Russell Brand is joined by Vadana Shiva and Branko Marticic to discuss how the media and the US military are lying to the public about the nature of the conflict in Ukraine, and why it's a good idea to have an erection in public places. Plus, the latest on the Trump vs. DeSantis super PAC spat, and how the mainstream media are doing their best to keep us in the dark about what's really going on in the world. Stay free, you lunatics. Stay free! To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/OurAdvertisers and use the promo code: "ELISSA" for 10% off "Hunt a Killer". Our ad-free version of the show is available on all good podcasting platforms, including Vimeo, iTunes and Podchaser, wherever you get your shows. If you like what you hear, please consider leaving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, wherever else you re listening to your favourite podcast, and we'll be giving you 5 star reviews on the next episode of Stay Free, Yes Yes Yes No! Stay Free! Subscribe to Stay Free with Russell Brand and Good Mythology here! We're streaming live on Rumble on all of the major podcast directories and social medias, including Podchronicity, to keep you up to date with the latest in the latest happenings in the culture and culture around the world of podcasting and culture. Stay Free - stay free and stay woke! - be sure to leave us a review on your favourite podchronicities! Be sure to tell us what you're listening to us what's trending on social media and what you think about it's up to in the past 24 hours and what s your favourite thing you're watching and what's up in your life you're up to this week's Stay Free With Us! in the coming week, and what are you looking forward to in your news and who's watching the most important thing you'll be listening to next? stay free, stay woke, be safe, be sure, be woke, stay free! xoxo, bye! XOXO. - EJoshes, Vicky, Vadansh, Vavos, Vazquez, John King, VANESSA, Vaynerchucks, Jack, Ayn Rand, Ben, and John King
00:01:42.000A little bit later, we'll also be talking to Branko Marticic about how the US government misled the public on the war in Ukraine and how the media, very much the Joe Biden to the Joe Biden of the state, support the government in their ongoing lies.
00:01:57.000Then we're in our item, here's the news, no, here's the effing news.
00:02:00.000We'll be looking at how military personnel are suffering poverty, suffering Indignity!
00:02:08.000All the while the military-industrial complex is profiting massively.
00:02:13.000Oh, I'm feeling a little bit better, but I won't tell you what condition it might be helping, according to... There's plenty of conditions it could be helping with you.
00:02:38.000Here he is appearing at, I would call it, An orthodox ceremony for the festival of Easter in which our Lord Jesus comes back from death to show us that there are deeper tunes to be played when it comes to the Requiem of Consciousness.
00:03:39.000No, and also, he's that as well, of course, he's a deranged madman, but he's so ill that we're going to win this war.
00:03:45.000Putin, Putin, he's so ill, he'll be really easy to kill in our not-proxy war that we're not having.
00:03:51.000We're just supporting Ukraine in a huge monetary effort that's necessary and had nothing to do with NATO impeding on former Soviet Union territory and nothing to do with a coup in 2014.
00:04:54.000With all of their bombast and banal pageantry, they're in no position to criticise the propaganda of anyone else.
00:05:02.000Look at that, by the way, his name, John King, came thrusting onto the screen, an unwanted graphic priapic erection forced in from the side of the frame.
00:05:12.000If his point is they're doing this too early, just make a decision to not show it then.
00:05:54.000Let's see though, I think Trump's super PAC propaganda, not necessarily affiliated with the Trump campaign, which is a super PAC thing, is better.
00:06:02.000Because what they've gone for Is a garish, galling, gory, and awful image involving pudding.
00:06:11.000Also, like, they're picking up on a weird detail about Ron DeSantis.
00:06:15.000I didn't know that Ron DeSantis ate puddings with his fingers.
00:06:20.000You know, like, have you ever been to India?
00:06:37.000I still think even in India, they wouldn't do a chocolate They might, mate.
00:06:41.000They might get their fingers right in there.
00:06:42.000If you are watching this live from India now, eating a puddin' with your fingers, then text us.
00:06:48.000But, I mean, it's up to you to use your phone.
00:06:49.000Maybe wipe the pudding off your fingers.
00:06:52.000Or, if you're on DeSantis, and you're watching this in Florida, with a great scoop of pud right there, cradled there in the nook of your third knuckle, suck that down.
00:07:04.000Delicious, like Mother Nature surely intended when she granted us these crazy little hand wands.
00:07:12.000Now, that ad from a pro-DeSantis pack is responding to scathing ads from a pro-Trump group, including this, yes, stomach-churning dig at the Florida governor after a report that he ate pudding with his fingers.
00:07:26.000Ron DeSantis loves sticking his fingers where they don't belong.
00:07:30.000The fact is that DeSantis has got a table and chair, and all that's on it is that pudding.
00:08:54.000I mean, the erotic need not necessarily evoke a passionate or even erotic response in the recipient because the world of sexuality is a complex and wonderful smorgasbord.
00:10:01.000In a minute, we're going to have a little look at how the media are fetishizing the identity of whistleblower Buddy Boy Texera, instead of focusing on the content of his leak.
00:10:11.000We'll be talking to Branko Marcicic about that in more detail.
00:10:14.000Why are the media always the willing, compliant The tack dog of the state instead of its interrogator.
00:10:22.000Let me know in the chat, in the comments, if you think that the era of mainstream media is over, that, like Elon Musk, we should label them Propaganda Unit, state-funded, funded by Big Pharma, bought to you by Pfizer.
00:10:35.000I mean, they normally do that themselves, actually, to be honest, don't they, as part of one of the conditions that Pfizer imposes on them.
00:10:40.000Here's another story about a lad, Josiah Garcia, he works for the military, I was thinking the Air Guard or something like that, and what he did was he applied to get a job as a hitman on what turned out to be a spoof hitman site.
00:10:56.000Someone, for a laugh I suppose, set up a spoof, you know, wanted hitman to carry out assassinations.
00:11:02.000this poor impoverished service person went, oh god I'll give it a go, I've got nothing
00:11:06.000to lose and then the FBI always looking for someone to arrest, an easy arrest. Like this
00:11:11.000is, you know, the FBI as you are aware have a long history of setting up crimes then solving
00:11:16.000that crime. I mean it's a weird racket they're running over there with regard to that.
00:11:21.000Terrorist organisations that they contribute to and kind of form and then shop them.
00:11:56.00021-year-old Tennessee Air National Guardsman is under arrest tonight, charged with applying to be a hitman.
00:12:02.000Officials say that he applied on a spoof site called rentahitman.com and was taken into custody after allegedly taking money from an undercover agent for a fictitious hit.
00:12:14.000Tonight, a Tennessee Air National Guardsman is facing federal charges after allegedly using the website rentahitman.com to apply for a job as an assassin.
00:12:24.000But it turns out the website was just a parody, and now he's been arrested.
00:12:29.000According to the criminal complaint, Garcia explained that he was, quote, Unconsciously or otherwise, it presents stories that are soluble and focused on the errors and malevolence, say, of an individual.
00:12:45.000What that does is it prevents us from realizing that what we're dealing with are institutional and systemic problems.
00:12:54.000Is it the actions of Jack Taxera revealing on that chatroom site that there was misleading information being propagated about the Ukraine-Russia conflict?
00:13:06.000Or the fact that this type of information is widely disseminated, the propagandist information I mean, in order to support the military-industrial complex, a machine for profit that requires war?
00:13:17.000I'd like to see a story focused on that.
00:13:21.000You so seldom see the interests of the powerful attacked on mainstream media, so you have to ask yourself, who do the mainstream media work for?
00:14:32.000A guy who wants to earn more money because potentially he's on food stamps, like one in six military personnel, wants to use the skill sets that he's acquired in the military, probably abroad, killing people that the government want him to kill, over in the United States, and suddenly everything changes at that point.
00:14:47.000If you don't trust the government anymore, then why would you trust them to determine which people it's okay to kill?
00:14:53.000While he's over there killing those people, he's a hero.
00:14:56.000Then he comes over here and fills in a spoof form, he's a villain.
00:15:00.000And the media will present him as such.
00:15:02.000He's answering such a pipsqueak question, when there's like an encyclopedia of inquiry that remains untouched.
00:15:11.000Authorities say Garcia then sent in his resume, which listed his nickname as Reaper, and a copy of his photo ID, adding, quote, what can I say?
00:15:19.000I enjoy doing what I do, so if I can find a job that's similar to it, put me in, coach.
00:15:25.000I mean, actually, I feel a bit sorry for him because of the earnest way that he's trying to fill in this resume.
00:15:34.000I actually would probably kill him at a price that's right.
00:15:37.000I'm willing to undercut my competitor, assassins.
00:15:40.000It's clearly not the primary problem when you have military personnel willing to carry out online assassinations as a sort of side hustle.
00:15:51.000If you're working for the military, you should be financially looked after.
00:15:54.000But the bleak truth is that many, many military personnel simply are not.
00:16:00.000One in six on food stamps, many insecure about shelter.
00:16:04.000This is not the kind of hero's welcome that the 19 song demanded. It's not the kind of celebration that
00:16:14.000American patriotism and pageantry continually suggests when it's at the recruitment end of finding
00:16:20.000military personnel suggest is available.
00:16:23.000It seems just fodder and objects of ridicule. And again, with the Buddy Boy text era case,
00:16:31.000why are we not focusing on the content of the leaks? Why are we focusing instead on
00:16:37.000irrelevant details about the lad that made the leaks.
00:16:41.000That's something we'll be talking to Branko Marcicic about in more detail.
00:16:46.000As well as Ukrainian censorship and the inability to openly discuss the war in Ukraine.
00:16:53.000Yeah, obviously if this goes any further you can imagine the discussions.
00:16:56.000What a sad end to the career of this military personnel.
00:17:00.000There's a sad end to a lot of people in the military in America.
00:17:02.000Almost 40,000 veterans are without shelter in the US on any given night.
00:17:06.000Veterans account for 11% of homeless adults in the US.
00:17:09.000So whether it's the way that this has gone or just the way that it goes standard for a lot of American veterans, it's not a great end.
00:17:16.000We're not having an adult conversation about the problem because if you want to have A real conversation about even this one story, you'd have to say, why is there so much desperation in an individual that has a job?
00:17:33.000Does that track across the military more broadly?
00:18:56.000Nothing like it's a terrible indictment of the American military in general and more broadly the way that it's funded when you know that 50% of all military expenditure ends up going via the Pentagon, the unauditable Pentagon, into the hands of the military-industrial complex.
00:19:11.000Let's have a look at some of the profits being made by these organizations like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and all of these guys.
00:19:18.000That's just the BAE system, 17.5 billion.
00:19:21.000Just have a little glance at that, the amount of profit made by some of the military-industrial complex.
00:19:24.000Meanwhile, there's people willing to do spoof assassinations to turn a few quid.
00:19:29.000Now, the FBI who were involved in that investigation have a long history of setting up stings and then solving the problem that doesn't seem seem to be what you'd want the FBI doing. Here's one of the
00:19:41.000more comic ones. In 2020, the FBI and Justice Department announced the arrest of 14
00:19:46.000Michigan militia members who called themselves the Wolverine Watchmen. Already, that's a
00:19:51.000bit daft, isn't it? If you're naming yourself after Wolverine. Are they watching Wolverine
00:19:56.000or are they watchmen that are like Wolverine themselves? We'll never know. We'll
00:20:00.000never know because they're made up and they wouldn't have done it anyway if the FBI hadn't
00:20:03.000got them all worked up about The FBI claimed that federal agents had thwarted an elaborate plot hatched by the men to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
00:20:13.000Questions of entrapment quickly emerged in the case.
00:20:15.000Yeah, it's entrapment of that poor lad, isn't it?
00:20:58.000They're justifying their own existence, because if the FBI doesn't do anything, then you don't need an FBI, and what you'll expose is that the infrastructure and architecture of the state primarily exists to subjugate the domestic population, distract and disempower them, rather than protect them.
00:21:14.000So you have to create bizarre cases like the Wolverine Watchmen, who sound made up, and indeed are made up, to justify their own existence.
00:21:22.000You watch now there's these robot Dogs in New York City.
00:21:26.000They'll never revert to not having them, even though once before the people of New York demanded they be removed, they'll continue to justify them, won't they?
00:21:34.000They'll say, oh look, these digi-dogs have been solved in all sorts of cases.
00:21:38.000Look at all the crimes they've solved.
00:21:40.000All these crimes, there was these Wolverine Watchmen.
00:21:43.000Those about, the Wolverine Watchmen, they were going to kick people right up the ball bag.
00:21:47.000There used to be a lot of homeless people in this area and magically they've disappeared.
00:21:51.000Presumably they've all gone and got jobs now as online spoof assassins doing pretend murders.
00:21:57.000Well, a ridiculous waste of everybody's time and money.
00:22:25.000No wonder they're willing to Boost their kudos on chat rooms and fill in spoof murder forms for a bit of attention.
00:22:32.000I would say what needs to be addressed is the way that the military is funded and run and the relationship that the American military has with the people that they all signed up to protect and serve.
00:22:44.000It's a disgrace that you can be a member of the military and personally poor.
00:22:49.000End the Let me know in the chat and the comments if you agree with that.
00:22:54.000Now if you're watching this on YouTube, you won't be for much longer because I'm going to be telling you just why I'm sniffing this sweet orange.
00:23:01.000I'm not a Ron DeSantis scoop-it-with-a-finger style perv.
00:23:05.000This is a magical new health kick according to the mainstream media.
00:23:25.000Click the link in the description right now.
00:23:28.000Okay, thanks to Will Sudders' dad, Andy Sudders, who's the only person willing to subscribe to the Telegraph website that enables us to access these stories.
00:23:38.000We can tell you that a study from University College London has found that people with long Covid and anosmia, anosmia, anosmia, that's a silly thing for when your nose stops working.
00:23:50.000nose and nose mirror have suffered a viral rewiring of the brain but may be
00:23:55.000able to get their sense of smell back through olfactory training. Sniff your
00:23:59.000way to health. That's all I was doing. Ron DeSantis will be using that as his
00:24:03.000defense. I was just trying to cure myself along Covid. I'm scooping up the
00:24:07.000goodness. I'm scooping up the goodness. Get away from that cat litter tray Ron.
00:24:12.000Them's not chocolate raisins in there, Ronald.
00:25:24.000Hang on, after all this time and all the debate around vaccines and all these things, are we honestly getting to the point where the answer to long COVID is sniffing stuff around the house?
00:25:35.000All of this trouble, all of them funerals you went to on YouTube, all of those people you couldn't visit, all you needed to do was sniff yourself better!
00:25:44.000I mean, of course I'm being reductive, and ultimately what he's saying is that you can reignite your senses and rewire them through olfactory...
00:25:53.000But when you add that to the great litany of formerly dismissed cures, steroids, vitamin D, exercise, being outside, breath work, general health, not eating processed foods, not bothering getting numerous booster shots that, according to clinical trials, I'm talking specifically about the Moderna one, don't do F all.
00:26:17.000The problem is that during the pandemic, no one actually had any oranges, because people were having all those burgers that they were told to eat.
00:26:23.000They should have been giving out, come and get a vaccine, and we'll give you an orange to sniff on the way home.
00:26:28.000Or if you're on Desantis, come get a vaccine, you can dip up to three fingers in my pudding bowl, Ron, and then get home and govern like you bloody well mean it.
00:26:38.000All right, we're going to be talking to Branco Marchetic, Yeah.
00:28:12.000Anyway, it's time now to look at some more news.
00:28:15.000If that wasn't, excuse me, I've got to stay well.
00:28:18.000I have to stay well, not just for me, but for the news.
00:28:21.000If you want to know if there is anyone willing to confront a Deputy Defence Secretary with the hard facts of military expenditure and potential corruption in a Pentagon that's failed its last five audits and can't account for literally billions of dollars of expenditure, then look for Jon Stewart.
00:28:37.000And across the aisle, Ally, if you're one of the people that declares themselves Libertarian, or right-wing that watches our show, me, as you know, and we don't know where Gareth is anymore, it's difficult to tell.
00:28:47.000I think that you shouldn't trust any political party.
00:28:55.000And when you listen to this story, when you watch this story, you are going to be inclined to agree because the military-industrial complex is perhaps the greatest example of institutional corruption there is.
00:29:05.000They are getting 50% of your federal tax dollars and they're not willing to tell you what they're doing with it.
00:29:12.000All this while, as we've explained and described to you today, Did you see Jon Stewart talking to that horrible Defence Secretary?
00:29:33.000Do you know that the Pentagon has never passed an audit?
00:29:45.000Jon Stewart's doing a good job, isn't he?
00:29:47.000Talking to people, having confrontations with that Defence Secretary lady where he brought up the fact that the Pentagon's never passed an audit.
00:29:54.000What's the point in doing these audits then?
00:29:55.000This is taking place, of course, while the Pentagon papers of that lad called something like Buster Teixeira, I'll get his actual name in a minute at some point, Has revealed that we're being told lies about the Ukraine war, the efficacy of the campaign so far, whether or not Ukraine will ever reclaim those territories, all the while money, your money by the way, is being pumped into keeping the conflict going because we've also been informed there's no chance of peace for at least a year.
00:30:20.000So I'm asking you and I want you to answer in the comments in the chat Who should really be on trial?
00:30:25.000That little boy or the military-industrial complex itself?
00:30:44.000She's been rude, isn't she, to someone who most of us are aware is pretty sharp and knows how to behave on camera, knows how to conduct an investigation, knows how to interrogate people.
00:30:53.000The narrative we're interested in here is why are we focusing on that little boy, buddy boy Texiera, when plainly people in positions of considerable power are literally contributing to the deaths of military personnel.
00:31:07.000Let alone the fact that people that have given their lives in service or have suffered in service aren't being properly looked after.
00:31:14.000You know there's a bunch of people in the military that are living on food stamps whose actions and decisions are actually leading to the death of soldiers and military personnel.
00:31:23.000Is it Buddy Texiera or is it high up people in the defense industry who are masking the facts about the war and facilitating ongoing contracts?
00:31:53.000But generally those audits aren't $400 billion for Raytheon and $1.7 trillion for a plane that doesn't seem to be doing it.
00:32:00.000There is a lot of waste, fraud and abuse within a system.
00:32:03.000Audits and waste, fraud and abuse are not the same thing.
00:32:06.000She really thinks she's going to be able to get through this conversation simply through analysing the etymology of the word audit.
00:32:12.000You don't seem to know what the word audit means.
00:32:14.000That's not the way out of this conversation.
00:32:16.000Because obviously the question underneath the question is, is the reason that these audits being failed because there's like loads of corruption and money's getting skimmed off the top and creamed off the top.
00:32:27.000I want it to be that Jon Stewart sits down and talks to a defence secretary and she goes, Now honestly, what it is, is this is how the money's being spent and we're really doing our best.
00:32:34.000I know it looks on the surface like Raytheon and Norfolk Grumman and BAE system and all of this.
00:32:39.000Looks like what they're doing is they're presenting us with a bill and then they're taking a load of profit then these weapons aren't making it to Ukraine and actually we're prolonging that war so we can keep these deals going.
00:32:47.000I know it looks like that but it isn't that.
00:32:50.000The problem is actually this little boy.
00:33:39.000Lately we're being granted conversations and confrontations that are emblematic of what we suspect is the dynamic between us and the powerful.
00:33:48.000Whether it's Elon Musk and that BBC report, I mean you see like that he doesn't want to answer questions and he thinks that the BBC are beyond reproach or this conversation between Jon Stewart and this lady or some of Matt Taibbi's confrontations.
00:33:59.000What we're getting confronted with is the pose of authority and power.
00:34:24.000We don't have to indulge in conspiracies.
00:34:26.000What we can plainly see though, on the basis of these five failed audits and the media furore surrounding Buddy Boy Texas lad, is that people want us to look over here at a lad revealing information in chat rooms that doesn't put anyone at risk.
00:34:41.000That espionage act should be called the don't say stuff we don't want you to say act.
00:35:56.000But I think it's a tough argument to make that an $850 billion budget to an organization that can't pass an audit and tell you where that money went Like, I think most people would consider that somewhere in the realm of waste, fraud, or abuse because they would wonder why that money isn't well accounted for.
00:36:19.000I mean, I'm trying to understand where you're trying to go other than the dollars, which really bother you.
00:36:30.000Whether or not the war is legal or illegitimate, or whether we're telling the truth, or whether or not the Pentagon fundamentally funnels money towards the military-industrial complex, and it's impossible to record that accurately without revealing that military personnel are not benefiting from your tax dollars, but the various military-industrial complex companies are benefiting.
00:37:38.000And if like, if that blows your mind, And if you think, like, that's like a crazy agenda for me to have, I really think that that's institutional thinking.
00:37:50.000Jon Stewart there, staying relaxed and spelling it out to a giggling, shrieking, awful government apparatchik.
00:37:57.000Let's have a look at it in more detail.
00:37:58.000Last year, the Department of Defense revealed that it had failed its fifth consecutive audit.
00:38:02.000The Biden administration provided details this month on its $886.3 billion budget proposal for national defence in fiscal year 2024.
00:38:10.000The Pentagon's spending path would put the military's annual budget over the $1 trillion threshold in just a matter of years, its chief financial officer said recently.
00:38:19.000When an institution receives that much revenue, they have to be accountable and responsible.
00:38:26.000The problem with the defence minister there, the deputy defence minister, is not just that her haughtiness is socially unpleasant, it's that it aligns very neatly and beautifully with the attitude we can assume is institutional based on these facts.
00:38:44.000Oh it seems like they don't care and they think they can do whatever they want and they don't even have to answer questions or indeed pass audits because their power supersedes the power of government and indeed democracy and no matter what party's in they're going to ensure that the military-industrial complex continues to thrive even if that means sponsoring and prolonging foreign conflicts that lead to the death of American military personnel whose image they're willing to use as propaganda to mask their corruption.
00:39:13.000And who they're willing to put to the forefront when conducting a trial against poor old buddy Texiera in order to say, hey, we're doing this because we want to protect American personnel.
00:39:22.000If you do want to protect American personnel, then use the resources that the American taxpayers are giving you to give American service people a decent, fair wage and a respectable way of life.
00:39:34.000Instead of, of course, funneling it seemingly unaccountably towards the military-industrial complex.
00:39:38.000Jack Teixeira, suspect in the Pentagon leaks, has been charged under the Espionage Act, which criminalizes the unauthorized retention and disclosure of national security secrets.
00:39:48.000It carries a sentence of up to 10 years per count, and each leaked document could be its own count.
00:39:52.000The Washington Post says it has about 300 documents.
00:39:54.000That means that Jack Teixeira will be 3,021 years old by the time he gets out.
00:40:01.000I think if he's not learned his lesson in the first 2,000 years, the penal system also needs an audit.
00:40:06.000The releases of classified information by Edward Snowden, a contractor at the National Security Agency, and Chelsea Manning, an army intelligence analyst, were treated by the government as catastrophes that jeopardized human lives.
00:40:20.000Documents released by Snowden revealed that the government was engaged in unconstitutional spying on Americans, while information that Manning provided to WikiLeaks showed that US forces killed journalists and civilians in Iraq and lied about it afterwards.
00:40:33.000Despite the government's dire warning, subsequent reviews showed that no deaths could be linked to the disclosures by Manning and WikiLeaks.
00:40:43.000So they said it was endangering the lives of military personnel, but in fact what it revealed was they're spying on you and killing civilians and journalists.
00:40:51.000How dare you say that we are killing civilians and journalists in Iraq and spying on American people?
00:40:57.000That put American personnel's lives at risk.
00:41:08.000I'm going to need a couple of billion dollars worth of missiles even to get through this audit.
00:41:13.000One of the leaked documents revealed the U.S.
00:41:14.000doesn't expect Russia-Ukraine peace talks in 2023.
00:41:17.000Another leak that was also reported by The Washington Post says the U.S.
00:41:20.000thinks it's unlikely the Ukraine will regain any significant territory in its expected counteroffensive, a stark difference from what the Biden administration has been saying publicly.
00:41:30.000So the key thing here is these revelations have made it plain that in private, the Biden administration say they're not going to get any territory back.
00:41:38.000In public, though, the Ukrainians are brave, strong people.
00:41:41.000This counteroffensive will be a success.
00:41:43.000It's worth pumping your taxpayer dollars into it.
00:41:46.000If they don't believe what they're saying, what is it they believe?
00:41:51.000Is it possible they believe it's profitable to continue the war?
00:41:55.000Is it possible they consider it necessary to engage Russia in an ongoing conflict?
00:42:00.000Once we know that they don't even believe it as a result of these leaks, by the way, no one's ever covering that, no one's covering the content of the leaks, then we have to ask, we have a duty to ask, what Is it, they believe?
00:42:12.000Why are we talking about the criminality of young Jack Texera, who it seems isn't a plucky little idealist, but just a kid on a chat room revealing stuff for casual kudos in those chat room encounters.
00:42:28.000Look at how the media partner the government in distracting us from the facts.
00:42:33.000In November 2022, there was legislation pending in Congress that indicates that the US government believes the Ukraine war may continue for years.
00:42:41.000On October the 11th, the Senate Armed Services Committee submitted its amended draft of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2023.
00:42:49.000Nestled within the draft is a provision that would establish an emergency multi-year plan
00:42:53.000to award massive defence contracts to Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, BAE Systems and other war
00:42:59.000corporations to produce weapons for Ukraine and to replenish US stockpiles as well as
00:43:42.000They're going to give us multi-year authority and they're going to give us funding to really put into the industrial base.
00:43:48.000And I'm talking billions of dollars into the industrial base to fund these production lines, said the Pentagon's chief weapons buyer, Bill LaPlante.
00:43:55.000What you really want is these people on trial.
00:43:58.000Jack tax area, if he goes away for a thousand, five hundred, ten years, a million years, it's not gonna make any difference to you, it's not gonna make any difference to the military.
00:44:05.000What we should be analysing, auditing, scrutinising, adjudicating, is this expenditure.
00:44:11.000If this doesn't change, the world cannot change.
00:44:14.000This is a key component of systemic corruption and ultra-democratic power, power that is beyond democracy.
00:44:22.000If we don't address this, nothing can change.
00:44:24.000Past and current military spending equals 48% of all spent federal tax dollars.
00:44:33.000Half of all federal tax dollars, federal tax dollars, so I guess you've got state taxes as well, but half of all federal tax dollars is going in this direction.
00:45:10.000Little buddy boy Texera or Norfolk Grumman, Raytheon and the military-industrial complex partnership between your government that you pay for and those organisations?
00:45:21.000If you were to audit it, good luck, and scrutinise it, good luck!
00:45:26.000That meant that we made that decision, and that meant we prolonged it, and that meant we didn't debate this, and that meant a peace deal was taken off the table, and that meant we inspired that coup.
00:45:34.000Oh, and that means that that money never made it to that particular organisation, and that meant that those service people ended up homeless.
00:45:40.000That means these service people are on food stamps.
00:45:43.000That meant these people committed suicide.
00:45:59.000At the same time, networks and cable news is replete with pundits and experts, or more accurately, military officials turned consultants whose current jobs and clients are not disclosed to viewers, for obvious reasons.
00:46:10.000This while military families are reporting housing, health and financial challenges according to a survey released by the Military Family Advisory Network which found that nearly a quarter of enlisted families are experiencing food insecurity and more than 60% of respondents pay more than they can comfortably afford for housing.
00:46:27.000So if you're in the military, which was one of those jobs that used to mean, well at least you're taken care of, You're gonna eat and have hours.
00:46:35.00060% of them can't comfortably afford housing and quarter of them can't eat.
00:46:39.000One-fifth of active service families and nearly 40% of veteran families surveyed reported less than $500 of emergency savings or no emergency savings fund.
00:46:48.000And over three quarters of military families indicated that they carry debt.
00:46:52.000Almost 40,000 veterans are without shelter in the US on any given night.
00:46:57.000The leading causes of homelessness among vets are PTSD, social isolation, unemployment and substance abuse.
00:47:02.000Veterans account for 11% of homeless adults in the US.
00:47:06.000Sounds to me like a system that could be radically improved.
00:47:10.000With a few key decisions and a few audits.
00:47:13.000Although sometimes I read stuff like that and I feel despair, sometimes I see people like that defence minister and I feel hopeless.
00:47:19.000Actually, it shows that the room for improvement is so vast that we would have to be stupid not to demand it.
00:47:26.000We'd have to be stupid not to put aside cultural differences and come together in order to prioritise what are plainly the defining problems of our time.
00:47:37.000Systemic abuse of power that takes place beyond the reach of democracy, i.e.
00:47:43.000whether you vote Republican or Democrat, you're gonna get some version of this.
00:47:47.000So we have to form new alliances, we have to form a new agenda, we have to create a new manifesto.
00:47:53.000Because it's disgusting to me that people that give their lives in service, whether they actually die for it or not, are Ending up homeless or unable to afford food and shelter while the Pentagon are unable to pass a bloody audit and while the representatives of the defense industry just haughtily dismissed the inquiries of an on-screen journalist.
00:48:36.000My snout's getting stronger by the second.
00:48:38.000I'm being joined now by friend of the show, Branko Marcicic, an investigative journalist for Jacobin, the author of Yesterday's Man, the case against Joe Biden.
00:48:48.000Uh, this is a really cool quote from Branko to get you in the mood.
00:48:53.000So sit yourself down in your chair, wherever you are, and listen to this.
00:48:56.000It's gonna get you hot and wet for Branko.
00:49:03.000What's more corrosive to US democracy, that the president secretly put US booties on the ground in an escalating war zone in Ukraine, breaking a promise and going against the wishes of the voting public, or that the public was finally told about it?
00:49:19.000That's a bit of the brilliant journalism of Branko Marticic, except for I made the word... I said booties instead of boots.
00:49:35.000We are, like you, independent journalists, and we have a duty to take truth pretty bloody seriously.
00:49:41.000I'll congratulate you, firstly, on your hair today, and secondly, we'll move on to my first question.
00:49:47.000Gareth Roy is very excited to have you here.
00:49:49.000He believes you to be a rising star of the independent journalism scene, and he wants to frame you as one of our key voices on Stay Free Media.
00:49:58.000So just know that, Branko, before you even begin your answer, that you are loved and believed in and adored.
00:50:04.000Now, the US government misled the public on the war.
00:50:07.000Why are the mainstream corporate media more interested in going on about that lad's nickname being OG?
00:50:14.000Why are the New York Times involved in his capture and arrest like Scooby-Doo and the Gang or Lovejoy, if you're British?
00:50:22.000Instead of focusing on the content of the leaks, please, Branko.
00:50:27.000I mean, this is basically a pattern that happens every time there's a major leak that exposes something politically convenient or embarrassing or even scandalous.
00:50:37.000government, I can give you a number of examples.
00:50:39.000I mean, basically, you know, some of the biggest leaks in U.S.
00:50:43.000history, you think about Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, you think about the various leaks that WikiLeaks put out under Julian Assange, the Snowden leaks, Chelsea Manning's contributions to the Assange WikiLeaks stuff.
00:50:58.000All of these people were, rather than, well, alongside, you know, writing about the genuinely kind of scandalous and revelatory stuff that they revealed, at the same time there was this obsession among certain segments of the press on You know, were these people, are they heroes or traitors?
00:51:22.000Let's talk about some of their misdeeds.
00:51:25.000Sometimes misdeeds are completely imagined, in the case of Snowden, who's been accused of being A Russian and a Chinese spy and all this kind of stuff.
00:51:35.000But, and then also sometimes, you know, very real misdeeds.
00:51:38.000You know, I think Assange, the sexual assault allegations against Assange were credible.
00:51:43.000Obviously, this guy, this latest leaker has, you know, this record of making, you know, offensive and racist comments and so on and so forth.
00:51:52.000But, you know, the entire time that we're talking about whether these people are good or bad and whether they, you know, are deserving of our respect or our valorization, We're not talking about the actual stuff that they revealed.
00:52:03.000In the case of Wikileaks, it was evidence of war crimes by US and coalition forces in Iraq and other places.
00:52:11.000In this case, there's so much important that's come out of this leak.
00:52:14.000I would say number one, The fact that the Biden administration apparently does have boots on the ground, despite saying it would not deploy troops, that has, you know, dozens of special forces personnel in Ukraine, as does the whole of NATO.
00:53:24.000Out of the many things that have come out but you know these are very important topics to discuss in the context of this ever escalating war and we don't talk about them because we're focused on is this person good or bad.
00:53:35.000Why can't the US be honest about the extent of their involvement in this conflict, plainly admitting that there are American personnel within Ukraine?
00:53:48.000And why can't the mainstream media hold them to account when these leaks are made?
00:53:54.000Why does this consensus to maintain one narrative exist, Branko?
00:54:00.000I mean, unfortunately, in the US especially, the press has long been kind of more eager for escalation and kind of a more aggressive military posture from the Biden administration.
00:54:13.000I mean, if you, you know, whatever you think about the Biden administration's policy to Ukraine, They have been relatively restrained compared to what the press has been asking.
00:54:23.000I mean, you know, from the earliest days of the war, there were White House press corps people who were saying, you know, basically, why won't you set up a no-fly zone?
00:54:32.000Which, you know, would have basically been the declaration of World War III.
00:54:37.000Or, you know, saying, why aren't you constantly pushing the administration to send more advanced, more escalatory weaponry to Ukraine, and so on and so forth.
00:54:47.000So I think for that segment of the media that kind of wants a more aggressive, confrontational posture from the United States government, it doesn't pay to talk about the risks.
00:55:00.000It doesn't pay to talk about the way that the US government has actually misled the public.
00:55:05.000around it's already fairly deep involvement in this war.
00:55:09.000And I mean for the Biden administration, of course, it wants to maintain this idea that, oh, you
00:55:14.000know, we're having a hands-off approach, this is not a proxy war, this is the
00:55:19.000This is not a conflict between the U.S.
00:55:21.000and Russia or between NATO and Russia.
00:55:23.000We're merely providing support to Ukraine at once.
00:55:26.000We're not ourselves actively, you know, belligerents in this war.
00:55:31.000Because I think for domestic consumption, it convinces people that, hey, the U.S.
00:55:38.000officials have not sort of blundered the country into yet another potentially catastrophic war.
00:55:44.000And I think on the You know, it has this benefit of making the United States seem like a kind of honest broker in this war rather than, you know, what Lula, the president of Brazil, recently said, which is, you know, it's been sort of encouraging the prolonging of the war that's been going on.
00:56:02.000Why is Zelensky declaring war on dissent, centralising nearly all of Ukraine's national TV networks?
00:56:10.000Why, if the leadership of Ukraine are on the side of righteousness, why can they not accommodate dissent Debate and conversation and obviously I would apply that to the ongoing march towards censorship in our countries, you know, Australia, England, America, all that.
00:56:33.000Why is there an unwillingness to accommodate dissent and debate?
00:56:45.000I mean, to put it briefly, the sort of authoritarianism that existed in Ukrainian politics, which, you know, long predates the invasion.
00:56:56.000Unfortunately, ever since the breaking of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has been several different struggles over the decades to kind of try and make it a more democratic, less corrupt country.
00:57:05.000You know, grassroots This has been a problem for a long time, and that was a problem under Zelensky before the war, but things really ramped up.
00:57:15.000You know, there's been both anecdotal and also if you look at the data, the prosecution data, there's just been an explosion of prosecutions, detainments, all this stuff against anti-war dissidents, or really just any dissidents of all kinds.
00:57:36.000It might mean that, you know, you are someone who criticized the Zelensky government within Ukraine for, you know, helping to making decisions that helped sort of lead to war.
00:57:49.000It might mean that you even support Russia.
00:57:53.000There are definitely people in Ukraine who, you know, it's a small number, a small minority, but there are definitely people who support the war effort.
00:58:01.000It might mean criticizing the Solicitor General for some of its anti-democratic overreaches.
00:58:07.000It can also mean, you know, things like just basically putting forward kind of left-wing ideology.
00:58:14.000A lot of leftists have been kind of caught up in the repression over there.
00:58:20.000The sum total of it is that, you know, basically there's been a crackdown on anything that kind of deviates from the official Ukrainian line, whether it's about the course of the war, the causes of the war, the fitness of the Ukrainian government, all this stuff.
00:58:34.000Whatever it is, if you're saying it and it's, you know, politically inconvenient to the government, you might get a knock on the door from the SBU.
00:58:44.000Now, in terms of why this is happening, I mean, there's two explanations.
00:58:50.000Number one, obviously Ukraine's been invaded by a larger neighboring power.
00:58:56.000Any country that comes under foreign attack and outside attack in wartime, you see a typically a centralization of government power.
00:59:07.000You see Things like censorship policies being put into place.
00:59:11.000You know, it happened under Lincoln during the Civil War.
00:59:14.000I mean, it happened just thinking about what happened with the United States after September 11 and how that kind of led to a centralization of a bunch of repressive powers.
00:59:24.000And so it's not surprising that Ukraine being under attack has kind of resorted to this A classic method of sort of control and unity during wartime.
00:59:35.000However, that's not the full story, because this was happening, like I said, long before, under multiple presidents, but, you know, ramped up under Zelensky too, who, well before the war, when his approval ratings had plummeted, and, you know, he had actually faced some pretty bad outcomes in municipal elections around the country, started to go after his opposition.
00:59:59.000You know, he sanctioned the kind of leading opposition bloc and basically through that got rid of a bunch of opposition media.
01:00:09.000He started to look at banning parties and so on and so forth.
01:00:15.000And then there were the mayor of Kiev, obviously now everyone's very much united, But before the war, the mayor of Kiev got a knock on the door from the SBU as well, the sort of, you know, security service of Ukraine, who, you know, went in and I think searched his apartment and it was, at the time, ran as a form of political intimidation against someone who might be a future Zelensky rival.
01:00:39.000So, it's those two things combining that there was already a trend towards authoritarianism under Zelensky's rule, but the war has, for multiple reasons, kind of made that just go to a far more extreme level than it was before.
01:00:57.000Some of it is legitimate and understandable.
01:00:59.000When a nation is under attack, there is a requirement for authoritarianism, centralized control, and a clear agenda that can be pursued without one might query or quibble about the idea of necessary dissent or necessary opposition.
01:01:13.000But certainly that makes sense and is understandable.
01:01:15.000But there is some politics, as usual, wiping out of opposition.
01:01:19.000Furthermore, I wonder how it relates to the post-war plan to rebuild Ukraine in partnership with Black Rock, eliminating the potential for a Ukrainian trade union movement to be able to meaningfully oppose the kind of restrictions and conditions that Any centralised and financially underwritten project of that nature would likely impose.
01:01:41.000Branko, thank you so much for joining us.
01:01:43.000I'm glad you're a regular contributor to our show.
01:01:48.000You can follow Branko's work on Jacobin and his book Yesterday's Man, The Case Against Joe Biden is available to buy using money right now.
01:03:48.000We'll be doing some exclusive Q&As for our community, so press that red button that's somewhere on your screen now to join us deeper, deeper down the rabbit hole before we ultimately start communities.
01:04:00.000We'll be starting physical communities before you know it.
01:04:03.000Remember, we do the Community Festival every year for three days.
01:04:05.000We're going to be travelling around the world, building communities, building resistance, opposing this machine.
01:04:09.000Trying to break out of the prison planet on a daily basis, bringing you the best possible contributors and alternative narratives that you simply will not get anywhere else.