Stay Free - Russel Brand - HOLY SH*T! It’s Inevitable Now | WAR is Coming - SF 426

00:00:00.000 so so

00:02:10.000 so in this video you're going

00:02:19.000 In this video, you're going to see the future.

00:02:31.000 Hello there, you Awakening Wonders!

00:02:32.000 Thanks for joining me today for Stay Three with Russell Brand.

00:02:35.000 We've got an extraordinary concoction of guests today.

00:02:39.000 Douglas MacGregor, former Trump administration insider and obviously military man.

00:02:43.000 Mike Benz, who's done more to expose Deep State or what he would call the blob than any other pundit that I can think of.

00:02:49.000 And Tulsi Gabbard, who with her elegance and dignity and forthright manner, give you some hope that there are politicians and lawmakers in whom You can trust.

00:03:00.000 Let's start off with Colonel Douglas McGregor outlining how he sees the ongoing escalation of tension exacerbating existing conditions and potentially leading us to the very threshold of Armageddon itself, as well as being rather sweet and avuncular chap.

00:03:18.000 Let's have a look at him now.

00:03:20.000 Something happened that was really intriguing, at least to me, recently.

00:03:25.000 The populist British leader Nigel Farage, who's about as close a thing as we have to Donald Trump, certainly he's, you know, he's Britain first, he's anti-immigration, he's openly patriotic, and in fact historically I've had a number of struggles and even contretemps with Nigel Farage. But one

00:03:47.000 thing he said publicly while campaigning for the Reform Party in the UK, sort of like a

00:03:53.000 British Tea Party type movement, I suppose, he said that, and indeed there is footage of him

00:04:00.000 saying that he warned while a member of the European Parliament that the continual

00:04:07.000 provocation of Russia and the attempt to turn Ukraine into a vassal state and make Ukraine a NATO

00:04:14.000 member meant to be a threat meant that it would be likely that Putin would eventually

00:04:18.000 invade. I've heard elsewhere people say that we started reporting on the Russia-Ukraine

00:04:24.000 conflict in the third act after numerous provocations.

00:04:29.000 Both Kirstahmer, the prime minister assumptive of our sort of centralist globalist Labour party,

00:04:37.000 Authoritarian, I should add to that.

00:04:39.000 And Rishi Sunak, the sort of current, former hedge fund investor and part of a hedge fund that invested 500 million dollars in Moderna.

00:04:50.000 Both of them condemned Farage's comments, saying that it's outrageous to claim that Putin was in any way provoked.

00:04:59.000 What is your opinion on that condemnation and on what Farage asserts?

00:05:05.000 Well, I think brother Farage has stated a self-evident truth.

00:05:09.000 It's something we call a tautology, for those who are interested out there.

00:05:13.000 It's absolutely true.

00:05:15.000 And we knew back in the 1990s, early on, But if we expanded NATO to incorporate more and more countries closer and closer to Russia, eventually there would be confrontation and conflict.

00:05:29.000 George Kennan pointed to it.

00:05:31.000 Virtually everyone with experience in the region and anyone with any knowledge at all of history knows that.

00:05:37.000 I think the worst part of it is that President Bush, and I'm talking about the senior Bush, made it very clear that we would not exploit the vacuum

00:05:46.000 created by the withdrawal of Russian military power from Central East Europe.

00:05:51.000 And of course, we turned around, and that's exactly what we did.

00:05:54.000 So I don't know what Starmer thinks.

00:05:58.000 Of course, he may not be thinking at all.

00:06:00.000 He seems to be reading from the same playbook as Sunak and the rest. 0.53

00:06:05.000 It's all nonsense.

00:06:06.000 If we want this crisis that could lead to a real war between us and Russia to end, it's very simple.

00:06:15.000 You simply suspend all aid to Ukraine until further notice, although you should send humanitarian assistance, and make it clear that we're withdrawing all personnel from all NATO countries from Ukraine, and get down to some sort of negotiated outcome.

00:06:32.000 Who wants enemies on their border?

00:06:36.000 If the Russians or the Chinese or the Iranians or anybody else came into Mexico and set up missile batteries aimed at the United States, what would we do? 0.56

00:06:45.000 Well, I can tell you what we would do.

00:06:47.000 We'd send the Air Force in right away, and then the Army would invade.

00:06:50.000 There would be no question of it.

00:06:53.000 You know, so the Russians exercised extraordinary patience and put up with a lot of nonsense.

00:06:58.000 Their cause has always been just.

00:07:01.000 That's the truth, Russell.

00:07:03.000 Your background is as a military advisor to a former Trump Secretary of Defense, and of course you're a combat veteran.

00:07:12.000 I wonder how your perspective has changed on the way that the media reports on military activity, and I suppose specifically wars and hostility between nations, now that you work in this type of media.

00:07:27.000 The reason I'm asking that question is because when you say something like Russia have been incredibly patient, I've seen people that have said comparable things, anything that's sort of sympathetic towards Russia or Putin, in the most literal sense I suppose it's true, being called Russian sympathisers, even being called appeasers.

00:07:45.000 There's an ongoing media attempt to portray Putin as a kind of quasi-Hitler and Russia as expansionist and imperialist, but under the kind of analysis you've offered us that simply just doesn't hold up.

00:08:01.000 Even to the common sense of the layman, it doesn't make much sense.

00:08:06.000 So, how has your understanding of the media's role in presenting to the public forthcoming conflicts and ongoing conflicts changed From when you were within the military.

00:08:20.000 When you were within the military, did you see it as necessary to ensure that the public were broadly supportive of a foreign campaign?

00:08:27.000 Do you think that this problem has exacerbated, become more deceptive?

00:08:31.000 What's changed, Colonel?

00:08:34.000 Well, I can give you a couple of quick examples because for what it's worth, when I was in the desert in 1990 and 91, Miraculously, the BBC was the most accurate source of information and news about what was really happening in the Middle East.

00:08:52.000 And we would routinely turn to listen to the BBC because their comments were very measured.

00:08:57.000 There was no exaggeration, just statements of fact.

00:09:02.000 And when they did invite people to comment, the people that came on to comment were very balanced and straightforward.

00:09:08.000 Even then, I thought that the American media saw the whole opportunity as a time to expand and exaggerate to the point where it became entertainment.

00:09:21.000 So we were showing people photographs of munitions landing on the enemy and celebrating the arrival of all 1.00

00:09:29.000 these rockets and missiles and artillery rounds as though something good was happening. In other

00:09:34.000 words, the American media, even in 1990 and 91, missed the point that it was a war and people were

00:09:41.000 being killed.

00:09:42.000 And when you kill people, there are consequences. 0.69

00:09:45.000 At least at that point, I thought the BBC did a good job.

00:09:48.000 Now, if you fast forward to 2003, as soon as we went into Iraq, the lies just began spreading and multiplying.

00:09:57.000 A one-star brigadier general in the U.S.

00:10:00.000 Army who was involved in the public affairs of what was happening on the ground in Iraq at the time was telling people things that were just blatantly untrue.

00:10:12.000 We had this young woman.

00:10:14.000 I can't remember her exact name.

00:10:16.000 I wish I could.

00:10:17.000 I think it was Jessica something.

00:10:19.000 Was a about five foot four five foot five All of a hundred and ten hundred and twenty pounds and she was trying to drive a truck with some ammunition in it The truck got lost a convoy was lost in a in a sandstorm. 0.95

00:10:34.000 She was captured Brutalized by the Iraqis had captured her then taken to a dropped off in a hospital where an Iraqi doctor Saved her life and then the Iraqi doctor actually contacted us so that we could come and get the woman and Well, all of this was turned into some sort of heroic fight where she fired her M-16 until she went down, which never happened.

00:10:57.000 And then the special operations went in to rescue her, which never happened.

00:11:01.000 So the lies were really taking off with great rapidity in 2003.

00:11:07.000 And from that point forward, it became clear to me, and I was still on active duty in 2003, that anything you heard from the media Was probably not accurate, probably not true, and that you had to immediately assume it was nonsense.

00:11:22.000 What did you feel about being involved in the Iraq war at that time, and has that opinion changed?

00:11:29.000 Well, at the time when I was approached in 2000, actually I was approached in 2001 in October, and it was made clear to me that this opportunity to exploit 9-11 would be used to justify intervention in Iraq, I said, well, there's three things.

00:11:47.000 First of all, I understand because we did not finish the job in 1991.

00:11:54.000 They were trying to kill Saddam left and right, never seemed to get him.

00:11:58.000 And then they claimed that the whole operation was exclusively for the purpose of driving out the Republican Guard.

00:12:04.000 They didn't understand the Arab world.

00:12:06.000 They didn't understand Iraq.

00:12:08.000 And it would have been much easier to simply remove Saddam and replace him with a new government. 0.78

00:12:13.000 Preferably of military men that could then call in the UN and handle elections or whatever.

00:12:19.000 But we were fixated on this notion of occupation.

00:12:21.000 But in October of 2001, when they approached me, they said, well, how much would it take to unseat Saddam, to remove his government?

00:12:29.000 I said, probably not very much.

00:12:31.000 And tried to explain that the average person in Iraq was not prepared or even remotely interested in dying in a war to defend Saddam Hussein with their last breath.

00:12:43.000 People didn't seem to understand it.

00:12:45.000 You know, you're British.

00:12:47.000 You know who drew the borders and the various lines that created all these countries that were formerly just tribes living inside the Ottoman Empire.

00:12:56.000 And they're not terribly meaningful, frankly.

00:12:59.000 But it's amazing that they've lasted as long as they have.

00:13:02.000 But there was no sense of the fluidity of the people.

00:13:06.000 They didn't seem to understand that in that part of the world, You know, loyalty to your family, to your clan, to your tribe, whatever, is much more important than anything called Iraq or Jordan or anything else.

00:13:18.000 Yes, that those concepts and constructs were convenient for us as we attempted to carve up the resources of that region but hadn't become glommed on to the consciousness of the indigenous people of that region.

00:13:33.000 And I wonder how this expansionist and exploitative mentality has continued to affect that region.

00:13:41.000 I want to mention to you a time that I saw a speech by Colonel Gaddafi after the execution of Saddam Hussein, where he said to some kind of Arab council, I'm sure you know what it would have been, like, hold on a minute, Saddam Hussein's been executed.

00:13:55.000 Guys, our region's under considerable threat.

00:13:57.000 Now, you know, Gaddafi was indeed next to go.

00:14:00.000 There have been some pretty dubious actions inside Syria, it looks like, you know, sort of arming militia, destabilizing that nation.

00:14:09.000 In the 1970s what went on in Iran was pretty peculiar and extraordinary and what happens in the Middle East to this day seems to require an ongoing relationships with the United States and the United States military.

00:14:23.000 I wonder Colonel how you feel about American resources and American lives continually being deployed to sustain exploit and advance wars within that region that unless you

00:14:38.000 have a partisan connection to it, seem pretty brutal, nihilistic and unnecessary. It's a bit

00:14:46.000 reductive, but you know, bloody hell, it's not helping, is it? No, look, you're absolutely right. 0.70

00:14:52.000 And it is very obvious to anyone who served for any length of time in the region that

00:14:58.000 the social structures are very fragile.

00:15:02.000 In other words, everything does revolve around family, clan, tribe, the local area,

00:15:07.000 and it doesn't take very much to disrupt the lives of those people.

00:15:11.000 And we continue to impute to the region the things which we take for granted.

00:15:19.000 We're national political integration is a good example that we are integrated states, integrated governments with powerful bureaucracies and so forth.

00:15:30.000 These kinds of things really didn't exist 25, 20 years ago.

00:15:35.000 And so it was very easy to go in and disrupt these societies.

00:15:39.000 The problem for us, Russell, and I think this is also true for Great Britain, because we are in many ways very similar to the British historically.

00:15:49.000 We are primarily a maritime and aerospace power.

00:15:53.000 What do I mean by that?

00:15:54.000 Well, we too are an island.

00:15:57.000 We have the North American continent.

00:15:59.000 We're surrounded by water.

00:16:01.000 Yes, we have a common border with Mexico, and we have a border with Canada, but there are very few people in both of those countries compared with us, and we have historically avoided conflict with those two groups of people as much as possible.

00:16:14.000 So we focused on everything beyond our borders over the seas.

00:16:18.000 The problem is with us is we sail in or fly into a particular area, and we stay for a period of time ostensibly to do good things, to build liberal democracy, to create utopias where everyone can live happily ever after, and no one is interested in being converted to this utopia.

00:16:40.000 And we disrupt the place, we damage the place, we destroy the place, we kill large numbers of people, either deliberately or accidentally, and then when we've had enough, we simply sail away, or fly away.

00:16:53.000 In other words, wherever we go, we are temporary.

00:16:58.000 If you're watching us on YouTube, we're only going to be available for a couple of more seconds.

00:17:01.000 Click the link in the description.

00:17:03.000 Join us on Rumble, where we're free to speak about opposing global war, which you sort of feel like you should be able to discuss anywhere.

00:17:09.000 Nevertheless, click the link in the description.

00:17:13.000 And I think what you're seeing today with the Russians in Ukraine, you see it in the Middle East with the Arab states, the Iranians, the Turks, you see it in Asia with China, and all the countries, their attitude is, wait a minute, we live here, you don't.

00:17:31.000 Let us decide what has to happen.

00:17:33.000 In other words, let us tend to our own affairs.

00:17:36.000 We don't need or want your intervention.

00:17:39.000 And this is the problem with this constant pursuit since 1991 of what I would call American political, military, economic, financial hegemony.

00:17:51.000 We Americans don't really need the hegemony.

00:17:54.000 No one in the United States is interested in it.

00:17:56.000 It's only a small group of people in Washington who have essentially gotten on board the locomotive and have taken this train down a track that nobody in the United States, if they had been asked, would have ever opted for.

00:18:08.000 And we don't need hegemony, and the world doesn't want our hegemony.

00:18:14.000 That's really the big message that's coming back to us.

00:18:17.000 And unfortunately, Washington takes this and uses the media to persuade everyone that the rejection of our hegemony means instantaneous hostility to us, which in turn then justifies the use of military power all over the world to beat back anyone who doesn't want to live with our hegemony.

00:18:37.000 It's an endless do-loop that leads to catastrophe.

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00:19:39.000 Increasingly, words like, you know, democracy and freedom when used to fuel these campaigns seem, if not euphemistic, downright dishonest.

00:19:52.000 And when we think of the last sort of 50 years and American PSYOP and deep state operations backed by perhaps special forces or outright military action in Central America, South America and in particular in the Middle East.

00:20:06.000 So there are obviously examples in Africa as well.

00:20:10.000 It seems that this ability to impose hegemony was facilitated by the fact that the projects

00:20:18.000 were being imposed upon regions, peoples, and in particular, I suppose, military forces

00:20:24.000 that were easy, relatively speaking, to subjugate.

00:20:28.000 And perhaps the information sphere wasn't so recalcitrant and immediate in its ability

00:20:36.000 to offer counter-narratives and immediate reporting, even though there's plenty of information

00:20:40.000 available on what the CIA was doing in Nicaragua or Venezuela even, and certainly Somalia,

00:20:47.000 Syria, the list goes on.

00:20:49.000 And what struck me as outright absurd was that the kind of mentality that had been somewhat

00:20:59.000 deployed in Afghanistan or Vietnam or wherever you want to say, was being imposed on a country

00:21:05.000 Like Russia, that has its own history, that has its own sovereignty.

00:21:09.000 I'm not suggesting those countries don't, but Russia is a military superpower and a nuclear superpower, and in spite of whatever weakening took place with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Empire, they remain a significant nation.

00:21:22.000 And the playbook didn't make sense to even a layperson like me.

00:21:27.000 And now we're starting to see That an individual's intuitive response is closer to an accurate appraisal than the oddly newly framed bombast and jingoism that you find coming out of a neoliberal Biden administration.

00:21:44.000 that uses similar tropes and terms and says that if you are interested in bringing about

00:21:50.000 diplomacy and peace that you are an apologist. So how is it from a military perspective that,

00:21:55.000 you know, that it seems like, because I've got so many questions for you, like one like,

00:21:58.000 I wonder when the American appetite for this kind of expansionism expired? I wonder when

00:22:02.000 manifest destiny was no longer appealing? I wonder when, you know, nation-first movements,

00:22:07.000 like seems to be happening across Europe and certainly in your country, took a true hold on

00:22:11.000 what isolationism means and how much it's connected to the end of the sort of American

00:22:15.000 manifest destiny project.

00:22:17.000 But I suppose to start us off, I wonder, Colonel, why it was assumed, and can it have been assumed, that a playbook that would work in those countries to the south of your nation or the Middle Eastern countries would in any way be effective in a country like Russia?

00:22:37.000 Well, if you embark upon policies or policy directions without any strategic analysis, I suppose everything is possible.

00:22:48.000 Remember that the people that you're dealing with in Washington today, in sharp contrast to the people that founded the country and governed us for most of our history, at least up until World War I, these people are ideologues.

00:23:02.000 Ideology is a secular variant of religion.

00:23:06.000 So you're dealing with people who are fanatics, who absolutely fervently believe that they have captured a monopoly on truth.

00:23:14.000 They're very similar to the crazed Bolsheviks of 1918, 1919, 1920, who believed that they had the answer. 0.87

00:23:23.000 And of course, their answer, collectivization, nationalization of everything, state ownership of everything, produced tens of millions of dead inside the Soviet Union long before World War II broke out.

00:23:36.000 Well, we're dealing with people that have the same attitude.

00:23:39.000 You cannot have a useful discussion or debate with them, because their position is, from the very beginning, that one size fits all.

00:23:48.000 They have the answer.

00:23:50.000 Liberal democracy, in their terms, has to exist everywhere, and when it does, there will be peace.

00:23:56.000 In reality, the answer that George Washington and Hamilton and Madison and all the people that framed the Constitution and founded the country believed in was something very different.

00:24:07.000 Their attitude was, the best thing we can do is to stay out of other people's affairs.

00:24:12.000 And if we are successful and we build ourselves up financially, economically, defend our country certainly, but build ourselves up and we become prosperous and successful, then others will want to emulate us.

00:24:26.000 In other words, we're not interested in exporting what we do and how we live to anyone at gunpoint.

00:24:33.000 That's a waste of time.

00:24:34.000 It doesn't work.

00:24:36.000 And then we went through World War II, and you know we occupied Japan, we occupied Germany, and a great deal of mythology emerged as a result of those occupations. 0.99

00:24:45.000 People believed that somehow or another we had rescued the poor, benighted Germans and Japanese from ignorance and squalor and stupidity and fascism. 0.96

00:24:55.000 In reality, all we did in both countries was get these countries back on the track that historically they had followed before the war. 0.97

00:25:03.000 So you still had the Japanese emperor, you now had a parliament, and all of these institutions in Japan worked, the same institutions in Germany sprung up and they worked, and the people themselves, culturally, were already predisposed to follow the same line that we're discussing right now.

00:25:22.000 It wasn't exactly the way we govern ourselves, it was different, but it was quite similar.

00:25:27.000 We thought, well, this model, what we've done in Germany and Japan, we can do the same thing in Afghanistan.

00:25:32.000 We can do the same thing in Iraq.

00:25:34.000 We can do the same thing in Syria.

00:25:36.000 And we forgot that the secret of success in both Germany and Japan was our fervent admiration and respect for the cultures and the histories of the people that we occupied.

00:25:48.000 We actually respected the Germans and the Japanese.

00:25:52.000 We didn't impose anything on them.

00:25:53.000 We helped them get back on their feet.

00:25:55.000 They did the work.

00:25:57.000 That's why we remain friends.

00:25:59.000 We at least understood that when the war ended we wanted to be on good terms with people.

00:26:04.000 We've thrown all of that out.

00:26:06.000 We simply say we have the answer and everyone in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya has to become like us, which is absurd.

00:26:14.000 Makes no sense at all.

00:26:17.000 It appears, and certainly I've heard the discourse to the effect that Ukraine is a convenient location.

00:26:30.000 Vassal state has certain resources, but it's strategically incredibly valuable.

00:26:37.000 When I see Zelensky panhandling for support from JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, explicit deals done with Blackrock, and I know Blackrock is enormous and in some ways a diffuse organization, but nevertheless, to make post-war, if such a thing is possible, Ukraine into a kind of a digital utopia, which I sense in a way, Colonel, might be a pilot scheme for the rest of the world.

00:27:05.000 There seems to be a sort of a globalist agenda to use technology to maximize power and citizen management and to exploit fissures where possible to make the claim that these technologies are only being used to help people to protect people either from a pandemic or from a war or to facilitate safety or convenience.

00:27:27.000 I wonder how that maps on to any potential post-war relationships economically with Germany or Japan and even at the risk of not complicating but certainly expanding this conversation I wonder what the significance was of American intervention in the First World War, if you consider the Second World War to be an epochal moment in America's confidence in ideological expansionism that became sort of deracinated from its original idea of protecting, or at least respecting, the heritage of the nations it was intervening on behalf of, and how that became colonialism of a more traditional hue.

00:28:09.000 Well, you're touching on an area where there are lots of theories and lots of different explanations.

00:28:14.000 World War I in particular, which I think is the first and greatest tragedy in the history of Western civilization, tells us a number of things about the United States and Europe.

00:28:25.000 And one of the things that we learn is about the banking system.

00:28:28.000 And clearly, we had extended great credits to the French and the British.

00:28:32.000 We said we were neutral.

00:28:34.000 And that the Germans could also come and utilize our credit markets.

00:28:38.000 But of course, it's very difficult for the Germans to reach the United States and involve themselves in your credit markets when the British Navy is blockading the continent.

00:28:49.000 So, we were always lopsided in the sense that we were on one side more than any other.

00:28:55.000 And inevitably, I think it became clear that if we did not intervene in the war, that frankly, Germany and Austria-Hungary would win. 0.65

00:29:04.000 And people did not want that to happen.

00:29:06.000 They saw that as a potentially devastating outcome economically in terms of finance for the United States.

00:29:14.000 And then again, you also have this undercurrent of the United States wanting to participate in this great imperial experiment.

00:29:23.000 Remember, we had gone into the Spanish-American War quite unnecessarily, frankly.

00:29:27.000 The Spaniards Agreed to virtually all the terms that we laid down for them, and we still invaded Cuba. 0.99

00:29:34.000 We decided to keep Puerto Rico.

00:29:36.000 We made the decision to stay in the Philippines, and all the Filipinos wanted was independence and freedom from the Spaniards. 0.99

00:29:43.000 We said we were going to stay there and install liberal democracy, make them Anglo-Saxon Democrats, and so we killed a quarter of a million Filipinos to make them Anglo-Saxon Democrats. 1.00

00:29:55.000 Of course, that's all nonsense. 1.00

00:29:57.000 And today we can look back on that and see the stupidity and frankly the criminality in all of it. 0.99

00:30:03.000 But today we're bound up with exactly what you're describing. 0.99

00:30:07.000 You've got people now who are looking at what can be taken from Ukraine.

00:30:12.000 They were looking at what could be taken from Russia.

00:30:15.000 Russia is resource rich.

00:30:18.000 Eastern Ukraine certainly has resources in it, but that's not what Putin was interested in, because Russia has enough resources on its own, as we've certainly discovered.

00:30:27.000 Remember, we were told Russia is weak, it's backward, it can't stand the sanctions for more than a few months.

00:30:34.000 All of that turned out to be wrong.

00:30:36.000 Russia is very strong, has very strong social cohesion, has resources, has a strong economic foundation.

00:30:44.000 They can outproduce us today in their manufacturing base.

00:30:48.000 As regards, with regard to military equipment.

00:30:51.000 So there was no strategic analysis that was ever performed.

00:30:55.000 It was all ideology and the belief that we could use our military power once again to bully people into accepting a status quo that they didn't want.

00:31:05.000 And now I think we're on the verge of losing everything.

00:31:07.000 If you look at the BRICS, which started out being a relatively small number of countries, everyone wants to join.

00:31:15.000 We think there are going to be 84 countries joining this BRICS organization, currently led this year by Moscow, before the end of the year.

00:31:24.000 Everybody wants to join it because they want to get out from under our financial system, out from under the Swiss system.

00:31:31.000 This is why people are de-dollarizing.

00:31:33.000 In other words, everyone is walking away from us or running away from us as fast as they can because they don't want to be bullied anymore.

00:31:43.000 There he is, Colonel Douglas MacGregor, who clearly believes in liberty and freedom, and is one of those alliances that I've just been astonished by.

00:31:49.000 Someone with whom, on the surface, I would have thought I had very little in common, but now I just enjoy and adore.

00:31:55.000 When it comes, though, to pure education, someone who's able to demonstrate to you why you should be mistrustful of the three-letter agencies, how war leads to profit for shadowy figures like George Soros, How even public brands like Google are ultimately connected to the CIA.

00:32:13.000 There can be no more significant or reliable voice than Mike Benz.

00:32:17.000 This is one of my favorite conversations with Mike.

00:32:19.000 Have a look at it.

00:32:20.000 Pretty recently I heard that when the Clinton Foundation were over in Haiti, ostensibly helping Haiti in a way that in retrospect looks pretty clumsy.

00:32:31.000 We're here to help you!

00:32:32.000 Please get your help off of us! 1.00

00:32:35.000 And like the money was spent In all sorts of weird clumsy ways and even when you see video footage of a sort of a younger sleeker Hillary Clinton leading George Soros peculiarly through the wreckage of Haiti even though that's before many of their subsequent disasters you feel like what's going on why is this guy there what's happening I mean I've heard

00:32:55.000 For example, that George Soros benefits in some way from the conflict between Ukraine and Russia with regard to oil.

00:33:03.000 But I don't understand that, and I wonder if you could help me to understand it, please, Mike.

00:33:08.000 No, this is important to keep in mind because George Soros is not just like a player in this.

00:33:12.000 The annual contributions just to the DNC.

00:33:16.000 In the last election cycle, George Soros contributed $100 million to the DNC.

00:33:20.000 The second biggest donor was only $40 million.

00:33:23.000 So George Soros was two and a half times bigger than anybody else in terms of a donor.

00:33:30.000 So he dominates the political leadership of the Democrat Party in the U.S.

00:33:35.000 But this is a very much a global story.

00:33:37.000 So let's sort of start with the George Soros origin story.

00:33:39.000 In 1979, George Soros was a partner at a hedge fund in New York.

00:33:45.000 Who primarily concentrated on doing foreign currency speculation, that is betting using New York financial firm assets under management on the direction of currencies in Eastern Europe in the middle of the Cold War.

00:34:01.000 He creates the Open Society Foundation, in his own words, as a tax loophole for his children, for Alex Soros, in South Africa in 1979.

00:34:10.000 But then he lucks his way into the windfall of a lifetime when Ronald Reagan becomes president in 1980, and this new doctrine of using NGO statecraft Using the National Endowment for Democracy, as I mentioned, that same thing that Hunter Biden was on the board of and that was created explicitly by the CIA director to have non-CIA fingerprints on funding of CIA assets.

00:34:36.000 In 1982-83, the NED gets set up and Reagan expands this doctrine of working through NED cutouts and working through the web of civil society organizations and NGOs to do CIA-backed color revolutions, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, which was the main hot zone of the Cold War.

00:34:55.000 So, Hungary, Poland, Germany.

00:34:58.000 While the Cold War was global, these exact countries were the biggest hot zones of spy versus spy, of the CIA versus the KGB, and they were the crown jewel of, you know, the prize for winning the Cold War.

00:35:11.000 When Hungary toppled its communist government and became part of the sort of NATO Western world, when Poland toppled its government with Lech Walesa and the Solidarity Movement there, when Germany reunified.

00:35:24.000 George Soros teamed up in the early 1980s when this collaboration was being set up so

00:35:31.000 that the Open Society Foundations, their offices in all of those different countries would

00:35:37.000 function as State Department and CIA vassals for the student groups and the revolutionary

00:35:43.000 street muscle that would take to the streets in a show of force or would destabilize or

00:35:48.000 shut down the economy or the governance functions of the ruling communist regime in order to

00:35:54.000 to orchestrate those revolutions.

00:35:56.000 George Soros basically took this open society model and set up basically satellites in all the different regions that the CIA and State Department were running government toppling blueprints in.

00:36:08.000 And so his own universities, his own NGOs, his own, you know, sort of civil society organizations were being used in order to help the CIA and State Department overthrow those governments.

00:36:21.000 Well, that's a great gig if you happen to simultaneously be running a hedge fund speculating on the direction of those currencies because you have an advanced 6-month, 12-month, 5-year head start in terms of the direction of that currency because you know that the CIA is going to overthrow that government.

00:36:42.000 and either prop it up or crush it so you can short it and make a massive, massive windfall.

00:36:48.000 For example, if you know that it's going to be destabilized.

00:36:52.000 And he was tasked by the Reagan State Department to do that destabilization work and they were

00:36:57.000 getting tens of millions of dollars to help facilitate that, again, through this money

00:37:04.000 And so Soros became a darling of this bipartisan blob apparatus.

00:37:10.000 He was best friends with John McCain.

00:37:11.000 You know, you may have seen pictures of them where they're so close to each other, smiling, you think they're about to start making out.

00:37:17.000 John McCain, by the way, was not just, you know, this very powerful senator for two decades here in the U.S.

00:37:23.000 He was not just the man, you know, who The blob was deciding between in the 2008 presidential election when the choice was between John McCain and Barack Obama, but John McCain was also the founder and the president for 25 years of the IRI.

00:37:39.000 Now, I mentioned Hunter Biden's NDI, the National Democratic Institute.

00:37:42.000 When the NED was created, when the CIA created the National Endowment for Democracy, It simultaneously created two different spindles, two branches of the NED, subsidiaries that are wholly funded and controlled by the NED.

00:37:57.000 One was for Democrat stakeholders called the NDI, which Hunter Biden sits on the board of, and Madeleine Albright, the former Secretary of State, runs.

00:38:04.000 It also created the RNC, the Republican branch.

00:38:06.000 You can think of this like the CIA wing of the Democrat party and the CIA wing of the Republican party.

00:38:11.000 The Republican branch of the NED is called the IRI, the International Republican Institute.

00:38:16.000 Who founded and ran that for 25 years?

00:38:19.000 It was John McCain.

00:38:21.000 So John McCain became essentially the Republican bipartisan branch of the Soros operation.

00:38:27.000 This is why you have sort of a kind of, even though Soros is known as a sort of left-wing figure, he is supported by half of the Republican Party.

00:38:36.000 And he makes selective contributions and bolsters, you know, these are folks like Mitt Romney.

00:38:41.000 Mitt Romney's on the board of the IRI.

00:38:43.000 Mitt Romney, by the way, is who ran for president for the Republic.

00:38:46.000 He was the Republican Party nominee for the 2012 presidential election.

00:38:49.000 And he's also the one who led the impeachment of the populist, nationalist, sort of representative wing of the Republican Party, Trump, you know, during the impeachment over the Ukraine.

00:38:59.000 Amazingly, remember, they impeached Trump because he threatened to withhold military aid to Ukraine, i.e.

00:39:05.000 the exact financial investments of this same class that I just mentioned.

00:39:09.000 And this also gets to the Soros story in Ukraine.

00:39:13.000 Ukraine is in debt to the IMF and the World Bank.

00:39:16.000 George Soros functions as a sort of financial intermediary between what the IMF, the creditors in the IMF and the World Bank need done to get their debts repaid and the political actions that countries need to take in order to pay off that debt.

00:39:32.000 Often what that involves is privatizing industries that are held by the state, selling them, and then using the proceeds of that sale to pay off the IMF and the World Bank.

00:39:44.000 If you know the IMF and the World Bank are going to force a fire sale of a major trillion dollar industry in that country, Well then, guess what?

00:39:53.000 If you are a corporation or a financial firm and you know this is going to happen, you get a bargain basement discount price to be able to swoop in and take over that industry when it undergoes that privatization.

00:40:08.000 George Soros explicitly laid out in a series of documents you can look up that were called the blue leaks or also called the hashtag DC leaks.

00:40:16.000 These were George Soros IMF coordination documents to coordinate the sale of NAFTA gas, the privatization of NAFTA gas in an IMF deal.

00:40:27.000 Now again, NAFTA gas is the state gas giant of Ukraine.

00:40:30.000 It is Ukraine's entire economy, okay?

00:40:33.000 Ukraine's entire economy is that it runs the gas transit points From Russia into Europe, which used to be 100% of gas into Europe from World War II essentially up until 2022.

00:40:47.000 Technically, they went through a gas diversification program in the early 2000s that the State Department coerced Europe to do to buy more expensive American gas in order to diversify off of Russia when Putin started to use gas diplomacy to reassert Russia on the world stage.

00:41:02.000 George Soros and Vladimir Putin were locked in a death battle for control over NAFTA gas, because NAFTA gas was basically split on its board between the NATO side and the Russia side, because all of Russia's economy was based on these Russian gas transits.

00:41:19.000 And so what NATO worked to do was diversify the gas transit so that they started from the Permian Basin in Houston, They were ported in through the Baltic Sea to run through terminals in Poland to connect to NAFTA gas, and so NAFTA gas would be... Ukraine would still be getting billions of dollars of gas transit money, but the starting point would be U.S.

00:41:39.000 companies and British companies rather than the Russian government.

00:41:42.000 And you can argue that that's in, you know, the national interest of American citizens or British citizens, but, you know, at the end of the day it is still A dirty tricks operation and that flies in the face of a hundred years of our, you know, free trade, free trade policies, if you will.

00:41:58.000 But George Soros was the battering ram for orchestrating that and for privatizing NAFTA gas and prying it off of Russia.

00:42:05.000 And so George Soros funding essentially the Democrat Party and funding the political operatives who were spearheading the Ukraine situation.

00:42:14.000 is perfect for his own financial empire because he is the one who's investing in Naftogaz and whose own portfolio companies and his own investment funds are invested in the endogenous gas industry in Ukraine.

00:42:27.000 So he is basically bribing US and British officials to take the battering ram of their military and CIA To pull off the operation that benefits his own financial portfolio companies.

00:42:40.000 The last thing I'll say is, you can go on my Twitter right now, at MikeBendCyber, type in, in the search bar, at MikeBendCyber, Soros Empire, and you will see a direct quote from George Soros himself, where he is bragging on tape that he created the Soros Empire by, quote, picking up the pieces The Soviet empire collapsed.

00:43:02.000 As the empire collapsed, I moved in and picked up the pieces.

00:43:05.000 collapsed. As the empire collapsed, I moved in and picked up the pieces. First in Hungary 0.91

00:43:15.000 in 1984, and then Poland in 87, China in 87 as well.

00:43:24.000 And I'm going to stop there.

00:43:25.000 And so this is how the this what the Soros empire was replacing the Soviet empire.

00:43:38.000 So he was you know that meme of two photographs and you look at them you say it's the same picture.

00:43:43.000 When you see NATO and you see Soros, they're the same picture.

00:43:46.000 When you see the US State Department and the UK Foreign Office and you see Soros, it's the same picture.

00:43:51.000 When you see the CIA or British intelligence and then you see a picture of George Soros, It's the same picture.

00:43:56.000 They're one blob.

00:43:57.000 Let's tie all this together with a comment that I think came from one of the questions on your locals at the start of this, which was, who does the blob work for?

00:44:07.000 You know, I think, I forget how you teed that up in the beginning, but I almost think of it, you know, like that Austin Powers scene where he goes, who does number two work for?

00:44:15.000 Who does number two work for?

00:44:20.000 That's right, buddy.

00:44:21.000 You show that turd who's boss.

00:44:22.000 That's a good scene, man.

00:44:24.000 That's one of my favorite scenes.

00:44:25.000 You show that turd who's boss.

00:44:27.000 Right, good.

00:44:28.000 We're on familiar territory.

00:44:29.000 Mike Myers comedy.

00:44:31.000 I feel at home.

00:44:32.000 Yeah, yeah. 0.93

00:44:33.000 Hit me, man. 0.99

00:44:33.000 Right, because that's actually a great way to look at this, because the execution arm of This transatlantic foreign policy blob is the State Department, the CIA, and the DoD, and its swarm army of tens of thousands of paid assets in the media and in the civil society and university realm and things like this. 0.99

00:44:54.000 But they are essentially number two, if you will, working for a class above them who they have a revolving door relationship with.

00:45:03.000 And which is really where people in government make their money and do favors for in order to make their own careers and be able to have their own, you know, put their own kids through private school education and really join an elite class.

00:45:18.000 And that is what I call the corporate and financial donor and drafter class.

00:45:22.000 You might think of as a co-investor class.

00:45:24.000 And before I delve into this, I'll start with a quick analogy from what I just mentioned with Jared Cohen, who I mentioned, you know, started at this, You know, started embedded in essentially CIA hot zones, organizing student groups, and then worked directly at the center of synchronizing CIA and State Department color revolutions on social media.

00:45:43.000 Then went directly to Google's essentially CIA branch.

00:45:47.000 But what did Jared Cohen just do a few short years ago?

00:45:51.000 Moved over from Google Jigsaw to the macroeconomic asset management branch of Goldman Sachs.

00:45:58.000 He is now one of the highest ranking officials at Goldman Sachs.

00:46:01.000 Well, what he's essentially doing at Goldman Sachs is he's not a mystic, you know, forecasting what's going to rise and fall in terms of economies or assets to invest in around the world.

00:46:12.000 Because he's got this State Department CIA back channel, he allows Goldman Sachs to do what's essentially insider trading at the most macro level.

00:46:20.000 If you know that the military or the State Department or the CIA is going to overthrow a government or privatize an industry, You know, a trillion dollar industry in Venezuela or Ukraine that's owned by the state government, but now it's going to be privatized.

00:46:34.000 So if you're an early investor in that, your investment is going to go to the moon.

00:46:39.000 You have this corporate and financial overclass where there's a revolving door.

00:46:43.000 Okay, so let's take a step back.

00:46:45.000 What do I mean by donor and drafter class?

00:46:47.000 So let's start with the term drafting.

00:46:49.000 So in a bike race, the ideal strategy is not to be out in front.

00:46:54.000 Even if you're the fastest racer, you don't want to be out in the lead in a bike race because you are bearing the brunt of the full force of the wind, which slows down your traction.

00:47:04.000 You need to exert more work.

00:47:05.000 In corporate terms, that is killing your profits if you're out in front.

00:47:10.000 The ideal strategy in a bike race is to be right behind the person in front so that they do the work cutting the wind and you efficiently, with a much less amount of energy, get the same place and then you overtake that person at the end.

00:47:27.000 And so what corporations do, and by proxy their financial equity and debt holders do, is they draft behind the blob, the government side of the blob.

00:47:38.000 They draft behind the DOD, the War Department, the Pentagon.

00:47:42.000 So, for example, when the military moves into Ukraine, they draft behind that.

00:47:46.000 When the State Department goes in and threatens sanctions on a country so that it changes its terms of private enterprise or changes its labor laws to make it cheaper for, they draft behind the State Department.

00:47:58.000 If the CIA is incubating a new emerging leadership class in a country who is going to be favorable to ExxonMobil there or Walmart there, Or an agriculture company there or a tech company there.

00:48:10.000 They draft behind that.

00:48:12.000 And they also serve as co-investors or donors into those projects.

00:48:17.000 Because oftentimes it's not enough just to have U.S.

00:48:21.000 funded allocations to fund a war project or a foreign assistance project.

00:48:27.000 Like, for example, in Ukraine, there's a big issue about how much funding is enough to actually support Ukraine.

00:48:32.000 So part of what the State Department does is they go around to get co-investors in the project in the region so that Microsoft or Google will sort of like, you know, co-fund it and provide a top-up.

00:48:43.000 to get the amount of money needed to do this initiative.

00:48:46.000 And actually a great example of this is something like DIA, the DIA app in Ukraine.

00:48:49.000 This is something that I think the Gray Zone, as you mentioned, published a lot about.

00:48:53.000 This is this digital ID system in Ukraine that Zelensky has made essentially mandatory

00:48:59.000 for all Ukrainian people and it ties their digital identity to their bank account.

00:49:03.000 It's basically the ultimate way to be able to manage a civilization and it was created by USAID.

00:49:10.000 USAID is the major funding organization that straddles the line between the State Department and the CIA.

00:49:16.000 It essentially serves as an above-board, public-facing State Department adjacency that funnels the money that is used by the CIA.

00:49:25.000 Essentially, when something gets USAID funding, it becomes an asset for our covert diplomacy.

00:49:29.000 And so USAID funded the creation of this app in a partnership with Google, Visa, and American Express, I believe were the two transaction companies.

00:49:39.000 So Ukraine doesn't have its own sort of sophisticated IT architecture.

00:49:43.000 The State Department, using its diplomacy arm, has now made mandatory the use of a system

00:49:50.000 that Google profits from because it runs the architecture of DIA, and that Visa and American

00:49:56.000 Express profit from because they process all the commercial transactions of now every citizen

00:50:02.000 in Ukraine.

00:50:03.000 So you now have a locked in, government-backed cartel over every single person in Ukraine

00:50:09.000 for both, you know, Amex and Google.

00:50:12.000 And so, this becomes a very powerful... Now, when you look at who actually sits on the board of these CIA interstitials.

00:50:20.000 So, like, let's take an example.

00:50:21.000 Something called the National Endowment for Democracy is a classic example of this.

00:50:24.000 So in my first salvo here, I talked about how Wisner's Wurlitzer in the era of CIA control

00:50:31.000 over media 1.0 was 1947 to 1975-1976, which is when the CIA would directly co-opt media

00:50:40.000 organizations. And then this sort of went down in flames when it all came out in public hearings in

00:50:46.000 the Church Committee and Pike Committee hearings in 1975-1976.

00:50:50.000 President Jimmy Carter, when he won as a Democrat in 1976, promised to put an end to that.

00:50:55.000 He fired 30% of the CIA's operations branch in a single night and basically kneecapped the ability for the CIA to do this work directly.

00:51:04.000 Reagan comes into office in 1980 and wants to revive the sort of full poisonous fang power of the CIA, but doesn't have the bipartisan support to ram this through Congress.

00:51:16.000 And so Reagan's CIA director, Bill Colby, approaches Reagan's attorney general, the head of the Justice Department, and says it was a disaster when media groups around the world were seen as funded by the CIA.

00:51:29.000 What we can do, though, is if we set up a national endowment for democracy promotion and have that be formally firewalled off from the CIA so that it looks like it's just coming from a public endowment.

00:51:43.000 Actually, it's not even public, a private endowment.

00:51:46.000 Then we'll be able to have the same capacities we had from the 1940s to the 1970s, but there won't be CIA fingerprints on it.

00:51:52.000 We'll just intermediate it.

00:51:55.000 We'll just back channel with the heads of the National Endowment for Democracy.

00:51:59.000 And so there was a back and forth between the CIA director, Bill Colby, and the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time, where they came up with the structure that there would be a formal firewall, the National Endowment for Democracy would be a Private, non-governmental organizations, but that as long as there was Senate Intelligence Committee consent to it, the CIA would effectively direct their operations.

00:52:19.000 And by the way, they're a private, non-governmental organization, but they're under the direct oversight of the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations Committees.

00:52:27.000 They're a CIA cutout managed by the State Department.

00:52:30.000 Now, the NED, if you look at who's on its board, It's the directors of all these companies.

00:52:35.000 Their board of directors for the National Endowment for Democracy has members of the Officers and Directors of Google, Officers and Directors of Amex and Visa, Officers and Directors of Exxon and Chevron.

00:52:47.000 A great example of this, actually, is in the run-up to the 2014 Maidan coup, the CIA State Department-sponsored overthrow of the democratically elected government of Ukraine.

00:52:57.000 Whether you agree with that or not, them's just the facts.

00:53:00.000 Victoria Nuland actually gave that speech about how they successfully orchestrated this using $5 billion, $5 billion with a B, in State Department and USAID subsidies to the right-wing, right-sector groups in Ukraine who did this.

00:53:16.000 She gave that speech bragging about that $5 billion in U.S. 0.99

00:53:20.000 financial sponsorship of the coup right at a conference that was right in front of Sponsored by Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell.

00:53:31.000 And by the way, those are the exact companies who had invested in the oil and gas space in Ukraine.

00:53:38.000 Chevron had signed in 2013 a $10 billion, again with a B, $10 billion partnership with Naftogaz, the Ukrainian state gas giant, which accounts for an overwhelming majority of Ukraine's national economic sector.

00:53:52.000 Shell had signed a $10 billion, again, a matching $10 billion partnership with Naftogaz in Ukraine, again, with a B. So Halliburton had signed a deal with the Ukrainian government's Naftogaz in order to do all the oil and gas refining of the oil and gas base there.

00:54:09.000 You know who held the rights to the Black Sea shale resources that were destroyed when Russia annexed Crimea?

00:54:15.000 All the shale rights in the Black Sea basin there?

00:54:18.000 It was Burisma.

00:54:21.000 You know, not only was Hunter Biden on the board of Burisma, but Hunter Biden himself was on the chairman's advisory board of the NDI, the National Democratic Institute.

00:54:30.000 You know what the NDI is?

00:54:32.000 That's the DNC branch of the NED, which is the CIA cutout created so that the CIA could run money without it having the formal fingerprints of the CIA during the CIA 2.0 restructuring.

00:54:44.000 So, Hunter Biden, on the board of the CIA cutout, that CIA cutout having on its board all the oil and gas co-investors, were then marshalling the CIA and the DOD, i.e.

00:54:57.000 U.S.

00:54:58.000 taxpayer funding, in order to prop up their investments in the region.

00:55:04.000 And this same blueprint is replicated everywhere.

00:55:07.000 In virtually every multinational corporation on earth, Again, it's very difficult to make sense of this space unless you're able to talk to people that understand the military, like Colonel Douglas MacGregor, people that understand the deep state and are willing to be open about it, like Mike Benz, but also you have to talk to reliable and yet ascendant political figures who may properly wield power

00:55:34.000 One day.

00:55:34.000 It's quite likely that Tulsi Gabbard will end up with a position in, I would imagine, any Trump administration would likely use her.

00:55:42.000 So it's interesting to hear what she feels about this most significant of issues about which we are often kept in the dark.

00:55:49.000 Here's Tulsi Gabbard discussing the likelihood of current tensions exacerbating to the point of no return.

00:55:54.000 Have a look.

00:55:56.000 Having dedicated so much of your life to the American military and having dedicated so much of your life to the Democrat party, I mean, I suppose the title of your book gives a pretty clear indication where your alliances lie and how you have evolved, but you must love, to a degree, both of these institutions.

00:56:13.000 And yet one of the main reasons you've left the Democrat party is because you say they are a party of warmongers now.

00:56:20.000 Can you tell me how the establishment's foreign policy has become divorced from the interests of the American people, the interests of the world, and even from the interests of the American military?

00:56:33.000 Well, thank you, first of all, just for the purpose of clarity.

00:56:37.000 My love is for our country, and the reason why I serve in our military now for over 21 years, serving as an officer in the U.S.

00:56:44.000 Army Reserve currently, is motivated by that love of country and wanting to be of service.

00:56:49.000 My time over 20 years in the Democratic Party, I joined in 2002, I was 21 years old.

00:56:53.000 I saw back then a party of Free speech, a big tent party that welcomed people with different backgrounds, different religions, different views, that stood up for civil liberties and free speech, even for people they disagreed with.

00:57:07.000 And it was a party that fought for the little guy.

00:57:09.000 You fast forward to where we are today, that party has become Holy unrecognizable.

00:57:14.000 And so just as my being part of the Democratic Party was driven by my love of country and my desire to serve, so too was my decision to leave the party because it has become a party that stands diametrically opposed to the fundamental principles of freedom that make this country the great country that it is.

00:57:32.000 I've spoken to a number of West Point veterans, military personnel, former and current, and it seems to me that there is a pervasive sentiment throughout the US military of powerful anti-establishment feeling, that they believe that the government is out of control, that numerous wars that your country has been involved in and remains involved in, either through aid or direct military involvement, are putting it Succinctly.

00:57:58.000 Corrupt.

00:57:59.000 Do you feel that there is a real danger that the military could become an anti-establishment force?

00:58:05.000 That patriotism in America now means not the love of your government, but as you have described, a love of your nation.

00:58:11.000 Distinct, discreet, and very definitively separate from your government.

00:58:16.000 Yeah, I think that the prevailing sentiment is because oftentimes those who serve and wear the uniform, they understand the costs of the decisions that politicians make and have the clarity to be able to see that even as we have a civilian-led military, as we should, when you have politicians, too often from both political parties, who are putting their own self-interest first, who are putting the party's interest first, or as we see very often, the interests of the military-industrial complex first, Nothing could be more offensive and insulting to a service member willing to lay down their lives in service to our country, to have a politician who has the power to send us to war, not caring about our country at all, and not asking the most basic question is, is this decision

00:59:02.000 Do we get involved in this war or that war?

00:59:04.000 Do we go and wage this war or do we choose peace and diplomacy?

00:59:08.000 Those decisions are not very often being made answering the question, does this actually serve our national security interests?

00:59:15.000 Does this serve the interests and the well-being of the American people?

00:59:18.000 We've seen how, and this is something that Congress has either allowed to happen or willingly executed, which is an increase of a transfer of power away from the legislative branch And into the executive branch, into the hands of the White House and the President of the United States.

00:59:35.000 It's an unfortunate thing because our system of governance, of course, is set up with three co-equal branches of government.

00:59:42.000 But on the issue of war and peace, for example, We have been in many wars and many conflicts, and yet Congress has not exercised its constitutional responsibility to be the body that actually declares war before that action can take place.

00:59:56.000 They've given that over to the president and the executive branch because they don't want to be held responsible for it.

01:00:04.000 You're obviously a pretty potent and unusual individual having served in two such extraordinary institutions so successfully and for such a long time.

01:00:16.000 How do you feel having served in Iraq, and I know that you were honoured in Kuwait and stuff, or at least for your service in Kuwait as a part of that conflict, when the definition of terrorism seems to be becoming As vague and as applicable according to utility as many of the other vague pieces of legislature that appear to be currently passing.

01:00:42.000 I know that you have said for example that you are anti all war except for when it involves I think you maybe said islamic terrorism I know that you'll correct me if I'm wrong but when it It seems now that the powerful are able to designate as terrorists their opponents when we are increasingly seeing in my country and in yours elite deep state units that were set up to oppose terrorism abroad deployed domestically to target the threat ultimately of free speech and the kind of unified personal power that you represent and are advocating for in your book.

01:01:15.000 Do we have to look Yes.

01:01:16.000 even at the categorization of terror and what we mean by that,

01:01:21.000 as well as perhaps considering the origins even of specific forms of terrorism,

01:01:25.000 such as that which you oppose.

01:01:27.000 Yes. Briefly on my foreign policy views, I see the world for what it is, not the fantasy land that

01:01:33.000 I see the world for what it is, not the fantasy land that too many of our politicians view,

01:01:36.000 too many of our politicians view, the lens that they view the world through and how they make

01:01:38.000 the lens that they view the world through and how they make decisions that ultimately so often

01:01:42.000 decisions that ultimately, so often end up being counter to the interests of the

01:01:44.000 end up being counter to the interests of the American people

01:01:48.000 to peace and to our security.

01:01:51.000 I'm not a pacifist or an isolationist.

01:01:53.000 I just believe that we should exhaust all diplomatic measures, means, outreach

01:02:00.000 before we look at the potential of war.

01:02:03.000 It should be the last result.

01:02:05.000 Sometimes it is necessary.

01:02:07.000 The adversary may change in different situations, but we the people, as well as those who wear the uniform,

01:02:14.000 must be able to trust that our elected leaders are going to do all that they possibly can to prevent war

01:02:21.000 and know that if we are sent into harm's way, it is for a mission that is necessary, that is unavoidable,

01:02:28.000 and that serves the safety, security, and freedom of the American people.

01:02:32.000 To your second point about the vague use of the word terrorism and how these institutions that were created, many of which were created after the terrorist attack on 9-11 here in our country, have been turned and used against our fellow Americans.

01:02:49.000 That abuse of power, the warrantless surveillance that in the recent legislation that was passed was just strengthened that allows these intelligence agencies to target Americans.

01:03:01.000 There was language in the TikTok bill.

01:03:02.000 I heard you talk about the TikTok bill earlier.

01:03:04.000 Language in the TikTok bill that included very vague language.

01:03:09.000 The president is allowed to designate who is a foreign adversary or who may own a business that they believe is under the influence of or directed by a foreign adversary.

01:03:21.000 Anytime you do that, anytime you put down in legislation this vague kind of language, there should be no doubt in our minds that it's just a matter of time before it's deployed against a political opponent.

01:03:33.000 So it's not a stretch of imagination for Elon Musk to rightly say, okay, yep, today it's TikTok, tomorrow it may be X.

01:03:42.000 There's a huge divergence between X and Meta, Facebook, Instagram, many of the Google, big tech, all these other entities that have been doing the bidding of the Biden-Harris administration that have gone along, whether willingly or feel they've threatened or bullied or whatever the case may be.

01:04:02.000 They have been actively censoring free speech on behalf of the Biden administration.

01:04:08.000 Elon Musk has made clear that X won't do that, and they won't play that game.

01:04:11.000 And so, is it really a stretch of imagination for him to believe that if he's not willing to play ball, that their targets may be set on him next?

01:04:23.000 Well, that's all we've got time for today.

01:04:24.000 Thank you very much for joining us.

01:04:26.000 Tomorrow's show is mind-blowing.

01:04:28.000 Do you ever wonder how social media power could be deployed to disrupt existing political systems?

01:04:35.000 It seems like a crazy endeavor, yet it's already happened.

01:04:38.000 Remember when Trump first used Twitter?

01:04:40.000 People were like, he shouldn't be allowed to use Twitter!

01:04:42.000 And now we have presidents just resigning on X and disappearing ethereally, never to be seen again, just to exist as a disembodied voice somewhere.

01:04:50.000 Now we have Some, and you know I think there are a few, but perhaps the most prominent social media commentator-cum-politician is Cyprus' own Phidias, who won the popular vote to become a member of the European Parliament in his country and then promptly went about

01:05:06.000 Revealing exactly the kind of hypocrisy and corruption we've long suspected.

01:05:11.000 This man can call Ursula von der Leyen his boss, the woman that did private text deals with Albert Baller of Pfizer to the tune of millions, some of which may have raised questions and indeed eyebrows, particularly when you consider her husband runs a big pharma company.

01:05:27.000 So much to explore, and I explore all of it with Phidias, who could be the future of popular politics.

01:05:34.000 Join us tomorrow for that conversation.

01:05:35.000 Until then, if you can, stay free.

01:05:44.000 Switch on.

Stay Free - Russel Brand - August 09, 2024

HOLY SH*T! It’s Inevitable Now | WAR is Coming - SF 426

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