Russell Brand is back with a brand new episode of Stay Free with Russell Brand. This week, he's joined by Alan Wagner, the author of 'How We Lost Our Freedom' and host of the show 'The Dark Side Of', to talk about everything from the Qatar World Cup, to the G20, and much, much more. Stay free, and remember to hit RUMBLE while you're watching this, because in some way that I'll never truly understand, it helps us when it comes to understanding the true nature of power. And remember, this is not a charity, it's not a show for whack jobs and conspiracy theorists. This is hard facts. And if you don't like them, you'll have to wait until next week's show, where we'll have a much better idea of what's going on in the world. Stay free and remember, you're not the only one who can see the future - you're also the only person who has the power to see the past and see the present. You're not alone. You are not alone, and you don t have to be woke to see it. You don't need to be spiritually awakened to be free. You can be free, you can be woke, and that's why you need to stay free! In this episode, we're talking about the future, and we'll be talking about it, and why it's important to be awake, and what it means, and how it's going to be a good day, and a day to wake up and get ready for the future. Stay Free, and wake up. Stay Free! - Stay Free. (and Remember to Hit RIBM, and Don't Sleep Tonight! Stay Safe, and Stay Brave, and Remember to Share This, and Get Up, Rise Up, Get Out, and Be Awakened, and Let's See The Future, and Sleep, and We'll See The World! You'll See It Soon. In This Video: This Video is by In This, You're Going to See the Future, You'll Have A Good Day. - This Is The Future Is Here! - In This Is the Future You're Gonna See The Most Powerful, You Can See The Present, This Is It? This Is Not Yours Truly, This Will Be The Future You'll Be The Most Beautiful Day You'll Hear It, You Will See The Realest Place You Will Hear It In A World That Will Lead You In A Better Place That Will Have It All?
00:02:04.000Thanks to those of you that are joining us right now in the chat.
00:02:07.000Some of you say that, look at that, who said that we should give them free underwear so that they can weave themselves while they watch the show?
00:02:14.000Hopefully in hysteria, but possibly for a great many reasons, all of which we can reveal over the course of the show.
00:02:20.000Remember to hit rumble while you're watching this, because in some way that I'll never truly understand, it helps us when you do that.
00:02:28.000So, OK, so here's some things that have been going on lately.
00:02:31.000The Republicans narrowly win back the House.
00:03:40.000But let's get started by looking at what some people are calling a morally reprehensible World Cup in Qatar, while others are saying, well, hold on, you know, when it comes to imperialism and human rights, what are you talking about?
00:07:02.000I was pretty unhappy anyway before all this nailing to a cross business started.
00:07:06.000Anyway, this guy, for a minute there, what's lovely is to see sort of a European sensibility collide with a type of authoritarianism that's used to having a bit more gusto.
00:07:15.000This is the kind of country where it's, I'm guessing, and I don't want to stereotype here, it's sort of everyday fair to just wander up to someone and go, Oi!
00:09:12.000And then there's the sort of colonial authority of the World Cup reporter, like, hey, we're here, we've got a business relationship with Qatar, you've invited the whole world here, this is a monetised event where football is nominally what it's about, but the World Cup man, it's so weird to have this win at World Cup.
00:09:53.000This is the collision of cultures that we're witnessing right now, because an alliance has been made between capitalism and culture, ultimately the one world religion of finance and capitalism.
00:10:04.000Yeah, and I mean sort of the type of capitalism, the corporatism that we live under now, crony capitalism, has conquered the entire globe.
00:10:11.000But there are going to be, there's going to be some weird collisions and clashes here.
00:10:14.000You're going to see weird stuff go down.
00:10:16.000Seems like in Russia, I don't remember there being enough problems about like, oh, they're nicking a bunch of gay people or whatever.
00:13:36.000Record amounts of missiles are selling them.
00:13:38.000And one of the things I noticed while we were signing the contract, for billions actually, on the missiles, I thought, hmm, you're a bit impolite to women.
00:16:11.000Is that sort of communist state power, totalitarian rule with a corporatist state, powerful manufacturing industry, very well-drilled army, nuclear capacity, forming new alliances across the globe, aware of a creaking U.S.
00:16:25.000economy, is dictatorial authority, says Eli Z.P.
00:16:28.000in the chat. No known power says TX scubba. Do you let me know in the chat what kind of
00:16:33.000power is there? If Klaus Schwab is right and we should be looking for a unipolar world
00:16:37.000with American corporatism at its center. What you gonna do about him? What you gonna do
00:16:42.000when he come for you Trudeau? Do you know Trudeau? What you gonna do? Gonna do some
00:16:46.000Judo? Gonna do some Voodoo Trudeau? What you gonna do? I don't know Trudeau.
00:17:17.000How are our own systems of government similarly and comparably tyrannical and was there human rights abuses during the time of the pandemic?
00:17:26.000That's one of the things that we're going to be asking Adam Wagner when we talk to him in a minute.
00:17:30.000For now though, let's see, let's watch, let's watch real power roll out in the hands of...
00:17:35.000If there is sincerity on your part, free and open and frank dialogue, and we will continue
00:17:48.000to work constructively together, but there will be things we will disagree on.
00:19:04.000Yeah, also not to literally compare Canada to China, but the thing that he says here is we believe in free and open and frank dialogue in Canada.
00:19:10.000Now, I mean, that certainly wasn't the case during the Trucker protest, was it?
00:19:13.000We're just going to have a free, frank, open dialogue.
00:19:15.000It seems that you're against these mandates as the trucker community, and you've come to exercise your civil rights through these protests.
00:19:21.000Now, what we're going to do is we're going to call you Nazis, we're going to ban your protests, we're going to freeze your bank accounts.
00:19:26.000But we're a million miles away from China.
00:19:34.000Yeah, that should have been the thing he said.
00:19:36.000Hey, we love what you did in the trucker protest, by the way, because I was thinking, I wasn't a fan of the blackface, I thought the haircut was Haircut was a little bit dubious, but the trucker protest?
00:19:44.000Dog, you've got something going on over there.
00:19:47.000You've just got to see him walk off at the end, because apparently he's got a slightly odd walk.
00:19:50.000Trudeau is so impaired by this encounter that it's affected his ability to perambulate natural style.
00:19:56.000He's been so heavily dissed that he's given him a limp.
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00:21:27.000We've got Adam Wagner on the phone now, and he'll tell us for sure in a minute, who wrote a book called Emergency State, how we lost our freedoms in the pandemic and why it matters.
00:21:54.000Adam, thanks for writing this book, mate.
00:21:55.000Now, I imagine you had to walk a bit of a line so that you didn't sound like a hysterical conspiracy theorist but addressed instead regulatory measures that were Unusual and wouldn't have been regularly afforded to a government without due democratic process.
00:22:10.000Tell me what was unique about this pandemic when it comes to the imposition of state power?
00:22:17.000Yes, so the books about the two years when in the UK, which I focus on, I talk a bit about elsewhere, the whole state just basically turned itself around.
00:22:29.000So rather than doing the things it normally does, it was doing things like keeping us locked in our houses.
00:22:35.000stopping us socializing, stopping us hugging, stopping us buying certain things, stopping us working, all of the basic things we usually do.
00:22:43.000And what I've tried to do is just describe that.
00:22:46.000I'm a lawyer, so I'm looking at it a lot through laws and rights.
00:22:51.000How did the state suddenly become this sort of all-powerful, oppressive entity, even if it was for a reasonable cause, as many people will think?
00:23:01.000Of course we fool ourselves that we live in liberal democracies and I suppose what you're saying is that under these, what were regarded at the time certainly as unique circumstances, we afforded this license to the government primarily because the narrative at the time was it was scientifically underwritten.
00:23:20.000Now I know you're not an epidemiologist and I'm not inviting you to be one.
00:23:24.000So it seems that all of those measures, whether it was about the hugging or the lockdowns or near mandates, certainly in some professions and areas of professional life when it came to particular medications, were all undertaken for safety, which in itself, I suppose, is an acknowledgement of the sanctity and value of human life.
00:23:45.000Now, as a lawyer, I suppose, what you would have to be doing is addressing the case.
00:23:48.000Were these actions legitimate and justified?
00:23:52.000Is that what you're talking about in your book?
00:23:59.000It's this classic sort of freedom versus safety balance, which we saw a lot during the war on terror as well.
00:24:06.000But this was really something extraordinary that I don't think we've seen ever in the history of the modern state, at least.
00:24:13.000That the state all of a sudden was saying, and not just illiberal states, but states that would consider themselves to be liberal, was saying you can't do the usual things that you're allowed to do and that you've always seen as sort of sacred things that you're allowed to do, even like worshipping, like going out and protesting, like working in an occupation.
00:24:37.000The thing I find really interesting is the psychology of it.
00:24:40.000It's not just that the state did these things, it's that people wanted the state to do these things.
00:24:47.000I know there were some people who didn't, but on the most part, in an emergency, people lie down.
00:25:13.000Furthermore, people that opposed them, as is usually the case in less overt and obvious circumstances, were defined as, at best, ne'er-do-wells, And at worst, enemies of the state.
00:25:25.000Lots of language that in retrospect looks difficult to justify around it being a sort of a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
00:25:32.000And we're not here to focus on the sort of medical aspects of this condition.
00:25:37.000But the very fact that the state was able to impose that power is certainly surprising.
00:25:42.000I remember initially, of course, that when we saw the measures that were taken in China where the pandemic ...began, people said, oh, they won't be able to do that in the British!
00:25:55.000Now, some British people were out on the streets, and those British people were demonised, vilified, ridiculed, and in retrospect, does it seem that it was an exercise in control that wasn't entirely medicated by medical necessity?
00:26:11.000I mean, in some cases, yes, in some cases, no.
00:26:14.000I think what you say about China is really interesting, because obviously the first lockdown was in China and Wuhan.
00:26:20.000And from what I can tell from my research, that was only the third time a country had ever locked down its population in the way that we come to understand lockdowns to be.
00:26:29.000I only found two other examples in Mexico and Sierra Leone in the past 10 years.
00:26:34.000And before that, it had never been done before.
00:26:37.000And when we saw China, we said, exactly, that's an authoritarian state.
00:26:48.000And then two weeks later, we were doing pretty much the same thing here as certainly what was going on in Europe.
00:26:54.000I think you mentioned protests, people going out on the streets and being vilified.
00:26:58.000I do think there was a real problem of basically banning protests.
00:27:02.000It didn't happen in every country, but it certainly happened in the UK.
00:27:06.000I acted for the women who organised the Reclaim These Streets protest for Sara Everard's death, where the police eventually sort of manhandled women off the bandstand in Clapham Common.
00:27:19.000But also, you know, the protest was pretty much banned the whole time.
00:27:22.000And that's, if you think about this as a time when the state is imposing the most draconian, the most extreme restrictions Probably in history, certainly since the Second World War, to also prevent people protesting at the same time and also prevent Parliament really looking at what was going on.
00:27:45.000I think you're taking away all of the usual safety valves for a democracy and I don't think that's really worrying.
00:27:55.000The revelations that you describe are so radical that it seems to me less likely that what we saw was an an irregular and exponential deviation from the norm, but rather the revelation of processes of power that were already in place and were simply revealed by this process, i.e.
00:28:20.000compliant media, ultimately compliant population, unquestioning democratic process, willingness to respond to edicts from centralized global bodies, All these preconditions must have been in place for things to unfold in the manner that you describe.
00:28:36.000Even when looking at the diagnosis offered to other nations, you know, somewhat xenophobically, we attribute the Chinese lockdown to their conditions and the continental ones to those.
00:28:45.000You don't even hear that word continental that much anymore, do you?
00:28:48.000But ultimately, the same principles were at play here.
00:28:51.000So it suggests to me that there were a set of underlying factors that had long been present, sets of interests, overlapping interests, that obviously afforded these conditions.
00:29:00.000So firstly, I'd like you to talk to me about that, and then we'll move on to the likelihood of such things happening again.
00:29:06.000In fact, the implausibility of it not happening again, actually.
00:29:11.000So I think, on the one hand, there was many similarities between what happened worldwide, but on the other, each country, it was a bit like injecting radioactive dye through the systems of each country.
00:29:24.000You know, what happens during an emergency?
00:29:27.000What does it tell you about the system?
00:29:29.000And I think China, the lockdown in China was very different to the lockdown here, much more extreme.
00:29:35.000You know, China was and still is carting people off, you know, compelling people who have COVID or symptoms of COVID to go to detention centres.
00:29:44.000They have much more extreme enforcement of lockdown.
00:29:48.000And as you know, they have the social credit system, they have state surveillance on a much higher level than in many other states, including here.
00:29:56.000So that what happened there was quite different to what happened here.
00:30:00.000But I agree that what happened here didn't just come out of the blue.
00:30:03.000It was a function of stuff that was already there.
00:30:07.000So the executive here, the government, is really powerful.
00:30:10.000And if it wants to disregard Parliament in certain instances, and particularly in emergencies, It can.
00:30:16.000So Covid decision making was taking place basically, it was four guys.
00:30:19.000It was Michael Gove, the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and Matt Hancock who's now in the jungle.
00:30:27.000But you know that was just four guys and they could pass laws using emergency laws by Matt Hancock signing the bottom of a piece of paper, didn't have to go to Parliament for another four weeks after it came into force and by that time it was kind of irrelevant.
00:30:47.000Only eight of them were approved by Parliament in advance.
00:30:50.000So over 100 were just passed on the nod.
00:30:54.000So Matt Hancock signed the piece of paper saying you can't go to the pub, or you can't sing, or you can't buy Easter eggs, that sort of thing, or you can't buy a substantial meal in a pub, those sorts of things.
00:31:04.000He'd signed the piece of paper and all of a sudden, like magic, it would become the law of the land.
00:31:09.000So I think that's something that was pretty UK specific but and really pretty worrying as well.
00:31:15.000Sweeping legislative changes were made overnight to an unprecedented degree by assuring people that this was a unique state of emergency and obviously we're not querying whether or not it was a unique state of emergency but people will be able to look at the medical data for themselves and make their own decisions based on what has subsequently been revealed.
00:31:39.000I suppose, Adam, what this makes me think, and people here, by the way, Firegirl2020 loves your analogy about the radioactive dye.
00:31:48.000And I saw you take a little smile of delight as you used that analogy.
00:31:52.000I saw you lit up like a radioactive man yourself on using it.
00:31:57.000So I suppose what interests me here now, and as I alluded to before, is that once we have established a model of emergency crisis response and legislate, is it likely that it's to be repeated?
00:32:08.000And in a way, is it particularly different from the sort of commonly understood practices, for example, of the United States through the CIA in countries like Nicaragua and elsewhere, where various crises, political or otherwise, have been utilised to create coups or certainly to advance American interests?
00:32:25.000So my questions there are, is it distinct from the normal shock doctrine Naomi Klein type analysis?
00:32:32.000And how likely is it this stuff will happen again?
00:32:36.000So I think, as one of the things I look at in the books, I think emergencies have always created fertile grounds for the use of emergency power and the grabbing of power by governments or by individuals.
00:32:50.000You saw it in Nazi Germany, that's the way Hitler created an emergency to take the last bits of democracy away.
00:32:58.000You've seen it in lots of different places.
00:33:01.000And that's not unusual because I think it's basic human psychology.
00:33:04.000We look for the sort of big leader to lead us out of an emergency, whether it's like a war or a pandemic or whatever.
00:33:12.000But I think that what happened in the pandemic was pretty unique.
00:33:17.000You know, Covid was a massive Massively dangerous virus and people, I'm not an epidemiologist, but over 200,000 people died in the UK alone from COVID.
00:33:27.000It was definitely something before the vaccines and before people had it.
00:33:33.000So not a surprise that this kind of thing happened.
00:33:35.000But what I think was surprising and worrying is it happened not just for a few weeks or months, but it happened for over two years while basically the executive and Matt Hancock and the health secretary took control and didn't give it back.
00:33:47.000It also seems that many of the transitions between the severity of regulation took place not in response to changes in medical data, but to some invisible undulations less easy to discern, i.e.
00:33:59.000Covid cases continue after their regulations altered.
00:34:03.000Now I'm going to have to pick you up on the Reichstag fire.
00:34:06.000There's absolutely no evidence that the Nazis were responsible for that.
00:34:11.000Adolf Hitler was doing a very difficult job and a very trying job.
00:34:15.000I don't know why I took it upon myself to try to argue the case of the Reichstag fire.
00:34:21.000It's because I watch too many documentaries on that kind of thing.
00:34:23.000I think that Hitler and the Nazis were a bad influence on Europe and genocides are broadly accepted as bad things.
00:34:32.000So mate, ultimately I suppose your area of interest as a lawyer is the analysis of the way that crises are used to generate not just compliance in the moment but possibly long-standing legislature.
00:34:45.000We were watching a talk from the B20 which is like the sort of A sort of business-oriented little sister of the G20 where, I can't actually remember who it was, but people were talking about the necessity again for vaccine passports and we're seeing this obvious intersection between surveillance and legislation and it appears that what's being, well let me ask you this as a question given that we're in an interview, does it appear that we're trying to create the conditions and circumstances where Chinese style social credit scoring can be introduced without the sort of aesthetic of
00:35:19.000A sort of a centralised, corporatised, communist state?
00:35:25.000It's going to be a lot harder in a country like the United States or the UK, but certainly not impossible.
00:35:32.000And I think that what we see here is something slightly different, that rather than the state being at the centre of the surveillance sort of infrastructure, it's private companies.
00:35:41.000And in a way that is Just as worrying, but in a different way, you know.
00:35:46.000So the state shouldn't have access to your movements and the social realities of your everyday life.
00:35:54.000And it probably shouldn't be controlling those things.
00:35:57.000But for private companies to have access to that information, I think is something we've sort of sleepwalked into a bit.
00:36:05.000You know, these big social media companies and they're basically unregulated.
00:36:09.000They basically do what they want and they can do what they want with that data.
00:36:12.000And I think that is It's not the same as the states like China basically restricting your access to everyday social goods by the way you behave.
00:36:23.000It's not as serious as that, but it's still something we've got to be really wary of and careful about.
00:36:39.000Yeah, my concern, Adam, is that having introduced these laws, they won't be subsequently rescinded and that there will be an appetite to recreate the conditions for further legislation of this nature.
00:36:53.000What does it tell us about the limitations of the types of democracies that we live in that this was allowed to happen?
00:37:00.000And what kind of legislative and political changes are required to prevent something like this happening again?
00:37:08.000And may I say, is there even an argument for a real reckoning now that we do have more clear data on the impact of the pandemic, both its severity but also the potential limitations, you know, using comparative study between nations that took different measures, the efficacy of those measures.
00:37:27.000Is it possible to legislate to prevent something like this ever happening again?
00:37:32.000Is there an appetite to prevent some of this happening again?
00:37:34.000Or does the fact that people so sort of willingly participated like this sweet docile compliant little Dopes suggest that that legislation wouldn't be desired anyway.
00:37:47.000I think that people want to forget what happened.
00:37:50.000And when people have read the book, they've sort of said, God, I actually can't believe that all that happened.
00:37:55.000They've sort of, it's disappeared from memory.
00:37:59.000And I think that's in itself really concerning, because we do need to do a sort of a rain check of what went on during the pandemic.
00:38:09.000Not just, you know, it's sort of, it's like when you've got a disease and you use a cure, to cure it, which does damage in itself.
00:38:19.000And you've got to think about, well, yes, overall, we may have prevented lots of deaths.
00:38:23.000I think it probably did prevent lots of deaths.
00:38:25.000We may have allowed time for the health services to survive and for a vaccine to be created.
00:38:43.000There are those things that we've highlighted that we need to think about.
00:38:46.000So I think just looking at the UK, we don't have a written constitution.
00:38:50.000We don't know exactly how the system of government works.
00:38:54.000Some of it's inherited, some of it's just known by the people in power, or maybe it's in some rule book somewhere, but it's not necessarily publicly accessible.
00:39:03.000And I think that makes it really difficult when you've got a crisis to know Who actually, who's in control on a basic level?
00:39:11.000We don't have, we have a human rights act, we have human rights protected, but they're not in any written constitution.
00:39:18.000The courts were really absent in the UK, unlike in other countries during COVID.
00:39:23.000They didn't strike down any of the restrictions, even these sort of extreme restrictions on social lives, on worship, on play, on everything.
00:39:31.000Unlike in lots of other countries where lots of law, in France over 50 COVID laws were struck down.
00:39:36.000So I think we're just, in the UK, we're sort of pretty unprotected from a pernicious government that will come in during an emergency and take control.
00:39:46.000I don't think the government was particularly trying to do the wrong thing.
00:39:50.000It was trying to do the best it could.
00:39:53.000It made mistakes but I don't think it was doing it for bad purposes.
00:39:58.000But I think another government could and I think that's something we to think about not just in the UK but elsewhere.
00:40:07.000So you're happy to assume that it is broadly ineptitude rather than malfeasance,
00:40:11.000and why not make the assumption of ineptitude if it would seem sufficient?
00:40:16.000But, and understandably as a lawyer, you see the solution as being legislative
00:40:20.000to have a clearly demarked set of principles that we live by, a set of lines that we do not cross,
00:40:27.000but it seems like the function of those emergency laws was to bypass that, curtail protest,
00:40:35.000And I suppose globally, Adam, the reason that, you know, the reason that the territory for conspiracy theory
00:40:42.000became more fertile, and the reason that we, I suppose, have to be disciplined in our discourse,
00:40:48.000is when you draw attention to the fact that there are some pretty powerful interests
00:40:51.000that significantly benefited from these conditions, and the way that information was presented to us
00:40:57.000further empowered them to continue along that trajectory.
00:41:02.000I'm speaking about the profits of big tech, the profits of big pharma, and I'm also talking about our unwillingness to look at the kind of deaths as a result of mental health, missed cancer treatments, diabetes, heart conditions.
00:41:15.000It was almost as if the narrative was presented in a particular way.
00:41:18.000I think all of us are willing, like, you know, The amnesia, perhaps, is not unilateral.
00:41:25.000Like, I remember that there was a bit where I was bloody scared.
00:41:45.000And again, there's no need to assume anything other than ineptitude, but it does feel that the way that the stories were reported, the way that the legislation was conducted, without even bringing in the personal and particular behaviour of people in positions of power and government, who might imagine that were they legitimately imposing these regulations because they thought it was necessary for safety, wouldn't have breached them quite so easily.
00:42:11.000That just seems to be something that a rational human Wouldn't do.
00:42:15.000If we put aside all of that just for a brief moment.
00:42:20.000I suppose I'm saying, mate, that your legislative suggestions seem important but would ultimately end up probably being bypassed by some sort of emergency measure that they keep in their back pockets like a flick knife.
00:42:32.000Because it appears to me that in spite of, I would generally agree with your assessment that these people are inept rather than necessarily Wicked, but it feels to me that there is some sort of force, and I don't consider it to be human, and sorry for making that sound supernatural, consider it like a convergence of interests that appear to have somewhat dictated the way that this stuff unfolded, whether or not it's Pfizer's ability to kick things down the road 75 years before revealing them, and even the amnesia stroke amnesty generally suggested.
00:43:01.000So is your book an attempt to ensure that we do not forget and that things like this don't happen again?
00:43:43.000Whether there's some bigger force that was creating the environment where things happened the way they did, I don't think so.
00:43:51.000I think that this is much more, if you look at the history of pandemics and the history of viruses, this is pretty much how they've always been, well certainly the last 500 years, there's always been curfews, there's always been pandemic laws, there's always been school closures and And gathering bands and pub bands and all of that, to varying degrees in different places.
00:44:13.000It's nothing that's been created by pharmaceutical companies in the modern world or anything like that.
00:44:18.000If you look back in the Old Testament, there is quarantine rules.
00:44:22.000So I think it's more about how you, the extent to which you can control a virus that passes very easily from person to person.
00:44:29.000We haven't figured out the answer to that except for, you know, a lot of people in the houses as much as you can and prevent them socialising until you've got some sort of cure or enough people have had it to protect them.
00:44:40.000But, you know, I'm not an epidemiologist any more than you are, so who knows?
00:44:45.000What I've worked out is your catchphrases are, consider it to be a dye, a radioactive dye and I'm not an epidemiologist and thankfully you're not a radiologist either otherwise you'd be injecting yourself with dye morning noon and night is my verdict on the situation.
00:45:00.000So the things I'd like to say is that yeah while historically the most obvious thing or you know contemporarily the most obvious thing to do if you're trying to stop a disease spreading will be to control the movement of a population that seems pretty yeah that's sort of clear no one would dispute that but I suppose when you put it together with secondary emergent details such as the control of the narrative of the conditions under which the virus emerged, the Wuhan lab leak theory versus the wet market theory, the nature of the media reporting on the event, I'm not advocating for like, oh there's a global conspiracy that needs people to dress up in costumes, chant or drink bodily fluids.
00:45:39.000I'm saying that it appears that there are a bunch of economic and financial interests that are so potent and magnetic that a kind of inertia carries us through these situations in ways that are detrimental to the human population, and according to your book, Adam, an abuse of human rights, or potentially at least that's a question that we're asking.
00:45:56.000I make this show with the producer, Gareth Roy, who I can see is sat there like a diligent prefect with all sorts of too long questions.
00:46:05.000burning their way through his mind like a dose of a virus that you don't need to control a population to curtail.
00:46:11.000Gareth, why don't you ask Adam what you're longing to ask him?
00:46:14.000Now I was very interested in what you guys have talked about so far.
00:46:19.000When Russell kind of mentioned the media as he did before and Considering this idea of the kind of polarisation that was created during this time, I mean, for me personally, it felt like something I'd never experienced in the kind of extremes that we experienced it.
00:46:35.000And I wondered for you and the research that you've done for this, what part that you felt like potentially the media and even governments played in this?
00:46:45.000Because obviously there's a lot of attention paid to the more cynical attitudes towards these government responses.
00:46:53.000in terms of the lockdowns that you talk about, the inability to protest.
00:46:57.000These kind of increased emergency powers that governments seem to be able to use at will.
00:47:04.000And I kind of wonder what you think about the labelling of people who were cynical about these measures as, you know, conspiracy theorists, when they have, when the things that they were able to compare this to, for example, 9-11 and what we found out through Edward Snowden afterwards, the level of surveillance that occurred as a result of that in their response to the emergency of 9-11 and therefore why we shouldn't be cynical about the methods that were undertaken by... I told you it'd be long, didn't I?
00:47:48.000I don't know if I go so far as cynicism, but you're absolutely right.
00:47:52.000After the war on terror, there was, you know, 10 years at the least of trying to dismantle what were meant to be temporary anti-terrorism laws and which as you said, led to a huge increase in the surveillance state.
00:48:07.000Maybe that increase would have happened anyway because of the increase of technology, but I think there are lots of reasons to be sceptical of the state.
00:48:16.000I think the way I put it is this, that there are certain parts of the state, and particularly the secret services, maybe the police, Where they, if there is an opportunity to increase powers and to make what, from their perspective, to make their job easier, for example by increasing surveillance, they'll take it.
00:48:40.000And there's always going to be, in a democracy as well, there's always going to be sort of prevailing winds like against each other towards certain parts of the state wanting to impose more on freedoms and certain parts of the state wanting to free people more.
00:48:54.000And I think it's the job of And the press, and the people, to hold everybody to account, to encourage transparency, to get out there and protest, to exercise a degree of healthy scepticism when we're being told, look, we're doing this for your own good.
00:49:11.000Because in the past, the road to hell has always been paved By those kind of expressions.
00:49:18.000So I think, I mean, that's what human rights laws are about.
00:49:20.000They're about ensuring that there's a way of analyzing what's going on through a perspective of the freedoms of the individual and mechanisms to do that.
00:49:36.000But it's the best way I think we've got.
00:49:39.000Just a follow-up to that, because obviously I know you've written about the fact that the initial lockdown was proclaimed without any legal authority whatsoever.
00:49:48.000This came at a time when the opposition, as in Labour at the time, they wanted even tougher measures, in short.
00:49:57.000So we were in a bit of a situation where There was, whether it was happening legally or not, there was simply no way that there was any opposition, meaningful opposition, other than the ability to protest.
00:50:10.000And that's a point where emergency powers are kind of used in a way that, as you say, four men in a room can sign a bottom of a piece of paper to enact.
00:50:23.000How are we meant to kind of be hopeful or insure against these things happening again?
00:50:28.000How can we know that this isn't just going to be enacted whenever those in power want it to?
00:50:36.000I think there are not that many reasons to be hopeful except to say that we do have a vibrant society where people are not, unlike in Qatar, not put in prison in the most part for expressing anti-government views.
00:50:55.000I think that during an emergency, it doesn't matter what the subject of the emergency, whether it's terrorism or war or famine or whatever, you will always have a sort of feeling that expressing contrary views to the prevailing wisdom becomes dangerous.
00:51:13.000It's seen as a danger to express opposition.
00:51:16.000And people will always be attacked for that reason.
00:51:20.000I think what we've got to do is make sure we keep open the lines of communication That we encourage freedom of speech, that we encourage people to go out and protest if they feel uneasy about something, that we don't damn them for doing that.
00:51:33.000But also, that doesn't stop you being able to say, look, you're saying that COVID is made up, or I'm not saying you're saying that, to a hypothetical person, you're saying that this virus is quite obviously dangerous and it's right here amongst us, is made up or is grossly overstated, and that's contrary to pretty much all the scientific opinion.
00:51:52.000It's still okay to say, look, that is wrong.
00:51:54.000It's a contrary view in the same way it's right for that person to have the right to say the opposite.
00:51:59.000So I think that's how we've got to encourage in a way.
00:52:03.000We've got to encourage the tension and the frisson that happens when people's different views come up against each other and not worry too much about the idea that views can be dangerous.
00:52:16.000And I think that's about freedom of speech.
00:52:21.000The ability to communicate, the ability to disagree, the necessity of that in a free and open democracy.
00:52:27.000And anything that opposes that might have another aim in mind.
00:52:32.000And if you can see another agenda, potentially a play, then it's at least worth considering it.
00:52:36.000And when people are condemned, as they were, ubiquitously, aggressively, and throughout the media, you have to Query it, I suppose, and if you live in a culture where elsewhere, where you see government acting in ways and big business acting in ways that don't seem to be similarly motivated by the well-being of people.
00:52:54.000I mean, what made such sense to me about this sudden sanctity of human life is everywhere when I look at the actions of government and big business, I go, there they are again, observing the sanctity of human life.
00:53:05.000With this vile bilge that they pump out daily.
00:53:12.000Human life celebrated and sanctified at every turn.
00:53:15.000So if people are cynical about that, perhaps what they're doing is occasionally turning on TV sets, looking out of windows, looking at social media.
00:53:23.000But we certainly need people that are able to, in a calculated, clear, and educated way, as Adam has done, discern, identify, diagnose the problem.
00:53:32.000That's why I have no trouble in recommending this book, Emergency State, by Adam Wagner, which, I reckon, every three or four pages, the old radioactive die analogy will be... Look at this.
00:54:18.000Sometimes what it is, is like you do what I do, isn't it?
00:54:20.000You're asking the question and you're sort of trying to work out exactly what you mean while you're asking the question, isn't it?
00:54:27.000Um, I think I just try and fit in a few questions into one question, because a little bit of me thinks, I'm only going to get this one opportunity.
00:55:04.000Me and young Putin, while you and your mate Adam were chatting away like you were speed dating for nerds, Me and young Putin were breaking some big news, weren't we, Putin?
00:55:26.000Well, it looks like the New York Times was supposed to have a live... well, was hosting a live event With FTX's CEO, Sam Bankman, which has been in the news recently.
00:55:39.000Obviously, it's a very complex story to get your head around, so everyone do your own independent research on that.
00:55:45.000But I guess it shows that one of the partners that's sponsoring the event is a, well, is a WEF partner.
00:55:53.000This could show the link between both, you know, the government of the United States with Janet.
00:57:15.000Edward Snowden here says, on the Twitter network, Sam Bankman-Freed admits robbing 5 million people when he's getting puff pieces in the New York Times.
00:57:23.000Daniel Hale is suffering in a dungeon for the crime of revealing 9 out of 10 people we kill with drones are Mere bystanders.
00:59:24.000So he said, he was talking about theatre and he was mourning the loss of theatrical attendance in the pandemic and afterwards and he said vaccine mandates and other draconian restrictions were partly to blame.
00:59:35.000As a quote he said, if you start specifying reasons why people can't be in a theatre, I don't think it's theatre anymore.
00:59:40.000The actor-director compared America's return to normal to England's shift Tim Robbins has been on a real journey.
00:59:46.000He's reflecting, he's calling himself a hypocrite, he's been to draconian, he's going through a lot.
00:59:50.000I say, like, Tim Robbins wants to come on the show.
00:59:52.000pandemic, he demonized those who didn't follow government narratives and said he was part
00:59:57.000of the problem. He said he went to a BLM protest and later reflected on the hypocrisy of such
01:00:56.000Tim Robbins, we're on the show right now and obviously we saw Jimmy Dore, who's one of our contemporaries in the space of alternative news, talking about your recent acknowledgement that your attitude towards lockdown measures in regard to theatre had altered.