In this episode of The Taffer and Shaffer Show, we have a chat with journalist Alan McLeod, who investigates the infiltration of social media platforms by the intelligence services. We also have an interview with Dr Joe Dispenza, who has been a long-time friend of the Taffer & Shaffer family and has a fascinating take on the current state of the royal family and the way they run things. And of course, there's still time for a quiz from Curtdizzle too! Enjoy & spread the word to your friends about this podcast and the show to anyone you know who needs a good laugh. Cheers, Cheers Chew Chew. - The Cheffers, Matt & Matt - Chew & Shaffers This episode is brought to you by Brought to You by, Brought To You by and A-M-A-R-E-K-U-T-E. We ask, is free speech finally back baby? Is it time to strike up a Diwali light and celebrate that sweet bird that we call freedom? Is it? We're asking you, Is it finally back? Let me know in the chat? - Matt and Matt - Is it back? - Is free speech back baby?? or is it still not back?? ? Matt, Matt, please invite President Putin onto the show? . Russell, do you agree with Putin? or disagree with me on this? Tweet us in the President? Do you think he's a great guy? , or do you think Elon Musk is a great hero? and why he's not a good guy ? or not a bad dude? ? Does he have a lot of money? Can he really be a great person? And why he should be allowed to do what he wants to do that? Is he really? What does he really need to be more like a man? in the first place? Or is he not a great man ? Do I have a problem with the Queen? & much more? Also, we'll be getting a guest on the show in November?? - Dr Joe? Chew, Chew Dr Joe Gabbard and Tulsi And did you see our conversation with Tulsi? Have a question or two about this?
00:05:13.000It was just the left field of some of the other questions you were asking.
00:05:17.000The rest of them were more conventional, but that one, yeah, you've got to get to the Crux, isn't it?
00:05:22.000Got to know whether people are believing in God or not.
00:05:25.000You're going to love this conversation because we're going to dive a little deeper on some of the subjects that matter.
00:05:29.000Did you know, for example, that some of the resistance to Musk taking over Twitter is because there are those in power in your country, and by your country I mean the United States of America, The belief he's not bullish enough on Ukraine.
00:05:43.000And let me ask you this question, and you tell me in the chat, you tell me in the comments, that social media is by now a de facto arm of the state.
00:05:52.000Alan McLeod knows all about that, so he'll tell us, we will ask him out, right won't we Gale?
00:06:11.000Why don't you tell us if you believe in God in the chat?
00:06:13.000Why don't you tell us if it's possible to somehow bring together these diverse and currently bifurcated strands of libertarianism and anarcho-syndicalism?
00:06:23.000People run in their own communities, people free to be individuals.
00:06:26.000Do you think we can ever crush the establishment if we come together as people?
00:06:30.000Can we create new movements out of the ashes of what we're currently experiencing?
00:06:34.000So that means roll on the autocue, darling, and that means that thing's happening where I've said all of the things that are on the teleprompter and I'm just left there hanging.
00:06:43.000Do you know what you're going to ask Jeffrey Sachs next week?
00:06:46.000I'm going to ask Jeffrey Sachs things that make him do this.
00:07:07.000I once heard that, you know I'm a fan of the, I have long been a fan of Morrissey, erstwhile of the Smiths, and Alan Bennett, the British playwright, said that Morrissey once turned up at his house, without warning, and he said, much too quickly, began to ask questions about a 1950s stand-up comedian called the Clitheroe Kid.
00:07:30.000And I thought, if he asked it much too quickly, he must have done it before Hello.
00:08:04.000Let me know in the chat if you think this.
00:08:06.000It's like the mainstream media are against Elon Musk because... what?
00:08:09.000Because he just sort of seems to be a free speech advocate?
00:08:13.000You feel that under Elon Musk's stewardship, the Hunter Biden laptop story would have been released?
00:08:20.000Not suppressed in the manner that it was?
00:08:22.000Are all these CIA dark ops folks gonna get booted out?
00:08:26.000What is the concern that Alex Wagner on The Tonight Show, I'm sure that's how it's pronounced, on The Tonight Show has?
00:08:32.000Let's look at the mainstream media news reporting on Musk.
00:08:35.000Breaking news tonight as it appears that Elon Musk has sealed the deal to take over Twitter.
00:08:40.000And this morning he tweeted a message to advertisers where he promised that, quote, Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape where Yeah, and you don't have free-for-all health, Scott.
00:08:51.000Obviously, I know that you're a sophisticated and educated viewer, so you know that MSNBC is owned by Comcast, which is a subsidiary of General Electric.
00:08:59.000That's the 14th largest defence contractor in the US.
00:09:03.000So, if you're the 14th largest defence contractor in the US, what is your attitude towards war?
00:09:09.000Just as a sidebar, in war you need weapons, and they're the 14th largest defence contractor in the US.
00:09:15.000Do you think that that gives them some biases?
00:09:17.000They're very explicit about that, aren't they?
00:10:07.000Because that, you know, as you know, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the second largest donator after the country, America, I think it's actually Germany, apparently, recent research.
00:10:50.000The Department of Defense and Federal Law Enforcement Agencies have secured thousands of deals with Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook that have not been reported.
00:12:12.000COVID-19 most likely was leaked from a lab in China, Senate GOP report says.
00:12:16.000The COVID-19 pandemic that's killed millions worldwide was most likely the result of a research-related incident in China and not natural transmission of a virus from animal to human, a new report by Republicans on the Senate Health Committee concludes.
00:12:32.000Do you think it came out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology or the nearby Stinky old dirty old wet market where people ain't washing their hands properly eating those little armadillos in a cage.
00:12:42.000Well if you're reading Facebook you will think one thing and one thing only.
00:12:46.000And the reason we're bringing you over here from YouTube is we got a strike simply for mentioning ivermectin incorrectly actually we were incorrect we said that ivermectin had been approved as a result of clinical trials while those clinical trials are actually still ongoing which is why I was so impressed by Tim Poole's celebratory Tweet on learning that Elon's taken over.
00:15:03.000I've told you before and I'll tell you again, I don't like people that are presidents and prime ministers just because they've got nice haircuts.
00:15:08.000There's got to be more criteria than that.
00:16:24.000No, I was just like, oh, OK, that's an interesting point of view.
00:16:26.000Yeah, the devil's going to find his way in, Putin.
00:16:30.000I'm not even going to touch on that subject with a man in your general age bracket.
00:16:35.000So that's the way that Satan finds his filthy little way into our lives.
00:16:39.000And I've certainly not made, thank God I left Catholicism.
00:16:41.000A remnant disciple of Jesus's, thank God I left Catholicism.
00:16:44.000Do you want to know something else though?
00:16:49.000The Vatican had to launch an investigation in 2020 after the Pope's official Instagram account liked an image of a Brazilian bikini model posing in a skimpy schoolgirl outfit.
00:16:59.000Vatican officials demanded to know how the embarrassing endorsement happened amid speculation that someone in the Holy Seas communications team have accidentally pressed a like button while browsing the model's extensive gallery of images.
00:17:11.000Oh dear, that is embarrassing, because what are you doing?
00:17:14.000If you're running social media accounts for His Holiness the Holy Father... Well, if it was the social media account team.
00:17:26.000So I think they had a thing of, right, let's just, for God's sake, put this rivalry between Brazil and Argentina behind us by liking anything that's remotely Brazil-related.
00:17:37.000And they saw that saucy-looking, I'm assuming, model.
00:17:42.000In a way though, adult human female step in the right direction from some of the revelations around the behaviour, not of this Pope of course, I'm not saying that.
00:18:30.000An adult woman is specifically what we want from a... Are we in safe ground here?
00:18:37.000Certainly not things we'll be putting up on YouTube afterwards to continue the promotion of this platform because we believe in free speech.
00:19:06.000Because I'll tell you what, if there was a religious order that allows you to look at pornography and smoke weed, I think I'd be their Pope.
00:19:13.000We'd have lost you years ago, wouldn't we?
00:19:31.000Sister Sophia is one of 10 nuns whose devotion to the so-called holy plant has turned into a budding business here on this one acre farm in California.
00:19:39.000Well the thing is, monks in abbeys in medieval Britain always brewed mead and ale, so it shows you that there is no sort of objective mentality when it comes to restrictions around substance misuse.
00:19:54.000It's more of a temporal and cultural issue.
00:19:58.000There may be a time where there's nuns like cooking up meth, just humble nuns cooking up rocks and In the nunnery or abbots in the monastery or whatever.
00:20:08.000So this is what I suppose I'm saying about shifting narratives.
00:20:12.000Controlling stories is the control of reality.
00:20:15.000It's already ordinary to imagine that monks brew beer.
00:21:20.000There's not an organic connection between left-wing politics and freedom and I know like in America and probably in this chat you have very definitive views about sort of the left as being alloyed to actual communism as in sort of old school Stalinist Maoist communism which are atrophying and dead ideas although I'm sure many of you think they're being reintroduced culturally through forms of censorship.
00:21:44.000Now of course our position here is a A little more nuanced because I believe absolutely in individual freedom.
00:21:49.000Freedom to express yourself however you want to without harming others and I suppose that that includes absolutely beyond tolerance.
00:21:59.000Love is the principle that interests me.
00:22:00.000I was reading something by Matt Taibbi talking a similar thing about journalism in the way you were just talking about kind of left and right in politics and he writes, a professional journalist who opposed free speech was not long ago considered a logical impossibility.
00:22:12.000Things are different now, of course, because the bulk of journalists no longer see themselves as outsiders who challenge official pieties, but rather as people who live inside the rope lines and defend those pieties.
00:22:23.000Media has been co-opted by a professional metropolitan class.
00:22:31.000There are occasional fluctuations that appear to be extreme, but no one discusses anything as extreme as absolute decentralization, public assemblies, real democracy, the ability to meaningfully control, Corporatism and central state dictums, our challenge, the edicts that come down from unelected bodies, IMF, WHO, WEF.
00:22:53.000I've told you a personal example of how we have already been regulated and somewhat punished as a result of YouTube, owned of course by Alphabet, automatically adopting the policies of the WHO.
00:23:06.000That means that what the WHO says goes.
00:23:10.000So that's Or anti-democratic by any measure.
00:23:14.000So this idea of decentralisation I think is extremely significant and I think it's a genuine opportunity to put aside the typical oppositionism that can exist in left-v-right type politics.
00:23:43.000If you love us so much, if all you care about is the world's health and organising it nicely, why don't you tell us what's in them blanked out pages?
00:23:51.000What's the point in producing a report and then scribbling it out in black marker?
00:23:58.000For one thing, it's a waste of printer ink to have that much.
00:24:03.000In our item, here's the news, no, here's the effing news, we look at Pfizer vaccine hikes, which are currently, like, now that they're going to market with that product, 10,000% above cost, and we look again at these redacted pages.
00:25:20.000Additionally, Romanian MEP Cristian Taraz, who's also a human rights advocate, made some serious allegations about redacted Pfizer contracts after CEO Albert Baller refused to testify and answer questions posed by the committee.
00:25:35.000So obviously when we found out that the CEO of Pfizer Decided not to come and answer questions.
00:25:45.000So he was not bound by law to come and, you know, he was not on record, you know, he was not facing any criminal punishments in case he's lying in front of this committee.
00:25:56.000But even in that case, he refused to come.
00:25:59.000Even without any risk of legal consequences, Albert Baller still refused to turn up to have what amounts to a chat with a nice blue backdrop.
00:26:09.000They can't get to them bloody WF meetings quick enough, can they?
00:26:12.000What do you have to do to get Baller to show up to your party?
00:26:15.000Questions that I think all of us, and all of you, have.
00:26:18.000And the first question is, what exactly in these contracts?
00:27:18.000The representative of Pfizer Who was sent to replace the CEO of Pfizer said that they can't fully disclose this contract because they have some commercial secrets over there.
00:27:28.000And they have to protect their interests.
00:27:31.000No, I'm asking you, what about the interests of our people?
00:27:34.000Never mind the interests of your people.
00:27:37.000We were borderline mandated to take that medicine.
00:27:40.000People that questioned it and queried it were openly ridiculed.
00:27:44.000Well, what do you say to those people now?
00:27:46.000How do you say, you know how you were sort of suspicious about, like, the whole vaccine and wanted more trialing and more transparency and more information just to be absolutely certain before you took this medicine that was new and you didn't know much about, broadly recommended by a government you don't trust, a media you don't trust, and a big pharma you don't trust, yeah?
00:28:01.000Well, this should put your mind at rest.
00:28:23.000In what other circumstances in this world, other than other examples of government and corporate collusion, would you pay for something and then, on receiving it, accept redaction?
00:29:28.000Let's find out what's got the old penguin so roiled up.
00:29:31.000Following an audit report in the EU's COVID-19 procurement strategy, Pfizer CEO Albert Baller, who was previously due to testify before the European Parliament's COVID-19 Committee October 10th, pulled out of the appointment.
00:29:43.000Paula was expected to face questions and address the scrutiny surrounding the negotiations for Europe's third vaccine contract with Pfizer signed in May and covering an initial 900 million doses for delivery in 2022 and 2023.
00:29:55.000It was the biggest COVID-19 contract signed by the European Commission.
00:30:01.000Probably there's a lot of scrutiny and examination before doses in that number are doled out.
00:30:05.000Certainly not the sort of deal you'd want done by text messages.
00:30:08.000The New York Times reported that EC President Ursula von der Leyen and Borla have been exchanging text messages leading up to the vaccine purchase agreement.
00:30:16.000In their own investigation, Investigate Europe discovered, deals for doses happened behind closed doors between the EU and pharmaceutical companies.
00:30:37.000The whole point of the culture that we live in when criticizing other cultures, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, whatever, is Not very democratic though, are they?
00:30:46.000Well, isn't democracy where government is an enactment of the will of the people?
00:30:51.000Now, surely we don't want to vote on when the bins are collected, although actually I do a bit, but we do want to vote on major issues and major deals and global medical emergencies that are funded at inordinate cost and generate incredible profits and then the process is redacted.
00:31:10.000Let me know in the comments, let me know in the chat.
00:31:11.000New variants, international competition and darkness around manufacturing costs have allowed Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna to increase the bill for European taxpayers.
00:31:20.000So this darkness, these redactions, this lack of transparency, even if it's not something
00:31:25.000nefarious, and who's to say whether it is or not, let me know in the chat if you think
00:31:28.000it is, certainly what it does is increases their ability to glean profit without accountability.
00:31:36.000You want transparency in a relationship like that.
00:31:38.000You've got no power, you've got no transparency, you've got no accountability.
00:32:12.000Or does that begin to look like a shallow, phatic exercise while real power marauds about under the cover of darkness of one form or another doing whatever the hell it likes?
00:32:22.000Pfizer announced it will soon raise the price of its publicly funded Covid-19 shot to between $110 and $130 per dose in the US.
00:32:28.000One of the things it might say in there is like that there's no accountability, no ability to regulate pricing, that they're conceding that.
00:32:36.000And if that stuff was built in at the beginning when all of us were... I remember our baller Specifically saying, well, this isn't something we're going to profit from, this is beyond that.
00:32:44.000But in reality, redacted, redacted up the wazoo, profits from here next week, and the only thing that's going to the moon is possibly Albert Buller and his own rocket, with cock-loving spaceman Jeff Bezos.
00:32:55.000I meant cock-rocket loving, I've no idea what he does in his private time.
00:32:58.000But he knows what I do in mine, due to data capture.
00:33:01.000The price hike would amount to a 10,000% markup above the cost of producing the vaccine, which is estimated to be as low as $1.18 per dose.
00:33:10.000Wall Street was expecting such price hikes due to weak demand for COVID vaccines, which meant vaccine makers would need to hike prices to meet revenue forecasts for 2023 and beyond.
00:33:20.000Essentially, this is a marketing exercise and an exercising commodity.
00:33:23.000May I offer you, sir, a third booster?
00:33:26.000Ooh, smells like you're overcharging us.
00:33:28.000The US government currently pays around $30 per dose to Pfizer.
00:33:35.000Unless Assange is right and the function of government is to take money from the public and place it in private hands, i.e.
00:33:42.000tax people heavily and divert it all to private contractors, whether it's in the military-industrial complex, pharmaceutical, other areas of health.
00:33:51.000I mean, the list just goes on, doesn't it?
00:33:54.000The market is expected to move to private insurance after the US public health emergency expires.
00:33:58.000Pfizer executive Andrew Lukin said, we are confident that the US price point of the COVID-19 vaccine reflects its overall cost effectiveness and ensures the price will not be a barrier for access for patients.
00:34:09.000How can you argue for a 10,000% increase saying that it won't be a barrier for patients when many medical experts say that if there are people that require this booster shot, it's likely to be the most vulnerable among us?
00:34:23.000Do you consider there to be a huge crossover between the most vulnerable and the most richest?
00:34:27.000Because I've noticed that the opposite tends to be true.
00:34:30.000That part of the vulnerability is a kind of economic vulnerability.
00:34:34.000So if anything, this vaccine should be even cheaper.
00:35:07.000Albert Baller received $24.3 million in total compensation for 2021.
00:35:13.000That's a 15% increase over the prior year.
00:35:15.000So let's try and focus on the positives, okay?
00:35:19.000It's not all about people that are vulnerable being ripped off with a 10,000% price hike or redacted pages or people being unaccountable.
00:35:27.000When your neck's feeling down, think about Albert Baller and his $23 million gleaned, to some degree, from human suffering.
00:35:35.000Covid vaccines have created nine new billionaires, yet more good news!
00:35:39.000With a combined wealth greater than the cost of vaccinating the world's poorest countries, which, you know, presumably you would do if you regarded it as a humanitarian thing.
00:35:46.000You can have nine new billionaires, or these poor people.
00:35:52.000Pfizer, along with other pharmaceutical giants, have fervently opposed the patent waiver as it sought to preserve its control over production and distribution of the shots, which were developed using government-funded technology.
00:36:09.000You're still worried about the redacted pages?
00:36:10.000You think that the only reason they redacted those pages is because there was information in there that if you had access to it, you'd be so angry you'd probably rise up and overthrow the government?
00:36:20.000Those redacted pages were the plans for a surprise birthday party and Albert Baller was actually going to show up even though he's under no obligation to attend.
00:36:36.000Another story of Pfizer helping humanity, whether it's through charging a reasonable price for a drug that makes sense, or open, transparent, dark black pages of limitless nothingness leading you into a sort of quantum nowhere.
00:37:42.000So, even if they are telling the truth, that means that there was no testing, only marketing, since the redacted part, according to them, is a marketing secret.
00:39:40.000No, I can't offer transparency, not here.
00:39:42.000What goes on in my financial office, that's my private business!
00:39:46.000Now, My Brain, My Choice says, when they hide information, it causes mistrust for good reason.
00:39:50.000And then on the simple subject of Lord God above, the limitless oneness that underwrites all apparent separateness, Apollocalypse 68 says, absolutely believe in God, but whatever you believe in is your business.
00:40:04.000As long as you believe in the betterment of humanity and our planet, then we'll get along just fine.
00:40:08.000Apocalypse 68, I couldn't agree more heartily.
00:40:10.000I was a bit worried when you started saying apocalypse over and over.
00:40:49.000I hope you and Woody Harlson, Project Peace, are right about that because I would like new models where we are independent of troubling energy sources, where we can regard this planet with great love, where we can break down all forms of monopoly, energy giants, bogus, peculiar, dubious relationships with peculiar foreign powers.
00:41:10.000It would be great, wouldn't it, to run the world a little differently, but we're going to have to change our priorities, as Gandhi said, and I'm pointing up there, Gal, because that's where he is.
00:42:07.000But people have decided that Alan McLeod is coming on.
00:42:10.000Now, what are you going to ask Alan McLeod before we speak to him?
00:42:13.000I am really interested in the government kind of intrusion into this case with Elon Musk.
00:42:19.000Government intrusion into the Musk takeover?
00:42:22.000Yeah, as in why they've cared so much about why Elon Musk wanted Twitter versus, for example, other billionaire moguls around There are other billionaire moguls.
00:43:02.000So I would think this is, Only Fans, Babestation, this is a proper channel.
00:43:08.000Now I'm going to be asking, Gareth, I'm going to be asking Alan McLeod about, I would say something along these lines probably, it's becoming increasingly clear over the last six years, Alan McLeod, that these people want it both ways.
00:43:20.000They don't want to break up surveillance capitalism or come up with a transparent, consistent, legalistic, fair framework for dealing with troublesome online speech.
00:43:29.000No, they actually want tech companies to remain giant black box monopolies with opaque moderation systems so they can direct the speech policing power of those companies to the desired political ends.
00:44:20.000But there was lots of reporting going on in the last couple of weeks saying that the US government, the Biden administration, was actually conducting a national security review of the purchase beforehand.
00:44:34.000They were basically saying, like Bloomberg, for instance, said that the Biden administration was a bit worried, and I'm quoting here, as they see his increasingly Russia-friendly stance.
00:44:46.000Now, in reality, Musk has actually been pretty bullish on Ukraine.
00:44:50.000He's supported the Ukrainian government.
00:44:52.000He's even sent those Starlink telecommunications satellites over to Ukraine, which their army is using to target Russian military right now.
00:45:01.000However, he has said a lot of things online, saying things like, you know, let's compromise,
00:45:06.000maybe we should negotiate, end this war.
00:45:09.000And that ultimately for the US government doesn't seem to be the right message.
00:45:13.000They're really not interested in that sort of, I don't want to say pro-peace, but at
00:45:20.000And so ultimately, I want to say that isn't this very interesting that the US government can block some sort of purchase if the billionaire in question is not sufficiently pro-war enough?
00:45:35.000We spoke to Tulsi Gabbard yesterday, and it was a very good, and may I say, very professional interview.
00:45:40.000And she spoke about the influence and power of the military-industrial complex over the Democrat Party in particular.
00:45:46.000And I suppose if they're dabbling in apparently private takeovers between sort of private billionaires, then I suppose that is a suggestion that there is an agenda being asserted from somewhere.
00:45:57.000Do you think it simply is a financial Do you think it's an ideological agenda?
00:46:02.000Do you think it is driven by the military-industrial complex?
00:46:04.000Or do you think there is something beyond even that, Alan?
00:46:08.000Well, the United States doesn't really make very much stuff anymore.
00:46:12.000They basically make weapons and, you know, some food.
00:46:30.000So when you think about these big tech companies that we rely on, we like to think of them as sort of transnational existing in the ether.
00:46:37.000But no, they're actually bricks and mortar companies, and nearly all of them are headquartered in California.
00:46:43.000And so they are subject to American laws.
00:46:45.000And not only that, my research over the past couple of years into big tech companies, and who is actually making decisions about content, moderation, trust and security, really was very shocking to me and to people who've read it.
00:47:00.000I was really interested in this when the big tech companies basically decided en masse to ban Donald Trump.
00:47:08.000I really wanted to know who was actually making the decisions, but they're really opaque and I couldn't really get any sort of answers or any sort of information off of their websites.
00:47:17.000Didn't you consider trying a little bit harder and stop being so lazy?
00:47:22.000Now what will be the repercussions for the security agencies working inside Twitter that you've written about in your, some are saying not hard enough working, investigative journalism career?
00:47:34.000What will happen to those embedded CIA, FBI type agents please mate?
00:47:41.000If people aren't aware, Twitter is absolutely chock-a-block full of FBI, CIA and NATO agents, or ex-CIA NATO agents.
00:47:50.000For instance, Dawn Burton in 2019 left her job as an FBI special agent, and then she just was parachuted into Twitter and became the Senior Director of Strategy and Operations for Public Policy, Trust and Safety.
00:48:04.000And there are many more examples like this.
00:48:08.000For instance, one of the chief people on Facebook's Trust Safety and Moderation team is Aaron Berman, who until 2019 was one of the most senior CIA agents going.
00:48:19.000He was actually writing the presidential daily briefs that Obama and Trump read every day.
00:48:25.000Although I think Trump just had them read out to him, actually.
00:48:27.000But yeah, ultimately, a lot of people really don't understand how deeply embedded Trump said those things was boring.
00:48:37.000Like, he didn't want to read those briefings.
00:48:39.000You're not the only one doing investigative journalism, Alan.
00:48:44.000And one of the things we investigated, and then journaled, was that Trump finds them things boring and they used to pretend that he was in them to keep him... Hey, you lot have been doing that to me, I've noticed!
00:48:55.000So it's a good bit of news about you, Russell.
00:49:03.000So yeah, they are deeply embedded and they are high-level officials.
00:49:07.000So this is not just some, I don't know, like it's beyond a revolving door.
00:49:10.000It's an amorphous and diaphanous connection, a sort of symbiosis that's ongoing that challenges the very idea of them being separate entities.
00:49:18.000Alan, did your increasingly half-hearted seeming research throw up any insights into how come Jeff Bezos was allowed to buy the Washington Post, please, sir?
00:49:30.000Well, you know, I think ultimately a lot of people in Washington don't really like Elon Musk.
00:49:37.000I mean, he's literally the richest man in the world, after all.
00:49:41.000But at the same time, in Washington, there is an extraordinary consensus about all sorts of things to do with politics, the economy, and how the world should work.
00:49:51.000Ultimately, Musk is a bit of a loose cannon in that sense.
00:49:58.000And it's quite hard to keep him under wraps.
00:50:01.000Bezos, on the other hand, really plays the game very much down the center and so ultimately hasn't ruffled any feathers in Washington like Musk has.
00:50:09.000And so ultimately, I think that's one of the reasons why there wasn't too much pushback to Bezos buying the post.
00:50:14.000But there has been a little bit of ruffled feathers in terms of Musk coming over to Twitter.
00:50:45.000Well, it's interesting to me because obviously looking at kind of media moguls in the States and owning of the Washington Post, I've just mentioned with Jeff Bezos, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, these are all owned by billionaires.
00:50:58.000So it's interesting when we get to Elon Musk that there's such opposition to that.
00:51:02.000But when you mentioned Bezos there, it brought me to thinking about his connections and Amazon's
00:51:07.000connections with the military-industrial complex and the kind of contracts that they have in
00:51:13.000And so it seems to me like obvious that they would, if Elon Musk is going to chuck out
00:51:18.000these members of the CIA and the FBI, that he's going to break that kind of link between
00:51:23.000government and a massive big tech platform, whereas someone like Bezos and Amazon rely
00:51:28.000on those relationships to provide so much money through these loads of contracts.
00:51:34.000So do you think that could be one of the reasons why there's such kind of opposition to this?
00:51:40.000Well, first of all, I do find it pretty funny how columnists at the Washington Post and Bloomberg are writing about the dangers of the billionaire class controlling our media system when they're quite literally owned by Jeff Bezos, formerly the world's richest man, and Michael Bloomberg, formerly the world's ninth richest man.
00:51:57.000But yeah, as you said, Amazon has signed a number of huge contracts with the US national security state worth billions of dollars, providing things like cloud computing and other software and infrastructure for Washington and its various three-letter agencies.
00:52:15.000Ultimately, people have talked about Twitter maybe being a place that fake news will abound
00:54:44.000You know, if you go to Washington, D.C., a lot of the U.S.
00:54:47.000is kind of in a state of disrepair, but one city that's absolutely thriving is D.C., and one of the reasons is there's just been this explosion of these semi-private companies that are just feeding from the trough of the Pentagon, all these trillions of dollars going into these, yeah, semi-private companies that do work All around the world, whether it's military or whatever.
00:55:10.000In fact, there's whole areas of the suburbs of DC that are now called Raytheon Acres, which is a reference to the military company Raytheon.
00:55:18.000Also, actually, Alan, that's actually what I call my testicles.
00:55:39.000Did you know, Alan, that the average taxpayer contributed about $2,000 a dues to the military last year?
00:55:46.000More than $900 of that went to corporate military contractors.
00:55:49.000That's just the same fact slightly repackaged through the lens of a taxpayer, but I still kicked a bin over when I researched it and did the sums required to make that transition, which I done.
00:56:03.000Well, I mean, if I was an American, I'd think, you know, we're paying $2,000 for this, but we don't have free healthcare.
00:56:10.000We're paying $2,000 to the military, but, you know, our schools are falling apart.
00:56:14.000There's a homelessness crisis, a drug epidemic.
00:56:17.000All of this stuff is very much a zero-sum game.
00:56:21.000If we're throwing all of this money at Raytheon and the endless wars that are going on all around the world, That means that there's no money for schools, for roads, for hospitals, for primary health care, for health care for drug addicts or anything like that.
00:56:35.000And so ultimately, we're seeing the society of the US start to crumble apart and people are starting to turn against each other.
00:56:43.000Unfortunately, they're not actually being focused at the real problem, which is the system of neoliberal capitalism, which is allowing this to happen.
00:56:52.000Igressino over in the chat, in caps mark you sir, says, Americans are furious.
00:56:59.000That's so, he's actually shouted that into the computer, hasn't he?
00:57:03.000There's probably a bit of spit on the screen, at least.
00:57:08.000Alan, this is my final request, journalist to journalist, would you consider coming on our show when you're not in Scotland, which is where you currently are.
00:57:18.000I did some research and that's where I happen to know you are.
01:00:01.000Lockheed Martin, who I believe are a military industrial complex weapons contractor, got 75 billion dollars from taxpayers and that's just in 2020 alone, when I believe he was locked up in your house because of a cough that it turns out wasn't actually that bad.
01:02:52.000Dr. Bob Gill will be talking to us about stuff that goes on, like healthcare contracts, the sly privatisation, blags, skullduggery, and a little bit of tomfoolery.
01:03:05.000There's no point bringing down centralised systems of power and then discovering that you're unhappy anyway because of something you're not resolved within the field of your own consciousness.
01:03:13.000You must awaken, and we will help you to awaken.
01:03:16.000When we are finished with you, you'll be so wide awake, you won't bloody well believe it.
01:03:20.000On Tuesday, next week, at 5am PT, 8am ET, 12pm BST, JP.
01:03:53.000You can win artwork around the theme of the book 1984, which I believe was written by a gentleman whose name I'm not going to tell you because it's a quiz.
01:04:03.000Alright, now if you're a member of the Stay Free AF community you can join us right now for a Q&A session where you can probably badger Gareth to play the French horn and I will give you investigative journalistic facts that's going to knock your socks right back down again so your feet will be nude and rude.
01:04:18.000We'll see you next week for more fantastic shows and it is our explicit endeavour to get Kanye and Elon on the show next week at the same time and see which one says something controversial first, me, them or each other.