Stay Free - Russel Brand - March 03, 2024


Here’s the News: A Shocking Protest Against the War From US Airman. Who’s War Is This Really?


Episode Stats


Length

17 minutes

Words per minute

198.12619

Word count

3,454

Sentence count

159

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

5

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Active US Airman Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington today. He said he did it in protest of the genocide in Gaza. A police officer showed up pointing a gun at his burning body and tried to save him.

Transcript

Transcripts from "Stay Free - Russel Brand" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hello there, you Awakening Wonders on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you download your podcasts.
00:00:05.000 We really appreciate you, our listeners, and want to bring you more content.
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00:00:23.000 Once a week, we bring you in-depth conversations with guests like Jordan Peterson, RFK Jr., Sam Harris, Vandana Shiva, Gabor Maté, and many more.
00:00:31.000 Now enjoy this episode of Stay Free with Russell Brand.
00:00:34.000 Remember, there's an episode every single day to educate and elevate our consciousness together.
00:00:40.000 Stay free and enjoy the episode.
00:00:52.000 Thanks for joining us on our voyage to truth and freedom.
00:00:55.000 Remember you can support our work by becoming a member of our community.
00:00:58.000 The link is in the description.
00:00:59.000 We make content every single day including additional content just for our supporters so that we can grow this movement and so we can oppose what we identify as hypocrisy and corruption and do our best to grow and awaken together.
00:01:11.000 Now we have a martyred man on our hands Aaron Bushnell who may have mental health issues.
00:01:16.000 He may be suffering from a variety of conditions.
00:01:18.000 We're unable to assess that yet.
00:01:20.000 What we can say for certain is a person who felt strongly enough in his nation, America, to live his life dedicated to it through active military service has set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in protest against the ongoing Middle Eastern war, which some people would call, of course, and let me know in the chat how you feel about this, a genocide in Gaza.
00:01:39.000 Now, what does it tell us about the military industrial complex and the state Of the unipolar ambitions of the military-industrial complex, the idea that you cannot have an ascendant Russia or a thriving China, what you must have is globalist state backed by institutions like NATO.
00:01:55.000 Have we reached the point where you can't even use the time-honoured argument that it is unpatriotic to not support war?
00:02:01.000 That we have to support the troops.
00:02:02.000 Those people that bravely put themselves on the front line have to be respected.
00:02:06.000 And to question wars is to question their loyalty.
00:02:08.000 Is to daub yourself anti-patriotic.
00:02:11.000 Well, what does this event tell us?
00:02:13.000 And indeed, imagine if this protester were aligned to issues that the state supports, how this death would be exploited.
00:02:21.000 Imagine that this could be framed as somehow, oh this guy set himself on fire because he doesn't like Donald Trump in some way.
00:02:26.000 Or if they have in some way been repressed or damaged by a conservative or traditionalist agenda.
00:02:33.000 Imagine how this event would have been exploited.
00:02:35.000 Now we're not going to show you the footage because I've watched it.
00:02:37.000 I don't watch things like that generally speaking.
00:02:39.000 I found it too disturbing.
00:02:40.000 You'll be able to find it if you want to watch it.
00:02:41.000 But here's a still from it that Caitlin Johnston commented was an image that helps you to understand modern America.
00:02:47.000 A serviceman who has burned himself to death having a pistol aimed at him.
00:02:51.000 What an astonishing image that is.
00:02:53.000 Caitlin Johnson has also written this piece on the broader implications of this tragic unpleasant event.
00:02:58.000 Active US Airman Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington today.
00:03:04.000 He said he did it in protest of the genocide in Gaza.
00:03:07.000 Independent journalist Talia Jane reports that a police officer showed up pointing a gun at the man's burning body.
00:03:13.000 I guess that's just what American cops do when they aren't sure what to do.
00:03:16.000 Someone who was actually trying to save the man reportedly yelled, I don't need guns, I need fire extinguishers.
00:03:21.000 I feel sometimes the world froze up.
00:03:24.000 The perfect symbol to define our time.
00:03:27.000 In this instance, a serviceman who set himself on fire in protest of a war supported by the United States of America and therefore taxpayer dollars, ultimately ends up with a police officer pointing a gun at him while he burns himself to death.
00:03:41.000 Tells you something not only about the conflict in the Middle East, in particular the Gaza conflict, but it also tells you something about the relationship between the state and the military.
00:03:50.000 The state and all of us the nihilism the ridiculousness the sadness and the hopelessness of the plight of the world when wars funded and perpetuated in this manner lead even to those that are asked to enact what is required of the military to self-immolation self
00:04:07.000 Destruction, despair and dread.
00:04:10.000 I think all of us get a sense that the military are exploited, their image, their loyalty, their service used to leverage censorship and compliance from the rest of us who may have many questions about the nature of these wars.
00:04:22.000 But this provides us with an event and a symbol that brings into stark and stunning reality exactly This just might be the most American thing I've ever heard of.
00:04:31.000 It's more American than the fake bald eagle cries that they put in Hollywood movies.
00:04:35.000 need for intervention, the need for diplomacy, the need for an end to these wars.
00:04:40.000 This just might be the most American thing I've ever heard of. It's more American than
00:04:43.000 the fake bald eagle cries that they put in Hollywood movies.
00:04:46.000 It's more American than monster trucks and mass shootings. You simply cannot fit
00:04:50.000 more America into a single incident than a man dying a horrifying death in protest of war
00:04:55.000 crimes while a first responder screams at cops to stop pointing their guns at him and go get fire
00:05:00.000 extinguishers.
00:05:01.000 If you were to pick a single moment in history to sum up the essence and expression of the US Empire, that would be it.
00:05:07.000 That's why I'll be very surprised if this gets much mainstream coverage.
00:05:10.000 Of course there is the horror, gore, sadness and tragedy of a human being doing that in desperation and in protest.
00:05:16.000 But there's also what is implied by the event.
00:05:19.000 All of us remember the image of that child running away from napalm attacks in Vietnam.
00:05:23.000 All of us remember the man in Tiananmen Square holding those bags in front of a tank.
00:05:27.000 Those images were popularised presumably because in some way or another we either had a more
00:05:32.000 responsible news media at that time that genuinely opposed the establishment agenda or we were
00:05:38.000 just more naive and the establishment agenda at those points required withdrawal from Vietnam
00:05:43.000 so they started to popularise that image.
00:05:45.000 Or in the case of Tiananmen Square, you can see why opposition to China would always have been an attitude or an aspect.
00:05:50.000 Nevertheless, at this point where many of us are questioning the legitimacy of events in Gaza, the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war, the escalation of tensions between America and China, A service person doing this outside an embassy is an indication that the appetite for these wars is waning.
00:06:08.000 Even as more and more we're subjected to various advocates for militarism saying you have to keep this war going.
00:06:15.000 We're just on the brink of beating Russia. 0.95
00:06:17.000 We're just about to achieve Middle Eastern peace through war. 0.99
00:06:20.000 You have to control Iran if we don't do this. 1.00
00:06:23.000 It's clear that that idea is running out of steam and the image of Aaron Bushnell ablaze.
00:06:29.000 Perhaps might be a pivotal moment in all of our understanding of these wars.
00:06:33.000 As you know our channel is continually accused of conveying misinformation.
00:06:38.000 We are accused of being conspiracy theorists.
00:06:40.000 You know that our defense is that we try to convey the truth to you and we try to oppose establishment power.
00:06:46.000 On that basis here are some facts about actual Here are some facts about the way that wars are funded and who benefits from those wars, and here are some facts about how service personnel are treated and how they feel more broadly, what their economic and domestic conditions are, so that you can decide for yourselves what might be behind these forever wars when perhaps they are not beneficial to the troops that are being enlisted and compelled to conduct the business of war.
00:07:11.000 A Forbes 2022 poll showed that only 17% support the United States doing whatever it can to help Ukraine, even if it provokes a war.
00:07:19.000 This war is becoming less and less popular, even as its funding increases, often tied to other wars and other regional disputes, shall we call them.
00:07:27.000 There is still an appetite to continue to fund this dispute, not to reach a diplomatic resolution.
00:07:32.000 A majority of American adults would not be willing to serve in the military were the US to enter into a major war, recent polling has found.
00:07:40.000 Ought then we not be considering that fact when entering into further agitation with Russia and potentially China and escalating tensions in the Middle East.
00:07:48.000 That people in America don't want to fight in a war.
00:07:51.000 I don't know if that has any impact.
00:07:52.000 No, not really, we can just ignore that.
00:07:54.000 Okay, what do you mean by democracy again?
00:07:56.000 I like Mike Benz's analysis.
00:07:58.000 Democracy now doesn't mean elections and therefore the will of the people.
00:08:01.000 Democracy means a set of institutions, be they national or global, that serve the carriage of power, that serve the fulfilment of the agenda of the powerful.
00:08:10.000 It's a brilliant shift.
00:08:10.000 When they say, we have to do this to protect democracy.
00:08:13.000 There's no elections in Ukraine.
00:08:14.000 By democracy, we mean Black Rock.
00:08:16.000 Quinnipiac polls show that 84% of Americans worry about getting pulled into a war in the Middle East.
00:08:21.000 Some 65% want a ceasefire in Israel's war on Gaza, not U.S.
00:08:26.000 No one wants a war.
00:08:27.000 People don't want to enlist.
00:08:28.000 that ought sway the outcome.
00:08:31.000 President Joe Biden will convene the top four congressional leaders at the White House this
00:08:35.000 week to press lawmakers on passing the $95 billion national security package that bolsters
00:08:40.000 aid for Ukraine, Israel, as well as the Indo-Pacific.
00:08:43.000 How can those initial pieces of data lead to that piece of data?
00:08:47.000 No one wants a war.
00:08:48.000 People don't want to enlist.
00:08:49.000 People want war to end.
00:08:50.000 We're going to be funding some more wars.
00:08:52.000 Well, were you listening to the first bit?
00:08:54.000 We were listening!
00:08:55.000 And actively ignoring!
00:08:57.000 Congress has passed four spending packages in response to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, $113 billion in total.
00:09:04.000 As of September 2021, the Pentagon's spending has totaled over $14 trillion since the start of the war in Afghanistan, with one half of the total going to military contractors.
00:09:14.000 One half of the total going to military contractors.
00:09:17.000 Are you beginning to suspect there could be an agenda beyond helping different sets of children around the world?
00:09:23.000 Remember, you may have recently seen Victoria Nuland saying, the good thing about this war in Ukraine is a lot of the money finds its way back to the American military-industrial complex.
00:09:30.000 And by the way, most of the support we are providing actually goes right back into the US economy and defence-industrial base.
00:09:38.000 Yeah, almost as if that's the whole point of this.
00:09:41.000 A large portion of these contracts, one quarter to one third of all Pentagon contracts in recent years, have gone to just five major corporations.
00:09:48.000 Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman.
00:09:52.000 I wonder if they have any influence on these policies.
00:09:55.000 Again, using Mike Benz's analysis, democracy now doesn't mean elections, it means institutions.
00:10:00.000 Presumably some of these institutions are the relationships between the state and major corporations, donors and funders.
00:10:06.000 Let me know in the chat how you would assess that information.
00:10:08.000 Meanwhile, how are the actual military personnel themselves feeling about these wars?
00:10:13.000 Remember, just 10-20 years ago, it was considered unpatriotic to criticize wars because it was as if you didn't respect the sacrifice made by service personnel.
00:10:21.000 And I know that many of you are vets that watch our channel, and I see your comments in there, and I hear how you talk about your time in service.
00:10:28.000 Look at some of these statistics.
00:10:30.000 It's an astonishing insight.
00:10:31.000 Military families are reporting housing, health and financial challenges, according to a survey released by the Military Family Advisory Network, which found that nearly a quarter of enlisted families are experiencing food insecurity and that more than 60% of respondents pay more than they can comfortably afford on housing.
00:10:47.000 Active service personnel cannot afford food and shelter.
00:10:50.000 That's really near the top of the Maslow Pyramid of Needs.
00:10:53.000 I'm doing the Pyramid of Needs there.
00:10:54.000 This isn't some Illuminati thing.
00:10:56.000 The Pyramid of Needs.
00:10:56.000 So if you're in the services and you can't afford food and shelter, you know, go America or not.
00:11:02.000 One-fifth of active service families and nearly 40% of veteran families surveyed reported less than $500 of emergency savings or no emergency savings funds.
00:11:11.000 And over three quarters of military families indicated they carry debt.
00:11:14.000 Almost 40,000 veterans are without shelter in the US on any given night.
00:11:19.000 Those statistics I find very difficult to listen to and they are brought into stark clarity by the image of Aaron Bushnell ablaze outside an embassy in protest of a war.
00:11:30.000 It seems that Aaron Bushnell has identified another conflict for which he is willing to give his life.
00:11:34.000 And I would say in that conflict there is an indication that there is a deeper patriotism available to all of us.
00:11:39.000 What does it really mean to support our tribe, to support our nation, to support our people?
00:11:43.000 Does it mean the continued funneling of our tax dollars and resources to those five companies?
00:11:49.000 Or does it mean disobedience and the ability to oppose their agenda?
00:11:52.000 Let me know in the chat in the comments what side of that equation you find yourself.
00:11:55.000 Once again, Katelyn Johnson has written about how both parties, the Republican and the Democrats, when it comes to this issue of war, and perhaps war is the ultimate issue, you tell me, ultimately agree with one another and tend to simply use different aesthetics when it comes to what legitimizes their war or their pursuit of their agenda.
00:12:13.000 It's an interesting article.
00:12:14.000 Have a listen.
00:12:15.000 The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that if a Republican president were to back a genocide, it will be an evil and unforgivable atrocity.
00:12:22.000 Whereas when a Democrat president backs a genocide, it's a minor foible that you better shut up about unless you want Trump to win.
00:12:28.000 The difference between Republicans and Democrats Is that the Republicans argue in support of wars, militarism, capitalism and oppression using right-wing language, whereas Democrats argue in support of wars, militarism and capitalism and oppression using left-wing language.
00:12:40.000 The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans do evil things for evil reasons, whereas Democrats do evil things for noble, humanitarian reasons.
00:12:47.000 The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans facilitate all the interests of the U.S.
00:12:52.000 Empire because America is strong and godly and should rule the world, whereas Democrats facilitate all the interests of the U.S.
00:12:57.000 Empire because America is liberal and egalitarian and defends the rules-based international order.
00:13:02.000 The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans want to start a world war with China, whereas Democrats strongly favor starting a world war with Russia.
00:13:10.000 The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that people massacring civilians in the global South under Republican administrations are racist, homophobic, misogynistic bigots, whereas the people massacring civilians in the global South under Democratic administrations are inclusive, intersectional, feminist, LGBTQ allies.
00:13:26.000 The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans criticize Democrats for made-up nonsense reasons like wokeness, whereas Democrats criticize Republicans for made-up nonsense reasons like Russiagate. 0.94
00:13:36.000 The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans are led by demented octogenarian swamp monsters who can't string a sentence together and have spent decades in office promoting ecocide, imperialism, exploitation, and oligarchy, whereas Democrats, oh well I guess that one's both of them actually.
00:13:50.000 The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that liberals feel bad when Republicans are overseeing the imperial bloodbath and feel good when Democrats are. 0.95
00:13:57.000 The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that when Republicans do the monstrous things necessary to maintain a globe-spanning empire, they're the greater evil.
00:14:05.000 Whereas when Democrats do the monstrous things necessary to maintain a global-spanning empire, they're the lesser evil.
00:14:10.000 The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that when the imperial murder machine has an R on it, we're meant to frown.
00:14:16.000 And when the imperial murder machine has a D on it, we're meant to smile. 0.97
00:14:19.000 I don't know where Caitlin Johnston, the author of that piece, stands on American imperialism. 1.00
00:14:23.000 It certainly doesn't seem that she's particularly enchanted by either party in the American political system.
00:14:29.000 And it seems to me that with Aaron Bushnell's death, we should be looking with this further scrutiny, not Only at America's military endeavors around the world, the way it's funding who profits, who suffers, who dies as a result of it on all sides, whether that's the people dying in Gaza, the people dying in Ukraine, the people dying in Russia, the people that will die in Iran, presumably, the people dying in Yemen, the people dying in Syria, the people that might die in Taiwan, the people that will die in China, the Americans that will die
00:14:54.000 All of the people that will be invited to die as this project continues, as well as perhaps assessing what benefits were gleaned from the Iraq war and who experienced those benefits.
00:15:03.000 Did you?
00:15:03.000 How's your fuel prices?
00:15:04.000 How's your food prices?
00:15:05.000 The Afghanistan war, how did you benefit from that? 0.69
00:15:07.000 How's your food prices?
00:15:08.000 How's your fuel prices?
00:15:09.000 And who can you vote for right now?
00:15:12.000 I can't imagine there's many of you saying Joe Biden because I read your comments, I know where you stand.
00:15:24.000 Where we stand on this issue is that perhaps this is an opportunity, a time for us to assess the nature of war, what our priorities truly are.
00:15:31.000 If American service personnel, while in active duty, are setting themselves on fire, and even the ones that aren't driven to martyrdom, are living in peculiar circumstances of poverty and suffering, does the idea that criticizing the war machine is anti-patriotic even make sense anymore?
00:15:45.000 And if you, as those statistics show, do not want to spend your tax dollars and your family's lives on these wars, who is benefiting from these wars?
00:15:52.000 When you see long-term political apparatchiks like Victoria Nuland saying it's necessary to continue the war against Russia, Well, when you see various advocacy groups saying it's necessary to further disrupt the Middle East in spite of the ongoing intervention of the West being part of the obvious problem in that region, when you see people on one side of the political aisle saying we must have war with Russia and on the other side we must have war with China, and for those of us that are in other English-speaking nations caught in the tailwind of your great nation debating whether or not our tax money and our children's lives have to be spent on your wars, surely it's time for us to together
00:16:27.000 As people, wherever we stand on the cultural scale, wherever we sit in the political spectrum to say, whose interests are being served by this?
00:16:34.000 When you see legacy media instruments, even ones of entertainment, refusing to robustly question the integrity of this ongoing global military campaign, you have to ask, how is it that the media are owned?
00:16:46.000 That the political establishment is owned?
00:16:48.000 That social media is increasingly becoming owned, censored and controlled in order to facilitate whom?
00:16:54.000 In order to benefit who?
00:16:56.000 And if you're wondering about what the benefits of these wars might be, have a look at what the benefits of the last wars were, and how they benefited you, your family, and your community.
00:17:05.000 And if to ask those questions is unpatriotic, then I'd have to say that I am becoming increasingly less patriotic.
00:17:12.000 I say that as an Englishman.
00:17:13.000 So that's just what I think.
00:17:14.000 Remember you can support our content by clicking that link in the description and becoming an awakened wonder with us.
00:17:19.000 Please God, we will be able to create a movement to oppose this hypocrisy and corruption somehow, because if we don't do anything, who's gonna?