Ross and Ross are back with a brand new episode of You Awakened! This week, the boys are joined by special guest Branko Marcicic to talk about Putin's recent trip to St. Basil's Basilica and the bizarre marks on his neck. They're also joined by a special guest to discuss the war in Ukraine and how the mainstream media and the US government conspired to keep us in the dark about it. Plus, the latest on the latest in the Trump vs DeSantis super PAC battle. You're not going to get more information on todays news and views than right here. You'll have to wait till the end of the show to find out who it's about! Logo by Courtney DeKorte. Theme by Mavus White. Music by PSOVOD and tyops. We'd like to learn a little more about you, the listeners. Please take a few minutes to fill out this brief survey. We'll be looking for any questions you have about the show, and we'll be answering them on the next week's episode. Send us your answers in the comments section below. Thanks for listening and supporting the show! Timestamps: 0:00 - What do you think of this episode? 1:30 - What would you like to see more of? 2:15 - Is Putin's neck a little too thin? 3:40 - Is there something wrong with his neck? 4:00 5: What are you worried about? 6:20 - What's the point of the Pope s crown? 7: Is he a deranged madman? 8:00: Is there anything wrong with it? 9:00- Is there a candle just a little bit too thin or not? 11:00s - Is this candle too thick? 12:30s - What is the point? 13:30- Is it just a bit more than a candle? 15:40s - How do you like it a little? 16:20s? 17: What's a candle a bit too thick or a little less than a bit less than that? 18: Is it more than medium? 19:15somewide? 21: Does it look like a candle ? 22:15- Does it feel like a bit like that? 16:40- Is that a candle too thin??
00:00:29.000A little bit later, we'll also be talking to Branko Marcicic about how the US government misled the public on the war in Ukraine and how the media, very much the Jewel Biden to the Joe Biden of the state, support the government in their ongoing lies.
00:00:44.000Then we're in our item, here's the news, no, here's the effing news.
00:00:47.000We'll be looking at how Military personnel are suffering poverty, suffering indignity, all the while the military-industrial complex is profiting massively.
00:01:24.000Here he is appearing at, I would call it, An orthodox ceremony for the festival of Easter in which our Lord Jesus comes back from death to show us that there are deeper tunes to be played when it comes to the Requiem of Consciousness.
00:02:29.000But he's so ill that we're going to win this war.
00:02:32.000Putin, Putin, he's so ill, he'll be really easy to kill in our not-proxy war that we're not having, we're just supporting Ukraine in a huge humanitarian effort that's necessary and had nothing to do with NATO impeding on former Soviet Union territory and nothing to do with a coup in 2014.
00:03:41.000With all of their bombast and banal pageantry, they're in no position to criticise the propaganda of anyone else.
00:03:49.000Look at that, the way his name, John King, came thrusting onto the screen, an unwanted graphic priapic erection forced in from the side of the frame.
00:03:59.000The point is they're doing this too early.
00:04:01.000Just make a decision to not show it then.
00:04:41.000Let's see though, I think Trump's super PAC propaganda, not necessarily affiliated with the Trump campaign, which is a super PAC thing, is better.
00:04:49.000Because what they've gone for is a garish, galling, gory, and awful image involving pudding.
00:04:58.000Also, like, they're picking up on a weird detail about Ron DeSantis.
00:05:01.000I didn't know that Ron DeSantis ate puddings with his fingers.
00:05:06.000But that's, you know, like, have you ever been to India?
00:05:09.000In India, people eat, like, surprising meals with their fingers, and I presume that's common across that region of the world.
00:05:16.000Like, I was in India, and people ate, like, rice and curry with their fingers, and you just have to go, well, why not?
00:05:20.000Maybe it's more weird to hold a little spoon or a fork.
00:05:36.000Maybe wipe the pudding off your fingers.
00:05:38.000Or if you're on DeSantis and you're watching this in Florida with a great scoop of pud right there, cradled there in the nook of your third knuckle.
00:05:49.000Suck that down, delicious, like Mother Nature surely intended when she granted us these crazy little hand wands, and let's know what's going on.
00:05:59.000Now, that ad from a pro-DeSantis pack is responding to scathing ads from a pro-Trump group, including this, yes, stomach-churning dig at the Florida governor after a report that he ate pudding with his fingers.
00:06:13.000Ron DeSantis loves sticking his fingers where they don't belong.
00:06:17.000What I like is that De Santis has got a table and chair and all that's on it is that pudding.
00:07:29.000My snout's getting stronger by the second.
00:07:31.000I'm being joined now by friend of the show, Branko Marcicic, an investigative journalist for Jacobin, the author of Yesterday's Man, The Case Against Joe Biden.
00:07:41.000This is a really cool A quote from Branko to get you in the mood.
00:07:46.000So sit yourself down in your chair wherever you are and listen to this.
00:07:49.000It's going to get you hot and wet for Branko.
00:08:27.000We are like you independent journalists and we have a duty to take truth pretty bloody seriously.
00:08:33.000I'll congratulate you firstly on your hair today and secondly we'll move on to my first question.
00:08:40.000Gareth Roy is very excited to have you here.
00:08:42.000He believes you to be a rising star of the independent journalism scene and he wants to frame you as one of our key voices on stay free media.
00:08:50.000So just know that Branko before you even begin your answer that you are loved and believed in and adored.
00:08:57.000Now, the US government misled the public on the war.
00:09:00.000Why are the mainstream corporate media more interested in going on about that lad's nickname being OG?
00:09:07.000Why are the New York Times involved in his capture and arrest like Scooby-Doo and the Gang or Lovejoy, if you're British?
00:09:15.000Instead of focusing on the content of the leaks, please, Branko.
00:09:20.000I mean, this is basically a pattern that happens every time there's a major leak that exposes something politically inconvenient or embarrassing or even scandalous, particularly from the US government.
00:09:32.000I mean, basically, some of the biggest leaks in US history, you think about Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, you think about the various leaks that WikiLeaks put Uh, out under Julian Assange, the Snowden leaks, uh, uh, Chelsea Manning's, uh, uh, contributions to the Assange, uh, WikiLeaks stuff.
00:09:51.000All of these people were, uh, rather than, well, alongside, you know, writing about the genuinely kind of scandalous and revelatory stuff that they revealed.
00:10:03.000At the same time, there was this obsession among certain segments of the press on, you know, were these people, are they heroes or traitors?
00:10:14.000You know, let's talk about some of their misdeeds.
00:10:18.000Sometimes, you know, misdeeds are completely imagined in the case of Snowden, you know, who's been accused of being a Russian and a Chinese spy and all this kind of stuff.
00:10:27.000But, and then also sometimes, you know, very real misdeeds.
00:10:31.000You know, I think Assange, the sexual assault allegations against Assange were credible.
00:10:36.000Obviously, this guy, this latest leaker has, you know, this record of making, you know, offensive and racist comments and so on and so forth.
00:10:44.000But, you know, the entire time that we're talking about Whether these people are good or bad and whether they are deserving of our respect or our valorization, we're not talking about the actual stuff that they revealed.
00:10:56.000In the case of WikiLeaks, it was evidence of war crimes by US and coalition forces in Iraq and other places.
00:11:03.000In this case, there's so much important that's come out of this leak.
00:11:07.000I would say, number one, the fact that the Biden administration apparently does have boots on the ground despite saying it would not deploy troops.
00:11:17.000There has, you know, dozens of special forces personnel in Ukraine, as does the whole of NATO.
00:11:26.000And on top of that, I mean, there's this major revelation about how easily this war could have already spiraled into into all out, you know, World War Three or nuclear catastrophe.
00:11:38.000There was this incident last year where Russian and British pilots kind of go into a scrape of the Black Sea.
00:11:46.000There was a bit of alarm over it, but we didn't quite know the full details.
00:11:50.000Now it turns out that actually the Russian jet, the Russian pilot misunderstanding instructions from, you know, radar operators fired the missile at the British jet.
00:12:02.000And the missile malfunctioned and nothing happened.
00:12:05.000But I mean, if that malfunction hadn't happened in the nick of time, this could have been a very different thing.
00:12:12.000I mean, this could have been absolutely disastrous.
00:12:14.000I mean, that's two things out of the many things that have come out.
00:12:18.000But you know, these are very important topics to discuss in the context of this ever escalating war.
00:12:24.000And we don't talk about them because we're focused on, is this person good or bad?
00:12:28.000Why can't the US be honest about the extent of their involvement in this conflict, plainly admitting that there are American personnel within Ukraine?
00:12:41.000And why can't the mainstream media hold them to account when these leaks are made?
00:12:47.000Why does this consensus to maintain one narrative exist, Branko?
00:12:53.000I mean, unfortunately, in the US especially, the press has long been kind of more eager for escalation and kind of a more aggressive military posture from the Biden administration.
00:13:06.000I mean, if you, you know, whatever you think about the Biden administration's policy to Ukraine, they have been relatively restrained compared to what the press has been asking.
00:13:16.000I mean, you know, from the earliest days of the war, there were White House press corps people who are saying, you know, basically, why won't you set up a no-fly zone?
00:13:25.000Which, you know, would have basically been the declaration of World War Three.
00:13:30.000Or, you know, saying, why aren't you constantly pushing the administration to send more advanced, more escalatory weaponry to Ukraine, and so on and so forth.
00:13:39.000So I think for that segment of the media that kind of wants a more aggressive confrontational posture from the United States government, it doesn't pay to talk about the risks.
00:13:53.000It doesn't pay to talk about the way that the U.S.
00:13:57.000government has actually misled the public.
00:13:58.000around it's already fairly deep involvement in this war.
00:14:02.000And I mean, for the Biden administration, of course, it wants to maintain this idea that, oh, you
00:14:06.000know, we're having a hands off approach.
00:14:09.000This is not a proxy war. This is this is not a conflict between the US and Russia or between
00:14:14.000in Russia or between NATO and Russia, we're merely providing support to Ukraine at once.
00:14:14.000NATO and Russia. We're merely providing support to Ukraine that it wants. We're not ourselves
00:14:19.000We're not ourselves actively belligerence in this war.
00:14:20.000actively, you know, belligerence in this war, because I think for domestic consumption,
00:14:24.000Because I think for domestic consumption, convinces people that, hey, the US elite,
00:14:27.000convinces people that, hey, the US elite, you know, the US officials have not sort of blundered.
00:14:30.000the US officials have not sort of blundered the country into yet another potentially catastrophic war.
00:14:37.000And I think on the international stage, it has this benefit of making the United States
00:14:42.000seem like a kind of honest broker in this war, rather than what Lula, the president of Brazil recently
00:14:48.000said, which is that it's been sort of encouraging
00:14:50.000the prolonging of the war that's been going on.
00:14:53.000Why is Zelensky declaring war on dissent, centralizing nearly all of Ukraine's national TV networks?
00:15:03.000Why, if the leadership of Ukraine are on the side of righteousness, why can they not accommodate dissent Debate and conversation.
00:15:14.000And obviously, I would apply that to the ongoing march towards censorship in our countries, you know, Australia, England, America, all that.
00:15:25.000Why is there an unwillingness to accommodate dissent and debate?
00:16:28.000I mean, it might mean that someone who criticized the Zelensky government within Ukraine
00:16:36.000for helping to making decisions that helped sort of lead to war.
00:16:42.000It might mean that you even support Russia.
00:16:46.000There are definitely people in Ukraine who, you know, it's a small number, a small minority, but there are different people who support the war effort.
00:16:53.000It might mean criticising the SNC government for some of its anti-democratic overreaches.
00:16:59.000It can also mean, you know, things like just basically putting forward kind of left-wing ideology.
00:17:07.000A lot of leftists have been kind of caught up in the repression over there.
00:17:12.000The sum total of it is that basically there's been a crackdown on anything that deviates
00:17:17.000from the official Ukrainian line, whether it's about the course of the war, the causes
00:17:23.000of the war, the fitness of the Ukrainian government, all this stuff.
00:17:27.000Whatever it is, if you're saying it and it's politically inconvenient to the government,
00:17:33.000you might get a knock on the door from the SBU.
00:17:37.000In terms of why this is happening, there's two explanations.
00:17:43.000Number one, obviously, Ukraine's been invaded by a larger neighboring power.
00:17:48.000Any country that comes under foreign attack and outside attack in wartime, you see a big
00:17:57.000Typically, a centralization of government power, you see things like censorship policies being put into place.
00:18:04.000You know, it happened under Lincoln during the Civil War.
00:18:07.000I mean, it happened, just think about what happened with the United States after September 11, and how that kind of led to a centralization of a bunch of repressive powers.
00:18:16.000And so it's not surprising that Ukraine being under attack has kind of resorted to this very classic method
00:18:24.000of sort of control and unity during wartime.
00:18:28.000However, that's not the full story because this was happening, like I said,
00:18:31.000long before under multiple presidents, but ramped up under Zelensky too,
00:18:37.000well before the war when his approval ratings had plummeted and he had actually faced some pretty bad outcomes
00:18:46.000in municipal elections around the country, started to go after his opposition.
00:18:52.000He sanctioned the kind of a leading opposition bloc and basically through that
00:18:58.000got rid of a bunch of opposition media.
00:19:02.000He started to look at banning parties and so on and so forth.
00:19:08.000And then there were the mayor of Kiev, obviously now everyone's very much united, But before the war, the mayor of Kiev got a knock on the door from the SBU as well, the sort of, you know, security service of Ukraine, who, you know, went in and I think searched his apartment and it was at the time read as a form of political intimidation against someone who might be a future Zelensky rival.
00:19:31.000So it's those two things combining that there was already a trend towards authoritarianism under Zelensky's rule.
00:19:39.000But the war has, for multiple reasons, made that go to a far more extreme level than it was before.
00:19:50.000Some of it is legitimate and understandable.
00:19:52.000When a nation is under attack, there is a requirement for authoritarianism, centralized control and a clear agenda that can be pursued without one might query or quibble about the idea of necessary dissent or necessary opposition.
00:20:06.000But certainly that makes sense and is understandable.
00:20:08.000But there is some politics, as usual, wiping out of opposition.
00:20:12.000Furthermore, I wonder how it relates to the post-war plan to rebuild Ukraine in partnership with Black Rock, eliminating the potential for a Ukrainian trade union movement to be able to meaningfully oppose the kind of restrictions and conditions that Any centralised and financially underwritten project of that nature would likely impose.
00:20:33.000Branko, thank you so much for joining us.
00:20:36.000I'm glad you're a regular contributor to our show.
00:20:40.000You can follow Branko's work on Jacobin and his book Yesterday's Man, The Case Against Joe Biden is available to buy using money right now.
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