Stay Free - Russel Brand - “IT’S MORE HARMFUL!” Exposing Big Pharma’s Alzheimer's GOLD RUSH - Stay Free #205

00:00:00.000 So, I'm going to go ahead and get started. So, I'm going to go ahead and get started. So, I'm going to go ahead and get

00:00:04.000 started.

00:00:05.000 So, I'm going to go ahead and get started.

00:00:28.000 So, I'm going to go ahead and get started.

00:00:56.000 In this video, you're going to see the future.

00:01:07.000 We've got a live shot there.

00:01:14.000 Hello there, you Awakening Wonders!

00:01:16.000 Thanks for joining us for this fabulous festival of mutual awakening and understanding.

00:01:21.000 We've got a fantastic show for you today.

00:01:24.000 Later, we'll be talking about Tucker and the Obama revelations, as well as talking about the nature of heroism and whether or not Obama would be better described as a war criminal, certainly according to the Geneva Convention.

00:01:36.000 He would be.

00:01:38.000 Also, did you know the rumble button's gone now?

00:01:40.000 You can't even give us a rumbling.

00:01:41.000 You're just going to have to give us a like like everybody else.

00:01:45.000 The homogenization of all spaces!

00:01:47.000 All things sanitized!

00:01:49.000 If you are watching us on rumble right now, remember, press the red button and join us in the locals community when you get to see these fantastic conversations live.

00:01:57.000 If you're watching us on YouTube, Only the first 15 minutes will be available to you, then we'll be slinking off into the home of free speech to give you the truth about aducanumab and Alzheimer's, a drug that pledged to treat Alzheimer's that seemingly makes things a lot worse.

00:02:14.000 Is there a profit in it?

00:02:15.000 Who knows what's going on?

00:02:17.000 Remember, you can join us on Locals for a new and reasonable price, but it's time now for me to introduce our fantastic guest today, Max Lugavere.

00:02:25.000 Max Lugavere is a health journalist who specializes in nutrition and the brain.

00:02:29.000 He's a filmmaker.

00:02:30.000 He's the author of the best-selling Genius Foods, Genius Life, and Genius Kitchen.

00:02:36.000 Max, thank you so much for joining us today.

00:02:38.000 Thanks so much for having me.

00:02:39.000 Are you happy here?

00:02:40.000 I'm super happy.

00:02:42.000 Max, the first thing that I want to talk to you about is our lethal, deadly, contemporary lifestyle.

00:02:46.000 Is it true that 60% of calories that adults eat are coming from processed food, and that processed foods are sort of no food at all, and are almost akin to a poison?

00:02:57.000 Yeah, I mean, they are foreign to our bodies.

00:02:59.000 And the distinction really is, you know, processing occurs on a continuum.

00:03:04.000 So when you slice an apple, you are processing it to some degree.

00:03:07.000 Yeah, that's pretty finicky though.

00:03:09.000 Even mastication, I said mastication, grow up.

00:03:12.000 Even by taking a bite out of an apple, that's a process.

00:03:15.000 Yeah, but at least you're allowing yourself to masticate your jaw to do the work, which is what it was evolutionarily designed to do, right?

00:03:22.000 If you bleach the apple into a soup, Yes, into a soup, right?

00:03:26.000 You pulverize it.

00:03:27.000 Your jaw muscles don't have to work, your stomach.

00:03:30.000 I mean, there are all these muscles throughout your body that are essentially getting a workout.

00:03:33.000 When you consume a bolus of whole food, we digest food slower.

00:03:38.000 It sends satiety signals to our brains in a more deliberate manner.

00:03:43.000 And so people, there's actually research that shows that people who consume primarily these ultra processed foods, foods that have essentially been pre-chewed for you, Partially predigested tend to over consume them to the tune of about 500 additional calories So right there if you look at the fact that today 73% of the foods in your average American supermarket and probably I would I would reckon that the UK is close by Are ultra processed it makes sense why the obesity statistics now are so startling about 50% of Americans are not just overweight but obese and

00:04:13.000 It's a good example of how our biochemistry has evolved alongside nature, which is kind of obvious because we're on the same planet and there's a sort of a natural and literally organic harmony between us.

00:04:26.000 And even if you extract mastication and the digestive processes that evolved in order to digest the food that we eat, if you extract the necessity for that process, you induce a kind of new The new potential for mutation and sickness and illness.

00:04:43.000 I wanted to talk to you just for a moment about, we recently have been talking about Bill Gates' growing meat in labs, funding a new sort of, not plastic coating, it's apparently an organic material that allows food to be preserved for longer.

00:04:57.000 What do we think about the sort of technologization of food and centralised food and the pattern in food.

00:05:04.000 Is this ultimately, as it claims, good for climate change and good for health or do you

00:05:07.000 think that these endeavours have other motivations behind them? No I think it's a, as

00:05:12.000 you here in the UK would call it, bollocks. Yes that's what we would say. That's what we would say.

00:05:16.000 That's what we say, that's our language. Yeah I think it's quite inappropriate.

00:05:19.000 What it does is it illustrates this phenomena known as nutritionism, where we apply science to the fact that we've co-evolved with whole foods, right?

00:05:29.000 And so we try to break a food.

00:05:31.000 Since the dawn of nutrition science really began, we've attempted to distill foods down to its constituent nutrients, right?

00:05:38.000 Like an orange has vitamin C and maybe a few other things, right?

00:05:41.000 banana has potassium and maybe a few other things.

00:05:43.000 So we isolate these nutrients and we try to determine what's essential and what's not.

00:05:48.000 And by the way, that list of essential nutrients is constantly evolving.

00:05:51.000 And so when you take like a Silicon Valley guy who looks at food through this lens, food as

00:05:59.000 data, essentially, you end up with a product like in the U.S.

00:06:02.000 We have something called Soylent.

00:06:03.000 I don't know if that's available here, but it basically is it's purported to be a food that

00:06:08.000 you could essentially live on that has all of the required essential nutrients in it.

00:06:11.000 But if you look at the ingredients list, it's like ingredients list.

00:06:14.000 It's a slurry of garbage, essentially, but it ticks all the boxes for what we believe to be

00:06:19.000 our essential nutrients and not.

00:06:20.000 There have been no long-term randomized control trials to ascertain whether or not this will

00:06:24.000 actually lead to a thriving human as opposed to somebody who's merely just surviving.

00:06:29.000 And so, yeah, it is at the end of the day, I think a huge problem.

00:06:31.000 It's a reductionist approach that hasn't served us in any area, you know, in the sphere of

00:06:36.000 biology and certainly not nutrition.

00:06:38.000 You can see how technocracy, the control by a cadre of experts, is facilitated by the reduction

00:06:45.000 of all things to data and the idea that if you have a kind of a spiritual or open-minded

00:06:52.000 perspective, also open-minded, your brain will fall out towards food that isn't based on

00:06:58.000 patentable qualities.

00:07:02.000 It is in fact a kind of an understanding that's somewhat more holistic That is regarded as inferior, that all things are turned into data, all things are made material, all things are objectified, no room for mystery and it doesn't always work.

00:07:19.000 So let's just for a moment touch on one of the points you made earlier before moving into the rather more controversial subject which we won't be able to talk about on YouTube about this Alzheimer's drug that I understand you have sort of personal motivations in your investigation and desire to convey the truth around this drug.

00:07:36.000 Before we get into that though, which we'll do exclusively in the other place, would you tell us a little bit about the obesity epidemic and its impact on health and the relationship between obesity, big food and big pharma?

00:07:52.000 Yeah, totally.

00:07:53.000 So, as I alluded to, about half of the U.S.

00:07:56.000 population, and this is, by the way, this is a condition that we're exporting now, so I'm not sure what the exact statistics are.

00:08:01.000 I know that in the U.K., about 50% of the calories consumed by your average adult are from ultra-processed foods, and the U.S.

00:08:08.000 is higher.

00:08:08.000 It's about 60% for adults, about 70% for children.

00:08:12.000 It's worse for children.

00:08:13.000 My hope was that children would eat less processed food.

00:08:16.000 Yeah, more candy, confectionary products and things like that.

00:08:18.000 Yeah, it's a huge problem.

00:08:20.000 Particularly at a time when you're still developing, right?

00:08:23.000 And the brain is undergoing rapid development.

00:08:25.000 So this is reflected in the statistics that show us that 50% of adults are either flat-out obese, And 9 in 10 adults have some component now of metabolic illness.

00:08:37.000 So metabolic syndrome, it's a constellation of symptoms about 9 in 10 adults now have that.

00:08:41.000 So it leaves the dramatic minority in a state of good health, right?

00:08:47.000 And so I think the food environment definitely plays a huge role in that.

00:08:50.000 As I mentioned, 73% according to a machine learning algorithm of the foods available

00:08:54.000 in your average supermarket are ultra processed.

00:08:56.000 These foods are being pushed on us.

00:08:58.000 They're sold to us with in primary colors at eye level in your average supermarket.

00:09:02.000 They make health claims.

00:09:04.000 The healthiest foods in the supermarket don't make health claims.

00:09:06.000 They're found around the perimeter of the supermarket.

00:09:07.000 You don't see health claims on eggs, on avocados, on dark leafy greens, things like that.

00:09:13.000 But instead it's the food products that are extremely high margin, right?

00:09:17.000 Can you tell me about the criteria used to demonstrate, as this beautiful chart does,

00:09:25.000 that Lucky Charms might be healthier for you than, I don't know, oxygen?

00:09:31.000 Lucky Charms are a greater requirement than water and your own blood and bones.

00:09:36.000 I'm made of lucky charms!

00:09:38.000 Yeah, and you really are what you eat.

00:09:40.000 So this is a nutrient profiling system that was devised out of the Friedman School for Nutrition at Tufts University, which has this, it's like this very curious hierarchy, right, that places watermelon and kale at the top of the list, but just underneath that you see frosted mini-wheats, you'll see...

00:09:57.000 Yeah.

00:09:58.000 So if this was actually like in the NFL or NBA or APL.

00:10:01.000 Like a perfect food.

00:10:02.000 Like watermelon is Manchester City, kale are Arsenal or you know, I'm guessing it's Green Bay Packers.

00:10:08.000 I don't know what happens in your country, but frosted mini-wheats.

00:10:11.000 Yeah.

00:10:11.000 Frosted mini-wheats can't come in at number three.

00:10:13.000 Right.

00:10:14.000 No, I mean, watermelon and kale are perfectly healthy foods, but you would die if you, if you, you know, chose to base your diet solely on those two foods.

00:10:21.000 On watermelon or kale.

00:10:22.000 Yeah, on watermelon or kale, right?

00:10:23.000 So.

00:10:23.000 But frosted mini-wheats.

00:10:25.000 Frosted mini-wheats, yeah, it's an ultra-processed, super high-margin.

00:10:27.000 You want a combination of a little bit of watermelon, a bit of kale, and then a frosted

00:10:32.000 mini-wheat.

00:10:33.000 That sounds ideal.

00:10:34.000 I mean, in my view, you could flip the whole thing upside down, actually, because you'll

00:10:37.000 notice that the ground beef, you've got dairy, whole milk, is sort of at the bottom, at the

00:10:42.000 bottom end, but on top of that, you'll find Lucky Charms, you'll find egg substitute fried

00:10:47.000 in vegetable oil, right?

00:10:49.000 So these are the, essentially, the darlings of the food industry that have been given

00:10:54.000 an unduly high ranking on this list, and there have been critics of this chart, critics of

00:10:59.000 this chart who've said that...

00:11:01.000 Foods these foods were not meant to be compared across categories, right?

00:11:05.000 But actually if you were to go to the Tufts University website, they did the exact same thing but obviously presented in a much more favorable light.

00:11:12.000 So this is the problem with these kinds of systems that are heavily influenced by the food industry.

00:11:16.000 How are these kind of, this kind of data, how is it funded?

00:11:20.000 How is it put together?

00:11:21.000 Who's behind the compilation of this?

00:11:23.000 Yeah, I mean the food industry.

00:11:25.000 The food industry definitely has a hand in not just funding the school, but the researchers that are involved.

00:11:31.000 I see that Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Gates Medical Research Institute were somewhat involved in creating what I can now call the Lucky Charms graph.

00:11:41.000 How Lucky Charms are better at that for you than eggs and other whole foods.

00:11:46.000 But also look at the pharmaceutical companies.

00:11:48.000 Everybody is like There's essentially no industry that isn't complicit.

00:11:55.000 And then when you look to the 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans Committee that was just assembled a couple months ago, 95% of those members had ties to either the food industry or the pharmaceutical industry.

00:12:04.000 So it's just across the board.

00:12:06.000 And this nutrient profiling system was essentially designed to influence consumer purchases by making front of package health claims.

00:12:14.000 And so to me, I mean, that's what a scoring system is essentially.

00:12:17.000 It's so that a consumer would be able to compare food items from across different categories.

00:12:23.000 And so I think it's a, yeah, it's a massive, it's a massive problem.

00:12:25.000 But the idea that this is objective information, the idea that you could trust the science and regard it as empirical data rather than a set of facts that are organized Particularly to direct you to consume particular foods, to live in a particular way.

00:12:40.000 We see this across all of public life.

00:12:44.000 When you unpack information, it's often that information has a sort of a trail behind it of financial interest.

00:12:52.000 And to see, as you say, Big Pharma, the kind of NGOs and foundations that frequently come up in our reporting is hardly a surprise in that crazy league of watermelon and Lucky Charms and little frosty wheat.

00:13:05.000 Yeah, I mean, look, I'm pro-science in the sense that I wish I could snap my fingers and have the kind of study replicated that would show us, for example, the kinds of big looming questions in the field of nutrition, which is a field that I genuinely love.

00:13:20.000 But the problem with following the science often is that the science follows the money.

00:13:24.000 And so you get something like this, which is just a four-year-old would look at that graph and be like, something's wrong here.

00:13:32.000 You know, it's plain that the reliance on a particular type of science has become a new orthodoxy.

00:13:39.000 I think in the last couple of years we became used to being castigated with the idea that science was not a subset of corporate and globalist interests.

00:13:49.000 and that happened while simultaneously some scientific voices were closed down

00:13:54.000 other scientific voices were amplified but we can't go into too much detail on

00:13:59.000 that while we are still on YouTube which are to a degree regulated by the World

00:14:05.000 Health Organization's guidelines which similarly accept incredible funding from

00:14:09.000 the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation of Lucky Charms. We're gonna leave now if

00:14:15.000 you're watching us on YouTube to make sure how much say how do I say that drug

00:14:18.000 again? A jacanamab. A jacanamab.

00:14:20.000 Yeah.

00:14:21.000 And what is the problem with aducanumab, one of the great drugs that's given Alzheimer's sufferers a real opportunity to live a better life other than possibly it doesn't work?

00:14:31.000 Can I still say that on YouTube?

00:14:32.000 Yeah.

00:14:33.000 If you're watching us on YouTube, click the link in the description right now and join us over on Rumble.

00:14:38.000 If you're watching us on Rumble, click the red button and join us in Locals Become.

00:14:42.000 an awakened wonder. Join us on this voyage to truth and freedom together. So tell us

00:14:49.000 a little bit more. Also, do you drink kombucha? Because we're developing vile slops, a fantastic 1.00

00:14:53.000 new kombucha brand. We're working on the name. It's been brewed up in the cellar even now

00:14:58.000 by Jim. He's got a great sort of water. I think what do you call it? Mother some sort

00:15:02.000 of like scoby, a scoby, some sort of fertile, ghastly little alien. I've looked at it. It's 0.72

00:15:09.000 our most nasty little thing in a jar. But vile slops will be coming soon and we're making 1.00

00:15:14.000 all sorts of pledges about it. But if we can get the FDA to sign it off, which I think

00:15:19.000 we can, it's going to be I think it's going to be a winner.

00:15:21.000 Can you tell us a little bit though about this? What's it called?

00:15:24.000 Kajagoogoo. 0.56

00:15:26.000 Catch me if you can.

00:15:27.000 Catch me if you can.

00:15:28.000 Yeah, so aducanumab is a monoclonal antibody drug that basically trains your immune system to identify markers on the plaques that are commonly seen in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease.

00:15:41.000 So Alzheimer's disease is characterized in part by the presence of this immense plaque burden, plaques made of a protein called amyloid beta.

00:15:50.000 along with some other, you know, proteinopathies like misfolded tau protein.

00:15:55.000 And so Alzheimer's disease drug trials have a 99.6% fail rate.

00:15:59.000 So the, the, the, it's just dismal when it comes to finding a drug to treat this condition,

00:16:04.000 which by the way, begins in the brain decades before the first symptom.

00:16:07.000 What do you mean by that?

00:16:09.000 Alzheimer's, the presence of Alzheimer's can be detected decades before the first symptom.

00:16:12.000 Does that mean that new preventative measures could be applied?

00:16:15.000 That there are early indicators that mean you could change lifestyle habits?

00:16:18.000 Absolutely, yes.

00:16:19.000 Oh my god, I've never heard that before.

00:16:20.000 Yeah, so I mean you, you, ten years ago... Do you not know about that?

00:16:22.000 Let me know in the chat.

00:16:23.000 Did you know that?

00:16:24.000 Ten years ago, you couldn't mention Alzheimer's disease and prevention within the same sentence without getting ridiculed by the medical establishment, by the medical orthodoxy.

00:16:32.000 And this actually happened to me.

00:16:33.000 So my first project, I'm a health and science journalist, so I didn't take an academic path, but my mom had a rare form of dementia called Lewy body dementia.

00:16:41.000 And even prior to that diagnosis, you know, it was unclear the variant of dementia.

00:16:45.000 And so I went down the Alzheimer's disease rabbit hole.

00:16:49.000 And my first project was a feature-length documentary which I'm still working on.

00:16:52.000 It's called Little Empty Boxes and it explores all of the different lifestyle and dietary factors that might predispose a person to developing this condition which now affects millions and millions of people worldwide.

00:17:03.000 In fact, it's now the number one cause of death in the UK as of last year, dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

00:17:08.000 So dementia and Alzheimer's is the number one cause of death?

00:17:10.000 Yes.

00:17:11.000 I didn't know that either.

00:17:12.000 How come these sort of facts are so opaque and difficult to discern?

00:17:17.000 Why is it that we're only just learning about it?

00:17:19.000 This was ridiculed, so it's not, there's nothing conspiratorial about us not knowing that it's preventable, it's just that wasn't scientifically verified so it's understandable.

00:17:26.000 But the idea that it's such a significant cause of death, it seems extraordinary to me that it's not something that we commonly appreciate.

00:17:31.000 Did you lot know that?

00:17:32.000 Let me know in the chat.

00:17:33.000 Yeah, well, I mean, there's a saying that science advances one funeral at a time.

00:17:38.000 And this is because scientific personalities are very obstinate.

00:17:40.000 They're fiercely territorial.

00:17:42.000 We see this in Alzheimer's disease.

00:17:43.000 We see this at the highest echelons of academic medicine and nutrition science and the like.

00:17:49.000 And this is why it takes, on average, 17 years for what's discovered in science to be put into day-to-day clinical practice.

00:17:56.000 And so I've been working in this field trying to advocate for prevention for about a decade at this point.

00:18:04.000 But it's really only the past couple of years, the past three years, really, that the tide has begun to turn.

00:18:08.000 So in 2020, the Lancet Commission on Dementia published a statement saying that About 40% of Alzheimer's cases and dementia cases are attributable to what they call potentially modifiable risk factors, which basically means risk factors for dementia, the development of dementia, that fall under your control, i.e.

00:18:26.000 modifiable.

00:18:27.000 And so things like obesity, things like diabetes, hypertension, depression, low education status, these are all variables that we have... Diet and poverty.

00:18:37.000 There you go.

00:18:38.000 But diet plays a massive role here.

00:18:39.000 There are some non-modifiable risk factors.

00:18:42.000 There are about three of them.

00:18:42.000 So you've got your age, your gender, and your genetics.

00:18:44.000 You obviously can't change those.

00:18:46.000 But this is a condition that largely develops.

00:18:51.000 We're now starting to see, due to an interaction between those risk factors that are hardwired in us and the environment in which we live.

00:19:00.000 And so that's where I think the data is becoming abundantly clear that we do have a say.

00:19:05.000 So it was your own mother's rare form of dementia that caused you to begin investigating the subject, is that correct?

00:19:15.000 Yes.

00:19:16.000 So I began as a generalist journalist and when my mom became sick it was like an atom bomb going off in my world.

00:19:23.000 She was the most important person in my life.

00:19:26.000 And in every doctor's office, what I experienced with her, I've come to call diagnose and adios.

00:19:31.000 And basically, a physician would run a battery of esoteric tests, write a prescription down, you know, or titrate up or down some medication that she was on and send us on our way.

00:19:39.000 And by the end of her life, she was on 12 different pharmaceuticals that were, I think, you know, in tandem or individually making her worse.

00:19:47.000 None of them helped.

00:19:49.000 And I can say that with certainty.

00:19:50.000 And so, I was very disillusioned by the tools that medicine had, you know, during that time when a person presents with the most feared condition for your average American, which is, of course, dementia at this point.

00:20:06.000 And I took it upon myself to use my journalistic skills and my media credentials to reach out to people and start doing my own research, diving into PubMed.

00:20:13.000 I mean, we live in a time now where, you know, all of the world's knowledge is available at our fingertips 24-7.

00:20:19.000 And I found it to be incredibly empowering despite the fact that I had this real tragic thing occurring in my personal life.

00:20:25.000 I exploited, I decided to exploit all those tools to the betterment of my, to the benefit of my family.

00:20:32.000 And what I learned was startling.

00:20:33.000 So I mean, dementia is a condition that begins years prior to the onset of symptoms.

00:20:37.000 And so that's a real window of opportunity to change the course of our cognitive destiny.

00:20:42.000 So if you're obese, become not obese.

00:20:44.000 If you're a type 2 diabetic, become not a type 2 diabetic.

00:20:47.000 You know, I mean, just being type 2 diabetic right now, which affects two thirds of, or I'm sorry, 50% of people in the United States now.

00:20:56.000 Increases your risk for developing Alzheimer's disease between two and fourfold.

00:20:59.000 So this is a massive, modifiable problem.

00:21:03.000 Yeah, that's extraordinary.

00:21:04.000 That's extraordinary.

00:21:05.000 I've never looked at it in those terms.

00:21:07.000 We sort of sold the idea that there's an inevitability that we're on some preconceived, predetermined route towards illness and pharmacological solutions that our behaviors and our diets are not Considerable factors in, you know, particularly in this kind of condition.

00:21:26.000 Yeah, and I'll give you another example where the pharmaceutical industry may be complicit, right?

00:21:30.000 So that 40% figure that I listed off to you, that was what was indicated in the Lancet report, which said the potential for prevention is high.

00:21:40.000 But I think that's a gross underestimate.

00:21:42.000 And one of another massively modifiable risk factor for people is the chronic use of what are called anticholinergic drugs, which is a category of drugs.

00:21:50.000 And I couldn't possibly list off all of the drugs.

00:21:52.000 But these are drugs that are like essentially sleep aids and they help with, you know, to relieve symptoms of allergies for people.

00:22:01.000 Chronic use of these drugs is associated with a dramatically higher risk of the development of Alzheimer's disease.

00:22:09.000 Can you tell me about aducanumab and what in particular is important about this and the potential falsification of papers and how it got its FDA approval?

00:22:21.000 Totally.

00:22:22.000 So ever since Alzheimer's disease was first coined in 1906 by physician Alois Alzheimer, He looked in the brain of a cadaver, a woman who had died from the condition, and saw plaque, essentially, in the brain, clumped around brain cells, neurons, like the plaque on your teeth, essentially.

00:22:42.000 And so from that day forward, amyloid plaque was thought to be the causal factor with regard to Alzheimer's disease.

00:22:50.000 And from a pharmaceutical drug discovery standpoint, the mission has been, well, if we can get rid of this plaque, then we'll have a cure for Alzheimer's disease.

00:22:59.000 But of course, as time goes on, we develop new imaging technologies.

00:23:03.000 What we see is that people without Alzheimer's disease also have amyloid in the brain.

00:23:08.000 Amyloid is produced naturally in all brains, essentially.

00:23:12.000 And so They would try all these different drugs trying to get amyloid out of the brain and that became that's called the amyloid hypothesis that became the domineering kind of route of drug discovery with the idea that if we can get rid of this this this villainous plaque that will find a cure for the condition right and so three spending three billion dollars a year on drug discovery

00:23:36.000 But by the year 2006, with Alzheimer's drug trials having a 99.6% fail rate, worse than for cancer, heart disease, any other condition, faith in that hypothesis was starting to wane until a paper was published in the journal Nature by a University of Minnesota researcher named Sylvain Lesny, which essentially Claim to have isolated a subtype of amyloid beta that, when injected into a healthy rat, caused severe cognitive deficits.

00:24:11.000 And so this was thought to be the missing link because, as I mentioned, cognitively healthy people have amyloid in their brain.

00:24:16.000 So researchers up until this point weren't really able to connect Amyloid beta with the most important symptomology, the most important symptom with regard to Alzheimer's disease, which is the severe and profound cognitive decline, until this paper was published where they claimed to have found the subtype, injected into a mouse, boom, we have like cognitive impairment, right?

00:24:39.000 And so since then, since 2006, that paper came out in Nature, which is like winning an Academy Award if you're a research scientist, right?

00:24:45.000 It's been cited thousands of times because science is cumulative.

00:24:48.000 It builds on papers that have come prior.

00:24:51.000 citing this paper and it really renewed faith.

00:24:53.000 It put, it sent a lot, it funneled a lot more money down this path and renewed faith in this

00:24:59.000 so-called amyloid hypothesis.

00:25:00.000 The problem was, and this was published last year, late last year in Science Magazine,

00:25:06.000 a Vanderbilt researcher named Matthew Schrag was known for kind of like scouring these

00:25:12.000 post-publication peer review websites where people look at papers that have gone through,

00:25:16.000 already gone through the peer review process but have flaws that they might flag

00:25:20.000 indicate and send off to the publishers.

00:25:23.000 And the peer review process doesn't look at, you know, they'll crunch numbers occasionally, but they don't look at, for example, Western blots, which are imagery, which is like basically like data presented in a more illustrative format.

00:25:36.000 And what Matthew Schrag found was that this 2006 paper, the images, the data was essentially fabricated.

00:25:45.000 There were artifacts indicative of Photoshop, like a cheap Photoshop cut and paste job.

00:25:50.000 So the paper was deemed completely fraudulent, like that data didn't exist.

00:25:56.000 And so again, since then, since 2006, All of this other research has come out building on top of it.

00:26:01.000 It funneled billions and billions and billions of more money looking into this path, this amyloid hypothesis. 0.96

00:26:07.000 Of course, it's wasted time, right, which is heartbreaking for anybody with a loved one with the condition.

00:26:12.000 And again and again and again, we see that amyloid is not the cause of the condition.

00:26:17.000 Certainly, when it builds up to the pathologic degree that we see in Alzheimer's disease, it becomes problematic, of course.

00:26:22.000 But it's like claiming that Um, cholesterol is the cause of heart disease.

00:26:26.000 It's like, what's causing the cholesterol to aggregate there?

00:26:29.000 What's causing the amyloid to aggregate in the brain, right?

00:26:31.000 It's there at the scene of the crime, but it's not necessarily the victim.

00:26:33.000 It's like claiming that firefighters cause fires because firefighters are always there at the scene of the fire, right?

00:26:40.000 It's correlation, not causation.

00:26:42.000 And so there are other theories as to why Alzheimer's disease develops and, you know, there's the metabolic theory of Alzheimer's and the like.

00:26:50.000 But this new drug, aducanumab, that was approved by the FDA, despite a panel of, it was about 11 or 12, I think it was 11 experts, the vast majority of them either disagreed with its approval or remained silent, like lips were sealed on its approval.

00:27:07.000 And nonetheless, the FDA approved it.

00:27:10.000 And it is minimally effective, right?

00:27:14.000 It might be better than nothing for certain patients, like a small subset of patients, but in the majority of patients that took it...

00:27:22.000 Were a significant proportion of the patients that took it.

00:27:24.000 I don't, I can't say for sure if it was the majority because I don't recall.

00:27:27.000 It led to severe side effects like brain swelling, bleeding, accelerated brain atrophy, which is already, you know, par for the course if you have Alzheimer's disease, like dramatic atrophy of the cortex of the brain.

00:27:43.000 And so it's not a cure.

00:27:44.000 It's just like this like this band-aid that probably does more harm than good.

00:27:48.000 So it possibly did nothing, it possibly made things worse.

00:27:52.000 Experts at the point when it was up for approval had doubts about it, questioned it or didn't speak about it and it was approved anyway.

00:28:01.000 Do you suggest that this is the type of thing that frequently happens and do you imagine that there are other motivations for its approval other than its efficacy?

00:28:09.000 Yeah, I mean, it's money.

00:28:11.000 I mean, first of all, it's wildly expensive.

00:28:14.000 And the benefit is it leads to a 0.45 cognitive benefit on an 18 point scale.

00:28:19.000 So 0.45 out of 18 points, that's the benefit.

00:28:23.000 And then you have all these horrible side effects to contend with, right?

00:28:27.000 Brain swelling.

00:28:28.000 Is it that drug?

00:28:30.000 Catch me if you can, Giselle.

00:28:31.000 Is it that what it done was broke down plaque but it didn't affect the causes of Alzheimer's?

00:28:35.000 Is that what it was?

00:28:36.000 Is that what they were able to demonstrate its effect was?

00:28:38.000 Exactly, yeah.

00:28:39.000 So it reduced the plaque, right?

00:28:41.000 So it's like, it serves as confirmation bias.

00:28:43.000 So as a toothpaste, fantastic.

00:28:45.000 But as a remedy for Alzheimer's and dementia...

00:28:48.000 Not so good.

00:28:49.000 There you go.

00:28:50.000 I mean, what it did was it served to confirm the biases of all of the many scientists who

00:28:54.000 are fiercely territorial over their reputations working in that field.

00:29:00.000 And again, like if we had a blockbuster, if I had a blockbuster drug to give my mom, you

00:29:05.000 know, at the depths of her despair and her difficulty with her dementia, I would, in

00:29:11.000 a second, I would have gone out to get it for her, right?

00:29:13.000 But these drugs don't work and they're potentially, you know, they're likely more harm than good.

00:29:18.000 So it's a big issue.

00:29:21.000 Max, it seems like what you're tracking is a food industry that promotes foods that likely contribute to senility, dementia, Alzheimer's and related conditions, then a drug industry that offers medications that are not effective And I begin to get the idea that we're on again a conveyor belt where one end of it we're sort of blobbed up with sloppy food as bad for us and basically poisonous and then treated with medications many of which have to be used in conjunction with others this sort of symphony of shoddy medications that are often not have not been effectively trialed.

00:30:02.000 And increasingly what we're finding is that the motivation for the pharmaceutical companies, for the food industry, for the FDA, is not scientific excellence or nutritional heights, but profit.

00:30:15.000 And it's pretty plain that it's become gargantuan and out of control.

00:30:19.000 As we often discuss on this show, I don't think anybody begrudges industriousness or Even a profit motive but when it reaches the point that it has done in the examples that you conveyed is a problem.

00:30:32.000 Also what's a problem is that when you try to have a conversation about these kind of subjects is that you're subject to incredible censorship.

00:30:38.000 Now am I right in thinking that the mainstream media opposed the documentary that you've already mentioned in which you try to present some novel ideas on Alzheimer's, its relationship to diet and the lack of effectiveness of many of the medications?

00:30:52.000 Oh yeah.

00:30:53.000 So when I first got started, an ambassador for one of these drug discovery funds, which is a nonprofit, right?

00:31:01.000 It's like you go to its website and you would think it was the most benevolent organization with the care of the patients as their sole priority.

00:31:09.000 But when I first got started on this project, I did a Kickstarter campaign for it.

00:31:13.000 And so it went kind of viral and we're raising money.

00:31:15.000 and all that and thankfully it was successful and we're now nearing the finish line finally.

00:31:20.000 But this ambassador wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal basically comparing my

00:31:26.000 efforts to, I think the headline was, Alzheimer's disease, the cure for Alzheimer's disease

00:31:32.000 isn't going to come in the form of coconut oil and other quack, you know, speculative

00:31:38.000 And this was like, this is years ago.

00:31:39.000 So this is even before that Lancet paper that said the potential for prevention is high, right?

00:31:43.000 But, but they, these, these, this, this, whether it's the, you know, the drug discovery funds or the researchers, people tend to be down on what they're not up on in the field of academia, right?

00:31:56.000 This kid comes along trying to- Are you that kid?

00:31:59.000 I'm that kid.

00:31:59.000 You're like a plucky kid.

00:32:00.000 Yeah.

00:32:01.000 You're an outsider.

00:32:03.000 You, Max- Lugavere, yeah.

00:32:06.000 Lugavere, with a name that sounds like a radical and an outlaw, you turn up with your new documentary where you want to talk about diet, the efficacy of certain medicines, presumably your personal experiences with your mother, and immediately there's opposition when it's at the kickstart.

00:32:23.000 starter phase. Yeah, immediately. And it was heartbreaking at the time because I thought

00:32:28.000 that this film had the potential and it does, it will do massive good for the world, but

00:32:33.000 because it took the spotlight for a second during that time off of, off of, we gotta

00:32:41.000 Alzheimer's disease is the only condition that can't be prevented, cured, or treated.

00:32:44.000 Let people get it, then cure it with toothpaste.

00:32:47.000 There you go.

00:32:48.000 And so it's like a house of cards built on fear, right?

00:32:54.000 If we stop the fear-mongering, then people are going to stop the funding of this, right?

00:32:59.000 They're going to stop writing the checks.

00:33:01.000 And so, yeah, I saw that up, like, up close and personal, and it was really heartbreaking.

00:33:04.000 And you still find the article.

00:33:05.000 It's something like, Alzheimer's disease, coconut oil, in the Wall Street Journal.

00:33:08.000 It was an op-ed.

00:33:09.000 Do you look at it sometimes? 1.00

00:33:10.000 I mean, you bastards. 1.00

00:33:12.000 I mean, I've thought about, I've thought about hitting that person up, but he was a really rude, rude human, unfortunately. 1.00

00:33:19.000 We've got some comments from our community, like Thomas Beard.

00:33:26.000 He wants to ask you about plant-based diets.

00:33:30.000 Are they a good thing or a bad thing?

00:33:32.000 I noticed that you liked our beef down at the bottom of the Lucky Charm link.

00:33:38.000 I'm a big advocate for omnivory.

00:33:39.000 I think it's our biologically appropriate diet.

00:33:42.000 But I think, you know, you can work a few levers to make a plant-based diet work if you're dedicated to it.

00:33:49.000 And, you know, as I know you are, and many people are.

00:33:52.000 Because you just think there are valuable nutrients, proteins, and things like taurine and stuff in meat that we just can't live without.

00:34:00.000 Yeah, I think, like, when we try to distill an entire food category, such as animal source foods, to one essential nutrient, like vitamin B12, we're practicing that reductionism that we talked about earlier.

00:34:12.000 We're practicing nutritionism.

00:34:13.000 And I think we've co-evolved with our food, we've co-evolved with all of the many what are called carna nutrients that are found in animal source products that are, you know, plug and play.

00:34:20.000 But ultimately, I think the big wins today for anybody navigating the standard American or the standard, you know, British food environment to be not overweight, to be not type 2 diabetic,

00:34:31.000 I mean those are the big rocks.

00:34:32.000 So yeah, I think you can make any diet work essentially, but my view is that

00:34:37.000 Omnivore is probably the most optimal.

00:34:39.000 Is it true that you disagree with some of the views of our other sexy diet guest,

00:34:45.000 Paul Saladino, on some of it?

00:34:47.000 He's got some theories on vegetables.

00:34:48.000 I think he says vegetables are a waste of time.

00:34:51.000 He hates them. 1.00

00:34:52.000 They should be shot. 1.00

00:34:55.000 Each parsnip should be interviewed now and asked to leave the country. 0.99

00:34:58.000 And if the parsnip for some reason resists, it should be pushed over the White Cliffs of Dover.

00:35:03.000 That's Paul Saladino's theories.

00:35:06.000 What are your views on vegetables?

00:35:07.000 No, I disagree.

00:35:09.000 I disagree.

00:35:09.000 I think vegetables are great.

00:35:11.000 I think if you're going to point a finger at kale or even oatmeal, which I think he's been doing quite a bit lately, and say that is the smoking gun for all of our health ills, I think that that's baseless.

00:35:22.000 But I think he does present some really good ideas as well.

00:35:26.000 Good, isn't it?

00:35:27.000 We've got to come to a kind of consensus of truth together.

00:35:30.000 Tesla said, and I can't believe I missed this question, Max, you mentioned earlier that Alzheimer's can be detected decades before symptoms.

00:35:37.000 How?

00:35:39.000 Well, um, so it's not that it can necessarily be detected, we can look for what are called risk factors at this point.

00:35:44.000 They can do imaging, they can look at brain volume, they can look at amyloid burden, but they're not doing those kinds of tests clinically, and that really is the holy grail of prevention, is to find the biomarker that dictates whether or not a person... Are you saying that biomarker hasn't yet to be found?

00:35:59.000 It hasn't yet been found, yeah.

00:36:02.000 But there's not enough trialing and research because that's not profitable, it's in fact expensive.

00:36:06.000 There was a blood test, and I wrote about it in my first book called Genius Foods, called IRS-1, where it was predicted with 90% accuracy something, or even higher than that, whether or not somebody was going to develop it.

00:36:16.000 But I think at this point it's good to know your genetic risk factor, to know whether or not you're a carrier of the ApoE4 allele, and then to look at all the other biomarkers that we know are associated.

00:36:26.000 Most closely you want to look at your metabolic health, So you want to make sure that you have a nice healthy blood sugar, you're not a type 2 diabetic, you're not overweight or obese, and I would also do my best to minimize at this point exposure to environmental pollutants, toxicants, air pollution, things like that.

00:36:38.000 If you know Duggan Oku, who's a great member of our community, and if you're not a member of our community yet, press the red button.

00:36:44.000 There are all sorts of incredible benefits, including regular scans to prevent... Oh, we don't do that.

00:36:50.000 That's just simply false advertising.

00:36:52.000 No, Dugganoku is a member of our community and he asks, hey Max, I want to ask you, through Russell of course, don't be cheeky, a question pertaining to diversity.

00:37:01.000 How do you feel that there is evidence to support the notion that diet may be more unique than what we're led to believe by our societies?

00:37:06.000 I've personally tried for years to figure out the diet which matches me best, sometimes living exclusively on grass.

00:37:12.000 Once for a week, only wine gums.

00:37:14.000 Another time, squirrel tail.

00:37:16.000 I've tried everything.

00:37:17.000 Some of those details I added.

00:37:20.000 What, how do I find a diet which matches me best while staying away from food that are filled with chemicals, plastics, or genetic modifications?

00:37:26.000 That's from Nodaganoku.

00:37:27.000 Yeah.

00:37:28.000 I mean, I think like, again, shop around the perimeter of your supermarket and stick to mainly minimally processed whole foods.

00:37:33.000 Everybody is different.

00:37:34.000 So there is no such thing as a one size fits all diet.

00:37:36.000 I like where he was going with that question.

00:37:38.000 And there's also, you know, everybody's different and then everybody has different microbiomes.

00:37:41.000 So you know we can say things like vegetables and things you know of that nature are good for you But if you don't have the microbiome cultivated to contend with a sudden onslaught Increase in fiber then you're gonna be paying a digestive penalty for that so you know you gotta I think a little bit of Experimentation is really important, but again.

00:37:58.000 I think as long as you're you're sticking mainly to minimally processed foods Omnivory I think for most people is gonna do the most good Things like that.

00:38:07.000 I think you're you're probably in the clear I Max, Dootie1947 says, Alright mate, I love my fried egg.

00:38:14.000 Organic, on toast, whole grain, with olive oil on it every morning.

00:38:18.000 Is this healthy?

00:38:20.000 Am I living in a gangster's paradise?

00:38:22.000 I would say that's pretty good.

00:38:23.000 I mean, eggs are... I love olive oil.

00:38:26.000 Yeah, olive oil is amazing.

00:38:27.000 Even if you're cooking with it?

00:38:28.000 It's a myth that you can't cook with it.

00:38:28.000 Yeah, you can.

00:38:29.000 Ha! 0.89

00:38:30.000 It's very chemically stable, owed to its predominance of monounsaturated fat, which is very chemically stable, and it's about 15% saturated fat.

00:38:30.000 Yeah.

00:38:37.000 And on top of that, extra virgin olive oil is loaded with polyphenol antioxidants, which protect the oil against oxidation.

00:38:44.000 Oh my God.

00:38:45.000 It's chemically very stable.

00:38:47.000 They cook with it in the Mediterranean.

00:38:48.000 I mean, people who, for generations, use extra virgin olive oil, they're using it to cook with, right?

00:38:54.000 Either that or, you know, animal-based fats.

00:38:56.000 But I think the healthiest fat to use, like the healthiest added fat to use is by far extra virgin olive oil.

00:39:02.000 And then eggs are one of nature's multivitamins.

00:39:04.000 I mean, it literally is a cognitive multivitamin, the egg yolk.

00:39:07.000 We've answered your questions.

00:39:10.000 That's what we've done.

00:39:10.000 That's why it's worth becoming an Awakened Wonder and a member of our community.

00:39:15.000 Another thing that you'll avoid by being part of a community is potentially depression.

00:39:20.000 40 million Americans are apparently depressed, or at least that many Americans are on antidepressants.

00:39:26.000 For all I know, it's many, many more.

00:39:27.000 Is depression exacerbated or even caused by diet, in your view, Max, seeing as how you claim to know everything?

00:39:35.000 I don't claim to know everything.

00:39:37.000 I really don't.

00:39:37.000 I don't.

00:39:39.000 I like to be really clear, actually, about what I know and what I don't know.

00:39:42.000 But with regard to depression, my first book was a deep dive into the topic of nutritional psychiatry, which is a growing field right now, and it's very exciting.

00:39:51.000 And it's showing us that for a subset of depressed patients, diet may play a role.

00:39:58.000 The mechanism here, it's being referred to by some as the inflammatory cytokine model of depression.

00:40:04.000 That depression is the result of chronic low-grade inflammation that's occurring in the body.

00:40:09.000 And we basically can control, to some degree, with our diets and our lifestyles, our overall inflammatory status.

00:40:17.000 And so we know that eating a diet that is rich in ultra-processed foods, you know, packaged shelf-stable vending machine foods, if you will, And an overly sedentary lifestyle, a lifestyle that relegates sleep to an afterthought, a lifestyle that is chronically stressed out.

00:40:31.000 We know that those are all pro-inflammatory and that that can have a downstream effect on the brain and our cognitive processes certainly as well as our mental health.

00:40:42.000 And so there are studies now coming out of Many highly regarded academic centers like the Food and Mood Center at Deakin University.

00:40:51.000 One study that I cite fairly regularly is the SMILES trial, which found that for clinically depressed patients who had really crappy diets, half of them were given the standard of care in Australia.

00:41:04.000 The other half were given a Mediterranean dietary pattern to adhere to.

00:41:10.000 They saw three times the rate of remission from depression in that group that was given the Mediterranean dietary pattern to consume.

00:41:17.000 Olive oil, you know, animal products, dark leafy greens, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, things like that.

00:41:23.000 And the other group, you know, obviously they didn't have the improvement in symptoms to the same degree and they didn't see the same rate of remission.

00:41:32.000 So, we're seeing now that, you know, in the form of clinical randomized control trials, that diet does have a pretty powerful influence, right?

00:41:39.000 And we know that micronutrients like magnesium, which half of Americans don't consume adequate amounts of, we know that that's related to many, many processes, hundreds of processes in the body.

00:41:48.000 We know that it can play a role in the reduction of anxiety and depression and things like that.

00:41:53.000 We also know that...

00:41:55.000 Yeah, there are nutrients.

00:41:56.000 There are nutrients in animal products, in shellfish, that play a really important role in mental health.

00:42:02.000 And I like what you said about inflammation, that we're like inflamed as individuals and as a culture.

00:42:08.000 What do you think about fake meat, the sort of the vegan streak, the way out, Bill Gates' hobby course, fake meats, what are they, any good, or vile blobs of nothingness?

00:42:21.000 I mean, I think that they don't hold a candle to actual meat in terms of a nutritional value.

00:42:28.000 But I'll concede that many vegans enjoy it because it just tastes good.

00:42:32.000 Yeah.

00:42:33.000 And so I wouldn't withhold that from them, right?

00:42:35.000 Here's the thing about me.

00:42:36.000 I actually don't care what people choose to eat.

00:42:38.000 I'm not emotionally invested in what other people choose to consume.

00:42:41.000 I just like to lay out the facts free of...

00:42:45.000 As free from bias as I can possibly muster.

00:42:50.000 And so, yeah, from that standpoint, eat it if you enjoy it, but from a nutrition standpoint, it doesn't hold a candle to real red meat.

00:42:56.000 Mate, I want to thank you for coming on our show, for sharing that information so fluently, carefully and beautifully.

00:43:04.000 Thank you for mobilising your own personal story and suffering into something valuable for the community.

00:43:10.000 And thanks for responding so brilliantly to our community questions.

00:43:14.000 I wish you all the best with the documentary.

00:43:16.000 You've found the funding for that now, have you?

00:43:18.000 Yeah, we, well, we still have like, you know, a bit of a ways to go.

00:43:22.000 We need to find distribution for it.

00:43:23.000 But we have a trailer at littleemptyboxes.com and I host my own podcast too, so people can come and check me out.

00:43:30.000 It's called The Genius Life.

00:43:31.000 There you go.

00:43:32.000 We'll post the links to both of those in both of our chats.

00:43:34.000 And also Max's latest book, The Genius Kitchen, is out now.

00:43:38.000 And as Max mentioned, his podcast, The Genius Life, is also available.

00:43:44.000 Now, if you want to be a member of our community, one of the ways that I reckon you can reduce inflammation and also get some Awakened Wonder Pants, it starts today.

00:43:54.000 If you are an Awakened Wonder, simply by pressing the red button, you can join our team meetings, post-show shows, meditations, podcast recordings.

00:44:03.000 It's really worth becoming a member.

00:44:05.000 I guarantee that.

00:44:07.000 Now, last week, the world was lit up to a degree by Tucker's controversial interview with that dude that made them Obama revelations.

00:44:16.000 So in Here's the News today, we used that to begin an analysis of Barack Obama's time in office and his status as an elder and hero of the Democratic Party.

00:44:27.000 How can this status be maintained when you scrutinize Obama's time in office, particularly around war?

00:44:33.000 Here's the news.

00:44:34.000 No, here's the effing news.

00:44:36.000 Thank you for choosing Fox News.

00:44:38.000 Good news. 0.99

00:44:39.000 No, here's the fucking news. 0.99

00:44:42.000 Tucker Carlson's interview regarding Barack Obama shows we live in a truly divided news space. 0.99

00:44:48.000 But when analyzing the record of former presidents, what should we be looking at?

00:44:52.000 Their private lives or their record in office?

00:44:57.000 You'll be aware of the viral video that Tucker did recently.

00:45:00.000 Let me know in the comments if you saw it, if you care about it, if it was interesting to you.

00:45:03.000 Some people thought it was good, other people thought it shouldn't have been made because it's too salacious and it's an unreliable witness.

00:45:08.000 Where do you stand on that subject?

00:45:09.000 What we would like to offer you is that Barack Obama is still being used as a kind of hero

00:45:14.000 in the Democrat Party movement, when perhaps there's a strong argument that he could be

00:45:17.000 regarded, and I don't use this phrase lightly, as a war criminal.

00:45:21.000 That his actions were criminal, literally, under the Geneva Convention.

00:45:25.000 That children died as a result of his decisions and actions.

00:45:28.000 That drone strikes were undertaken.

00:45:30.000 And activities that if we thought they were being done by Korea, or Syria, or Russia,

00:45:34.000 we would be outraged by, and be personally willing to put on the camo and go to war ourselves

00:45:40.000 for.

00:45:41.000 So, let's have a look at what everyone else is talking about at the moment, before analysing

00:45:44.000 the reality of Barack Obama's record as a president.

00:45:51.000 I suppose all of us are interested in the private lives of great figures and the idea that there might be more to them than meets the eye.

00:45:57.000 And with such a significant and notable president as Barack Obama, it's just extraordinary, salacious, intriguing to even hear about him spoken of in this kind of context.

00:46:05.000 Certainly there's a conversation to be had.

00:46:07.000 Ex-owner Elon Musk called out Tucker Carlson for not providing objective evidence in allowing a convicted fraudster.

00:46:13.000 What were you convicted for?

00:46:13.000 That doesn't sound good, does it?

00:46:15.000 You know, just making stuff up.

00:46:16.000 And what are you telling us now?

00:46:18.000 Some true stuff?

00:46:19.000 To claim he had sex with Barack Obama on the text mogul's social media platform.

00:46:23.000 It's a weird image, isn't it?

00:46:24.000 As if he was sort of balanced on Twitter while it was happening.

00:46:26.000 As says for yourself, Carlson captioned the video, which has amassed nearly 40 million views as of Thursday.

00:46:31.000 This is further evidence of a completely bifurcated news space with independent media on the rise.

00:46:36.000 The previously unprecedented possibility that a story like this could be broadcast on this scale.

00:46:41.000 And for us, also an opportunity to look at the greatness of Barack Obama and the idea that Barack Obama is still a figure that will be trotted out in order to maintain Biden's credibility as a president.

00:46:53.000 The reason that Barack Obama remains a significant political figure is precisely because Joe Biden is observably in decline and associating him with Barack Obama is still a powerful boost to his image as a senescent occupant of the White House.

00:47:08.000 But are people who deify Barack Obama overlooking some pretty crucial facts about his time in office?

00:47:13.000 Putting aside this viral video, let's have a look.

00:47:16.000 Now, as I've told you loads of times, I was super optimistic when Barack Obama came into office, but perhaps the defining aspect of his time in office was the financial crash of 2008.

00:47:25.000 This was a seismic moment not only Not only for the presidency of Barack Obama, but for the

00:47:29.000 In my view, we are still reeling from the consequences of that financial cataclysm,

00:47:29.000 world.

00:47:33.000 and it was an opportunity to re-apportion wealth and re-establish the power of ordinary

00:47:38.000 people versus corporate, financial and globalist interests.

00:47:40.000 But what actually happened in 2008?

00:47:42.000 So let's have a look at a few bullet points of Barack Obama's time in office.

00:47:45.000 He bailed out the banks in 2008 instead of, of course, bailing out ordinary people.

00:47:49.000 He prosecuted more people under the Espionage Act than all previous presidents combined, and that's essentially silencing Americans who criticize American foreign policy or American deep state, notably Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, both prosecuted under the Espionage Act.

00:48:03.000 But perhaps most significantly of all, there were 10 times more airstrikes in the covert war on terror during President Barack Obama's presidency than under his predecessor George W. Bush.

00:48:12.000 Obviously because of Iraq, we all think of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, whose names are synonymous with war undertaken for profit to capture resources, a war that was delegitimized by the failure to find WMDs. 0.57

00:48:23.000 And to imagine that Barack Obama conducted more covert airstrikes than that administration is surprising and still feels at odds with how we perceive Barack Obama.

00:48:31.000 During his presidency, Obama approved the use of 563 drone strikes that killed approximately 3,797 people.

00:48:38.000 In fact, Obama authorized 54 drone strikes alone in Pakistan during his first year in office.

00:48:44.000 One of the first CIA drone strikes under President Obama was at a funeral.

00:48:47.000 Murdering as many as 41 Pakistani civilians.

00:48:50.000 That's extraordinary because at that point we were still in the euphoria of the election of Barack Obama, truly believing this was an opportunity for hope and change.

00:48:57.000 We had not yet had our expectations damped down by the events of 2008 and the revelation

00:49:02.000 that it doesn't really matter who you vote for.

00:49:04.000 You are primarily going to get a system that serves corporate interests, financial interests,

00:49:08.000 military industrial, complex interests.

00:49:10.000 But to know that still in that euphoric honeymoon period, 41 innocent people were murdered as

00:49:16.000 a result of Barack Obama's decisions shows you that really we were in a kind of dream,

00:49:21.000 in a kind of delusion.

00:49:22.000 It was business as usual.

00:49:24.000 The deep state were able to conduct the kind of operations that they typically conduct.

00:49:28.000 The military-industrial complex asserted the control that they're always able to assert.

00:49:31.000 Nothing really significantly changed.

00:49:33.000 Like Joe Biden told a room full of donors after he succeeded Donald Trump.

00:49:37.000 Nothing will essentially change.

00:49:39.000 This I think is the thing we have to remember most of all.

00:49:41.000 We get caught up in the soap opera of these characters and really the interests that they truly represent are uninterrupted by the democratic fluctuations in which we participate.

00:49:50.000 Or don't.

00:49:51.000 Let me know in the comments if you agree.

00:49:52.000 The following year, Obama led 128 CIA drone strikes in Pakistan that killed at least 89 civilians.

00:49:58.000 Just two years into his presidency, it was clear that the hope that President Obama offered during his 2008 campaign could not escape US imperialism.

00:50:06.000 What I kind of like about that sentence is the indication that there's no point blaming Barack Obama, that Barack Obama essentially is just on a conveyor belt of Visual distractions that we temporarily are enamored of, while real power carries on behind the scenes.

00:50:20.000 Let me know if you agree.

00:50:21.000 The drone operations extended to Somalia and Yemen in 2010 and 2011, resulting in more destructive results.

00:50:28.000 Under the belief that they were targeting Al-Qaeda, President Obama's first strike on Yemen killed 55 people, including 21 children.

00:50:34.000 Inconceivable.

00:50:35.000 Really important news.

00:50:36.000 The sort of thing that we should be aware of.

00:50:37.000 The kind of things that are just sort of brushed over.

00:50:39.000 So much more important than any allegations in this conversation, I would contest.

00:50:45.000 That's not a criticism of Tucker.

00:50:46.000 Much more important than anybody's private life, 21 children were murdered.

00:50:50.000 And yet we think because, oh, this happened in Pakistan, or it's just somehow we package it off as necessary and ultimately kind of irrelevant, don't we, if we're honest?

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00:51:19.000 Not lab-grown fruits either.

00:51:21.000 I don't do that, and you won't do it either.

00:51:23.000 You're too busy thinking and worrying about conspiracy theories, aren't you?

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00:52:11.000 Now, let's get back to this rather devastating and difficult news.

00:52:14.000 Ten of which were under the age of five.

00:52:16.000 Additionally, twelve women, five of them pregnant, were also among those who were murdered in the strike.

00:52:20.000 These blundered acts of murder by not only President Obama but the US government are morally reprehensible.

00:52:25.000 I suppose this is the kind of information that we have to bear in mind when we look at the accepted stance with the current war between Ukraine and Russia.

00:52:32.000 That America's role is to back brave Ukraine, and Ukraine are brave, for moral reasons, for humanitarian reasons.

00:52:39.000 How can that be the case when a president still regarded as a hero participated in the murder of women and children?

00:52:46.000 This is beyond the Even more civilian casualties came out of Afghanistan throughout Barack Obama's time in office.

00:52:50.000 have to say, kind of irrelevant, because the momentum of this system is so potent and powerful

00:52:55.000 that even dead children are just regarded as almost irrelevant shrapnel and collateral

00:53:01.000 damage in the operations of this unforgiving system. How can we begin to believe that any

00:53:06.000 war that America backs is just?

00:53:09.000 Even more civilian casualties came out of Afghanistan throughout Barack Obama's time

00:53:13.000 in office. In 2014, Obama began removing troops currently deployed in the country. However,

00:53:18.000 instead of this action by the President being one in pursuit of peace and stability in the

00:53:21.000 region, it only acted as an opportunity to drastically increase air warfare.

00:53:25.000 Afghanistan had war rained upon them by US bombardment, with the administration viciously dropping 1,337 weapons on Afghanistan in 2016.

00:53:34.000 In total that year, the Obama administration dropped 26,171 bombs, drone or otherwise, across seven countries.

00:53:40.000 Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.

00:53:44.000 The US, in cooperation with its allies, including the Afghan government, killed 582 civilians on average annually from 2007 to 2016.

00:53:52.000 Most people's perception of Barack Obama does not include statistics like that.

00:53:56.000 If we imagine imagine for a while that Russia were conducting those kind

00:53:59.000 of military activities, and as far as I know, they are.

00:54:02.000 Certainly they are currently being vilified for their criminal invasion of Ukraine, and 0.85

00:54:05.000 no one is countenancing that point.

00:54:07.000 Many of us try to explain the recent history, and indeed 20th century history, that possibly

00:54:11.000 contributed to the current conflict in the way that American interests benefit.

00:54:14.000 But this kind of, if not egregious, then certainly profligate bombing of a variety of countries

00:54:19.000 under one of the most popular and least controversial presidents in our history.

00:54:23.000 I know a lot of you guys don't like Barack Obama because Democrats and like because of your kind of political persuasion.

00:54:29.000 But broadly speaking, Barack Obama is like now a sort of celebrity, isn't he?

00:54:33.000 Like he's Netflix shows and that kind of thing.

00:54:36.000 And when you see him on stuff, he's cool and chatty.

00:54:38.000 This is a piece of reality that many of us are not willing to countenance.

00:54:42.000 A reality that really we should be looking at and addressing.

00:54:45.000 In his memoir, A Promised Land, ah, that land, Obama defends his drone program, writing, I wanted somehow to save them.

00:54:53.000 Well, don't bomb them then. 0.98

00:54:54.000 And yet the world they were a part of and the machinery I commanded more often had me killing them instead. 0.95

00:54:59.000 Well, you went a bit off track.

00:55:00.000 President Obama would have the reader believe he wanted to help the suspected terrorist, but simply couldn't.

00:55:05.000 In reality, he consciously and undemocratically decided the fates of thousands of lives without due process.

00:55:09.000 That's a considerable distinction.

00:55:11.000 With the exception of the wars themselves, the claim that former President Barack Obama is a war criminal also lies within the double-tap initiative.

00:55:18.000 Double-tap drone strikes are as disturbing as they sound.

00:55:21.000 These attacks are follow-up strikes on first responders as they rush to the bombed area trying to assist any survivors.

00:55:27.000 That's a level of mendacity that's difficult to incorporate into the image of Barack Obama as a hero that's brought on to make Joe Biden more electable.

00:55:36.000 Isn't that kind of information enough to help us to revise our systems?

00:55:40.000 To recognize that what's required is radical change?

00:55:43.000 That the distinctions between the two parties and successive presidents isn't significant enough?

00:55:48.000 If this is the kind of thing that's deemed acceptable business as usual, surely business as usual is precisely what needs addressing.

00:55:54.000 Well, in 2012, an attack on the Shawwal Valley aimed at Taliban commander Sadiq Noor reportedly killed up to 14 people in a double-tap drone strike.

00:56:01.000 These attacks are both morally and legally reprehensible as they are conscious acts of murder against civilians, which is, again, this, from any other entity, would be used as legitimization to criminalize an entire state, wouldn't it?

00:56:13.000 If someone came out behind a podium, you know, with the Stars of Strife and the Eagle and everyone had a listen, guess what they're doing in Syria or Iraq or Russia?

00:56:20.000 They do this thing called double-tap strikes. 0.75

00:56:23.000 actually bomb an area and then when the first responders come to help the victims, many of

00:56:26.000 whom are children under five and pregnant women, they bomb them as well. You go, well actually I'm 1.00

00:56:30.000 willing to participate in a war against them, give us the stuff, I'll go, I'll go, that needs to be

00:56:35.000 stopped. Oh you don't need to go anywhere because it's happening here and in fact the person that's

00:56:38.000 making those decisions is being sold to you as a hero. And again I'm not naive enough to suggest

00:56:42.000 that Barack Obama is somehow the generator of that kind of malevolence, he's rather just a temporary

00:56:47.000 occupant of an office that demands that in order to support the interests that truly run America.

00:56:52.000 That's what we're saying again and again on this channel.

00:56:55.000 We are presented with spectacle.

00:56:56.000 We are presented with distraction.

00:56:57.000 The price of even our inhibited freedom is a machine that murders children and says there's nothing wrong with it.

00:57:05.000 A machine that sells us poisoned food and tells us there's nothing wrong with it.

00:57:09.000 That props up pharmaceutical industries and energy industries that couldn't operate under their own financial capital but require your taxpayer dollars to subsidise and fund them and tell us that there's nothing wrong with it.

00:57:20.000 There are so many more questions that require asking.

00:57:24.000 before blithely accepting some of these people as heroes.

00:57:27.000 Drone strikes conducted by the United States during a five-month long campaign in Afghanistan caused the deaths of unintended targets nearly nine out of ten times, leaked intelligence documents suggest.

00:57:37.000 Nine out of ten times, most of the time, should probably not happen.

00:57:40.000 Not a reliable model, is it?

00:57:42.000 In my recent conversation with Sam Harris, when he talks about terrorists and their potential ecstatic state when conducting jihad, there's a kind of fetishisation of the presumed evil of religious ideology.

00:57:51.000 But secularism leads to murder of this nature, just under the cold rational dispatch, collateral damage, no note, no funeral, no need for redemption, culpability or explanation.

00:58:01.000 So the idea that some types of violence are worse than others is one that has to be resolved.

00:58:07.000 And of course, Daniel Hale, the whistleblower, who revealed that information is celebrated as a hero around the world in prison under the Espionage Act that Barack Obama used more than any other president in history.

00:58:18.000 These drone strikes make a strong case for categorizing Obama as an international war criminal.

00:58:22.000 The 1949 Geneva Conventions ratified by the United Nations explicitly provides protections for not only the wounded but also for medical and religious personnel, medical units and medical transports.

00:58:33.000 Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court states that internationally directing attacks against personnel, installations, material, units or vehicles involved in humanitarian assistance or peacekeeping missions in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations is classified as a war crime.

00:58:47.000 These classifications, these words, they're meant to mean something.

00:58:50.000 You know, of course, that America could not appeal to the International Criminal Court to condemn the actions of Russia in Ukraine because they would know that they'd begin a conversation where they'd have to say, we have done the same, we have done worse.

00:59:02.000 This is the truth of American foreign policy, the influence of the military-industrial complex, and the set of interests that the American government truly represent.

00:59:09.000 This is the truth of a hero, albeit a partisan hero, like Barack Obama.

00:59:13.000 That they represent those kind of interests.

00:59:16.000 That if we were to obey the Geneva Convention, which obviously we're just going to ignore, then you'd have to say, no, Barack Obama, look, is just literally a war criminal according to that definition.

00:59:25.000 You just have to dispatch with that definition in order to maintain the heroic status of Barack Obama, which people are willing to do.

00:59:32.000 No one is willing to look at reality.

00:59:34.000 We're not willing to say, well, look, this is the cost of these systems.

00:59:37.000 It's not benefiting you.

00:59:38.000 You're not benefiting from that.

00:59:39.000 These people are not a threat to you.

00:59:41.000 You have to be convinced that they're a threat to you in order to facilitate that.

00:59:44.000 Whose interests are ultimately advanced by that kind of bombing, by that kind of murder of children?

00:59:48.000 Let me know in the chat and comments.

00:59:50.000 The law also states, "...intentionally launching attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians also constitutes war crimes for the guilty party."

00:59:58.000 Through the drone strike program and double tap attacks, there is no question that former President Obama and his administration violated international humanitarian law.

01:00:06.000 Obama's symbolic significance cannot outshine his relationship with the imperial endeavors of the American empire.

01:00:12.000 And yet it seems to the Democratic Party they do exactly that.

01:00:15.000 Barack Obama is still regarded as a hero.

01:00:17.000 In order for him to be regarded as a hero, you have to just wipe away the Geneva Convention.

01:00:22.000 You have to completely ignore the murder of children.

01:00:24.000 You have to do that.

01:00:25.000 It's impossible, isn't it, to combine those facts.

01:00:27.000 And even if you put aside the idea that Obama is somehow personally culpable, although evidently he was the president, I don't know how much higher up the chain you would need to get, You have to accept that the system itself is in need of radical re-evaluation.

01:00:38.000 And these are the kind of things that should be at the forefront of our mind, and this is what we should be demanding of any democracy, or indeed any nation, worthy of the name.

01:00:45.000 But that's just what I think!

01:00:46.000 Let me know what you think in the chat!

Stay Free - Russel Brand - September 12, 2023

“IT’S MORE HARMFUL!” Exposing Big Pharma’s Alzheimer's GOLD RUSH - Stay Free #205

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