Russell Brand is back with a brand new episode of Stay Free With Russell Brand, and it's going to be a fantastic one. In this episode, we're talking about the TikTok trial, the Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton's night out in New York, and the protests in France. Plus, a look at Joe Biden inadvertently tagging neoliberal utopia Canada as the place that it actually is. Get ready for a Freudian slip from Dear Joe Biden. Stay Free with Russell Brand is on all of the social medias, if you search for it, you'll find us. This episode is brought to you by Gimlet Media and produced by Vevolution. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.media/OurAdvertisers We're part of the Robots Radio Podcast Network. See all the great network shows at RobotsRadio.net. Episode Music: "Space Travel" by Borrtex "Goodbye Outer Space" by Cairo Braga "Outer Space Warning" by Fountains of Sisyphus "Good Morning America" by The Good Fight" by Pylawn "Good Omens" by Bumble & Co. Join our FB group - click here to join in on the fun and learn more about our sponsorships and support their efforts to make the podcast! Subscribe to stay free with us on all the awesome shows on the airwaves. Subscribe, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices and become a supporter of the podcast on iTunes and Podchaser. Podcoin and leave us a review on the Podcoin on Podcoin Connect if you're looking for a chance to win a chance at a VIP membership! Get in touch about the show that gets the ultimate VIP membership offer on the best podcon experience Learn more by becoming a friend of the show and get exclusive access to our newest episode on the show? Subscribe and review it on the ultimate listening experience? Leave us on Podconversation Subscribe & subscribe to our podcast? and we'll be listening to the show on all things Podcoin and all the best vlogs on the pod is going to get the best of the best in the best places in the world in the podcast world! and much more! Thanks for listening and reviewing the show gets even better next week!
00:00:57.000We're going to be talking to Crystal Ball on the show about a variety of topics.
00:01:01.000And when we flip over to being exclusively on Rumble, we'll be talking about aspects of the TikTok trial that we wouldn't be able to speak about on YouTube.
00:01:09.000But first, did you know That Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton went to a Broadway show, and next to them in the aisle were a couple of stools.
00:01:22.000Do we don't know if those faecal deposits were as a result of their attendance, or if it's just a coincidence, do we, Gareth Roy, Screen Assistant?
00:01:31.000No, we don't know if it was them who did it.
00:01:33.000It seems odd that it would be one each and look at them.
00:01:37.000They've been to see Some Like It Hot and they seem pretty pleased about something.
00:01:41.000I would say that's the kind of euphoria that often infects a face after a deposit, Gareth, because you can let me know in the chat, in the comments, have you ever known bliss like it?
00:01:50.000Sometimes when I'm talking like this, you know what I remember is that people tune into this, parts of the mainstream media, with the specific agenda of attacking our show.
00:01:59.000And they'll say things like, Brand did a poo joke at the beginning.
00:02:05.000Well, it's going to get pretty rebellious later because we're going to be talking about the French protest and how it relates to a new emergent globally populist movement where people en masse across the world are becoming so...
00:02:18.000Incensed by institutional corruption and hypocrisy that they are taking to the streets.
00:02:24.000I wonder how these protests are going to play out.
00:02:27.000I wonder how they're going to affect leaders in your nation.
00:02:32.000Let's take a second to look at Joe Biden inadvertently tagging neoliberal utopia Canada as the place that it actually is.
00:02:41.000A sort of little brother, an emulator of the Chinese state.
00:02:46.000Get ready for a Freudian slip from Dear Joe Biden.
00:03:00.000It's interesting that he did that in Canada and it's also odd that Joe Biden's slips and errors have now become almost soundtracked with canned laughter.
00:03:25.000So I'm only talking about Joe Biden as a symbol because when I say stuff like that, I feel mean because I know he's a human being and I know like he lost children and all that kind of stuff.
00:03:34.000So I'm not attacking him as a human being.
00:03:36.000I'm just talking about as a symbol of the level of corruption and ineptitude.
00:03:42.000Don't you think that sometimes when you just learn about more wars, more corruption, like aren't we supposed to be wearing aluminum foil suits by now?
00:03:50.000Aren't we meant to be evolving towards the next level of humanity by now?
00:03:54.000I get why you feel sorry for someone who's old.
00:03:57.000But when you talk about wars, and you talk about the situation in Yemen or Syria at the moment, there are a lot of other children dying, just to kind of sew up that point.
00:04:05.000Thanks, Gal, because I don't like to be mean to people, but you're right.
00:04:08.000Due to the ongoing involvement of the US military-industrial complex in the war in Yemen, children have probably been killed today.
00:04:17.000They've probably died today, whose names we will never know, due to a geographical quirk.
00:04:22.000One of the things though that encourages me that global change is possible, that there is a global awakening, that new systems could be brought into being that allow us to bypass the entrenchment corruption that all of us live within, even if we're people that are doing okay or if we're people that Suffering terribly is this conflagration in Paris.
00:04:42.000Now, we are English, so we've got a long-standing antipathy towards France.
00:05:04.000Little Dan, who works here, operating a handheld gal, the shots we'd get... I hope he doesn't do an angry protest out there.
00:05:09.000Bear will even now be making a Chelsea Clinton style package to let you know that some may like it hot, others like it lukewarm, others like it almost semi-liquid.
00:05:21.000One of the things, before we get into the details, such as they are about these protests
00:05:25.000across France, which are essentially the French people are protesting against having to work
00:05:30.000an additional two years for no extra return, a bill that was passed in the National Assembly,
00:05:36.000that's their equivalent of Congress or Parliament, without being put to a vote.
00:05:40.000And it caused amazing scenes of disruption in France and leads me to believe that generally
00:05:44.000speaking French politics, like French everything, is a little bit sexier.
00:05:49.000One of the things though, on the ground, on the streets, in the restaurants, that's fascinating,
00:05:53.000is just how French people have immediately adjusted to living in the middle of a riot.
00:06:00.000It's like it's not bothering them anymore.
00:06:02.000Like me, if I was in a restaurant and outside was on fire, I feel like I would, like that, I wouldn't be out just going and saying, oh please, excuse me, I'll have the soup.
00:07:39.000If you want to come, you might not want to.
00:07:40.000You might be a sort of a radical French person, happy to bring down the state because you're not being pensioned properly and democracy's being ignored like everywhere because your country's being led by a neoliberal stooge that went to the right school, made the right connections, organises the right tax breaks for the powerful, attends Davos conferences, May pretend to care about cultural issues, may pretend to care about inequality, as they would call it in France, but actually cares about, I don't know, corruption.
00:09:31.000I'm going to go ahead and get started.
00:10:08.000The world has become sort of performance art.
00:10:11.000Yeah, I guess it's interesting as a metaphor you could argue that maybe we all have to get on with life and ignore all the awful atrocities that are going on just because here it's literally happening right next to them.
00:10:23.000We're ignoring something that's happening not that far away in foreign countries.
00:10:29.000Also, Nero literally fiddled while Rome burned.
00:10:33.000The Emperor Nero, who was an early symbol of centralised authority and despotism.
00:10:40.000The Emperor Nero apparently played a fiddle.
00:10:42.000I didn't think fiddles had been invented that long, but I suppose they must have been.
00:10:47.000Anyway, apparently while Rome was burning at the end of that particular empire, perhaps in the same way we're seeing the end of not just American empire, but its expansiveness.
00:10:54.000Because when we talk about America, we're not talking about you.
00:10:56.000American people with all your glory and your culture and your principles and your beauty.
00:11:00.000We're talking about American institutions, American expansionism and Americans' representation
00:11:15.000How will it play out in European nations that have evident differences?
00:11:19.000You can sort of see that and feel that, but ultimately the same kind of corporatism, the same sort of commodification, the same sort of ideology that is engendered by secularism, a kind of Sort of, what do I want to say, a diluted nihilism, a sort of sense of meaninglessness that's best embodied perhaps by a man playing a bloody organ in the street wearing a face mask while the culture falls apart around you.
00:11:45.000Martin Luther King said, and I must say tonight, that a riot is the language of the unheard.
00:11:50.000And what is it that America has failed to hear?
00:11:52.000It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met.
00:11:56.000And it's failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.
00:12:05.000In a sense, the idea that rioting is the language of the unheard is important.
00:12:14.000A riot suggests that a deep psychic injury is being expressed.
00:12:19.000A riot tells us that our institutions and systems are insufficient, they are inefficient,
00:12:26.000they are unable to represent the will of people.
00:12:30.000This case, this particular set of disturbances brought about by an undemocratic change to the pension laws is a great example because the French feel like they have a Deal!
00:12:59.000You have a relationship with divinity of your own determination.
00:13:04.000That you have relationships with the people that you love.
00:13:06.000That you're allowed to decide on your own destiny.
00:13:08.000You're not meant to be someone boxed off in order to facilitate convenience of powerful sets of interests.
00:13:16.000Victor Hugo, writer of Les Miserables, which is of course about the unrest that led to the French Revolution in that book and, you know, subsequent musical and all those assets.
00:13:25.000Every man who has in his soul a secret feeling of revolt against any act of the state of life or of destiny
00:14:28.000But when you sense, hold on a minute, we could create a better world, you know,
00:14:32.000the technology and the ideology for true democracy We could localise, we could collectivise, we could organise things differently.
00:14:41.000It's not to say that there would be no centralised authority, but it would be authority in response to the will of the people.
00:14:47.000Essentially, what they claim we already have, when what we really have are institutions that operate on behalf of corporate interests and financial and military interests and keep you distracted and subdued.
00:14:57.000Let me know in the chat and the comments if you agree with that.
00:15:04.000We have the right to refuse. This is our right, yours and mine.
00:15:07.000You can't know all the laws by heart. You don't know what will happen if you refuse, but you have to try.
00:15:13.000I suppose this is a kind of a call for deep bravery in a time that can feel pretty frightening.
00:15:21.000You might not yet know what exactly Emmanuel Macron is all about, but you might have the same sense that I do, that he's a kind of globalist corporate stooge, that one of those people that operates on behalf of the rich, uses language about equality and diversity, a kind of, what do you want to call him, a Gaelic Trudeau figure, like just one of those people that acts like they're super nice, but in fact operates on behalf of essentially Well, you'd be kind of right, I reckon.
00:15:47.000He went to the École Nationale de l'Administration.
00:15:51.000It's an elite French finishing school that a lot of French leaders and CEOs and stuff attend.
00:15:56.000He came under fire after they spent 2.4 billion with consultancy firms now being investigated for tax evasions.
00:16:04.000They've just introduced a new bill that prevents you photographing the police.
00:16:07.000I guess that came about because of those yellow vest protests in France recently,
00:16:11.000which was a fascinating movement because it couldn't be dubbed right wing or left wing or racist.
00:16:18.000Or it seemed to be a genuine organic populist movement.
00:16:21.000The fact is we do in a country as vast and as complex as France,
00:16:25.000there can be a variety of cultural interests of different demographics.
00:16:31.000But the thing that populism is about, if you ask me, is that it's truly about allowing people to come together
00:16:38.000around the issues around which we all agree and to temporarily suspend internal conflict around the
00:16:45.000subjects that where we do have disagreements, cultural identity, etc., where there's necessarily going to
00:17:01.000That's like they're ushering that in and sort of the auspices of the Olympics, of course, famously now raising the retirement age by a couple of years without so much as a vote.
00:17:11.000And during these riots, they've been using ketaline and spraying people with gas all the usual sort of staff garroth. Well yeah I mean one
00:17:19.000of the things that he's literally been doing these last few years is increasing the kind of police
00:17:23.000state. I mean has he? Well as we're seeing happening in the US and certainly a crackdown on protests
00:17:29.000in this country as well Macron's been putting loads of money into increasing that police state
00:17:34.000militarizing exactly again like we've seen in America and as we've seen happening over the pandemic it's
00:17:39.000similar kinds of stories over in France they're doing the same thing and so they're actively
00:17:44.000trying to crush dissent in ways that I feel like that conversation we had with Glenn Greenwald, like the elites are no longer interested in negotiating or appeasing the masses, they are happy instead to militarise, confident that with AI and new technology it's possible to repress dissent and crush dissenters.
00:18:06.000That's why in your country, America, You're seeing the militarisation of the police force.
00:18:10.000You even saw budgets allocated to COVID aid reallocated to the militarisation of the police force.
00:18:17.000That was pretty popular during those times.
00:18:18.000In our country, the UK, similarly, we're seeing the undue empowerment of police forces.
00:18:24.000And by the way, this is not anti-police rhetoric.
00:18:25.000I've got friends that are in the police force and I know a lot of people join those organisations with Good, well-intentioned, community-oriented goals.
00:18:34.000And I would say consensual policing, consensual law, democratic law, be it having services within your community, by your community, is a big part of our future.
00:18:44.000What we don't want are police forces that operate on behalf of the state, crushing dissent and ultimately the military arm of the government.
00:18:51.000That's why it's interesting that after the whatever you want to call what happened on jan 6 insurrections protests riots you choose your word one of the responses was to give billions more to the capital police force and turn them into a kind of domestic terror force because when they talk about terror they're talking about you listen we're only going to be on youtube for a couple of more minutes then we're going to click over to being exclusively
00:19:14.000On Rumble, we're going to be talking about how Rumble has been banned in France, and of course a lot of mainstream media are criticizing and condemning Rumble.
00:19:21.000That's because we're doing something right.
00:19:23.000We're going to be talking too about the kind of stories that are impossible to talk about on YouTube, including...
00:19:29.000Fellow content creator, Dr. John Campbell's recent revelations around excess deaths, which we simply cannot talk about on this platform, and how that relates to the ongoing congressional TikTok hearings currently.
00:19:45.000Because what's fascinating about those hearings is every single thing that they're saying about TikTok, they're responsible for themselves.
00:20:10.000One of the things that's fascinating about this story, of course, not just the corruption, not just the data capture, not just the fact that ultimately what they're looking for is TikTok to be propagandised on behalf of the state.
00:20:20.000They just want a more favourable relationship with TikTok that they presumably can't get because of its origins and national relationships.
00:20:27.000It's another of those stories that shows us that the current elites still do not understand what they're dealing with when it comes to the power of social media.
00:21:18.000Is that the same thing or is that two things?
00:21:20.000Like, it doesn't sound like he knows enough to be empowered.
00:21:23.000What's really lovely about this, maybe spool back about five seconds, because what I love about this is you see Mr. Shu Qiu, the CEO there at TikTok, or ByteDance, or Datadance, or whatever they call that company that owns TikTok, you see him do a face that I'm familiar with as he works out, oh no, I'm talking to someone who's so much more stupid than I am, is I'm going to have to level down almost to sort of finger puppets to describe this to him. Watch him, he looks up and he's
00:21:49.000like, oh no, this geezer's an idiot, where do I begin? Like, you know, when you do, you're not
00:21:53.000old enough, you're young enough, but when like remote controls and that came in and we had
00:21:57.000to explain it to our nans and grandads, no nan, you just have to, oh, do I jab the TV with it like
00:22:03.000it's a bamboo cane? No, nan, you can stay in your armchair, for God's sake, woman.
00:22:22.000You're dealing with someone who... But more important than this obvious ineptitude of the investigators in this particular congressional hearing, is a story or a notion that we touch on pretty frequently.
00:22:36.000How do they have the moral authority to investigate, let alone condemn TikTok when they, check this out, politicians blast TikTok by accepting its executives donations.
00:22:47.000So you've got politicians condemning TikTok who take money from TikTok.
00:22:52.000If you think TikTok's bad, don't take TikTok's money.
00:22:57.000I mean, this comes on top of what we already know about all the members of Congress and senators that own, as we always talk about, stocks and shares in the big tech companies that they regulate.
00:23:06.000Yet more hypocrisy on top of hypocrisy.
00:23:08.000Later on, we're talking to Crystal Ball from Breaking Point.
00:23:11.000We love her and saga, saga, saga, saga.
00:23:24.000But my second question is going to be, do you believe that any current political party is capable of dealing with the deep systemic corruption that becomes evident with the money in politics issue?
00:23:36.000Why will no political party say, if you are in Congress, you cannot own stocks and shares at all.
00:23:53.000If you made those laws, it would change the landscape of politics over Night.
00:23:59.000So even this TikTok trial currently, which will ultimately, you know, what they want is the ability to censor the ordinary users of TikTok.
00:24:06.000They certainly won't be trying to make institutional change within a powerful organization like that.
00:24:23.000All the way through, we can move on, or the CDC, all the way through, all the way through the pandemic, or certainly at points of it, they used data, they captured data and used it to monitor people.
00:24:34.000data yeah based on people's activities during lockdown to monitor whether people were moving
00:24:39.000about or not but again like not actions that you would expect from your own government when we're
00:24:45.000talking about spying so it's okay it's okay when we do it but when China are doing it where that's
00:24:49.000what we're against. Every single thing they're attacking TikTok for they are culpable of.
00:24:57.000Accusing TikTok of having a relationship with the CCP, with the Chinese state communist party, they have relationships with social media companies.
00:25:06.000The only thing that I can think of is They're not Chinese.
00:25:43.000Google handed private customer data over to FBI investigators.
00:25:46.000Once there's a precedent for that... Yeah, just another way in which big tech and the government colludes.
00:25:50.000And has colluded, as we have witnessed through the Twitter files.
00:25:53.000If there's an organisation as powerful as big tech organisations have become, you simply cannot have an unfavourable relationship with the state.
00:26:01.000They necessarily have got to find a way to jog along nicely together, haven't they?
00:26:05.000The idea that this whole thing is about intrusion and privacy is kind of laughable in a way, when you know things like this have been going on.
00:26:12.000If it were about that, they would have done different things in all of these cases.
00:26:16.000So this idea that we're forced to live in a kind of theatre, that's why I think there's an uncanniness when you see that keyboard playing in France.
00:26:24.000There's something eerie about it, like, oh, this means something.
00:26:36.000Of course, in France, Rumble's banned there because, well, it's not Not necessarily banned, was it?
00:26:42.000It's like France won't allow Russia Today content to be shown, so Rumble video service, turn off France.
00:26:50.000Rumble, an online video platform and cloud services, has disabled access to its services in France after the French government demanded the multinational company remove Russian news sources.
00:26:59.000Recently, the French government demanded that we remove certain Russian news sources from Rumble.
00:27:02.000It's part of our mission to restore a free and open internet.
00:27:04.000We've committed not to move the goalposts of our content policies.
00:27:08.000The statement from the statement from Rumble read the company said
00:27:11.000it would challenge the legality of demands made by the French government.
00:27:15.000Chris Pavlovsky, who's the CEO there, has like, yeah, look, he's made that sort of claim once more on Twitter.
00:27:21.000I've got that amazing clip of us at the Rumble launch party where me and Chris Pavlovsky sort of stood to get a photo
00:27:45.000What is the excess deaths thing that John Campbell said?
00:27:49.000A new study covered by John Campbell has demonstrated a correlation between countries with high COVID vaccination levels and excess mortality.
00:29:14.000people said that when you know like if you join our locals community where you get extra content and the ability to ask us questions directly it's much more casual show our extra show you know like it's more relaxing but earlier i was eating some dinner so gareth hosted it for a bit and people said it's like when garth hosts swain world Wayne World?
00:29:48.000I'll tell you what, we've got a fantastic show.
00:29:50.000Crystal Ball might already, for all we know, Crystal Ball could already be on the line and about to be subject to be reading like a gold advert or something.
00:30:35.000Like during the pandemic, there was talk about how dangerous everything was, but that it definitely, definitely didn't come from a lab and definitely came out of a stinky old dirty old wet market.
00:30:43.000They were still doing mad sort of Things that are too much like gain of function.
00:30:47.000You know, we want to make sure we get the language right because even though we're on Rumble where there is free speech, we believe in responsible speech and we believe in unifying speech.
00:31:19.000The only thing that could be worse than that would be to find out that, I don't know, during the pandemic itself, they carried on doing that type of experiment that caused it in the first place, if indeed that did cause it, and that would be unbelievable!
00:31:36.000Today's story teaches us a great deal about how that went down.
00:31:41.000In particular, Jon Stewart, who, let's face it, is something of a darling of the liberal establishment left, was widely condemned and criticized for his brilliant Wuhan joke and observation about its likely origins.
00:31:54.000What surprises me even more than the venom and invective faced by dissenting and critical voices is the astonishing fact that during the pandemic new evidence suggests that they continued with the very kind of experiments that likely caused the whole thing in the first place.
00:32:12.000So the idea was, you know, about the vaccines and other things that science had truly helped heal the world from a pandemic, probably called by science.
00:32:23.000Let's face it, as a comedian, every time you're doing joke about Wuhan, which I do in my new special, link in the description if you want it, you're aware of the brilliance of the outbreak of chocolatey goodness in Hershey, Pennsylvania, as probably the perfect pandemic joke.
00:32:37.000But the backlash is what's interesting in this instance.
00:32:40.000And the backlash was swift, immediate, and quite loud.
00:32:46.000The part that I don't like about it is the The absolutes and the dismissive, like, fuck you, I'm done with you.
00:33:10.000And I'm sure me and Jon Stewart would disagree with loads of things around the pandemic, as me and any other person would on a variety of subjects.
00:33:16.000And a significant point that we need to address is that they carried on with experiments of this nature, even knowing that it was possible that the pandemic had been caused by a lab leak.
00:33:29.000And this reporting is from the mainstream media.
00:33:31.000Way back in the midst of the pandemic when there were new varieties and variants emerging every day, oh the Delta one, the Omicron one, they were, instead of thinking, oh this is a pain in the arse, when are we going to be able to go back to our normal lives such as they are, combining them to see what would happen.
00:33:46.000At what point is there going to be some humility?
00:33:49.000At what point will the hubris be punctured?
00:33:51.000At what point will proper safety measures and a consensual agenda for scientific experimentation, other than the pursuit of finance would be what I contest, be achieved?
00:34:00.000British scientists Lads, you've let us down.
00:34:03.000I was hoping it was going to be American or Chinese scientists.
00:34:07.000Carried out experiments that risked creating more dangerous variants during the pandemic, it has been claimed.
00:34:12.000In testing led by Imperial College London and supported by the UK Health Security Agency, cells were infected with Delta and Omicron at the same time to see which had a competitive advantage.
00:34:22.000So I was thinking that scientists are like children.
00:34:31.000Anton van der Merwe, Professor of Molecular Immunology at the University of Oxford said, bearing in mind he's a conspiracy theorist, that such experiments risk combining the two variants to produce something more lethal that could have infected scientists or leaked from the laboratory.
00:34:46.000Don't you worry when your own common sense and gut instincts turn out to be empirical science.
00:34:51.000Hey, wait a minute, shouldn't they not be doing that?
00:34:54.000Hey, what if it came from that lab though?
00:34:56.000All those things just keep being true.
00:35:03.000Don't forget, in the face of all the propaganda, that these people are fucking maniacs!
00:35:08.000Coronaviruses like SARS-CoV-2 are well known to evolve by exchanging genetic material when two distinct viruses infect the same cell, he said.
00:35:16.000This makes it much more likely that these strains will recombine and create a more dangerous variant, which could infect those doing the experiments, who could then spread it into the community.
00:35:25.000Professor Van der Merff said, Using Delta and Omicron was particularly risky because they were from different lineages and had more differences than those variants closer to the original Wuhan strain.
00:35:35.000What kind of scientists are doing that?
00:35:37.000What kind of reckless, risk-taking high-rollers are conducting experiments that seem to be fueled primarily by risk and gambling?
00:35:46.000These are not the qualities I want in clinical scientists.
00:35:49.000I want them to be like, okay, well, we've got a problem here.
00:36:32.000A spokesman for the university said, And we all know that government decision making during the pandemic was absolutely perfect, whether that was the parties they continued to hold throughout the pandemic, or the way that they admitted in text messages that they were exaggerating the risks in order to frighten us.
00:36:58.000It was conducted in a biosafety level three laboratory.
00:37:02.000We don't even need biosafety level one and two.
00:37:05.000Always try your hardest for it to be safe.
00:37:19.000Always try your best not to cause a pandemic.
00:37:22.000In line with strict government regulations.
00:37:24.000Government regulations at this point don't seem to have that much credibility, do they?
00:37:28.000I mean, it's likely this thing came from a lab leak.
00:37:31.000The government responded appallingly and were biased in directions that were ultimately unfavourable.
00:37:36.000They were dishonest and propagandist throughout it.
00:37:39.000So we've got science that's interested primarily in profit, a government that's interested in regulating, even if it's unethical and untruthful, and there are literal examples of that.
00:37:49.000That is not a combination for a loving republic.
00:37:52.000Since the start of the pandemic, there have been fears that COVID-19 leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, where researchers were carrying out experiments on bat coronaviruses.
00:38:03.000Why are we still talking about Raccoon Dog and trying to blame a perfectly innocent, adorable new pet?
00:38:09.000Anyway, probably you don't often have viruses leak from labs.
00:38:12.000It's probably rare, unprecedented, or hardly happens at all.
00:38:15.000So we've probably all got nothing to worry about.
00:38:18.000In recent decades, oh yeah, recent ones, smallpox Swine flu, SARS, and anthrax, as well as foot and mouth disease, have escaped through laboratory leaks.
00:38:30.000Swine flu, ew, SARS, well, we know where that led.
00:38:34.000Anthrax, I didn't even know that was a disease, it was a literal thing terrorists did, as well as foot and mouth disease, which I think, of the diseases, is the most disgusting one, because who wants a foot in their mouth?
00:38:53.000We've all had a terrible time in the pandemic.
00:38:54.000It's been rough for all of us, whether it's the deterioration in education standards, the threats to small businesses, the lack of trust in institutions, the increase in inequality.
00:39:02.000We've made some vital decisions on that basis as scientists.
00:39:05.000We are pleased to announce More dangerous pathogens in laboratories!
00:39:10.000And also, some of them we're doing on biosafety level one.
00:39:22.000We're doing it in cities and towns, where people live.
00:39:25.000But, you know, if they're going to live in cities and towns, some of which already have markets that are not as dry as they should be, they're well accommodated with these kind of risks.
00:39:34.000Imagine if you're buying a house and the estate agent says, oh, there's a market over there.
00:39:39.000Should also tell you there's a laboratory there doing high risk experimentation with lethal, deadly pathogens, which is going to worry you more.
00:40:02.000That could lead to the accidental or deliberate release of a pandemic-capable pathogen.
00:40:07.000I don't think we had to even consider deliberate release.
00:40:10.000Okay, so due to our risky experiments that we conducted only at biosafety level one, there has, I'm sorry to say, because we're in a busy urban area, there has been a lab leak.
00:40:57.000Professor van der Merwe, who must be exhausted, has argued previously that many scientists were reluctant to consider the possibility that a laboratory leak started the pandemic for fear of having to curtail their own risky viral experiments.
00:41:09.000Hey, but, like, you know, if it did come from that lab, what about my own risky experiments?
00:41:18.000Their love of risky experimentation should not be the north star of our decision-making.
00:41:24.000Well, first and foremost, we will not be doing anything to curtail the risky experiments of these adorable, fun-loving scientists.
00:41:31.000Now, put that to one side, how best to handle this pandemic so that as much money as possible and as many rules as possible can be...
00:41:39.000Lost my focus on the fun-loving scientist for a minute.
00:41:42.000He discovered that in a separate experiment in Germany, scientists carried out similar tests as Imperial using the alpha and beta variants on hamsters, ferrets and humanised mice.
00:42:54.000If it was conclusively proven the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic was the result of a laboratory leak, it would obviously strengthen the case for stricter global regulation of experiments on potentially dangerous pathogens.
00:43:05.000So that's just one more reason why the narrative is being so tightly controlled.
00:43:09.000Why they're working so hard to say it was a raccoon dog.
00:43:11.000Why they're working so hard to smear dissenting voices.
00:43:14.000Why at the beginning, even when they were considering the lab leak theory themselves, because it's so bloody obvious, they prevented that from being widely shared and promoted the wet market idea.
00:43:25.000Doesn't it make you think that it's been overhauled?
00:43:27.000In the entire way that science is conducted.
00:43:29.000Notably, not having science as a subset of corporate pharmaceutical interests.
00:43:33.000Not having science as a tool to underwrite a new orthodoxy of regulating people.
00:43:38.000Having science as a kind of mutual and magnificent principle to drive our kind forward.
00:43:47.000It seems to me that we should regulate, prevent, massively shut down this type of experimentation unless it directly leads to advances and benefits for ordinary people, not just for profit and whatever other crazy motivations are in there that I can't even work out.
00:44:18.000Alex Overton, locals works fine in France.
00:44:22.000It's nice, isn't it, to know that it's working perfectly well.
00:44:25.000Killuminati369, deploy the next variant.
00:44:29.000These are the kind of comments that allow us to seamlessly move into a conversation with a very important voice in our cultural space of independent media and free thinking.
00:44:40.000Friend of the show, personal, deity is too strong a word, but a reporter that I very much admire.
00:44:49.000Crystal Ball from Breaking Point is joining us.
00:44:52.000Alright Crystal, thanks for coming mate.
00:45:08.000We wanted to start by talking about the French protests and what can be drawn when talking about the, I don't know, is it the downfall, the demise of neoliberalism?
00:45:20.000And we wanted to look at whether or not you personally feel that it's too late.
00:45:24.000to reform centre-left parties, but to accept that with the ongoing militarisation of the
00:45:30.000police force, this tendency for centralising authority and crushing dissent, where the
00:45:36.000change from outside of the system is going to be required, in fact, isn't that what protests
00:45:40.000and riots ultimately are? So I just wanted you to contextualise the protests in France
00:45:47.000alongside what's happening in your country for us. Thank you.
00:45:52.000Well, I think of neoliberalism as a sort of zombie ideology, which has clearly failed
00:46:00.000and been rejected by all sorts of people all around the world as failing to really serve
00:46:08.000So you end up with governments and economies, which should be there to serve society, to serve the people, and instead are serving a group of But I call it a zombie ideology because even as the failings of it have been exposed and rejected, it still holds a lot of power as we see obviously in the UK, as we see in the US with Joe Biden, as we see in France with Macron.
00:46:37.000Being able to win reelection with, you know, he had like a 30% approval rating when he won reelection.
00:46:43.000And by the way, Joe Biden's chief of staff pointed that out as a model for how Joe Biden himself could get reelected, even as he is tremendously unpopular.
00:46:53.000So that's how I sort of see the ideology of neoliberalism.
00:46:58.000As far as whether it can be reformed within the system or what sort of tactics might work, I think you need a whole-of-body politic approach.
00:47:08.000So the sort of protest movement that you see right now in France, and incidentally that's being very successful right now in Israel as well, that's not just people marching the street with placards, but it's people shutting down airports, shutting down commerce, shutting down transit, and really hurting Neoliberalism in the Capitol, where it really hurts, that is tremendously powerful.
00:47:31.000I think another essential piece, and all of these are about basically, you know, small d democratic weapons.
00:47:38.000Another piece is in building out the power of labor and labor unions.
00:47:42.000That's obviously an instrumental part in having power when you go to protest and when you go to have a general strike, that you have people who are working together in solidarity to have that kind of an impact.
00:47:52.000But then I think another piece is electoral politics.
00:47:55.000You know, in the American context, we take for granted that the Democratic Party is what it is and the Republican Party is what it is.
00:48:02.000But these parties are just collections of people.
00:48:05.000And the Democratic Party of the past, When it was the FDR New Deal party meant something very different and stood for things that are very different from what the party does today.
00:48:16.000So, you know, I think the people who run the DNC are a bunch of posers who could, you know, be supplanted by a real movement of the people and sort of hijack that party to restore it to its roots of serving the interests of the people rather than the interests of the donor class.
00:48:34.000That's an exciting proposition, but even in recent electoral cycles we've seen that party, it feels like from within, scupper the attempt of a more populist leader in the form of Bernie Sanders, who I figure you were well into, and it makes me feel like, in a sense, part of the function of these institutions is their ongoing preservation and the ability to stymie any
00:49:38.000And he has a progressive primary opponent who was announced in Marianne Williamson.
00:49:44.000And Democrats, for all their talk about democracy during January 6, et cetera.
00:49:50.000Now that it's time to actually put to a vote among Democratic primary voters, OK, who do you want to be your nominee?
00:49:56.000And we know from the polls that an overwhelming majority would like Joe Biden to step aside and they would like to have options in this primary.
00:50:03.000They've already switched around the order of the states to try to rig the primary election for Biden.
00:50:09.000And they're also already saying, we're not even going to have a debate.
00:50:12.000So you don't even get to hear on a stage what the various platforms are.
00:50:17.000So there is no doubt that when it comes down to it, they have zero commitment to democracy.
00:50:21.000They will use any authoritarian tactics, just as Macron did in France, to try to maintain their power.
00:50:27.000The only thing that can shift them from that stance is a populist uprising that forces that Their hand that demands a debate that demands a real primary that demands a real democracy.
00:50:38.000And I think those are the only sort of choices.
00:50:40.000Neoliberalism, it's no accident that it's being forced.
00:50:44.000leaders like Macron and Biden are being forced to use increasingly authoritarian tactics
00:50:49.000in service of maintaining their power because it has sort of been revealed as this rotten
00:50:55.000ideology that doesn't deliver on its promises.
00:50:58.000The only response to that is a truly populist response, which really means handing power
00:51:04.000and people reclaiming power both in their workplace, through labor unions, both in the
00:51:08.000streets, through protest, and also by taking back electoral politics.
00:51:12.000So you have to have all three of those pieces in my opinion.
00:51:16.000I feel like the professional neoliberal centre-left kind of hates working people and that kind of contempt comes through continually in their rhetoric.
00:51:26.000Marianne Williamson's coming on this show next week.
00:51:29.000I love what you said there about the institutional and centralised authoritarianism that would corruptly rejig the order of those sort of state elections in order to prevent any momentum or even debate and that makes me feel like what like why would I grant any airtime to that kind of political body with that kind of mechanic a slightly more trivial question before moving on to things that are a bit more intense it just occurred to me then uh crystal like do you see now when joe biden makes one of those errors where he sort of accidentally says it you know that's why i love china when he's in canada or whatever that people laugh straight away with that and do not product placement that drink you should be drinking
00:52:12.000Kombucha, or something healthy, rather than that evil brew!
00:52:30.000Get your agent on the phone, I'll do that deal.
00:52:33.000Like, when Joe Biden does that, when Joe Biden does that stuff and he makes a mistake, have you noticed they started laughing now?
00:52:39.000Do you think that that's something that's happened as a result of a spontaneous cultural movement?
00:52:44.000Or do you think someone goes out and briefs before Joe Biden appears on stage and goes, if he makes one of those errors, just chuckle along with beloved old Uncle Joe to sort of soften the evident ineptitude and the horrible metaphor that that ineptitude represents Of a kind of atrophy and cadaverous power.
00:53:02.000In fact, when you say zombie neoliberalism, it is convenient that there's an actual zombie running the country.
00:53:09.000He's like the sort of living embodiment, semi-living embodiment of exactly that.
00:53:14.000Look, I think when people are uncomfortable, they tend to laugh because they don't know what else to do.
00:53:20.000And so when you have incidents like, you know, I don't know if you remember the one where there was a congresswoman who died in a car accident and he had sent out a letter of condolences to the family and then he's at this event and he's calling for her, Jackie, Jackie, where are you?
00:53:36.000In any case, there are clear signs that he's not the politician that he used to be.
00:53:44.000Now, listen, if people are able to see him on a debate stage and hear his ideas for the country and defend the areas where he's made clear promises and completely failed on and in a completely open democratic fashion, that's what the American people decide to go in the direction of.
00:54:01.000But what They are trying to do because they know that he's an incredibly precarious and fragile position is they're trying to shut down any ability for people to hear an alternative whatsoever.
00:54:13.000So, you know, it really reveals their hand of how weak they think that he is.
00:54:18.000And then they also have the issue of Kamala Harris as vice president.
00:54:22.000She's even less popular than Joe Biden is.
00:54:25.000And not only is she a heartbeat away from the presidency, she's the heartbeat away from a president who, you know, would end the next term at 86 years old.
00:54:34.000So this is a series of really compounding problems for them that they don't quite know how to deal with other than through authoritarian, anti-democratic tactics.
00:54:43.000The only choice is for us to reject them and say, listen, whatever you think about the issues, whatever you think about Marianne Williamson or Joe Biden, The American people at least deserve to have an open forum and an open debate because we're at a critical juncture in our nation's history and in world history where it's never been more important to have that open discussion and debate of ideas and visions for the future.
00:55:05.000I am really encouraged by what you say, Crystal, about how populism can advance existing political
00:55:14.000structures because I tend sometimes out of despair to feel like, oh, there's no point.
00:55:44.000Well, if I could just insert in that, you know, I'm talking a lot about the Democratic
00:55:48.000Party, but there's a similar process that's playing out in the Republican Party right
00:55:52.000I mean, there are some real schisms that have emerged in the Republican Party that are a real, you know, potential source of democracy and reform as well.
00:56:02.000So, you know, I don't see this as a sort of one-sided opportunity to change the tenor of our country or the world or change the landscape.
00:56:11.000But it's not going to come without a fight.
00:56:14.000I mean, the people who have power are not going to just willingly give it up to a group of renegades, whether it's operating within this party system or within a third party.
00:56:25.000political system, you know, as much as Bernie Sanders was shut out in 2016 and again in 2020, he still came a lot closer.
00:56:33.000Then a third party is able to come just because of the fundamental structure of first past the post voting and how this ultimately works.
00:56:41.000So I just think from a pragmatic standpoint, you're likely to have a better shot of success going for hijacking one of the existing political parties than coming from the outside.
00:56:52.000You're quite right that that pressure should be bipartisan.
00:56:55.000I wanted to ask you, do the current TikTok congressional hearings demonstrate the evident and ongoing hypocrisy that exists in American politics, in so much as almost every facet of attack that's being explored, whether it's the surveillance, the data capture, the apparent collaboration with the state, could be levelled at American.
00:57:20.000Social media companies or global social media companies.
00:57:24.000And I want to tie this to the subject we were just discussing, meaningful change within the system or even beyond the system.
00:57:32.000Do you feel that if either the Republican Party or the Democrat Party or an independent party stood on a platform that included banning politicians from having a second job, Banning politicians to trade in stocks and shares full stop or having any dependent child or spouse own stocks and shares and making it illegal for either party to receive corporate donations, only individual funders and even then in a very regulated way.
00:57:57.000Do you think that that, you know, essentially getting money out of politics, ending lobbying, ending congressional stock trading, ending the sort of funding of the parties by finance and big business, would alter the landscape of American politics So radically that, you know, that it would actually bloody well work and be meaningful.
00:58:14.000And what kind of opposition would those kind of ideas face and how would they stop it happening and sort of loophole their way out of it?
00:58:22.000Well, I think it'd be dramatically popular with the American people.
00:58:28.000You know, leaders, congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle were sort of forced to pretend like they cared about banning stock trading in Congress.
00:58:37.000And both Nancy Pelosi, back when she was Speaker, and also Kevin McCarthy, when he was running to be Speaker of the House, pretended like they wanted to take action on this issue because they knew it was so popular and so politically powerful.
00:58:49.000And then now that Kevin McCarthy is actually Speaker of the House, you haven't heard anything about it anymore.
00:58:54.000Even the renegades that like challenged him in terms of a speakership, that was not one of the concessions that they extracted.
00:59:00.000And Nancy Pelosi found a way to effectively kill, you know, some real genuine bipartisan efforts that might have had some teeth in that direction.
00:59:07.000So they use it as a political cudgel as it serves them, but then make sure that there is no actual change that happens.
00:59:14.000Do I think that getting money out of American politics would make a difference?
00:59:18.000I think it would absolutely, you know, transform the landscape of American politics because we ask ourselves so many times, why when you have things that are so incredibly popular, you know, things like making sure people have paid sick leave or that union membership is available to people or that people have a living wage?
00:59:36.000I mean, these are massively popular issues.
00:59:41.000And frequently, corruption is a core part of the story.
00:59:45.000And if we go even one level deeper than that, this is really, going back to France, this really is the core of the rot of neoliberalism, which says profits and money above all else.
00:59:56.000So of course, if that is your system, and that's the altar that you worship at, Then you're going to end up with a system that is rife with corruption.
01:00:06.000So I think that's kind of the root of the problem, and they'll do everything they can to protect the status quo that exists because the people in power, they got there because things work well for them the way that they stand right now.
01:00:18.000It means to me that that's an interesting edifice to focus attack on, because it exposes the areas in which both parties plainly agree and will use rhetoric around it, but won't implement legislation around it.
01:00:34.000And it exposes that, as Chomsky says, where both parties agree, you have no choice at all.
01:00:39.000And to sort of introduce that and popularise those ideas, I feel like it'd be a really interesting way of radicalising political debate in a meaningful way.
01:00:47.000Crystal, thank you so much for joining us.
01:00:50.000Thank you for endorsing that soft drink, which I think has links to Alzheimer's.
01:01:34.000I think we advanced the debate somewhat, didn't we?
01:01:37.000And we also promoted a deadly soft drink.
01:01:41.000No, I think, I mean, I think, you know, all the points about Biden, I mean, I wasn't aware of what Krystal was talking about in terms of ways in which the Democrat Party are going about making, ensuring that, you know, Biden gets re-elected over, for example, someone like Marianne Williamson, who we'll speak to, but it's...
01:02:14.000Listen, when I went over to Rumble and met this... I already knew the CEO, Chris Pavlovsky, but like, I went over there and sort of there was, you know, I met Donald J. Trump.
01:02:26.000His wife, that little girlfriend, that lady, Kim, off of, like, Fox, who really aggressively attacked me, saying I was like a scumbag and a stinkhole and a scuzzbucket, and then, which was an absolute joy to me, and, like, just laughed her way through all of those things, and it sort of felt like it didn't matter at all to me.
01:02:43.000We had like our photo done me and Chris Pavlovsky over by the rumble logo right and I just as we were taking our photo like he sort of intuitively put his hands clasped his hands across his midriff right like or lower midriff your torso let's call it and I just went at the moment in that moment I went Don't cover your genitals!
01:03:03.000Like, as if I was an expert in body language or something like that?
01:03:06.000And, like, it was the person that took a photo that works with us, Lauren, I think, she had a camera on live, so it's got the audio of it.
01:03:14.000And, you know, to celebrate Rumble's recent controversies being banned in France, or at least taking themselves off of the French system, here is me and Chris Pavlovsky, and me advising him to not cover his genitals, which I say is an entertaining moment.
01:04:15.000And then sort of the observation that perhaps in Biden, we have the perfect zombie president, a cadaverous undead figure lurching his way forwards into new conflicts in Syria, weaponizing and mobilizing and monetizing the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.
01:04:34.000We've got a fantastic week coming up tomorrow.
01:04:36.000We'll be speaking to Vandana Shiva, the great mother We'll be talking about the various agricultural revolts, in particular the one in the Netherlands currently, and again, how a new populist movement that transcends cultural differences is emerging.