In this episode of Rambles, Gareth and Gareth discuss the coronation of King Charles and the new Queen, Camilla Parker-Bowles. They also talk about why the royal family is so important to the modern world and why we should be worried about them. And Gareth tries to explain why he's not anti-royal and why he doesn't want to have a royal family in the future. Plus, Gareth gives us a Foucaultian dialectic and Gareth explains why he thinks we should stop funding royal pageantry and go back to the old ways of doing things in the 21st century. If you like the first 20 minutes of this episode then you'll love the second 20 minutes where we talk about Julian Assange and the letter he wrote to the King about freedom of speech sent to the Prince of Wales. You'll also get to hear Gareth's thoughts on the Camilla and Prince Charles coronation and why it's a good thing that the mainstream media aren't paying attention to it and why they don't care about it. And they're not the only ones who don't get to watch the whole thing live on YouTube, because they're also not even getting the chance to watch it on YouTube. And if you don't like it, join us on Rumble! or join us over at The Rambler, where we'll be talking about it on the first episode of the new show on the second half of the show, where you can watch it exclusively on YouTube and get double clever facts, facts, figures, facts and all that stuff! You're in for it! . . . and a whole lot of fun, rambles! Rumbles, give it a listen! Give a listen and let us a listen to it on your favourite podcasting app! And don't forget to give us a rating and review it a review on Apple Podcasts and tell us what you think about it in the comments section! If you've got a minute of your thoughts on what you're listening to us on your brain about it, tweet us what's your favourite thing you've been listening to on Insta: and what you'd like it's the best thing you're watching on your feed! or do you've heard about it? or what's going on in your life and what's the most important thing we're doing on your social media feed? We'll be listening to you're having a good day!
00:00:50.000You are therefore an awakening wonder.
00:00:53.000Are you joining us on YouTube or have you joined us on Rumble yet?
00:00:56.000That bastion, that citadel, that oasis of free speech.
00:01:00.000There's a link in the description because we'll do the first 20 minutes over here where we're going to be talking about the coronation of King Charles.
00:01:16.000I don't like doing stuff like that and on a Bible type things.
00:01:19.000We'll be talking about that and also when we flick over being exclusively on Rumble, right, what You know, we're going to talk about Julian Assange, still in Belmarsh Prison, who's written a letter to King Charles talking about free speech.
00:01:31.000And we're going to be talking about what five things are right wing now that surprise you.
00:01:36.000It's astonishing just to see how the taxonomies around politics and the categorization of politics has altered.
00:01:43.000We're talking about pageantry and ceremony.
00:01:46.000And I'm going to offer you, I'm going to be offering you a Foucaultian dialectic, girl.
00:02:33.000I've even got a mug with... Yeah, they're all on there.
00:02:37.000So, like, it's not like I'm anti-royal, even though the mainstream media did a right, like, snidey little anti-royal story on me, because I'd said, why are we, we're like hostages, why are we still funding all this stuff?
00:02:49.000Do you think it's right with all the energy crisis?
00:02:50.000In fact, I'll offer you this question in the same way I did it before.
00:02:53.000Do you think that we should be funding expensive pageantry, whether it's inaugural events or stuff like in your country, America, or stuff in our country, these kind of ceremonies, when there's an energy crisis, when there's a cost-of-living crisis, when there's a food crisis?
00:03:08.000Or do you think that we could be redirecting these resources?
00:03:12.000Sometimes I think this about socialism.
00:03:13.000I think, like, people go, oh, we can't be funding healthcare and hospitals and schools and whatnot.
00:03:18.000But of course, you're subsidizing the military-industrial complex.
00:03:44.000Yeah, yeah, that's good because there's only one thing worse than being talked about and that's being told to Well, are these words sayable while we're on YouTube, Gareth?
00:03:53.000I'm talking about the first story and the Camilla.
00:05:34.000The big PR campaign for two years, trying to get everyone to forget about Princess Diana and Laika, and then the minute they get a marching band, they go, Wipe that vagina, Camilla!
00:05:55.000Wait a minute, I don't remember that song!
00:05:57.000What's really interesting, of course, about all ceremony and pageantry is that it's part of the installation and ongoing instantiation of power.
00:06:06.000But we talk continually, don't we, on this channel about decentralization.
00:06:11.000The decentralization of power is one of the things we continually talk about.
00:06:15.000Now, the Royal Family are aware that they are not liked in the city of Liverpool.
00:06:19.000That is why they used this song, famous and popular in Liverpool, the anthem, in case you're not a fan of British football, and if you're not, you should be, the anthem of the great football club of Liverpool, all respect to Everton fans, you're all great as far as I'm concerned, their anthem is You'll Never Walk Alone.
00:06:36.000Now, part of the pageantry, part of the ceremony was they did a cover of You'll Never Walk Alone.
00:06:41.000The people of Liverpool hate The British establishment, because of a disaster, Hillsborough, where 97 people were unlawfully killed, because they feel that they've been ostracised, alienated and ignored by the establishment.
00:06:53.000And really, like many of the working communities of the North of England, they're aware of how the South and Southern-based establishments have rinsed them and turned them over.
00:07:01.000And you know we're always arguing for decentralised power.
00:07:03.000Would Newcastle, Liverpool, Manchester, even Birmingham, Nottingham, would these great cities be better...
00:07:09.000With more autonomy, more devolution, how do we benefit from centralisation?
00:07:28.000They use You'll Never Walk Alone at As part of the ceremony, but you've got to see the riposte of Liverpool fans.
00:07:35.000It's not a riposte, actually, because I'd already done it.
00:07:36.000But you've got to see the genuine feelings of Liverpool fans when they are forced to listen to the national anthem of their football match.
00:07:42.000Let's start with the appropriation of a piece of Liverpool culture, even though it's a pop song as well.
00:07:47.000Have a look at how this thing went over.
00:07:49.000We'll hold in your heart as you never once
00:08:15.000It's a deliberate choice so that some people that are in Liverpool or connected to Liverpool go, oh, they did a lovely job of your Never Walk Alone.
00:08:22.000Well, look at the Liverpool... Guys, guys, guys, steady.
00:08:36.000Half the coronation, every football match, they played the national anthem.
00:08:50.000That's just, that's a pretty ardent disapproval, I would say.
00:08:55.000It's interesting to watch the players.
00:08:56.000I think a couple of them are, well, it's only Trent, English out of them, Andy Robertson, Scottish, like so, but you can see Spostar sing along.
00:09:29.000Mo Salah, he's Egyptian, Suez Canal, he got no love lost for the British Empire.
00:09:35.000So it's interesting, isn't it, to sort of see how these things play out, how the pageantry is in some ways disconnected, and even old little old Russ here, I said a thing like, we must be crazy to fund this, when they reported on it in the Independent newspaper, curiously a newspaper called the Independent is Up to 50% owned by Saudi Arabian interests and some people say that you oughtn't have a Saudi Arabian owned newspaper presenting itself as English because it's going to bias their reporting.
00:10:06.000So you know remember when your president Joe Biden said we'll make Saudi Arabia a pariah only to do a bunch of arms deals and oil deals and fist bumps and all that stuff?
00:10:15.000Really what I'm saying is power takes place invisibly behind the distractions of these cultural artifacts that they bombard us with like a kind of kaleidoscope and nonsense to keep us distracted.
00:10:28.000Those liberal supporters are lucky they didn't get arrested because there was a lot of other arrests going on on the day of the coronation for people peacefully You're not allowed to peacefully protest.
00:12:12.000Remember, if you're watching this on YouTube, join us over on Rumble now.
00:12:15.000And if you want to dive a little deeper, get right into Locals, because in a minute, we're going to be talking about the stuff they won't tell you on mainstream media because of their biases and their ultimate support of the establishment.
00:12:26.000We're going to be talking about Julian Assange's letter to Charles.
00:12:29.000And if you can guess now in the chat, five things that make you right wing now, I'll give you one clue.
00:12:42.000Like, I know you, you know, maybe sometimes you feel like you're going too far when you make comparisons with China.
00:12:48.000And I know like some of those protesters, some of the people who were arrested, it was like, these are draconian methods, these things that authoritarian people should... You're affected by these protests.
00:12:56.000Well, I just think, while you're seeing this, I mean, this is the kind of stuff like when you're in China and you're seeing the elections and it's just like, oh, it's just, I mean, it's outright propaganda.
00:13:04.000And obviously this is not to do with elections, but it is about power, ultimately.
00:13:07.000That is what this whole thing is reinforcing.
00:13:57.000So, while all this stuff was going on, They just casually introduced, like while we're looking at big golden five ton carriages while people are using food banks.
00:15:22.000Enabling the Secretary of State to bring civil proceedings in relation to protest activity where courts grant an injunction in the context of those proceedings.
00:15:29.000The measure enables the court to attach power of arrest.
00:15:31.00012 months prison sentence for blocking a road.
00:15:40.000I think that's why they were reporting so much on those people where it was a bit annoying, you know, where they were sort of linking arms across roads, you know, those energy protests, people throwing stuff at paint-ins, which was, I think, funded by some weird interests, you know.
00:16:09.000This comes from friend of the show Silky Carlo from Big Brother Watch.
00:16:13.000She provides us with a lot of information around surveillance.
00:16:16.000The Met used live facial recognition systems during the coronation.
00:16:20.000This form of mass surveillance will mostly consist of technology provided by HIK Vision, a controversial company due to its tech being used in labor camps in China.
00:16:28.000Don't judge us only by the tech we use in labor camps!
00:16:33.000So when we talk about comparisons to China, people will be like, oh you're ridiculous, this is just stupid, of course it's not like China.
00:16:40.000Well, the type of technology they're using is exactly what they're using in China, in labor camps actually.
00:16:45.000This live facial recognition is not referenced in a single UK law, has never been Never been debated in Parliament and is one of the most privacy-intrusive technologies ever used in British policing.
00:16:55.000So when you're talking about, oh, let's celebrate the coronation, what you're celebrating is these things being introduced.
00:17:03.000The appropriation of working-class cultural artefacts like the song You'll Never Walk Alone, even though the people of Liverpool with whom that song is associated absolutely detest the establishment and openly boo during those songs.
00:17:14.000Technology and protest laws being introduced to all, you know, to showcase how bloody liberal everything is.
00:17:20.000I've got a few interesting quotes about that.
00:18:08.000No, when a newspaper called The Independent, funded by Saudi Arabia, says that I said the public are stupid, when I ask, are we stupid, why did they change it?
00:18:32.000The 12 or 15 millions in the British Empire who, while they possess no electoral rights, are yet persuaded they are free men and who are mystified into the notion that they are not political bondmen by that great juggle of the English Constitution.
00:18:47.000A thing of monopolies and churchcraft and sinecures and armorial hocus-pocus, primogeniture and pageantry.
00:18:56.000I'll break down a few of those words there.
00:19:07.000That was like Andy Robertson in the English National Anthem, just a Scotsman staring at the floor, insulted by what's going on.
00:19:16.000Now, sinecures is a job where you don't have to do any work.
00:19:19.000Armorial hocus-pocus, I actually don't know what armorial means, I imagine that's to do with the armed forces.
00:19:23.000Primogeniture, the process of making the firstborn king, because really, Charles's sister Older than him, she should have been king or queen.
00:20:44.000Lionel Richie is brilliant and those people when I was 16 took a piss out of me saying I should have been listening to like jungle music and like hardcore house.
00:20:53.000They were wrong and I'm right because I was on my own in my room listening to Lionel Richie.
00:24:00.000Shall we... right, let's flick over to being on... I don't want to say flick over while I'm looking at that sort of perfectly spherical pair of nuts either side like that.
00:25:22.000Here are some other things that are right-wing now, because guess what?
00:25:25.000In your country, America, you know, like people are saying that RFK, now that he's got 20% of the poll in, he should be allowed to participate in some presidential debates.
00:25:35.000But saying that you want a presidential debate, that's right-wing now.
00:25:38.000Apparently, I've got Assange's letter on my desk somewhere, gals.
00:25:51.000Stella, no offence, sorry mate, his wife and the leader of the campaign to free Julian Assange, a campaign that we actually back, as a matter of fact.
00:25:59.000Sorry, Stella, sometimes I just say things for a laugh.
00:26:31.000I had to go on this, and what you realise is that, like, this will be on the ABC network, which will also own a film studio, and they all do, like, deals together.
00:26:38.000Now, I bet the Coronation was being covered by a particular network, or had, you know, exclusivity with a particular network, or more access, and I bet it's the one that does this.
00:26:47.000And, like, it was mad enough getting me to go on American Idol, so I went on it.
00:26:51.000Because mainly, weren't you on there as, like, a charisma coach or something?
00:27:43.000Now, so I know it's sort of like, so Katy Perry, about whom I've got nothing but good things to say having been married to Katy.
00:27:48.000She was a lovely human being, actually, in all truth.
00:27:51.000You don't marry people because you don't love them, you marry them because you do love them.
00:27:54.000Now let's have a look at Katie being with Lionel Richie and then the weird bit where like Camilla and Charles shuffle on and I am such a sucker for this stuff such a tea towel owning royal supporting down in my dumb blood way that I feel sort of sad for them and not right.
00:28:09.000I am going to do some kind of meta-producorial stuff here.
00:28:13.000This will definitely be pulled out by if they're going to do a newspaper article about you saying the monarchy should be abolished they'll definitely do something about this.
00:29:06.000They didn't ask to be born in that position any more than we wanted to be born in our positions.
00:29:10.000This is not an attack on human individuals.
00:29:12.000I actually do believe in God, therefore I believe in love.
00:29:15.000What I feel is a problem is using symbols of power that ...are beyond reproach and question while simultaneously bringing in protest laws using unprecedented surveillance techniques and further drilling down into the idea that you can't change anything, that there's something natural about hegemony and that there's something natural about ordinary people suffering while you have a reified and elite class.
00:29:40.000It's not a tax on those individuals who If you believe in God, then you do believe that all people are fundamentally beautiful and that we're all trying to get back home to that beauty rather than, oh, these people are worse.
00:29:51.000I don't believe in that kind of sectarian, partisan attack.
00:30:10.000Me in particular, I've made a lot of mistakes.
00:30:12.000But our intention is to bring people together so that we can organize society more fairly, so that we all have more authority in our own lives and our own communities.
00:30:21.000So I'm glad you reminded me about the mainstream media.
00:30:24.000They'll definitely take this clip and use it.
00:30:25.000Now, all of it is going to be saying stuff like, Oh, no, We can't use that.
00:30:28.000That's all fair and just and judicious and sensible and superior to our low-life mentality.
00:30:34.000They'll end up doing that thing with Homer where there's that clock behind him that keeps changing.
00:30:38.000I wanted to say that the rules are bad.
00:30:41.000We should... They would just literally do that, wouldn't they?
00:30:49.000Well, this is a really interesting thing at the moment.
00:30:51.000The situation with, as you said before, that now calling for Biden to do a debate, which the DNC don't, are going to make sure doesn't happen, which doesn't seem, for the Democratic National Committee, doesn't seem very democratic, does it?
00:34:02.000Should we have a, should we want to see some sensible analysis of the entire event before talking to a representative of the mainstream and like tormenting and teasing and loving on them a little?
00:35:45.000Hello there you 6.4 million awakening wonders.
00:35:47.000Thanks for joining us on this voyage to truth and freedom.
00:35:50.000A truth and freedom that is already within you, waiting to be expressed communally, collectively and individually through open discourse, through banning censorship, through demanding free speech.
00:36:01.000We can have conversations through which we will recognize we have more in common than divides us.
00:36:09.000You might not be an English person, a British person, an Irish person even, and therefore not have strong opinions on this subject.
00:36:15.000In fact, my opinions on the subject are somewhat ambiguous and ambivalent, but let's have a conversation about the nature of power, the nature of censorship, and are the monarchy a British hot-button topic like pro-life, pro-choice, and gun control in your country, America?
00:36:31.000A subject that's used To divide people.
00:36:34.000Turn on the notification bell right now and subscribe to our channel.
00:36:36.000It's the only way we can be sure that we reach you every day with the content we make for you every single day.
00:36:42.000Remember, we're interested in your opinion.
00:36:46.000That's why I was particularly offended to see that when the independent newspaper, a British newspaper, I say it's British, but it's significantly owned by Saudi Arabian interests, I reported on a broadcast we did last week and changed my words, saying Russell Brand calls the public stupid, silly, when in fact what I'd said was, we must be silly to continue to tolerate this, and then presented a bunch of questions.
00:37:13.000My mother-in-law likes the royal family.
00:37:15.000My grandmother, God rest her soul, loved the royal family.
00:37:18.000British people have it deep in our bones because of the wars, the pageantry, the significant things it represents.
00:37:24.000Queen Elizabeth II's durability and duty are deeply stitched into the fabric of this country.
00:37:30.000So I would never be flippant or frivolous.
00:37:32.000Never would I label the public that I am a part of, the community that I belong to, the communities that I grew up in, as stupid because it simply means too much to me.
00:37:41.000Why, then, would the independent change the language?
00:37:46.000If you change something where a person says, we must be silly, to you must be silly, that reveals an intention, doesn't it?
00:37:53.000It means they have an opinion on me, I suppose, in particular in this instance, not that I'm suggesting that I'm particularly important, But they are trying to rile a certain group of people.
00:38:02.000But I'm not alone in thinking that the coronation is perhaps a ceremony that is out of date.
00:38:09.000In fact, let me know in the comments if you agree with this.
00:38:11.000I see the coronation of King Charles as similar to the presidency of Joe Biden, unwittingly revealing that an institution is decaying and in need of radical revision.
00:38:23.000And I also think that the 300 million pounds a year that the royal family cost us is nothing to the 35 billion pounds a year lost through tax evasion, and that the power that the royal family is nothing compared to the power that corporations are able to exert.
00:38:37.000I think that what we need to address here is power, the nature of power, and uncontra symbols.
00:38:42.000Let's have a look at events from the weekend.
00:38:44.000At kick-off, as was the case at every Premier League game, the National Anthem was played to mark the coronation of King Charles.
00:38:51.000As expected, there were widespread boos and jeers at Anfield.
00:38:54.000Liverpool fans have been booing the National Anthem since at least the 1980s in protest against the establishment and its treatment of the city.
00:39:03.000The treatment of the city they're referring to includes the Hillsborough disaster where it has been proven that in that instance the police lied and the Sun newspaper famously published a headline, the truth about Liverpool fans in which they lied, like newspapers regularly and ordinarily do in order to carry their own agenda.
00:39:21.000Let me know in the chat and the comments if the booing of the Liverpool fans is a kind of indication that the decentralisation that we continually talk about on this channel is a necessity.
00:39:30.000Would the people of Liverpool much rather run their own city and their own principality rather than being somehow tied to a centralised institution, whether that's monarchical or parliamentary?
00:39:52.000And again, to let you know my nuanced opinion, I don't think the monarchy is the most significant thing when it comes to corruption and lack of power for ordinary people.
00:40:01.000I just think it's an indication of how these systems function.
00:40:04.000But if you want to look at the history of the situation, the power of the British monarchy is derived from imperialism and colonialism.
00:40:12.000In this country recently, we've had a conversation about removing the ships from the Manchester United and Manchester City badges.
00:40:19.000Well, if you want to take the ships out of those badges, because of the connections to slavery that that indicates, you have to have an honest conversation about the royal family, don't you?
00:40:28.000Let me know in the chat and the comments.
00:40:29.000There was another procession along the Mall this morning.
00:40:33.000The protesters marched away to the beat of the drum before the King had even left for the Abbey.
00:40:41.000This comment from Giotti is fantastic.
00:40:43.000This is one of the people that commented on our channel.
00:40:45.000I just finished watching the coronation.
00:40:47.000It made me cry, not in a good way, as I watched an elderly man and woman go through a ceremony as old as the country itself and at phenomenally eye-watering expense, to crown the oldest person ever to be crowned in the history of Britain and probably the world.
00:41:00.000It made me think of his mother at her coronation and how young and strong and peachy fresh she was, filling the nation with hope and promise for the future as we recovered and rebuilt the country and the population after World War II.
00:41:11.000My ineffable sadness was not relieved by the spectacle, the pageantry and the pomp of it all.
00:41:14.000It made me think of the poverty stricken, the homeless, the trapped, the sick and the disabled, the mentally ill, the orphaned and the elderly.
00:41:21.000So people who have affection for the royal family, people that revere Queen Elizabeth II, and you can watch our video on Queen Elizabeth II's passing here and judge for yourself whether I respect the monarchy and what it represents and the way that it's connected to ordinary British people.
00:41:35.000But when you hear those Liverpool fans, when you see the poverty in this country, when you see that there's an energy crisis, while energy companies profit, while you see nurses and doctors and teachers striking just a couple of months after it was painting rainbows on the windows and they're our heroes and protect key workers, you have to recognise we are at a time of reckoning and conversation.
00:41:57.000And when you see a newspaper attack someone who's We were arrested for having t-shirts and flags, she says.
00:42:01.000it shows you the establishment, in this case Saudi Arabian owned, have an agenda.
00:42:06.000Let me know what you think in the comments.
00:42:07.000We were arrested for having t-shirts and flags, she says.
00:42:12.000Officers have been given new powers this week to police protests.
00:42:24.000That's happening in Canada and all over the world.
00:42:27.000New bills to censor you on social media and elsewhere, even for information you haven't published, are being passed in what are called the Five Eyes countries, thanks to the revelations of Edward Snowden, a man who's currently in Russia.
00:42:40.000You have to recognize who your heroes are and who your heroes are not.
00:43:01.000Let me know in the comments in the chat.
00:43:02.000The commissioner of the Metropolitan Police said tonight that the force is proud to have led the largest policing operation in decades.
00:43:13.000Adding, God save the King, So that's extraordinary.
00:43:18.000So on one level you might think that the coronation is frivolous, comparatively not expensive, and generally speaking is a symbol to bind the country together.
00:43:25.000And I think that is what it should be.
00:43:27.000Like the sadness in that comment, it should represent what the Queen did represent to people 50 years ago.
00:43:33.000But now it seems to represent something different.
00:43:35.000The ability to impose power, the ability to control dissent, the ability to censor when necessary, the ability to pass anti-protest laws, the ability to direct funding and taxes towards resources that benefit the elite establishment rather than ordinary people.
00:44:12.000The gilded gates of Buckingham Palace opened this morning.
00:44:16.000Gilded gates, golden carriages, horses, this is expensive.
00:44:20.000But the expense is not really the problem.
00:44:22.000That expenditure, as we've said, is nothing compared to the corporate power exercised over your government in whatever country you're in, or the tax evasion of powerful corporations.
00:44:31.000But it is a symbol of where power lies, and it is galling and ridiculous.
00:44:35.000While there's a crisis around food and energy to have golden carriages parading through the streets that you're paying for.
00:44:43.000The heavens opened but that couldn't stop Charles's march towards his destiny.
00:44:48.000Well of course we're not going to say we're not going to cancel it because it's raining in England although the superstitious and the spiritual among us will say...
00:45:07.000A thousand members of the British Armed Forces.
00:45:10.000So that's some considerable freight behind this meaningless fun symbol, isn't it?
00:45:15.000You'll notice that the word serve was used a lot more than the word rule or reign.
00:45:20.000That because Queen Elizabeth II in her durability, her endurance, her duty somehow embodied all of our grandmothers and their quiet ability to suck up a couple of world wars and still deliver an omelette has somehow been projected onto this archetypal symbolic central family.
00:45:38.000Now talking of service has become a kind of bait and switch.
00:46:09.000Will you solemnly promise and swear to govern the peoples of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?
00:46:16.000Of course we know the power of the king is largely symbolic but here are a few interesting facts.
00:46:21.000British monarchs are worth almost 28 billion dollars.
00:46:24.000The royal family cost UK taxpayers around 300 million pounds every year.
00:46:28.000King Charles's private fortune is estimated at 1.8 billion dollars.
00:46:33.000Charles did not have to pay inheritance tax on his massive wealth he inherited from his late mother, including the Duchy of Lancaster, which brings in around 24 million dollars a year, with net assets of around 1.2 billion.
00:46:44.000I don't even begrudge them all of that.
00:46:46.000I just feel it's worth having a conversation about what that represents during a cost-of-living crisis, and that cost-of-living crisis is brought about by the control and management of resources, and our belief that things can't change and shouldn't change.
00:46:59.000I'm simply offering you this possibility.
00:48:50.000That's what I mean by it's a good thing.
00:48:52.000But it doesn't actually change the lives of many, many ordinary people who cannot afford energy, who cannot afford food, who are funding wars abroad in the same way that colonialism and imperialism was founded.
00:49:03.000We continue to fund wars through tax dollars in, for example, Ukraine, and it seems like we're agitating for one in Taiwan.
00:49:11.000In terms of global economics, Britain is, I would say, broadly irrelevant.
00:49:14.000Therefore, all of our institutions, in the macro, are somewhat irrelevant.
00:49:18.000But symbolically, what you can read from these ceremonies is that power will manoeuvre and manipulate, supported by their allies in mainstream media, to keep ordinary people distracted, underserved, ill-informed.
00:49:31.000Let me know what you think in the chat and the comments.
00:49:33.000Do you read something from I'm not saying that you shouldn't like the monarchy.
00:49:39.000You go there, you'll probably have a good time.
00:49:40.000It's been there all your life, on biscuit tins, on your money.
00:49:43.000If you didn't feel anything about it, you'd be crazy.
00:49:45.000I'm offering you, in a rational, secular society that's not meant to be religious anymore, that's meant to be based on enlightenment values, Is this the best way for British people to spend their resources and to spend their attention?
00:49:58.000Or is it being used to distract us from the fact that whether you voted in our country, Conservative or Labour, you're going to end up with the same sort of deal?
00:50:04.000Is it being used to distract you from the fact that a couple of years ago there was a massive wealth transfer, loads of businesses got shut down, nurses, teachers and doctors were called heroes and applauded, and now just a couple of years later they can't get the minuscule rises and decent working conditions that they're willing to go on strike for?
00:50:20.000You have to look at these things collectively.
00:50:58.000I actually shook hands with King Charles, as he now must be known, once.
00:51:02.000And this is not a personal attack on individuals or human beings.
00:51:04.000They didn't ask to be them any more than you asked to be you.
00:51:07.000I'm simply inviting us to have a conversation about the way that power, wealth and revenue are distributed and the potential for amending systems in a way that seems to be trying to be born.
00:51:17.000In the same way that you can witness that these ceremonies and institutions are being held up with incredible effort.
00:51:26.000You can see from the anger in Liverpool that people want decentralised power and control over their own resources.
00:51:31.000Let me know in the chat in the comments if you agree.
00:51:33.000Crafted from 22 carat gold in the 1600s, the crown's trimmed with ermine and festooned with over 400 precious stones, including rubies and sapphires.
00:51:46.000I like that they're impressed by how much gold and sapphires are.
00:51:50.000Shall we have a look at where those diamonds and sapphires came from and if there's any connection to colonialism, imperialism, slavery right now on the king's head.
00:51:58.000The crown's only used for coronations.
00:52:01.000Charles will likely never wear it again.
00:52:06.000Queen Camilla was also crowned and anointed today.
00:52:11.000Once reviled in this country, Charles' mistress, hated by the public, she's worked hard to improve her image since they wed nearly 20 years ago.
00:52:21.000One weird sentence worked hard to improve her image.
00:52:24.000Like, the hatred, I think, or the anger or the mistrust is always there and it's kept down by careful management and crushing of dissent.
00:52:32.000That's why I'm mentioning that The Independent changed what I said in order to attack me, not just because it personally slighted me, although that is part of it because I'm a human being.
00:52:39.000But also because they, in order to shut down dissent, they'll change what you said to something else so they can attack you and bring down any dissenting voices.
00:52:48.000Camilla's worked hard, just means there's been an ongoing PR campaign.
00:52:57.000Nothing wrong with any of that, except for you're paying for it, and it's a symbol of hegemonic power and also a symbol of you cannot change things.
00:53:30.000Again, I don't have a really a strong opinion.
00:53:33.000I just have an inquiring mind like you.
00:53:35.000I just want to understand the truth and I'm serious.
00:53:38.000When I talk about changing the world, for me, it's not like, yeah, we've really got to change the world in ways that doesn't affect the interests of the powerful.
00:54:16.000History, pageantry, tradition, these are all wonderful things, but I feel that they are things that we could access in our own lives and our own community for better value.
00:54:25.000Again, I don't think that the royal family is the centre of the problem.
00:54:28.000I don't think it's the most significant problem that we're facing right now.
00:54:32.000I see it primarily as a symbol of intransigence, i.e.
00:54:35.000things are this way, they must remain this way.
00:54:38.000Note that new protest laws were introduced simultaneously.
00:54:42.000Note that around the world new censorship laws are being lobbied for, so that channels for free speech, like this one, can be shut down, monitored and controlled.
00:54:50.000And note even that my modest critiques of the royal family were altered so they became aggressive attacks on ordinary people.
00:55:00.000Why do you think they want to do that?
00:55:01.000Because they want to turn us against one another so they can continue to be a Saudi Arabia funded newspaper with the ridiculous name The Independent so that during the pandemic we can be told that we're all in this together while the country in the world is torn apart.
00:55:15.000So that doctors and teachers can be marched like lambs to the slaughter into workplaces that may have been unsafe for all we knew at the beginning of the pandemic, only to be abandoned when they go on strike for reasonable working-paying conditions just a couple of months later.
00:55:30.000What I'm talking about here is real principles and real values.
00:55:33.000I know you have them because I learned them from you.
00:56:13.000You'd like to drop those leftover pandemic pounds that you put on during the pandemic because you were sad inside because of the pandemic.
00:56:20.000But how sick are you also of all the ads for weight loss pills and fad diets that probably don't even work anyway and might make your feet change colour?
00:56:33.000Eating five healthy servings of fruit and vegetables every single day.
00:56:37.000But who among us has time to prepare that every single day?
00:56:42.000This brings us around to Field of Greens.
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00:57:30.000Donnie Mack goes, it would have been better if Charlie, the king, had put one of his fat sausage fingers in a roll and fed them to the rest of the royals so he can't get his hands on even more stolen gem gems from around the world.
00:57:58.000And then as a response to that bit where we played that Wipe Your Vagina, Camilla, or whatever that bit was, the blessed old bird goes, isn't it Regina?
00:59:01.000Oh, that's from a sitcom called Bread.
00:59:04.000To his majesty king charles iii on the coronation of my liege i thought it only fit in to extend a heartfelt invitation to you to commemorate this momentous occasion by visiting your very own kingdom within a kingdom his majesty's prison belmarsh that's where sanji's held you will no doubt recall the wise words of a renowned playwright the quality of mercy is not strained it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath i wonder what renowned playwright that is Ah, oh, it's the Bard, it's Shakespeare.
00:59:33.000Ah, but what would that Bard know of mercy faced with the reckoning at dawn of your historic reign?
00:59:39.000After all, one can truly know the measure of a society by how it treats its prisoners, and your kingdom has surely excelled in that regard.
00:59:47.000Your Majesty's prison, Belmarsh, is located at the prestigious address of One Western Way, London, just a short fox hunt from the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich.
00:59:56.000How delightful it must be to have such an esteemed establishment bear your name.
01:00:01.000It is here that 687 of your loyal subjects are held, supporting the United Kingdom's record as the nation with the largest prison population in Western Europe.
01:00:09.000As your noble government has recently declared, your kingdom is currently undergoing the biggest expansion of prison places in over a century, with its ambitious projections showing an increase of the prison population from 82,000 to 106,000 within the next four years.
01:00:47.000As a political prisoner held at your majesty's pleasure on behalf of an embarrassed foreign sovereign, I'm honored to reside within the walls of this world-class institution.
01:00:59.000During your visit you will have the opportunity to feast upon the culinary delights prepared for your loyal subjects on a generous budget of two pounds per day.
01:01:06.000Savor the blended tuna heads and the ubiquitous reconstituted forms that are purportedly made from chicken.
01:01:13.000And worry not, for unlike lesser institutions such as Alcatraz or San Quentin, there is no communal dining in a mess hall.
01:01:20.000At Belmarsh, prisoners dine alone in their cells, ensuring the utmost intimacy with meals.
01:01:28.000I'm sorry about this, but, you know, what did we want?
01:01:30.000I mean, this is a letter by a political prisoner to a newly anointed monarch.
01:01:36.000And really, All of that pageantry and ceremony is the framing of power, the lack of dissent, the inability to offer dissenting opinions.
01:01:46.000And again, let me reiterate, I don't think monarchy is a huge problem or the abolition of the monarchy the solution, but symbols of power and the inability to critique power is a significant part of the problem.
01:02:00.000Beyond the gustatory pleasures I can assure you that Belmarsh provides ample educational opportunities for your subjects as Proverbs 22.6 has it, train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.
01:02:13.000Observe the shuffling queues at the medicine hatch where inmates gather their prescriptions not for daily use but for the horizon expanding experience of a big day out all at once.
01:02:23.000You will also have the opportunity to pay your respects to my late friend Manuel Santos, a gay man facing deportation to Bolsonaro's Brazil, who took his own life just eight yards from my cell using a crude rope fashioned from his bedsheets, his exquisite tenor voice now silenced forever.
01:02:39.000Venture further into the depths of Belmarsh and you will find the most isolated place within its walls.
01:02:44.000Healthcare, or Hellcare as its inhabitants lovingly call it.
01:02:47.000Here you will marvel at sensible rules designed for everyone's safety such as the prohibition of chess whilst permitting the far less dangerous game of checkers.
01:02:55.000Deep within Hellcare lies the most gloriously uplifting place in all Belmarsh, nay the whole of the United Kingdom.
01:03:01.000The sublimely named Belmarsh End of Life Suite.
01:03:03.000Listen closely and you may hear the prisoner's cries of brother I'm gonna die in here.
01:03:08.000A testament to the quality of both life and death within your prison.
01:03:12.000But fear not, for there is beauty to be found within these walls.
01:03:14.000Feast your eyes upon the picturesque crows nesting in the razor wire, and the hundreds of hungry rats that call Belmarsh home.
01:03:22.000And if you come in the spring, you may even catch a glimpse of the ducklings laid by the wayward mallards within the prison grounds.
01:03:28.000But don't delay, for the ravenous rats ensure their lives are fleeting.
01:03:32.000I implore you, King Charles, to visit His Majesty's prison, Belmarsh, for it is an honour befitting a king.
01:03:37.000As you embark upon your reign, may you always remember the words of the King James Bible, blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy, that's Matthew 5-7, and may mercy be the guiding light of your kingdom, both within and without the walls of Belmarsh, your most devoted subject to Julian Assange.
01:03:55.000The thing that you were talking about in the presentation earlier, you know, you have nothing against necessarily King Charles or any of the royal family.
01:04:42.000It's cruel and it's illegal and it's not unrelated to the ceremonies that we witness whether it's Biden appearing in Poland to talk about Ukraine lit in blue and yellow as if war is a spectacle and entertainment.
01:05:01.000The enactment of that power is violence.
01:05:04.000It will always be violence, whether it's the violation of Assange's rights or the ongoing violence required to sustain the military-industrial complex.
01:05:11.000But to make sure this is so, Julian Assange, may he be freed soon.
01:05:15.000May the people in positions of power see the negligence of their current stance and release Julian Assange, and you should participate in that.
01:05:24.000Spurring that on in any way that you can, and we'll find ways that we can help Stella, his wife, and the leader of the campaign with that campaign.
01:05:31.000But so we don't end, let's not end on too dour of a note, because we're meant to have a bit of a laugh, aren't we, for God's sake?
01:05:36.000Julian Assange wouldn't want us going down on a bummer.
01:05:38.000I don't mean that in prison parlance, by the way.
01:05:41.000I mean, he literally puts jokes in this letter.
01:06:28.000Why is Jan using that picture of King Charles that's based on like a Ralph Steadman satire, the spitting image puppet version, and what are these Diana and Charles slippers that you slide your tootsies into?
01:08:08.000What about though, can I ask you this question?
01:08:10.000And just tell me your honest answer, of course.
01:08:12.000Like, when, you know, you're Australian, Julian Assange is Australian, how do you feel about hearing that appeal by Julian Assange?
01:08:19.000And do you ever think that while royalty is presented as kind of just a bit of a laugh and it's fun and it's glamorous and it's cool, that sometimes it is used to mask power and to make people look I don't really know the answer to that.
01:08:40.000I've never really, you know, thought about it too much politically like you have.
01:08:44.000I've sort of learned a lot since I've turned you on at five o'clock.
01:08:53.000But no, I look at it as more as just being a collector.
01:08:58.000Not so much on the political side of any of it.
01:09:01.000Me and all, sometimes I have things, I can't think like this all the time, I go nuts.
01:09:04.000Like when I'm trying to watch football or whatever, I try not to do me own head in by thinking about it too intentionally, but I do get caught up in it.
01:09:10.000Hey, what bit of Australia are you in?
01:09:13.000We live in the Hunter Valley in New South Wales.
01:09:25.000Now, I met this person, and this is not a joke, he was known by the name of Pearl Knob, and he'd done diving down there, and he said, with the native folks of Australia, the Aborigines, and it was their custom, if I may say, to keep a pearl somewhere within the private reproductive organ of the male, and he had one, and he showed me it.
01:09:46.000Is this common practice in the nation of Australia, or did I mix with an oddball?
01:11:49.000And I will say, she's a lovely person.
01:11:51.000Miller and I will say she's a lovely person. Don't be swayed for God's sake Jan. No she's really really nice.
01:11:59.000No she's cool she's nice she's a human being I've got mates that are mates with her and they say
01:12:03.000she's well nice of course she is human being she's a child of God I love all of God's children.
01:12:07.000What's your best bit of memorabilia both from an expense perspective and from just your favourite you know.
01:12:15.000Oh, gee, there's so many pieces that I love.
01:12:19.000You know, there's so many royal gold figurines.
01:12:21.000I want you to imagine there's a fire, not in Australia, because I know that's a terrible evocative issue for the Australians, because you have them too bloody often, frankly.
01:12:28.000While you're here in England, you've bought your cherished pieces here.
01:12:33.000There's a fire, and it's the fault of, like, just, I don't know, a negligent Gas Board official probably working for a terrorist organisation.
01:12:40.000We don't need the backstory of the fire.
01:12:42.000In the fire, you have to grab your most cherished piece.
01:14:17.000Thanks for coming on and thanks for spending a bit of time helping us get over the horrible tragedy of Julian Assange's illegal imprisonment with a bit of lightness and a bit of fun.
01:15:32.000If you're a member of the Locals community, not only can you join us now for additional chat with another Australian, Hugh Rimmington from 10 First News.
01:15:39.000We're going to talk about mainstream media.
01:16:10.000Listen, why don't you press the red button on your screen to join us on Locals Baby.
01:16:17.000On tomorrow's show, we're doing a deep presentation on Ukraine and the facts behind the US government's reasons for increased military aid.