peacekeepers around the world.
We used to punch above our weight.
I know in the Second World War, we certainly did.
We had our own beach in Normandy.
I just think it's sort of sad, and I'm speaking parochially as a Canadian here, that we're not even involved here.
If anything, we're probably on the wrong side.
Well, Justin Trudeau is very pro-China.
And you talk about the capabilities of the Canadian military.
Where it really matters for Canada is the Arctic, because we have Russia, China threatening basically to take Canadian territory.
Now, fortunately, Canada is a military ally of the country called the United States.
But even the U.S. doesn't have very much in the way in the Arctic, even though we are an Arctic state like Canada is.
And this is, I think, something that is going to be important for Canada as it starts to reassess its relationship with China, because China's wanted to have commercial facilities in the Arctic regions of Canada.
And those obviously have a strategic purpose, much more important than the commercial purpose that Beijing talks about.
Yeah, very interesting.
Well, Gordon, it's great to catch up with you.
Some of this news I feel is underreported, or at least in the media that we get generally in Canada, the visuals of those Philippine ships being rammed is quite striking.
And I know that you pray for peace.
I read that in your Twitter feed.
And I think we ought to do that.
Pray for peace, but prepare for the worst.
I think that's our duty.
Gordon G. Cheng, great to see you.
And folks, if you're not following Gordon on Twitter, me, I highly recommend it, Gordon G Cheng at Twitter.
You will learn things there that you see nowhere else.
Great to see you again, my friend.
Thank you so much, Ezra.
Thank you.
All right, stay with us.
more ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Pray for Peace, Prepare for Worst00:02:37
Your letters to me.
St. Matthew has this to say about Ya'ara Sachs.
Just another example, Trudeau's choices of the dumbest politicians in the Liberal Party.
In with the crowd of the likes of shameless O'Regan and Climate Barbie.
Yeah, I'm really trying to understand Yaa Sachs.
She runs away from us.
I guess she's not very good on her feet.
Although you'd think that the questions we'd asked, she'd have an answer to by now.
I mean, you'd think she would have six months to think about her explanation for meeting with that terrorist leader, Mahmoud Abbas.
But besides that extreme lapse in judgment, she's Trudeau's point person on pushing hard drugs on vulnerable communities.
I really think she's done an extraordinary amount of damage to this country.
If my political senses have any skill, I think she's going to be crushed in the next election.
I was at a town hall in her own district, and people couldn't stop booing.
On my interview with Mark Murano about Elon Musk's comment about carbon dioxide, one Rubicon says he sells electric cars.
He can't say something that will help kill his business.
I'm going to disagree with you a little bit there.
He has repeatedly said that he himself does not ask for government grants.
That was GM or others.
And he himself says that climate alarmism and climate extremism is out of control, that we do need other sources of fuel.
So I don't think he is like David Suzuki or like an ideologue.
I think he just might have made a mistake here.
I mean, no one person can know everything about every field of science and engineering.
It sounds to me like he just sort of heard a stat and repeated it and didn't check on it because I know for a fact that you exhale carbon dioxide at 40,000 parts per million.
It's about 400 in the natural atmosphere.
So your breath is 100 times more carbon dioxide-y than the air.
And that's not poisonous.
I mean, after a while, you feel, oh, the air here is stale, roll down the window, get some fresh air.
But the idea that a thousand parts per million is going to kill you is absurd when you breathe out 40 times that.
Anyways, I think it's sort of nitpicking.
I think Elon Musk is possibly the most important citizen on planet Earth right now in terms of not just putting aside all his industrial and engineering and entrepreneurial skills.
The fact that he is fighting for freedom of speech on a free speech platform is a greater gift to humanity than pretty much anyone else out there right now.
That's my view.
Well, I'm off tomorrow to Tamara Leach's trial in Ottawa again.