In this episode, Russell Brand reflects on the tragic loss of three children in the Nashville school shooting, and offers his thoughts and condolences to the families affected by the senseless loss of these young lives. He also reflects on how we should respond to the politicization of mass shootings, and the need for compassion and empathy to the people directly affected by these events. And, of course, he offers his own thoughts and prayers to the victims and their families, and their loved ones, as well as the families of those who lost a loved one in this senseless act of senseless violence. This episode was produced and edited by Annie-Rose Strasser. Our theme song is Come Alone by The Weakerthans, courtesy of Lotuspool Records. The album art for the song was done by Ian Dorsch, and our ad music was written and performed by Mark Phillips. It was mixed and produced by Matthew Boll. Additional music was produced by Bobby Lord and Mark Phillips, and additional engineering and mixing was performed by Alex Blumberg. All rights reserved. We do not own the rights to any music used in this episode. If you'd like to purchase a copy of the song, please contact us at bit.ly/birdchirping@whatiwatched.co.uk and we'll pay our fair share of the music used on the song "Bird's Chirping" and "Rumble" we're working on it, we'd love to have it on our next week. Thank you, too, if you're a review or review it on SoundCloud, we'll hear it on the next episode of Bird's Chorchor, we're listening to it on Apple Podcasts, too! and we're looking forward to hearing from you in the next few weeks. - Thank you for your thoughts and feedback on the music we've sent us out to you, and we appreciate the feedback we've gotten so far. -- it's a big thank you! - Teddy, too much love and support is much appreciated! -- Thank you so much, please spread the love and appreciation, please leave us out there! Love Birds Chirp, Birds Chorping, Rambling, Rumble, Rumba, Rumpus, Raving, Rumbling, and Rumbellum, Rapping, and all that kind of thing. -- thank you, R&R, and much more!
00:00:47.000Thanks for joining us on Stay Free with Russell Brand.
00:00:50.000It's actually our 100th show, which we had a kind of pre-ordained celebratory tone established for before we heard about the recent or the current Nashville shoot-in.
00:01:03.000So it's, in a sense, put us in a position where we're uncertain as to how to cover that story.
00:01:11.000Because in particular, to be entirely honest with you, I've noticed how Stories of school shootings or mass shootings that are obviously, as you're aware, all too common tend to become politicized and particular pieces of information emphasized or amplified according with the media outlet and presumed political alliances of that channel or broadcaster.
00:01:35.000And I suppose one of the things we consider to be our obligation is to look for commonality among all humanity and among all nations while recognizing that we are of course subject to the same or comparable biases to any other group or any other individual so for me I feel initially that I will declare that as a parent when you hear about this unnecessary traumatic merger of children the first
00:02:04.000Impulsive response, in fact, is one of dread and anxiety.
00:02:09.000Because I've been with my children today, as I have every day, and all of us live with the assumption of safety.
00:02:15.000And perhaps we should live with that assumption of safety.
00:02:17.000For what is a society other than a set of accepted beliefs, relationships and assumptions between us?
00:02:26.000And as the fabric of society appears to deteriorate around us,
00:02:29.000seems to be more undergirded by conflict, bias, stoked conflagration and loathing,
00:02:36.000perhaps it is unsurprising that there are these occasional symptomatic outbursts of violence,
00:02:43.000whether they are large scale geopolitical expressions of violence,
00:02:47.000and we've been pretty expressive and clear about what we think the underlying motivations for that are,
00:02:57.000It's commonly understood in media analysis circles that the fetishisation and focus on the perpetrator
00:03:05.000is unhelpful, in particular in that it increases the likelihood of emulation.
00:03:11.000And I think many of us struggle with how tonally are we going to deal with that,
00:03:16.000knowing that in a matter of days, of course, people are going to talk about other things,
00:03:21.000that we are going to recover a sense of normality.
00:03:25.000And in fact, it's our ability to adapt as human beings that here appears particularly galling
00:03:31.000for who could grieve enough for the unnecessary murder of three nine year old children.
00:03:39.000For certain, there are families whose lives will forever be scarred by these events,
00:03:40.000are families whose lives will forever be scarred by these events, classmates who will be
00:03:45.000classmates who will be forever affected.
00:03:47.000forever affected. And the fact that this is something that appears to be particular to the
00:03:53.000United States of America is something that emphasizes the tragedy in my mind as a
00:04:00.000green card holder, a regular visitor and occasional resident of your country. I have
00:04:06.000incredible compassion and love for the United States of America, so I'm certainly not being haughty
00:04:11.000or condescending or saying that there's something uniquely bad about America. And I'm
00:04:15.000certainly not presenting any kind of solution. And I certainly don't want to
00:04:19.000participate in the politicization of an event that really is a human event.
00:04:24.000And I ultimately consider it to be my, not duty or role, because both of those things seem pretty grandiose, perhaps function to participate in conciliatory conversations.
00:04:34.000Because I've noticed that even with something as tragic as mass shootings, the subsequent reporting appears to focus On aspects of the story that are politically expedient for certain groups and doubtless that will happen in this case as it often perhaps even usually does and what I feel perhaps we ought to turn our attention to is what are the underlying
00:04:59.000circumstances that lead to this, in a way the manifestation of it, whether you want
00:05:06.000to particularize it around the characteristics of this particular
00:05:09.000shooter or shooters in the past and gain points from it or somehow express and
00:05:16.000process the grief through loathing, through certainty, to arrive at some
00:05:21.000place where it's like this is what we must do.
00:05:25.000These are the people that it's okay to hate.
00:05:27.000I feel like, personally, and again, let me know in the chat and the comments, whether you're watching this on YouTube or over on Rumble, that how you express your pain and your grief is as personal and particular to you as mine is.
00:05:41.000And what my own life has taught me as a person that is fallible, that's made numerous mistakes, has been granted a second life in recovery because of my own issues with mental health and addiction, that compassion and empathy always has to be part of it.
00:05:54.000Compassion and empathy to the people directly affected first and foremost.
00:05:58.000The now dead children, the now at this moment grieving parents.
00:06:01.000And I feel that when I hold that in my mind, some of the other issues recede, and the kind of rapacious race towards solution and conclusion, important though those things are, are secondary to love and compassion.
00:06:16.000And I don't mean that in a woolly or ephemeral way.
00:06:21.000When you think of the non-violence of some of the great people of history, of Martin Luther King and of Gandhi, to To insist on nonviolence, to insist on the principle of unity in love, to acknowledge that this is obviously a shared problem that our entire culture is experiencing.
00:06:40.000But when we rest upon the certainty of condemnation, what we simultaneously do is prevent progress.
00:06:49.000I feel like this is a situation where you want leadership, where you want certainty, where you want solutions.
00:06:55.000And the kind of leadership and the kind of solutions that suggest themselves to you will probably, undoubtedly,
00:07:01.000inevitably be informed by your own cultural background, by your own allegiance and biases.
00:07:07.000And this is why I suppose the call that I am offering is for a deeper allegiance,
00:07:13.000But once again, this seems to me to be an opportunity to recognize our common humanity, that none of us
00:07:19.000want to experience the death of our children.
00:07:22.000None of us want to experience a tragedy like this in our community.
00:07:26.000So while we're talking about this, and hopefully we won't talk about it for the whole episode,
00:07:30.000and hopefully we'll find a way of segueing into some other subjects.
00:07:35.000One of the things we don't want to do is fetishize the identity of the individual that did it to be reductive or in some way darkly celebratory around the gore and horror of the events and to try to find in it some kind of lesson Some kind of lesson that includes doubt.
00:07:56.000Some kind of lesson that includes our common fragility and fallibility, rather than bipartisan and oppositional certainty.
00:08:07.000Because if this show teaches me anything, it's that I don't know very much about human beings and how they're capable of behaving.
00:08:15.000I've been a desperate and uncertain adolescent that ultimately sought comfort in addiction.
00:08:22.000Doubtless, there are many people in the world right now that feel lost and alienated and dispossessed.
00:08:30.000Perhaps the success of the film The Joker, which many said unduly fetishised the position of the loneliness, is a kind of eulogy for a culture of dispossession, loss, feeling like you don't belong to anyone or anywhere.
00:08:46.000And none of these things are being meted out by me as excuses, not for the inexcusable.
00:08:51.000Not for the inexcusable causing of immeasurable and unimaginable grief, the type of which has been inflicted today, simply as an offering of, if we are truly to look for solutions to the problems that our culture is clearly experiencing, We're going to have to start considering things that we haven't previously considered.
00:09:15.000We're going to have to discover a different type of language.
00:09:17.000And my sense, and I would not claim to be certain about this because I know as little as anybody else, is that what we must have recourse to are deep spiritual values, the kind of values that are difficult to access in a culture that prioritizes tribalization, oppositionism, commodification, individualism and materialism, progressivism, and I mean progressivism in terms of technological progressivism, i.e. humankind is heading
00:09:40.000somewhere, we're better than we've ever been.
00:09:42.000When those kind of certainties abound and define the conversation,
00:09:47.000then I don't feel that we're going to reach any conclusions together.
00:09:51.000I feel that this is one of those times where perhaps we should be really deliberately
00:09:55.000listening to people who we don't agree with and taking on board what their concerns are.
00:10:00.000Why do you feel so certain about that?
00:10:02.000Why do you have such certainty around, let's face it, the divisive subjects of gun control, identity politics, all of the things that I predict, imagine, assume, will come up as the talking points around this issue and will ultimately play out in accordance with a Pre-determined set of ideals that each side have.
00:10:23.000And what I've been struck by lately is when it comes to the political divide, both sides appear to be in a way operating on behalf of interests that are not explicit and not declared.
00:10:37.000And all of us really, really have the same interests.
00:10:45.000All of us are going to experience loss.
00:10:47.000And if we don't find that North Star, something between us and among us that causes connection rather than division, then I don't feel that there will be much of a chance for healing.
00:10:58.000I hope that nothing that I've said here is in any way met you as condescension or haughtiness or worst of all possible things, Britishness, because I know what our historic relationship is with your country.
00:11:13.000But I feel that really, we have to establish a tone together, don't we?
00:11:17.000A tone and a place for conversation and mutual love.
00:11:21.000Because really, whether it's this particular shoot-in, or the other numerous shoot-ins, or the future shoot-ins, because let's face it, this isn't going to be a watershed or a benchmark.
00:11:30.000We can start to grieve the forthcoming ones too.
00:11:33.000we have to start recognizing that people have really varying perspectives on this,
00:11:38.000and that should be the starting point for a conversation, not ossified division.
00:11:44.000So I suppose what we can all do is look at our own certainty and see where there is room for doubt,
00:11:49.000look at other people's convictions and see where there's opportunity for compromise and conversation,
00:11:56.000and therefore, and as a result of that, perhaps move forward together.
00:12:01.000Later on the show, we are going to be talking to Vandana Shiva, one of the great mothers of our culture.
00:12:06.000She'll be talking about the issues of agriculture and obviously we'll talk to her about this situation because Vandana Shiva is one of the voices that I most enjoy listening to when it comes to what I would refer to as a kind of new populism.
00:12:19.000Not right-wing populism, not left-wing populism, a type of politics that includes everyone's voices and looks for ways that we have perhaps the opportunity and possibility of moving forward.
00:12:31.000We're going to be looking at the French protests, which again indicate that people are en masse, hugely dissatisfied with the machinery of politics, that it isn't working for them, that it's undemocratic, that it is not inclusive.
00:12:45.000Once we click away from being on YouTube and other platforms, on Rumble, we're going to be looking at Ram Paul versus Moderna, that recent hearing and conversation.
00:12:54.000We can't Show that on YouTube because there are sort of guidelines there that are restrictive.
00:12:59.000And perhaps if we're able to establish a tone of conviviality and even joy on a day like this one, we'll talk about some funny stuff that's happened in the world.
00:13:10.000I mean, I suppose one of the things, Gareth, that was pretty surprising is when Joe Biden had to address this issue, he was in an unusual situation.
00:13:20.000I was trying to work out when he was called upon to address this subject.
00:13:23.000subject, whether he'd already been informed of the Nashville shooting, because he talked
00:13:27.000inexplicably about ice creams. But here are the things I'm considering, because what it's
00:13:30.000reminded me this whole event of is the necessity for compassion and not to lean into assumptions.
00:13:37.000So maybe, because he says some weird stuff about ice creams, but he's in a room with
00:13:41.000children, so maybe he was trying to keep a tone of, I don't know, congeniality and not
00:13:45.000the sort of horror of murder of children, just like the children in the room that he's
00:13:50.000literally standing in, and maybe he didn't know yet, it's not clear, but when Fox News
00:13:56.000proved to him he was talking about some bizarre stuff.
00:13:59.000How do you feel we should handle today's show mate?
00:14:03.000I don't know I mean it was yeah I think what you just said was uh There's so much to take from it.
00:14:09.000I think in terms of the reaction to this, something has to change in terms of how we react.
00:14:15.000Other than the people who are literally involved in this, as you say, the parents, the people grieving, the people affected directly by this.
00:14:22.000There has to be a change in the way we react to events like this.
00:14:26.000And I don't necessarily even mean just politically, because when you're talking about the politicization of the way these things go, You know, we don't want to kind of draw comparisons and it seems maybe a bit distasteful to bring up foreign policy and war, but the very same politicians who will politicize this, who will turn this into and that's why we're better or that's why we're better,
00:14:48.000are involved in dreadful atrocities around the world where things like this occur all the time.
00:14:55.000And I know that will be pointed out and it's not to kind of in any way diminish or take away from what's going on.
00:15:01.000But we also can't pretend that if politicians who react to this in a way that's favorable to our politics or not favorable to our politics aren't also directly involved in some terrible events around the world as well.
00:15:17.000A broader problem with partisan politics and partisan coverage is it allows people to score points from one another without addressing underlying issues.
00:15:26.000That people will find ways that this can be leveraged around, obviously, the issue of gun control, and there are aspects of that argument that would seem reasonable, and other people will make points about the identity of the individual involved.
00:15:42.000I feel that what principles and values are, and what they refer to, I suppose,
00:15:46.000and you let me know in the chat and the comments how you feel about this,
00:15:49.000because obviously we value your opinion, is that if you say, oh, well,
00:15:54.000what about the kids that die in drone strikes and were killed in Yemen and Syria,
00:16:01.000and while Barack Obama's literally getting a peace prize or whatever, that kind of culture
00:16:08.000and that kind of myopia means that there is no legitimacy to the discourse beyond it,
00:17:32.000Just in the same way that we would look at the motivations for a war, or the motivations for a piece of legislation, or the lack of Let's have a look at some of the coverage.
00:17:46.000I wonder if we might start with the MSNBC coverage and just look for a moment at how a mainstream outlet tells this story.
00:17:57.000I suppose we'll look at it and analyse it as we go and think, oh yeah, look, they're emphasising this, they're excluding that.
00:18:04.000Or would you say it's relatively banal vanilla?
00:18:43.000The things I once saw, this brilliant piece of analysis on a show called Newswipe, which was a UK show that was made by Charlie Brooker, who's a genius that wrote Black Mirror, actually, subsequently, was when it comes to the reporting of mass shootings, this psychoanalyst said, you should never make the shooter sound like some kind of antihero.
00:19:04.000You should never start the report with a bunch of sirens going off.
00:19:08.000You should never sort of focus on the death toll like it's a sort of a sports score.
00:19:13.000He sort of said all these things and then they showed how commonly it's reported on in exactly that way, antithetical.
00:19:20.000Now that the news media has lost much of our credibility due to the kind of alliances it has with commercial interests, you have to apply the analysis gleaned from that when looking at their reporting on a different subject.
00:19:34.000Once you recognise that they report on wars in a way that bears particular biases, or medical matters that bear particular biases, do you imagine these biases are shed when it comes to different, more evocative and immediate issues?
00:19:46.000Even though wars are pretty evocative and health crises are pretty evocative, When it comes to something that has the potential for immediate, urgent, visceral sentimentality, like this particular subject, you have to bear in mind that there will be an expression of those same biases.
00:20:03.000The psychoanalyst that I'm citing pointed out that the likelihood of subsequent school shootings after a school shooting is very high, and I'm sure that your own research has pointed out And helped you to clarify that when there are serial killings or other types of bold and lurid murders, there's an increased likelihood they'll occur with sort of social and suggestible creatures.
00:20:30.000Shattered by gunshots at the Covenant School in Nashville.
00:20:35.000A school shooting, multiple victims down.
00:20:40.000Because it should be the most particular thing that's ever happened.
00:20:41.000Like if it's the day that when you're losing someone that you love, it should be the most kind of particular, specific and awful day of your life.
00:20:48.000But the grammar of the whole news is so recognisable and identifiable.
00:20:52.000Again, the sirens, the sort of the police call turned into entertainment.
00:20:56.000What's sort of somewhat galling about this, and I guess we're engaged in it because we're a media organisation of some description as well, is that they will have to get those assets.
00:21:05.000Right, someone get the call, the 911 call.
00:21:09.000You can see him push in on the police cars.
00:21:11.000Make sure you get the audio of the siren.
00:21:14.000Then, in coming days, the clamour for interviews of people that are affiliated with or connected to the shot of the kids holding hands as they're led out of the classroom.
00:21:23.000It's, I suppose, terrifying that something that should be as extraordinary as this already has an identifiable lexicon.
00:21:30.000Yeah, and I can't imagine that they're not aware of This theory of emulation when the media reports events in the ways that they do.
00:21:39.000I mean, literally, we have a list of like seven ways in which the media reports this that has a tendency, or the theory is, to lead on to copycat cases.
00:22:47.000And then secondly, we've got this one, Colorado Springs, where homophobia was suggested as the motive.
00:22:52.000And then this one here in Boulder, where the Muslim community feared backlash because of the sort of nature of that particular shooting.
00:23:04.000Um, and I suppose already in those relatively recent spate of killings, you can see that there is variety that crosses the spectrum of identity.
00:23:15.000So again, when we're talking about it, it feels to me that because this will unfortunately be an episode in an ongoing drama, you have to look at or I suppose I suppose you have to look at the solutions and the likely causes.
00:23:30.000And for me, like, Social violence is an indicator of a kind of deep cultural and social and spiritual malaise, a kind of deep darkness that needs to be addressed in people.
00:23:46.000This is sort of odd actually, because when I first made this point, when I was much younger, when I was still using drugs, there was a sort of a murder, some children were murdered in our country, the UK, it was a very famous murder.
00:23:57.000And I, oddly, made the point that, as a culture, we should be willing to accept that there must be aspects of our social conditioning and our values, and there also must be the absence of other principles that lead to this.
00:24:12.000And indeed, the condemnation of the individuals involved, and this is me talking about that
00:24:17.000case, while understandable ultimately won't lead to conclusions.
00:24:20.000And I'd like, I've still got the scars actually, like literally, because I did it as stand-up comedy at the
00:24:25.000Edinburgh Festival, and I was a drug addict, so I said it in an insensitive and
00:25:06.000And that for me means that when people transgress against me
00:25:11.000or against the culture, in this instance, which is obviously not about me,
00:25:14.000then I have to try to find my route to forgiveness and find my route.
00:25:19.000And of course, in a situation where there are people personally affected or affected because they're part
00:25:24.000of that community or part of that state, people may have various ways of connecting to that tragedy.
00:25:31.000I suppose then you feel, oh, well, we can forgive them for their anger and for their own urge for violence or retribution or vengeance.
00:25:41.000But we, those that are ultimately just observers and just participants in common humanity, we have to find in our Where is the resource?
00:25:49.000Where is the cultural and social resource that we're going to rely on to change this?
00:25:53.000Because the shared goal must be to change it.
00:25:56.000The shared goal must be a better world.
00:25:59.000The shared goal must be a culture that's a reflection of our higher values rather than our lower drives and our kind of shared dementia.
00:26:08.000And in order to do that, those of us that are not in the game, as it were, are going to have to strive to be the maximum amount compassionate, I suppose.
00:26:18.000And I think even more because when you look at, for example, the media response, which is cyclical, as we've just shown, and continues across various platforms or networks and political responses, that they are always going to be the same.
00:26:35.000And as sad as it is to kind of think they will utilize this for their own means and gains in whatever sense that is.
00:26:44.000And so I guess the responsibility does Lie with the rest of us to respond in a different way, in a way that can actually make some meaningful change.
00:27:22.000And I feel that that, perhaps above all else, is the emergent lesson of our recent conversations and our recent broadcasts is, ah, if we're going to progress, we can't approach other people with certainty and judgment.
00:27:34.000Certainty, like the judgment I will reserve for myself, like how can I be better?
00:27:37.000How can I treat the people in my life better?
00:27:40.000And then when I'm dealing with you, tolerance and compassion, and I will fail.
00:27:44.000I will fail, because I'm a human being like you.
00:27:46.000But at least we now know what we're trying to do, rather than... The aim of life is to feel better than other people, and to, with certainty, judge them and hate them.
00:27:54.000Whether that's around the identity, or the gun control, or whatever.
00:29:17.000So if you're going to boot everyone out of Congress or the Senate that owns stocks and shares in big pharma, big tech, big energy, then you're going to have an empty Senate.
00:29:38.000You'll have seen it already, but it's pretty fantastic.
00:29:40.000Mr. Bancel, Moderna recently paid NIH $400 million.
00:29:44.000Do you believe it creates a... I like that him and Bernie are just sat there together, do you?
00:29:49.000Well, look, what you were talking about, kind of cross parties, this is where, like, Bernie Sanders have been so heavily critical of Moderna recently, mainly to do with, like, the price hikes and how much they're charging and how it was all taxpayer-funded in the first place.
00:30:01.000And so this is, like, one of those, I guess, cases that happens every now and again where they're attacking things from slightly different positions, but ultimately their target is the same.
00:30:10.000Yeah, when we talked to our friend of the show, so-called journalist Matt Taibbi, about his experiences in Congress, it feels like those hearings were kind of literally a show in so much as the conclusions had already been drawn.
00:31:15.000But I think, you know, I think it's really important that like both these things, I mean, ultimately, this is about transparency.
00:31:21.000And what is publicly funded medicines, you know, ultimately, we need, they need to be answerable to the people who funded these things in the first place, whether that's through the information around what side effects there are, if there are side effects, or whether it's around how much money they're literally making out of this, you know, they, they should be accountable.
00:31:41.000And at the moment, they have not been accountable any of these people.
00:31:57.000Why are American taxpayers paying for the development of it, or in the case of BioNTech, bought by Pfizer, German taxpayers, and then the profits are taken by the company?
00:32:12.000Conflict of interest for the government employees who are making money now off of the vaccine to also be dictating the policy about how many times we have to take the vaccine.
00:32:39.000We recently made, before Christmas last year, a $400 million payment to the NIH for an old patent that they had developed, not related to COVID, but useful in the development of a COVID vaccine to pay them for their work.
00:32:53.000government to assess how that money should be used.
00:32:55.000You think it creates a conflict of interest for the same people deciding the policy of how often we have to take the vaccine to also be making money the more times we take the vaccine?
00:34:52.000Joe Biden went on the TV saying like, oh, I'm gonna do everything I can.
00:34:55.000You know, we beat big pharma this year, all of that stuff.
00:34:58.000And there's literally a piece of legislation, the buy dull clause,
00:35:03.000that means that when pharmaceutical companies are charging too much money for a product.
00:35:07.000They can say, listen, charge a reasonable amount for this or we're going to white label it and we're going to rescind your patent and anyone and everyone will be able to make it.
00:35:15.000Like Ivermectin, a drug that is... Oh, you can say it now, can't you?
00:35:25.000Might as well call Rumble, the place where you're allowed to say Ivermectin.
00:35:29.000Like, and I suppose, but you know, many people said that part of the reason that they've not trialled Ivermectin is for its efficacy against COVID is that it is not patented and therefore not profitable.
00:35:41.000And a case like the prostate cancer drug one, and what's that company called?
00:36:55.000Is it because French workers are being asked to work an additional two years?
00:36:59.000Or is it because of a neo-liberal conspiracy to drive people into the ground, surveil them into the shadows, and to punish them simply for being alive?
00:37:11.000France is burning down ostensibly because undemocratically a bill has been passed to add two years onto the working life of the average French person.
00:37:21.000And there's no such thing as an average French person.
00:37:26.000Why has this had such an incredible impact?
00:37:28.000Why is this thing, albeit wrong, had a disproportionately large effect?
00:37:32.000How does it relate to the Gilets Jaunes protests, yellow vest protests, of a year or so ago?
00:37:37.000And does this mean that across the world we're starting to see a rise of populism that will accept nothing less than systemic political change, new decentralized systems, meaningful democratic representation, and an end to unfair taxation?
00:39:26.000Of course, it's not just on the street protests, but organized worker strikes.
00:39:30.000And I would suggest to you that if you're ever going to get some meaningful change from outside parliamentary or congressional democracy, it's going to require coordinated action.
00:39:40.000That is why all political parties are ultimately opposed to union movements, because those movements mean that you have a way of organizing its power, whether that's based on your geographical community or your job or some other issue. When a public coalesces around something and
00:39:57.000acts as one we literally have the power that democracy is supposed to
00:40:21.000It's not meant to be, I'm alive, oh God, isn't this terrible?
00:40:24.000The corruption and the lies and the heartbreak and the despair and the pointless senselessness and the charade of it and just looking at things on the screen that don't mean anything and eating food that's not quite right and the sense that there's something just out of your reach, some connection, some beauty, some joy that's not for you, that you're being deprived of.
00:40:41.000It's meant to be enjoyable and let's Let me tell you this, it's possible.
00:40:46.000And it's so exciting, for me at least, to see many people come together as they did in the Yellow Vest protests of a year or so ago in such quick succession.
00:40:55.000Let's face it, this is a time of crisis.
00:40:57.000One crisis often leading to another, whether it's military or Medical or financial?
00:41:02.000We're seeing the necessity for radical change and we're seeing the opportunity that mass action can create.
00:41:07.000What we do not yet have is a cohesive response to the existing corruption, a vision and an agenda for how to bring it about and obviously that's what we want to develop with you.
00:41:15.000We don't just tell you always and everything crap all the time.
00:41:20.000What is the point of having a National Assembly if they ignore you?
00:41:26.000What's the point of having Congress if they ignore you and respond instead to the edicts suggested by the lobbying money and your own interests if you own stocks and shares?
00:41:35.000What's the point in voting in our parliament if they have a second job that pays them more money?
00:41:38.000Democracy in its current form isn't working anywhere.
00:41:42.000This kind of populist energy that people fear is exactly what's required.
00:41:46.000This transcends the cultural issues that have come to define our time, which are important for all of us.
00:41:52.000We should all learn how to accept that there's many, many ways to be human, traditional, progressive.
00:41:56.000Let's get on with that stuff, shall we?
00:41:59.000But this is what we really need for us to come together and confront centralised power.
00:42:03.000As long as we're caught up in that quarrel, we're not going to be able to do this.
00:42:05.000A recent poll by AFP finds a majority of the French support the protest movement against pension reform, and 59% support bringing the country to a standstill over it.
00:42:17.000They're radical, aren't they, the French?
00:43:00.000So, let's explain the basics of this story, the pension reform bill, why it was bypassed, and what this story tells us, not only about France, but about the whole world, this popular uprising that we're currently experiencing, and what we're going to have to do about it together if we're going to do anything other than make minor changes that won't make any bloody difference.
00:43:19.000The pension reform itself is deeply unpopular, opposed by 70-80% of the French public.
00:43:24.000But the manner in which the new law was passed, invoking the 49th article of the French constitution allowing the Prime Minister to bypass the National Assembly to force through the reforms without a vote, sparked real anger.
00:43:36.000That Parliament was not consulted is widely perceived as an anti-democratic affront.
00:43:41.000Ignoring Parliament is anti-democratic.
00:43:44.000Having politicians that don't represent people is anti-democratic.
00:43:50.000While the scale and intensity of the protests have made media headlines worldwide, the government response has attracted the attention of human rights organisations.
00:43:59.000Amnesty France has condemned the use of violent and repressive policing tactics.
00:44:03.000It has highlighted frequent use of dangerous crowd control methods such as kettling, which is illegal in France.
00:44:10.000Human rights organizations have also condemned the excessive use of tear gas and hundreds of arbitrary arrests.
00:44:16.000It seems like the usual tale that we're becoming familiar with.
00:44:20.000Something undemocratic takes place, people protest, the protest is treated like that's the problem.
00:44:39.000People aren't really motivated, I don't think, by abstract ideological things.
00:44:42.000I think people are motivated by, hold on a minute, this is my life, I can't live my actual proper life now, as in this instance.
00:44:48.000This is an article by Charles Devilon, French, you know, Senior Lecturer in Political and Social Thought at the University of Kent in England.
00:44:55.000The shift towards security is perhaps the most striking aspect of macronism.
00:45:00.000Aren't you noticing that worldwide, sort of handsome or good-looking people are stepping to the forefront to tell you how liberal they are and then surveilling you and taking away your right to protest?
00:45:10.000Justin Trudeau, the world's gentlest, loveliest, sort of barroom crooner, I can't wait to evoke emergency action.
00:45:17.000Rishi Sunak, that lovely little haircut of a man, can't wait to bring in tough new protest laws.
00:45:23.000Everything has become about appearance.
00:45:24.000And the problem with that sort of symptomatic approach, whether it's the aesthetics of power or the way of treating protest and dissent as a symptom rather than an indication of a deeper problem, means that we're not ever getting any closer to a solution.
00:45:38.000In fact, we're exacerbating the problem.
00:45:40.000Oh, here's something that looks like it would be a solution.
00:45:42.000A guy saying that he's nice and progressive.
00:45:45.000Yeah, well, none of us are having our lives improved, so we're going to continue to ultimately protest.
00:45:51.000When a fundamental, integral, and essential solution is required, we're continuing to present panaceas, distractions, illusions, optical solutions that don't actually change things for us.
00:46:01.000He has replaced liberty with security and made this the cornerstone of his regime.
00:46:06.000Even before COVID-19 reached Western countries and governments responded with lockdowns and curfews,
00:46:13.000Macron had securitized the French state against internal threats.
00:46:16.000Is it me or does the future feel more insecure and uncertain?
00:46:32.000For those who are in the United States, there is a way to secure your hard-earned nest egg.
00:46:38.000American Heart for Gold make it easy to protect your savings and retirement accounts with physical gold and silver.
00:46:44.000With one phone call, they can have physical gold and silver delivered right to your door or inside a qualifying retirement account like your IRA or 401k.
00:46:53.000American Hartford Gold is the highest-rated firm in the U.S.
00:46:56.000with an A-plus rating from the BBB and thousands of satisfied clients.
00:47:00.000Right now, they will give you up to $5,000 of free silver on your first qualifying order.
00:47:30.000I hope you enjoyed that video and that it informed you somewhat around some of the context that's led to these protests in France, which seems to me to be another emergent populist uprising.
00:47:54.000So, Vandana, one of the things I wanted to start with was this, the new Dutch party, the BBB, who recently have acquired a surprising number of seats in the Netherlands, a party that represents agricultural interests.
00:48:08.000I don't know much about this party at the moment, what their other affiliations or perspectives are, but I do know that they're representing ordinary farmers against centralised interests, and I know that farmers across the world,
00:48:21.000whether it's in your country, India or Sri Lanka or Germany or our country or America, are facing
00:48:26.000what feels like a sort of a globally coordinated opposition, which often appears to be couched
00:49:07.000It's the citizens of Netherlands who don't want their economy, their land, their country hijacked.
00:49:14.000And the three inconsistencies with focusing on the nitrogen problem at a time where Mr. Bill Gates, with his fake solutions, has photographs all over on his website and in his book called How to Deal with the Climate Catastrophe, I love nitrogen fertilizer.
00:49:33.000He's standing in front of a fertilizer factory in Tanzania.
00:49:37.000Now, the problem with nitrogen is synthetic nitrogen fertilizers.
00:49:42.000Otherwise, nitrogen is a source of life.
00:49:45.000That's what leguminous plants, the pulses, do for free for us in a non-violent way.
00:51:19.000For the corporations and the billionaires and the colonialists, land is real estate, land is property.
00:51:24.000For the people of the land, including the citizens and the farmers, land is the mother, land is the identity.
00:51:31.000And food for the corporations is a commodity.
00:51:33.000Food for each of us as free citizens, for whom food freedom is the basis of freedom, is the very basis of our identity, our relationship with the earth.
00:51:43.000So the reductionism by which the Dutch farmers' protest was put into a right-wing slot is really the right-wing wanting to hijack the whole planet, our water, our soil, our seeds, our food.
00:51:59.000It seems that the most essential resources and even the word resources itself suggests utility rather than a symbiotic relationship with the earth which is difficult to achieve on a global scale and seems more natural.
00:52:16.000When there is a more integral and local relationship between the earth, between food, between the people that grow it, it becomes impossible.
00:52:26.000I've noticed that this space has become cultivated and censored by voices that appear to be operating
00:52:35.000on behalf of censorial forces, authoritarian forces.
00:52:42.000How is it that someone like Bill Gates has become the face of agriculture, has become the authority on agriculture, when his interests so plainly appear to be motivated by capital and dominion?
00:53:00.000What is the media structure around this man?
00:53:05.000And why is it that it's so difficult to criticise him?
00:53:09.000And why are people that criticise him smeared so aggressively?
00:53:15.000Well, the reason Bill Gates is interested in agriculture and food is because that's his new empire.
00:54:01.000And he is the biggest land, farmland owner of America.
00:54:05.000You know, this thing, oh, it's only this much percent.
00:54:08.000It's like when I was dealing with the mining case for our government and the industry would say, oh, but, you know, the limestone is just this much percent of the value.
00:54:35.000Gates has already taken control of the seed, not only through the seed banks, the global seed banks, but also, and the soil-based seed banks, but through the new gene-editing techniques, and has just passed this crazy law of total deregulation.
00:54:53.000He wants to destroy real food everywhere.
00:54:56.000And he wants to work with Bayer for more row crops, Farming with drones, no farmers anywhere.
00:55:02.000He really is looking at a future of farming without farmers.
00:55:06.000And that's why the violence against the farmers of the world was bad enough when the Green Revolution was introduced in India, in Punjab, which is where the protests began.
00:55:18.000But today, it's everywhere where farmers stand up.
00:55:21.000They are labeled in all kinds of ways, rather than people defending their food sovereignty, their seed sovereignty, their land sovereignty, their livelihood sovereignty.
00:55:31.000I've seen farmers vilified so aggressively, in particular with the Netherlands.
00:55:35.000People saying, these farmers are destroying the very land that they cultivate.
00:55:39.000Why are these professional liberal media voices so quick to criticise and condemn working people?
00:55:45.000Why are they so willing to shill for globalist interests as so plainly epitomised by Bill Gates and his agenda?
00:56:02.000First, they don't really have a relationship, either with the land or with the farmers.
00:56:08.000And when you don't have a relationship, you can be fed anything into your head.
00:56:14.000And the PR spin and the narratives are replicated.
00:56:18.000And especially if you're rewarded with all kinds of platforms, then if you don't think through your conscience, You just echo.
00:56:26.000But the second reason is, there are many people who have fallen into this nonsensical eco-modernist trap.
00:56:34.000And they don't really see a world without farmers, because they've defined... Basically, they've forgotten that we are part of nature, that farming with nature is part of nature.
00:56:48.000And they've defined humans as the enemy of nature, and farmers who are the closest to the earth Agriculture means the care of the land.
00:56:57.000They are being criminalized, as I said, not only because that is the historical narrative of colonialism, but more seriously, food and land is where the future profits are seen by the billionaires.
00:57:11.000So land sovereignty and food sovereignty becomes the ultimate defense.
00:57:15.000And I applaud the Indian farmers who fought for 14 months.
00:58:53.000So the water crisis, the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis, our health crisis are all interconnected with a system that they want to accelerate further.
00:59:03.000More industrial farming, more industrial food, which is at the root of the problem.
00:59:07.000But food is our communication with the soil, with the biodiversity, with our gut microbiome.
00:59:19.000And whoever doesn't want community, either in human community or in the ecological community, they will assault in every way.
00:59:29.000And this is just the contemporary witch hunts.
00:59:32.000It's just a contemporary version of witch hunts.
00:59:36.000Even in secular cultures, food remains a sacrament, a connection to the land, to the divine, to the unknowable forces that mean that food is presented, that food grows and sustains and through husbandry and agriculture can be managed.
00:59:56.000But there is a component that we can never Fully, truly understand, and I can see why they want to turn everything into data and make everything about control, even as always, while presenting it as being about safety and security.
01:00:11.000Ultimately, these things end up being about control.
01:00:14.000Thank you, Vandana, for your incredible focus and ability to communicate.
01:00:19.000Certainly your ability to focus is not shared by whoever's operating that camera.
01:00:22.000There's been some extraordinary shots, some zooms and some pulls out.
01:01:41.000There's a few quid to be made there, I'll warrant you.
01:01:44.000If you were wondering what happened to the end of the France video, we're going to post that now on Rumble.
01:01:48.000You'll be able to watch it in full on Rumble right now.
01:01:52.000And hey, if you want to come and see me live this Thursday in Reading, trying out a new show where we're letting you vote on a variety of issues, almost as if the technology for democracy already exists.