Stay Free - Russel Brand - Oh SH*T! NATO EXPANDS! Russia To Retaliate?! - #107 - Stay Free With Russell Brand

00:00:00.000 I'm going to go ahead and do that. And then I'm going to go ahead and do the other one.

00:00:07.000 I'm going to go ahead and do that.

00:00:44.000 In this video, you're going to see the future.

00:00:56.000 We've got a live shot there.

00:01:02.000 Hello there, you awakening wonders.

00:01:04.000 Thanks for joining me on Rumble for Stay Free with Russell Brand.

00:01:07.000 If you're watching this on YouTube right now, join us on Rumble, particularly after about 10, 15 minutes or so, where we will be using freedom of speech to say the most uncanny, absurd, and ultimately truthful things.

00:01:19.000 Things that might not please the establishment, but will certainly present opportunities for you to awaken, form new alliances, and ultimately new systems that will replace This corrupt carnival that's taking place even now, particularly around Donald Trump's arraignment and ongoing criminalization.

00:01:39.000 We'll be talking about the criminalization of Trump and how it distracts us from significant global events like Finland joining NATO and speaking to Aaron Maté about that at length.

00:01:49.000 Aaron Maté, our fellow conspiracy theorist and far right-wing, not just right-wing, Far right.

00:01:57.000 We see, we look over our shoulder, there's Mussolini, Oswald Mosley, and the big little guy.

00:02:04.000 They're just back there going, come back!

00:02:05.000 Come back to neoliberalism!

00:02:08.000 Come back to the lack of inquiry that passes for mainstream media reporting.

00:02:13.000 How are you today, on-screen assistant, Mr Gareth?

00:02:16.000 Yes, very well, very well.

00:02:17.000 Oh, you feel quite well, do you?

00:02:18.000 How are your old biochemical and immune systems holding up?

00:02:18.000 Oh, yes.

00:02:21.000 Doing alright.

00:02:22.000 Thanks Ross.

00:02:23.000 Fortunately this is a period of grind, of sustained broadcast.

00:02:30.000 How you know that the Trump trial is being exaggerated is the fetishisation and amplification of the smallest detail.

00:02:40.000 Have a listen.

00:02:42.000 to this reporter trying to discern and diagnose anger from the side of someone's head like using a still listen to it like i mean i've been obsessively in love with people over the course of my love life over the course of my life i've been obsessively in love with people But I've never, like, scrutinised a person's face, like, trying to discern some sort of real emotion in quite the manner that this CNN reporter scrutinises Trump, trying to divine anger as if it was some hidden stream being pursued by a rod.

00:03:15.000 Let's have a look.

00:03:16.000 If we could go back to the picture that we just showed a second ago, he was looking off to the distance.

00:03:20.000 He looked really irritated and annoyed.

00:03:24.000 It was a profile photo that we just showed.

00:03:26.000 There it is.

00:03:29.000 The one before, that wasn't it.

00:03:30.000 Oh no, that wasn't it.

00:03:31.000 This one, see?

00:03:31.000 It's this one.

00:03:32.000 It's very distinct, this one.

00:03:33.000 Look at that!

00:03:34.000 Look at, like, that, like, also, wouldn't you just freeze someone?

00:03:38.000 Like, and actually, one of the ways that I can tell a really good actor in a movie is, you know, sometimes when you press pause in a movie, not for any nefarious or onanistic reason, you're just pausing it because you do now, the same way as you watch everything with subtitles on now, the way the world's all changed and everything.

00:03:51.000 Do you watch everything with subtitles?

00:03:52.000 I actually do, yeah.

00:03:52.000 We do, don't we?

00:03:53.000 We do, everyone does.

00:03:54.000 Like, when you pause it... That's my dog, Bear.

00:03:57.000 Stop it! 0.99

00:03:57.000 Bear! 0.99

00:03:58.000 Stop it, Bear.

00:03:59.000 We're trying to understand the news.

00:04:00.000 You might as well analyse Bear doing that now and say that that has got some sort of mythic, archetypal connotation.

00:04:06.000 Something I would do, actually.

00:04:07.000 Staring off into the distance, as he was.

00:04:09.000 Bear staring off into the distance.

00:04:11.000 Could it be because of these dog treats?

00:04:13.000 Or is it because he knows that he made an illegal payment to Stormzy Daniels?

00:04:18.000 There he goes. 1.00

00:04:20.000 Bear, what the hell was that hush money all about, damn you? 1.00

00:04:23.000 Was it a misdemeanor or a felony? 1.00

00:04:25.000 It's a felony.

00:04:26.000 It might have started as a misdemeanor, but by God, we're going to amplify it.

00:04:29.000 It'll be a felony by the time we've finished with it.

00:04:32.000 It's either amplify this to a felony or address the fact that our political movement offers no meaningful alternatives to systemic corruption, and we ain't going to be doing that anytime soon.

00:04:42.000 Yeah, if you pause a film, you can tell.

00:04:43.000 Like, say if you pause Daniel Day-Lewis, probably at any moment in There Will Be Blood, he'll always be sort of going, Hey!

00:04:49.000 My milkshake!

00:04:51.000 I stole... Like, I mean, he'll always be being that dude.

00:04:54.000 Sure.

00:04:54.000 Like, you won't catch him just sort of going, what's that?

00:04:56.000 You know what I mean?

00:04:58.000 Like, he'll always... Look, that's the mark of a good actor, I would say.

00:05:00.000 He's always... I imagine that was what you did on the set of... I'm another example.

00:05:03.000 Sure.

00:05:04.000 Sarah Marshall, Arthur, the one where I'm a rabbit, the one where I'm a mouse, the one where I'm a troll.

00:05:04.000 Sarah Marshall.

00:05:09.000 The one where you kiss Dalek Baldwin.

00:05:11.000 The Baldwin one. 0.92

00:05:12.000 Any one of those, you pause me, I'm conveying the exact right emotion.

00:05:16.000 So, like, the way that they're sort of trying to... Like, Trump there, he could be about to go, like, mate?

00:05:19.000 Yeah.

00:05:20.000 It could be anything.

00:05:21.000 That's not like... Even the bit where they said, uh, staring off into the distance.

00:05:24.000 I mean, how distant can it be?

00:05:26.000 It's a courtroom.

00:05:27.000 It's not even that big.

00:05:28.000 Yeah, he's not, like, at the Grand Canyon, is he?

00:05:30.000 No.

00:05:31.000 He's not going to be, like, looking... He's just looking over there a bit.

00:05:34.000 They're filling time, is what they're doing.

00:05:34.000 Yeah.

00:05:35.000 They're filling!

00:05:36.000 Unlike us, where we've already... Oh, we're not filling.

00:05:38.000 We've got a Chris Hedges quote coming up that's going to knock your socks off.

00:05:41.000 We're going to be quoting Baudrillard.

00:05:43.000 As usual, because we're interested in pointing out that this is more than a political crisis.

00:05:48.000 This is an existential crisis.

00:05:50.000 And by God, we need a crisis, because as they say, crisis is opportunity.

00:05:54.000 Christ-a-tunity, as Homer Simpson said.

00:05:56.000 Because this is an opportunity for us to address what's happening geopolitically.

00:06:01.000 While all this is going on, while Putin's being endlessly compared to Hitler, Finland are joining NATO.

00:06:07.000 We're being told... We've got this in a minute.

00:06:09.000 We're going to show you a clip in a bit.

00:06:11.000 The description of NATO is worthy of The Simpsons.

00:06:14.000 You're going to love this.

00:06:15.000 But anyway, let's just watch a bit more of Trump's face and see what we can project onto this banal image.

00:06:22.000 Amy Gengel, you've been covering Donald Trump for a long time.

00:06:26.000 That is a pissed off Donald Trump.

00:06:28.000 Right.

00:06:29.000 You know, this is not defiant.

00:06:32.000 We've seen pictures that sort of are sobering.

00:06:35.000 No question, that is an angry Donald Trump.

00:06:39.000 That is angry.

00:06:40.000 That's not defiant.

00:06:41.000 They've got no moral authority anymore, I don't think.

00:06:44.000 I just want to use this.

00:06:45.000 This is a great quote from John Baudrillard, or Jean, to say it properly.

00:06:50.000 Nice.

00:06:51.000 Even as much as the French have irritated the English over the years, many long years, I will say their names properly. 0.63

00:06:57.000 Well done.

00:06:58.000 Check this out.

00:06:59.000 The futility of everything that comes to us from the media is the inescapable consequence of the absolute inability of that particular stage to remain silent.

00:07:09.000 They can't on CNN go, look, to be honest... Don't know what he was thinking.

00:07:12.000 Don't know what he was thinking.

00:07:13.000 He could be thinking anything then.

00:07:14.000 He might be holding a fart.

00:07:16.000 Yeah.

00:07:16.000 Because you know Donald Trump will have been thinking things that weren't about the trial, or weren't about this case.

00:07:21.000 of a sock and he could be just sort of trying to go, oh can I get an alpha there? Oh I can't.

00:07:21.000 Yeah.

00:07:25.000 Like trying to move a toenail inside a sock.

00:07:27.000 Because you know Donald Trump will have been thinking things that weren't about the trial,

00:07:31.000 or weren't about this case. Because we all do at all times.

00:07:35.000 I in the middle of some of the most important moments of my life still stop to sometimes

00:07:38.000 think I wonder if West Ham are going to be alright.

00:07:41.000 You know what I mean?

00:07:42.000 That crosses my mind.

00:07:43.000 I can't believe I'm actually thinking about that now, because I've got other stuff going on.

00:07:47.000 But humans are complex, and thoughts are rather complex.

00:07:51.000 But the mainstream media is not.

00:07:53.000 They're reductive and simplifying everything and they're participating, consciously or otherwise, in a mass distraction right now.

00:07:59.000 The really important things can't be talked about.

00:08:02.000 Let's get back to our old friend Beaudrillard before moving on with our media analysis.

00:08:07.000 Music, commercial breaks, news flashes, adverts, news broadcasts, movies, presenters.

00:08:12.000 There's no alternative but to feel the screen.

00:08:15.000 Otherwise there would be an Irredeemable void.

00:08:19.000 We're back in the Byzantine situation where idolatry calls on a plethora of images to conceal itself from the fact that God no longer exists.

00:08:27.000 That's why the slightest technical hitch, the slightest slip on the part of a presenter becomes so exciting, for it reveals the depth of the emptiness squinting out at us through this little window.

00:08:38.000 That they're terrified that they cannot provide an alternative to the nihilism that materialism and post-enlightenment rationalism has created.

00:08:47.000 If all that matters is what you want as an individual, if your religion is just your preferences and your aversions, Then who are we?

00:08:55.000 If you negate the possibility of the unknowable, the possibility of the mystery, the possibility that we are infinitely and limitlessly connected to one another in ways that are difficult to discern, if you accept that we are somehow connected to one another, and even if that's from a cosmological perspective, i.e.

00:09:11.000 we are all in the same little pinhead that exploded into the universe, then you have to have a different set of obligations.

00:09:17.000 You can't lose yourself in banal sectarianism the way we have done around the Trump Trump.

00:09:23.000 Let me know in the chat and the comments if you agree with me on that little piece of analysis.

00:09:29.000 What are we going to look at now?

00:09:30.000 Is this the surreal bit?

00:09:32.000 Yeah.

00:09:33.000 Oh, this is interesting, because here, essentially, this is another bit of news where they've got nothing.

00:09:40.000 In a minute, we're going to hit you with some home truths about what's going on in the world with Aaron Maté.

00:09:44.000 We're going to be talking about what's happening with NATO expansionism ongoing.

00:09:48.000 But for a moment, let's enjoy the banality of this.

00:09:52.000 Essentially, ABC News, Frota reporter, and listen to this, she describes something as surreal, but It's one of the realest things I've ever heard.

00:10:00.000 She just described someone walking in a room and sitting down, I think.

00:10:03.000 It's not like someone, like, has an orange fall out of their ear, or sort of like blows their nose and peanuts come out of it, or they open their mouth and like the universe is seen forming within it.

00:10:14.000 Have a listen.

00:10:15.000 So, uh, a big day for our country.

00:10:18.000 Uh, let's bring in ABC News investigative reporter and producer Olivia Rubin, who was inside the courtroom today when Donald Trump was there, along with... Big day inside the courtroom.

00:10:28.000 Again, sort of magnifying the situation and sort of suggesting to you that the reporter has access to something intimate.

00:10:35.000 But you've probably seen some of the footage inside there.

00:10:37.000 There's just people going, Mr. Trump!

00:10:38.000 And him just walking by.

00:10:39.000 It's not like they're gonna... What are they gonna do?

00:10:41.000 Smell a pheromone coming out of his bum crack?

00:10:44.000 Let's have a look at the word surreal. 0.67

00:10:46.000 Let's just have a look at a dictionary definition of the word surreal.

00:10:50.000 She'd walk us through what happened.

00:10:52.000 Terry I think surreal is a terrific word to describe what was happening in that courtroom.

00:11:00.000 As I've said the former president entered into the room.

00:11:03.000 Alright, let's have a look at the word surreal.

00:11:05.000 Let's just have a look at a dictionary definition of the word surreal.

00:11:09.000 Having a disorienting, hallucinatory quality of a dream.

00:11:14.000 Unreal and fantastic.

00:11:15.000 Here are just a few popular examples of the surrealist art movement.

00:11:19.000 That's by René Magritte.

00:11:20.000 There's Dali's Persistence of Memory and the recent film being John Malkovich.

00:11:25.000 And I suppose what they do is they play with form and context and our expectations of reality.

00:11:31.000 Yeah, well, what more do you want?

00:11:32.000 She said he entered the room, Russ.

00:11:34.000 How more surreal do you want?

00:11:35.000 Whoa! 0.71

00:11:36.000 He entered the room and he didn't manifest himself within it or drop into it in the form of molecules and then recoagulate as a solid object.

00:11:44.000 That would have not been surreal.

00:11:46.000 Back to David.

00:11:47.000 President entered into the room and he had sort of a grimace on his face.

00:11:52.000 He took into- he took in- Sort of a grimace, and that's actual news.

00:11:56.000 You can't legitimize all of the authority that ABC claims.

00:12:01.000 Just to say he had sort of a grimace on his face, describing that it's sort of a grimace.

00:12:07.000 I wouldn't like to say it was exactly a grimace.

00:12:10.000 No, no.

00:12:11.000 That's too much.

00:12:11.000 I wouldn't go that far.

00:12:12.000 That'd be irresponsible.

00:12:13.000 That'd be conspiracy theory.

00:12:15.000 That'd be fake news. 0.99

00:12:16.000 That's the sort of irresponsible crap you get on the internet. 0.98

00:12:19.000 People saying that there's a grimace when it's more like sort of a grimace. 0.99

00:12:23.000 That's irresponsible.

00:12:24.000 That's misinformation.

00:12:25.000 They should be shut down.

00:12:26.000 Thankfully, we're forming a body now to be able to censor that kind of madness.

00:12:32.000 We don't have a barometer for the amount of emotion that Donald Trump should show in an arraignment.

00:12:36.000 You can't quantify it.

00:12:37.000 He sat there, he showed very little emotion throughout the entire hearing.

00:12:41.000 Very little emotion?

00:12:43.000 Because like what would be the right amount?

00:12:46.000 Or too much?

00:12:46.000 Right.

00:12:48.000 I mean, we don't have a barometer for the amount of emotion that Donald Trump should show in an arraignment.

00:12:55.000 You can't quantify it.

00:12:55.000 No.

00:12:57.000 Absolutely not.

00:12:58.000 Like, ahhhh!

00:13:01.000 Or like he's sort of switched off.

00:13:04.000 That's just, that's how people are.

00:13:05.000 Yeah.

00:13:06.000 Essentially what they should be saying is, look, come on, nothing's happened except actually we are funded by the pharmaceutical industry and we get military industrial complex employees on and claim they're experts offering you A reliable, unbiased opinion.

00:13:24.000 That's what they should say.

00:13:25.000 When Baudrillard talks about in the silence there is like this sort of truth, like the godlessness, I would say that there is still, because I'm a religious person, that God is in that silence and you're confronted with the deception that you've been watching.

00:13:37.000 Deception or distraction, ultimately the same in a way.

00:13:40.000 Imagine if I broke down Gareth's movement.

00:13:42.000 at the DA's team who was speaking. He at times leans side to side speaking with his attorneys

00:13:48.000 and that was sort of how the former president...

00:13:50.000 Imagine if I broke down Gareth's movement. Gareth looking down now, he's nodding his head a bit.

00:13:56.000 Doesn't look like he's spent as much time combing his hair as he usually might.

00:14:01.000 There's a little bit of a forelock falling over on the left side of his face, possibly because he himself is moving closer to the left in response to the allegations that this is a far-right channel.

00:14:12.000 You could endlessly commentate on Mnuchai if you wanted to, but what was...

00:14:16.000 Better, I think, is to acknowledge that they are amplifying the significance of this trial, amplifying misdemeanor into felony, amplifying the importance of the entire narrative, because systemically and centrally, there will be no meaningful change as a result of, or you know, whether Trump stands again, doesn't matter, like this is, the stories that are important cannot be covered.

00:14:36.000 by virtue of the fact that they would potentially lead to significant change.

00:14:39.000 And the kind of stories that we should be looking at are ones like this.

00:14:43.000 Finland, who hate Russia so much that they possibly even participated in the Nord Stream Pipeline explosion.

00:14:50.000 Allegedly.

00:14:51.000 It was either them or Norway, we don't know for sure, because no one's willing to carry out an investigation,

00:14:55.000 because if they did carry out an investigation, the UN have decided they're not going to carry out an

00:14:59.000 investigation, because it would probably turn up the fact that the United

00:15:03.000 States were involved in that.

00:15:04.000 Allegedly.

00:15:06.000 Russia will beef up forces, beef them up, in the northwest as Finland joins NATO.

00:15:11.000 Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko has said that Russia will beef up its military presence in its northwestern territory in response to Finland joining NATO.

00:15:20.000 Finland's ascension into NATO will more than double the alliance's territory on the Russian border.

00:15:24.000 The Russian-Finnish border is about 810 miles long and will now become More militarized.

00:15:29.000 They're militarizing the Russia's borders.

00:15:32.000 Right.

00:15:33.000 So this is obviously a good thing.

00:15:34.000 I mean, obviously, it's great that Finland have joined, because more militarization, more chance of war.

00:15:41.000 Ah, more weapon styles.

00:15:42.000 Closer to Armageddon.

00:15:43.000 I mean, it's all good, isn't it?

00:15:44.000 I can't see any downsides.

00:15:46.000 There's no harm in amplifying a potential nuclear conflict.

00:15:49.000 I mean, what this does is it plays into Trump's hands.

00:15:52.000 When Trump can go to Mar-a-Lago, the historic Mar-a-Lago, and say stuff like, they've tried hoax impeachments in the past, they silenced the Hunter Biden laptop report, they're bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war, You can't say those things aren't true.

00:16:10.000 Let me know in the chat, in the comments, what you think.

00:16:11.000 Those things are true!

00:16:13.000 So if you actually despise Trump so passionately, isn't it beholden upon you to alter your own ethical and moral stance on significant geopolitical events rather than continually fetishizing Trump?

00:16:26.000 Even if you believe it to be to his detriment.

00:16:28.000 I mean, it's just that I can't understand the world view.

00:16:30.000 Have a look at this piece of reporting on CBS, of course, another mainstream media outlet.

00:16:37.000 You know, sometimes on The Simpsons where, like, they show the class, like, you know, zinc! 0.55

00:16:41.000 Like a video on the importance of zinc or something like that, or hormones, you know, and you think, God, this is so reductive and oversimplified.

00:16:50.000 It's like a Jebediah Springfield video.

00:16:53.000 Yeah, like when they sort of explain, Jebediah Springfield, okay?

00:16:56.000 He was great.

00:16:57.000 Oh my God!

00:16:57.000 He was a great guy.

00:16:58.000 And then they find out he was a terrible man.

00:17:01.000 This is like that.

00:17:01.000 We're going to give you one perspective on NATO.

00:17:06.000 This is the mainstream media's perspective on NATO.

00:17:08.000 But you know now, right, you're an adult, that there's more than one perspective.

00:17:12.000 NATO's not Superman.

00:17:15.000 I never liked Superman anyway, because I thought he was too simplistic of a guy.

00:17:19.000 He's super, and that's it.

00:17:21.000 He's not complex.

00:17:22.000 He's not weird.

00:17:23.000 He's not, like, touching himself.

00:17:25.000 You like Batman, don't you?

00:17:26.000 Because he's complicated, and confused, and difficult, and plus he had to make his own way in this life, and you know what happened when the necklace got pulled off his mum, and you know... Are you drawing comparisons between yourself and Batman?

00:17:36.000 Yes.

00:17:36.000 I'm like Batman, except that bit where he dresses up like a bat and solves crime, which some say are his defining characteristics and what makes him so interesting.

00:17:45.000 Other than that...

00:17:46.000 I'm a lot like Batman!

00:17:48.000 Other than in the way that matters.

00:17:49.000 Let's have a look at NATO being described by the mainstream media in a reductive, and I would say, let me know if you agree with this in the chat and the comments, in an insultingly reductive way.

00:18:00.000 NATO's a defensive alliance that protects the US, Canada, and most of Europe.

00:18:06.000 And that's all it is.

00:18:07.000 Yep.

00:18:07.000 It's not anything else.

00:18:08.000 No.

00:18:08.000 I mean, already, right, just bear that in mind.

00:18:10.000 Defensive.

00:18:11.000 Defensive.

00:18:12.000 We don't attack people.

00:18:13.000 Not aggressive.

00:18:13.000 We're not militarizing Finland's borders or anything like that.

00:18:17.000 We're certainly not participating in arms sales.

00:18:19.000 All those things couldn't legitimately be called defensive, could they?

00:18:22.000 So just remember, defensive.

00:18:24.000 Let's write it down so that you're cleverer tomorrow.

00:18:28.000 The tackle of one country is considered an attack on all.

00:18:32.000 Okay, thanks!

00:18:33.000 Today it's newest member is Finland.

00:18:36.000 This is maybe the one thing we can thank Mr. Putin.

00:18:39.000 Actually, right, I will say this.

00:18:42.000 Isn't it like that historic?

00:18:43.000 It wasn't a treaty between Gorbachev and Reagan, but it was an agreement not to encroach upon former Soviet territories by even one inch.

00:18:53.000 I don't think Finland was a Soviet territory, but like that's another nation on the borders of Russia that is about to be militarized.

00:19:01.000 That doesn't seem like the right thing to do.

00:19:04.000 It's a doubling down on the perspective that Russia is an aggressor and according to many,

00:19:08.000 Putin is a war criminal and has, and Russia have, committed war crimes in Ukraine.

00:19:12.000 I've got no problem with that. 0.71

00:19:14.000 I tell you who does have a problem with that, the United States of America, because if they

00:19:17.000 acknowledge that, then they're going to have to accept that their previous administration

00:19:23.000 and current administration are also guilty of war crimes.

00:19:25.000 I mean, it's so much more important than whether or not Donald Trump and Stormzy Daniels hushed

00:19:30.000 each other up the money pipe, isn't it?

00:19:33.000 That's right.

00:19:34.000 I believe what happened is someone's been hushed up the money pipe, Stormzy I think,

00:19:38.000 and as well as Daniel, and the pair of them, or if you ask me, they're as guilty as one

00:19:42.000 another.

00:19:43.000 It takes two, baby, to tango, doesn't it?

00:19:46.000 Let's have a look.

00:19:49.000 Because he, once again, here has precipitated something he claims to want to prevent by

00:19:54.000 Russia's aggression. 0.51

00:19:56.000 In the lead-up to Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, he complained about NATO's expansion in Europe, but I... Complained.

00:20:04.000 Hey, I don't like... I do not like the way that Russia is expanding in Europe, because it is an aggressive act that is against many historic agreements.

00:20:14.000 It wasn't a complaint, was it?

00:20:15.000 It was more like, you said you weren't going to do this, and therefore we're going to have to... You know, it wasn't a complaint.

00:20:21.000 A complaint sounds like you've just kicked a ball into someone's garden or something.

00:20:25.000 NATO borrowed Vladimir Putin's lawnmower, and then when Vladimir Putin said, could we have that back, he said, that's always been our fly, Mo.

00:20:33.000 We've always had it.

00:20:35.000 And you can't prove that we haven't always had it.

00:20:37.000 It was an agreement, a mutually beneficial agreement, in that so much as everyone benefits from there not being a nuclear war.

00:20:45.000 Ironically, Putin's achieved the exact opposite of what he wanted.

00:20:49.000 Before Russia's invasion, about a quarter of Finns supported joining NATO.

00:20:54.000 It says ironically he's achieved exactly what he wanted, or what he didn't want.

00:20:58.000 Yeah. 0.72

00:20:59.000 But which is ridiculous, there's no irony about it. 0.64

00:21:01.000 That's not irony. 0.84

00:21:02.000 No.

00:21:03.000 You've not understood, right, as is often the case with American media reporting, they've

00:21:07.000 not understood the meaning of the word irony, and that probably offends me more than bringing

00:21:12.000 us all to the brink of Armageddon, actually.

00:21:15.000 After Moscow attacked its neighbour, that surged to around 80%.

00:21:20.000 It's a good thing I have a good heart.

00:21:21.000 Since Finland's frontier with Russia is over 800 miles long, its membership has more than doubled Russia's border with NATO states.

00:21:30.000 And right next door, Sweden's also seeking to join the alliance.

00:21:35.000 Finland's military is considered one of the most capable and modern in Europe.

00:21:41.000 Moscow says that if forces from other NATO countries are now deployed to Finland, it'll respond by bolstering its own military in that region.

00:21:50.000 Noam Chomsky says that one of the ways that the media treats us is a kind of an ongoing infantilising process.

00:21:59.000 Most ads targeted towards the general public use discourse, arguments, characters with especially childish intonation, often targeting frailty as if the viewer were a creature of a very young age or mentally impaired.

00:22:10.000 The more you try to fool the viewer, the more childish the adopted tone.

00:22:14.000 Why?

00:22:14.000 If one goes to a person as if she had the age of 12 years or less, then due to suggestive quality, the other person tends, with some probability, to respond or react with much the same thought as a person of 12 years or younger would feel.

00:22:25.000 So they're talking to us like children, placing us in the roles of children.

00:22:28.000 There's a kind of paternalism at play.

00:22:30.000 Yeah, that's exactly what that report was doing.

00:22:32.000 Yes, it was.

00:22:33.000 You don't need to worry.

00:22:34.000 Finland have just joined.

00:22:36.000 And NATO!

00:22:38.000 And also that entire appraisal of NATO was reductive and childish.

00:22:43.000 This is from friend of the show, Pulitzer Prize winning conspiracy theorist, Chris Hedges.

00:22:48.000 Chris Hedges said, OK, so this is another take. 0.97

00:22:51.000 You just heard them say NATO is a defence organisation and that kind of crap. 0.97

00:22:53.000 Well, check out this. 0.91

00:22:54.000 NATO and the arms industry that depends on it for billions in profits has become the most aggressive and dangerous military alliance on the planet.

00:23:01.000 Created in 1949 to thwart Soviet expansion into Eastern and Central Europe, it has evolved into a global war machine in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Asia.

00:23:10.000 NATO expanded its footprint, violating promises to Moscow once the Cold War ended, to incorporate 14 countries in Eastern and Central Europe into the alliance.

00:23:17.000 It bombed Bosnia, Serbia, It launched wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, resulting in close to a million deaths and some 38 million people driven from their homes.

00:23:27.000 It's building a military footprint in Africa and Asia.

00:23:30.000 It invited Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea, the so-called Asia-Pacific four, to its recent summit in Madrid at the end of June.

00:23:36.000 It's expanded its reach into the southern hemisphere, signing a military training partnership agreement with Colombia in December 2021.

00:23:42.000 It's backed Turkey with NATO's second largest military, which has illegally invaded and occupied parts of Syria, As well as Iraq.

00:23:49.000 So this is another perspective.

00:23:51.000 Defensive alliance though.

00:23:53.000 Just defending there, just a little alliance.

00:23:55.000 NATO is like a, you know in the playground when you hold hands with another child, well it's a bit like that. 0.59

00:24:01.000 Like it's a really sort of insulting way.

00:24:05.000 to present that and I suppose that's what is so all-pervading that we forget to even criticise it.

00:24:12.000 Like the attitude towards us is you are children, you don't need to participate. How could you even

00:24:18.000 begin to legitimise censorship if you didn't believe that the recipients of that information

00:24:25.000 are incapable of discerning for themselves whether or not the information is legitimate.

00:24:31.000 Like, even just 10 years ago, you could talk to people with all sorts of crazy crackpot ideas and just go, well, that's cool and interesting.

00:24:38.000 I don't think it's true though, but nice one. 0.93

00:24:40.000 I mean, let's face it, some people think some of the most literally Religious perspectives in the world are ridiculous.

00:24:48.000 On one hand you've got Richard Dawkins, on the other hand you've got the Catholic Church, and you just sit and listen to both and go, oh cool, cool.

00:24:54.000 The irony of all this is that Chris Hedges, who literally wrote that about NATO, was obviously censored in terms of when RT was censored.

00:25:03.000 No more Chris Hedges on the internet.

00:25:04.000 Unfortunately he's found his way back through other means and Substack and things like that.

00:25:09.000 I just want to congratulate you on the correct use of the word irony, Gareth.

00:25:13.000 But, um, thank you very much.

00:25:14.000 But yeah, the very fact that these are the kind of things that they don't want out there.

00:25:17.000 When we're talking about censorship, it is from facts like this about NATO, because what they want us to know about NATO is what was in that news report.

00:25:25.000 NATO is for this.

00:25:26.000 It's good that this is happening, and it's good that Finland has joined NATO.

00:25:29.000 This is all good.

00:25:30.000 Yeah, Chris Hedges isn't saying, uh, you know, I don't like Spanish people.

00:25:35.000 It's not racist, is it?

00:25:37.000 It's not like, oh, I don't think trans people should be able to... That's not what Chris Hedges is about.

00:25:42.000 Chris Hedges is going, wait a minute, I've got another perspective on NATO.

00:25:45.000 Here's another perspective from Chris Hedges on war itself.

00:25:49.000 That is a kind of view that's being even more elegantly extracted from the mainstream discourse.

00:25:55.000 If we really saw war, What war does to young minds and bodies?

00:26:00.000 It would be impossible to embrace the myth of war.

00:26:02.000 If we had to stand over the mangled corpses of schoolchildren killed in Afghanistan and listen to the wails of their parents, we would not be able to repeat clichés we use to justify war.

00:26:14.000 This is why war is carefully sanitised.

00:26:17.000 This is why we are given war's perverse and dark thrill, but are spared from seeing war's consequences.

00:26:23.000 The mythic visions of war keep it heroic and entertaining.

00:26:26.000 You remember during 9-11, in the end, they wouldn't show the people leaping from the buildings rather than dying within it because a decision was made that that's too unbearable.

00:26:38.000 But in the ongoing wars that are sponsored by the military-industrial complex,

00:26:43.000 from which they benefit, that the media continues to tacitly support through their reductive reporting,

00:26:49.000 support through their reductive reporting, to prevent us having adult conversations about,

00:26:53.000 they are sanitizing exactly the way that Hedges describes.

00:26:56.000 The wounded, the crippled and the dead in this great charade, swiftly carted off stage.

00:27:02.000 They are war's refuse. We do not see them, we do not hear them. 0.99

00:27:06.000 They are doomed like wandering spirits to float around the edges of our consciousness,

00:27:10.000 ignored, even reviled.

00:27:12.000 The message they tell is too painful for us to hear.

00:27:15.000 We prefer to celebrate ourselves and our nations imbibing the myths of glory, honor, patriotism and heroism.

00:27:21.000 Words in combat become empty and meaningless.

00:27:25.000 That's Chris Hedges, the conspiracy theorist and father of the world. 0.64

00:27:28.000 All right, nutcase. 0.58

00:27:30.000 If you're watching us on YouTube, we're going to click over to be exclusively on Rumble now, where we're going to give you a fantastic insight to how your houses are going to be taken away from you by the financial industry.

00:27:45.000 In short, you will own nothing and you will be happy.

00:27:48.000 Sounds like empty rhetoric.

00:27:50.000 Sounds like a conspiracy theory.

00:27:52.000 Sounds like fear mongering.

00:27:54.000 Here are the policies that are going to bring it about.

00:27:57.000 Here's the news.

00:27:59.000 No, here's the effing news. 1.00

00:28:01.000 No, here's the fucking news! 0.98

00:28:06.000 While we're all distracted by Trumped-up charges, Wall Street is quietly buying up your homes and by 2030 will own 40% of them! 1.00

00:28:14.000 Bloody Trump!

00:28:20.000 In a climate where we're being distracted by admittedly alluring and exciting criminal trials, reality and centralised power continues uninterrupted. 0.90

00:28:31.000 We're talking specifically today about Wall Street buying up family homes and how that relates to the Great Reset Agenda.

00:28:38.000 You will own nothing.

00:28:39.000 But will you be happy?

00:28:40.000 Not with escalating rents.

00:28:42.000 Not if by 2030, 40% of family homes are owned by the financial sector.

00:28:47.000 This is a significant shift in the balance of power.

00:28:50.000 These are the kind of stories that aren't sufficiently reported on and observed.

00:28:54.000 These are the kind of things that will happen whether you have a Republican in the White House or a Democrat in the White House because we believe they're part of a corporate globalist agenda that will not be interrupted while we're distracted by sectarian politics. 0.54

00:29:06.000 Let's get into it.

00:29:07.000 For years, John and Angie Collier saved.

00:29:10.000 This is nice!

00:29:11.000 Eager to buy a first home in Fishers, Indiana.

00:29:13.000 Attracted by the good schools and proximity to work.

00:29:16.000 But pursuing the American dream has proved daunting.

00:29:19.000 As real estate investment groups buy up houses in cash and rent them out, in some cases, to the very families who dreamed of owning them.

00:29:27.000 In a sense, it is our sweetness and innocence that defines us.

00:29:32.000 We don't fully understand the way that the financial world works, that houses are being bought up, that agricultural land is being bought up, that pharmaceutical companies spend as much money managing the prices of their stocks by investing in them, by buying them back, than they do investigating new and potentially beneficial drugs.

00:29:51.000 We live on a layer of reality that prevents us from accessing the bigger and perhaps more significant picture when it comes to determining the outcomes of our lives.

00:30:00.000 And here, when it comes to those most basic of amenities, the basis of Maslow's Pyramid of Needs, shelter, even there, true power is getting involved.

00:30:09.000 True power is buying up property.

00:30:12.000 True power may prevent you from having a home.

00:30:15.000 In January, 33% of all homes purchased in the US were bought by investors.

00:30:20.000 Illuminati!

00:30:20.000 43!

00:30:21.000 Illuminati!

00:30:22.000 I'm guessing that the Colliers are just an example, that the Colliers aren't the news.

00:30:25.000 Ah, what are the Colliers doing today?

00:30:27.000 The Colliers currently rent in a town near Fishers from one of the nation's biggest house rental companies.

00:30:32.000 I'm guessing that the Colliers are just an example, that the Colliers aren't the news.

00:30:36.000 Ah, what the Colliers doing today?

00:30:38.000 Oh my god, he's left her! You bastard Collier! 1.00

00:30:42.000 Four times in recent weeks, they've been outbid by investors with all cash offers. 0.99

00:30:46.000 It can be, you know, discouraging when you get overbid by, you know, companies.

00:30:51.000 How do you save when you're spending $2,200 a month just to rent?

00:30:57.000 In a sense, what they're intelligently, I suppose, on the mainstream media news doing is using the Collier family to represent an ordinary American family and demonstrating how the difficult to observe movement of the financial industry and the increasing cost of living are affecting ordinary Americans.

00:31:14.000 What the mainstream media will not be able to do, is what we will do, is tell you exactly why this is happening and what is required to stop it.

00:31:21.000 So these companies have you on both ends?

00:31:24.000 Yeah, it's definitely a conundrum.

00:31:26.000 Good old Mr. Collier, smiling his way to homelessness.

00:31:29.000 I actually quite admire his spirit.

00:31:31.000 Can I come and live with you, Mr. Collier?

00:31:34.000 Yeah, sure.

00:31:35.000 You seem like you might be quite high maintenance.

00:31:37.000 I actually am.

00:31:38.000 In some Fishers neighborhoods, investors own more than half of the homes, according to realtor Laura Turner.

00:31:44.000 This is one of the neighborhoods that investors have really targeted.

00:31:47.000 They're coming in, they're buying it at cash, and then they're going to hold them as rentals.

00:31:50.000 Remember something as fundamental as Julian Assange's claim that the function of government is to extract public money and put it into private hands?

00:31:56.000 These sort of simple maxims help me to understand the nature of reality, i.e.

00:32:00.000 in this instance, the function of real estate development ought to be to provide homes for ordinary Americans.

00:32:06.000 One might imagine that in the 1950s, for all of its cultural problems and challenges, it was a simpler ...metric or mechanic that existed between the construction industry and the American citizen or consumer.

00:32:16.000 But now the financial industry has become so deregulated and sort of terrifying and vast.

00:32:21.000 There's like, hang on a minute, if we buy up all the homes, then we'll be able to profit by 5%. 0.99

00:32:26.000 It's like some terrible, terrible mathematics that's revealed that you should just fuck ordinary people to death. 0.98

00:32:32.000 Fisher's mayor, Scott Fadness, is frustrated by the surge of distant, faceless landlords. 0.99

00:32:37.000 I like the surge of distant, faceless landlords.

00:32:39.000 What's that?

00:32:40.000 Coming over the hill?

00:32:41.000 That's just the surge of distant landlords.

00:32:43.000 But what about this featureless, blank expanse?

00:32:46.000 Oh, they're faceless?

00:32:47.000 Don't let that worry you, though.

00:32:48.000 The fact that they're not participating in humanity.

00:32:51.000 Do you think they're going to be reasonable if I'm letting them rent?

00:32:51.000 Oh, OK.

00:32:53.000 I don't know.

00:32:54.000 Try and tell from looking at his face.

00:32:57.000 So take, for instance, if you have a high grass and weed issue, a code enforcement issue.

00:33:01.000 I mean, if they own 4,000 homes, who is the individual that you can go talk to about a specific problem?

00:33:07.000 Excuse me, the plum is not working very well.

00:33:10.000 After getting outbid time and again, the Colliers say they've given up on fishers.

00:33:15.000 Is the American dream still accessible?

00:33:17.000 I think the American Dream is changing.

00:33:20.000 We all know that it's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe in it.

00:33:24.000 Our society may be going in that direction where we are getting further away from ownership.

00:33:30.000 But I don't think it's the right direction.

00:33:32.000 I actually think Mr. Collier should be in charge of the country.

00:33:35.000 His upbeat demeanor is exactly what we need right now.

00:33:38.000 Okay, so this proxy war we're engaged in and the prosecution of Trump, which is a distraction from the fact that centralized government's never gonna do anything about issues that are affecting me and you.

00:33:48.000 Isn't that right, dear?

00:33:49.000 That's right.

00:33:50.000 How do you keep smiling?

00:33:51.000 I don't know, dear.

00:33:52.000 I don't know.

00:33:52.000 Anyway, gotta run.

00:33:53.000 We're gonna start another war with China. 0.98

00:33:55.000 Oh, guys, do we really need to do this?

00:33:57.000 Do we have time?

00:33:58.000 Also, the showers stopped working.

00:34:01.000 They put in a bid on a home in a town farther out.

00:34:04.000 Their American Dream modified, not broken.

00:34:07.000 The conclusion of the report can't be that the American Dream is modified, not broken.

00:34:11.000 It's a terrible dream of compromise and centralized corruption and financial brutality and faceless landlords.

00:34:19.000 We've modified the American Dream now, so it's got this scary, faceless landlord in it.

00:34:24.000 I think I'm not gonna go to sleep tonight.

00:34:26.000 Institutional investors may control 40% of US single-family rental homes by 2030.

00:34:32.000 Goodnight!

00:34:32.000 The single-family rental industry got its start with government backing in the fallout after the 2008 financial crisis.

00:34:38.000 Never let a good crisis go to waste.

00:34:40.000 The thing we learned here is you can really, really exploit single families. 0.97

00:34:46.000 Well done.

00:34:46.000 Lesson learned.

00:34:47.000 Thank you.

00:34:48.000 Thank you.

00:34:48.000 Oh, and will I be going to prison for my part in all this financial travesty?

00:34:53.000 No, no.

00:34:53.000 Just focus on exploiting those single families.

00:34:56.000 As I say.

00:34:57.000 It was that rare opportunity that attracted the institutions to build a portfolio out of these foreclosed properties, said Steven Zhao, an assistant professor of finance and managerial economics at the University of Texas, Dallas.

00:35:10.000 It's another example of what's a crisis to ordinary Americans or people across the world being an opportunity for those dominant financial interests.

00:35:17.000 We've seen this play out again and again.

00:35:19.000 You know that's what happened in the pandemic.

00:35:20.000 We presume that's what happens in a military crisis or indeed a war.

00:35:24.000 And It demonstrates that there is a fissure between your lives and needs and the requirements, methods and agenda of powerful institutions.

00:35:32.000 Well, at least it's just free market economics and it's stuff that's not costing you any money and you're not paying for it even after the criminality of 2008 where you bowed out the people that plunged your country and you personally into economic despair.

00:35:43.000 What's outrageous is your tax dollars are helping Wall Street buy up single-family homes.

00:35:48.000 Representative Ro Khanna said in an interview with CNBC.

00:35:52.000 Yeah that is outrageous isn't it?

00:35:53.000 It's not like they're brilliant business and economic minds, they're just people that are operating in a legislative space that is deliberately unregulated that allows what is essentially a type of criminality to take place.

00:36:07.000 In the midst of this hysteria around the Trump trial, where because of a kind of minor technicality, money from the campaign fund was spent on hush money that might lead to this, can it be a misdemeanor or felony?

00:36:21.000 While that's being focused on, stuff that should be a crime, like the deregulated corruption that led to 2008, the exploitation that's going to lead to your home likely being owned by a Wall Street bank instead of you or your children, No one's doing anything about that, and we participate in it.

00:36:39.000 I participate in it.

00:36:40.000 I find it hard to care more about this than I do Donald Trump.

00:36:43.000 Oh, I wonder what he'll be wearing.

00:36:44.000 Will he have a pocket square?

00:36:45.000 What shoes will he be wearing in court?

00:36:47.000 Does it matter, really?

00:36:47.000 We should be focusing on this!

00:36:49.000 Since the early 2010s, Tricon Residential, Progress Residential, American Homes for Rent, and Invitation Homes have each bought thousands of homes.

00:36:59.000 Some of these companies are financed by private equity firms such as Blackstone, and investment managers such as Preeti and Partners.

00:37:06.000 It's almost a captive market, said Jordan Ash, Director of Labour Jobs and Housing at the Private Equity Stakeholder Project.

00:37:13.000 They've been very explicit about how people are shut out of a home buying market and are going to be perpetual renters.

00:37:20.000 I don't have Enough of an understanding of global economics and real estate to determinedly tell you that it's best for you to own your own home.

00:37:30.000 But I do, from a general moral and philosophical perspective, sense that what you want is authority and control in your own life.

00:37:38.000 This particular issue seems to suggest that what's happening is that power and resources are becoming increasingly centralised.

00:37:46.000 This is exactly what they mean when they say you will own nothing and you will be happy.

00:37:51.000 They like to pretend, oh it's just a conference, it's just a bit of fun, oh it doesn't matter that both the leader of your country and the leader of the opposition of your country are all going there and the biggest companies in the world are all going there.

00:38:01.000 I'm not suggesting it's anything I'm not suggesting it's anything other than PR for the globalist agenda so that the solutions to the problems we all face can always be presented in a way that won't disrupt the agenda of the powerful.

00:38:13.000 That's exactly what I'm suggesting it is.

00:38:14.000 But the ideas that emerge out of there are ideas like this.

00:38:17.000 And if you spoke to these companies like, you know, Progress Residential, American Homes for Rent, There'd be someone nice that you'd speak to, that would tell you that they're going to provide better homes and better services and all that kind of stuff.

00:38:27.000 But you're a person.

00:38:28.000 You live in reality.

00:38:29.000 You know what your experience is.

00:38:31.000 You know what happened to your family and you and the people you love in 2008.

00:38:34.000 And you know what this centralization of resources and power is going to lead to for you.

00:38:38.000 And it isn't good, is it?

00:38:39.000 Although dear old Mr. Collier, he'll smile his way through it.

00:38:42.000 Okay dear, we can just live in this pile of dust.

00:38:44.000 I can heat you up with my breath.

00:38:46.000 Maybe if I can keep laughing.

00:38:48.000 Ha ha ha ha ha.

00:38:49.000 These tears, we can use them to bathe our son.

00:38:51.000 Ha ha ha ha ha.

00:38:53.000 These calls come after fierce housing inflation hit many sunbelt states,

00:38:57.000 including Texas, Florida, and Georgia, according to the National Association of Realtors.

00:39:03.000 The prices in some Sunbelt markets have outpaced national figures for rent inflation.

00:39:07.000 Between January 2020 and January 2023, rents for a two-bed detached home increased about 44% in Tampa, Florida, 43% in Phoenix, and 35% near Atlanta.

00:39:14.000 Florida, 43% in Phoenix and 35% near Atlanta. That's compared with a 24%

00:39:19.000 increase nationwide. So not only are you not gonna own your own, you're gonna be

00:39:24.000 extortionately overcharged for your rent.

00:39:27.000 This is ultimately another one of those wealth transfer techniques, where low-income, ordinary folks, middle-class folks, all will pay more money for stuff, and it will aggregate in the hands of the elites.

00:39:38.000 Plainly that, it's a technique to do that, and it's being soft-sold to us.

00:39:41.000 By 2030, the institutions may hold some 7.6 million homes, or more than 40% of all single-family rentals on the market, according to the 2022 forecast by MetLife Investment Management.

00:39:53.000 We heard from community organisers who are surprised at how many of the homes on a particular block will be owned by corporate landlords, PESP Housing Director Jordan Ash told CNBC.

00:40:04.000 Home ownership is the main way in this country that people build wealth.

00:40:08.000 And while in some ways it may not look very different if someone is renting or owning a home, financially it's very significant both for that individual family and for communities, whether or not they do own the home.

00:40:19.000 Part of the problem with private equity involved in housing is that they're in it for the short term, Ash continued.

00:40:24.000 Their goal is to take a company, increase cash flow in order then to sell it or to take it public, which they did in the case of invitation homes.

00:40:31.000 Unlike smaller landlords, who are still looking to have a profit, maybe in it for the long term and see it as a long term investment, are more concerned in terms of stability, concerned in terms of satisfied tenants and wanting there to be less turnover, with private equity it's really about maximising the short term returns.

00:40:46.000 So in a sense, it's a mentality that you don't want to play a role in housing.

00:40:52.000 And in particular, the housing of families that are looking for stability.

00:40:55.000 Not that people that are single or live different types of lifestyle aren't also worthy of secure instability.

00:41:00.000 Of course they are.

00:41:00.000 But they've probably long been subject to the mentality that is now beginning to prevail in this particular market.

00:41:06.000 What this is evidence of is the kind of expansion that prevents choice, even while we're told that free market capitalism is leading to more and more choice for all of us.

00:41:13.000 I consider it to be similar to food.

00:41:15.000 It's kind of like you're only eating the type of food that's available for you.

00:41:19.000 And because that's the type of food that's mass produced, it's very difficult to eat healthy food.

00:41:23.000 We know we should be eating healthy food.

00:41:24.000 We can't get it.

00:41:25.000 It's more expensive to buy organic.

00:41:26.000 Once that kind of thing starts happening because of market forces in homes, you're ultimately moving towards a time where you live in a cell and are attached to a drip.

00:41:33.000 And if you can't offer the machine something of value, you'll ultimately be criminalised, homeless or executed.

00:41:39.000 I mean, that's the general direction, isn't it?

00:41:40.000 What do you think about that, Mr. Collier?

00:41:42.000 Well, I quite like the old drip.

00:41:44.000 Hey, once in a while, I take it out of my arm and have a sip and I pretend it's a slushie.

00:41:48.000 Oh, back in the arm for now.

00:41:49.000 What a little boost, Junior!

00:41:51.000 Before 2010, institutional landlords didn't exist in the single-family rental market.

00:41:56.000 Now there are 25 to 30 of them.

00:41:58.000 So it's just a new, emergent market.

00:42:01.000 Like, a hundred years ago, no one ate processed food.

00:42:03.000 Now everyone eats processed food.

00:42:05.000 It's not good for us.

00:42:06.000 The general trajectory, while we're told it's progress, and in certain ways, technology, medicine, in certain fields, it obviously is, it's also centralising and aggregating and accumulating wealth in a very particular direction.

00:42:17.000 You recognise that, don't you?

00:42:18.000 Let me know in the chat, in the comments.

00:42:19.000 From 2007 to 2011, 4.7 million households lost homes to foreclosure and a million more to short sale.

00:42:28.000 So that means that 2008 was a period of great opportunity and advantage.

00:42:33.000 It's a bit like the pandemic, isn't it?

00:42:34.000 Like the pandemic and the financial crisis definitely have comparable components in that it was a devastating crisis if you were in a particular strata of society, but an incredibly lucrative opportunity if you were in another strata of society.

00:42:47.000 Private equity firms developed new ways to secure credit, enabling them to leverage their equity and acquire an astonishing number of homes.

00:42:54.000 After the 2008 crash, the unprecedented supply of cheap housing in good neighborhoods made corporate single-family home management feasible for the first time.

00:43:02.000 It's only regarded as a financial opportunity.

00:43:04.000 That's homelessness from another perspective.

00:43:06.000 Neighbourhoods that were formerly ownership neighbourhoods, that were one of the few ways

00:43:10.000 that working class families could build wealth and gain stability, are being slowly or not

00:43:15.000 so slowly turned into renter communities and not renter communities owned by mom and pop

00:43:19.000 landlords but by some of the biggest private equity firms in the world, says Peter Coons,

00:43:23.000 the former Los Angeles director of the activist group Alliance of Californians for Community

00:43:27.000 Empowerment.

00:43:28.000 In some ways I'm glad because it's now so magnified, amplified and obvious that there

00:43:33.000 is corruption that it's affecting everybody.

00:43:35.000 So whether you're sort of part of an underclass, ordinary working class, middle class, even affluent middle class, they're coming for you in the rhetoric of Donald Trump.

00:43:43.000 What is really dangerous to tenants and communities is the full integration of housing within financial markets, says Maya Abood, who wrote her graduate thesis at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the single-family rental industry.

00:43:56.000 Because of the way our financial markets are structured, stockholders expect ever-increasing returns.

00:44:01.000 All of this creates so much pressure on the companies that even if they wanted to do the right thing, which there's no evidence that they do, all of the entanglements lead to an incentive of not investing in maintenance and transferring all the costs On to tenants.

00:44:14.000 Blackstone spent over 5.5 million dollars lobbying in 2022 with several members of Congress owning stocks in it.

00:44:21.000 So once again, it's the same story.

00:44:23.000 Centralizing financial interests in alliance with a government that they lobby, with people in Congress who own stocks and shares in their company, moving in a direction that is not beneficial to you and will eventually reach a tipping point Where ordinary people are so disempowered we can no longer participate in the game.

00:44:39.000 All the while, eyes are on Donald Trump for minor legislative foibles and failings, and if they're illegal and justice is consistent, anyone who breaks the law should be subject to the punishment that are associated with breaking those laws.

00:44:53.000 But we all know that that's a political trial, and we all know that everyone benefits from the distraction

00:44:58.000 that it provides.

00:44:59.000 And that these kind of stories are the stories that are going to affect your life.

00:45:03.000 This is going to come between you and owning a home, and ultimately your ability...

00:45:07.000 ability to organize and control your own life and resources.

00:45:10.000 So, while the Trump trial is fascinating, these are the stories that we have a responsibility to

00:45:16.000 understand, these are the kind of situations that we have to demand

00:45:19.000 that the powerful deal with, or we have to replace the powerful with ourselves.

00:45:23.000 But that's just what I think.

00:45:24.000 Let me know what you think in the comments.

00:45:25.000 I'll be reading those comments in just a second.

00:45:27.000 Thank you for choosing Fox News.

00:45:29.000 The news. 1.00

00:45:30.000 No, here's the fucking news. 0.99

00:45:33.000 I hope you understand life a bit better now having seen that, 0.99

00:45:38.000 having heard us explain to you how abstract ideas like, you know, you will own nothing and you'll be happy can

00:45:46.000 gently become implemented as policy and how the financial industry

00:45:50.000 and now able to enter into territories that would have been unthinkable just 10, 15 years ago and how 2008,

00:45:56.000 a financial crisis for many of you was a financial opportunity

00:45:59.000 for some of the world's most powerful interests.

00:46:01.000 It's an ongoing theme.

00:46:04.000 Gareth, it's exciting.

00:46:06.000 Another day, another Maté.

00:46:08.000 I like to speak to at least one member of the Maté family every single day of my life.

00:46:15.000 Today we're speaking to the friend of the show, a journalist for the Grey Zone and co-host of the Useful Idiots podcast, Aaron Aaron Maté, conspiracy theorist, far right pundit, probably far far right.

00:46:28.000 If we're far right, I don't know where he is on that particular spectrum.

00:46:33.000 He has the honour of being known by the Guardian as the most prolific spreader of disinformation.

00:46:38.000 So let's, while we're having this conversation, carefully observe and pay attention to make sure he's not misinformationing us right where it hurts.

00:46:46.000 Alright, Aaron, it's good to see you.

00:46:48.000 Good to see you too, Russell.

00:46:49.000 Happy to fill your quota of Maté family members and disinformation spreaders, so good to be here. 0.98

00:46:56.000 Thank you for coming on.

00:46:57.000 Straight after you, we're going to be speaking to Oswald Mosley, the far-right British politician from the 1940s and the starter of the Brownshirt movement.

00:47:07.000 See what he's got to say about stuff.

00:47:09.000 Mate, we wanted to talk to you actually about the expansion of NATO, the Finland recently joining NATO and also the sort of broad framing of NATO as a force for good in the world.

00:47:23.000 And if you wouldn't mind tying that all into the sort of current show trial of Donald Trump and how the exaggeration of these misdemeanors into felonies is a convenient way to maintain a convenient framing of American politics at a time when perhaps we could be looking at more important geopolitical issues.

00:47:45.000 Well, the indictment of Trump ties into issues like the expansion of NATO because back when Trump first broke into the political scene in 2015-2016, one of the things that he was saying that really freaked out the political establishment in the U.S.

00:48:00.000 and other NATO states like the U.K.

00:48:02.000 was that he was questioning the existence of NATO.

00:48:06.000 And people couldn't believe someone could possibly in the political spectrum say such a thing.

00:48:12.000 And I think that was one of the factors in all this freak out about Trump and all the motivation to then paint him as a Russian agent is because he was actually saying things that you're not supposed to say inside respectable NATO state politics.

00:48:29.000 And we've seen now in the real world the results of NATO and this drive to expand it uh in this proxy war in Ukraine.

00:48:40.000 The fact we're having this war now is an outgrowth of a you know three decade long policy of pushing NATO to Russia's borders uh trying to bring in states like Ukraine and Georgia and doing so in despite doing so despite pledges to the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War that we're not going to expand NATO one more inch to the east and that's been violated and that's a major reason why we have this war today.

00:49:04.000 So, Finland joining the club is just one more provocation.

00:49:09.000 It's not to me as serious as the attempt to bring Ukraine in, because Ukraine has an actual historical tie to Russia.

00:49:16.000 There are millions of people inside Ukraine who consider themselves to be ethnic Russians.

00:49:20.000 Parts of Ukraine used to be apart.

00:49:23.000 Of Russia. 0.80

00:49:24.000 And Russian officials have long warned that any attempt to bring Ukraine into NATO would put Russia in a bad position because basically, as William Burns, the then ambassador to the US, wrote back in 2008, if Ukraine joins NATO, Russia feared that that would trigger a civil war and that would force Russia to intervene on the side of people who support Russia.

00:49:45.000 And that's pretty much what has happened.

00:49:47.000 And so Finland joining NATO, I don't think is Something Russia is too concerned about, but certainly expanding NATO's borders to Russia does increase the tensions.

00:50:00.000 And the idea that NATO is supposed to be defensive is just, as you've talked about, is a joke.

00:50:05.000 I mean, look at its recent record, destroying Libya, invading Afghanistan, you know, destroying 1.00

00:50:13.000 Yugoslavia and turning that into separate states.

00:50:16.000 I mean, that's the real nature of NATO.

00:50:18.000 And the idea that it's there to protect people is just completely undermined by its own record.

00:50:22.000 They have an explicit relationship with the military industrial complex.

00:50:28.000 Is there any evidence that they are involved in the brokerage of arms deals, that they

00:50:33.000 facilitate it, that an expansion of NATO somehow leads to the expansion of the military industrial

00:50:39.000 And also, Aaron, just to say, that is fascinating what you... When Trump, who I'm not broadly speaking a... like some... he's not something I blithely support.

00:50:48.000 I enjoy him as an establishment wrecking ball, I do have to say.

00:50:52.000 But when he sort of mentions something like, you know, don't have to be in NATO, there's something that I enjoy about that kind of anarchic and sort of outsider perspective.

00:51:03.000 So, yeah, I just wonder if you can just talk about NATO's relationship with the military-industrial complex and the possibility of disbanding NATO.

00:51:12.000 Yeah, well, on Trump, I mean, that's why elites hate him so much.

00:51:16.000 Not because he's actually a threat to their agenda, but sometimes he blurts out the wrong things.

00:51:21.000 So he'll question the existence of NATO, while still policy-wise, he encourages NATO states to spend more on the military-industrial complex.

00:51:29.000 So policy-wise, he pretty much continued the NATO agenda, but sometimes, occasionally, he'll speak the truth.

00:51:35.000 And he'll say the wrong things.

00:51:37.000 Also, in Syria, for example, when he announced that US troops were staying after he initially tried to withdraw them, he said we're staying to take the oil.

00:51:45.000 And you're not supposed to say that.

00:51:46.000 You're supposed to say we're there to fight terrorism and spread democracy.

00:51:49.000 So that's why they don't like him.

00:51:50.000 And that's why there's constantly attempts to undermine him.

00:51:53.000 Not because he's actual policy-wise, he's a threat to the conventional agenda, but because sometimes he just speaks out of turn.

00:52:00.000 And yes, in terms of NATO's relationship with the military-industrial complex, if you look at the multiple rounds of NATO expansion, And how that's been received in the U.S.

00:52:10.000 Congress, which has to vote to approve these expansions.

00:52:13.000 Every time that happens, there's a massive influx of lobbying money by the military-industrial complex in support of NATO expansion because the military-industrial complex recognizes that NATO expansion is hugely profitable for them.

00:52:28.000 Back in the 1990s, there was a lobby group in the U.S.

00:52:31.000 called the Committee to Expand NATO or something like that.

00:52:34.000 And it was headed by a guy named Bruce Jackson.

00:52:36.000 But that wasn't Bruce Jackson's only job.

00:52:39.000 Bruce Jackson's day job was that he was a vice president at Lockheed Martin.

00:52:44.000 So he recognized that expanding NATO was very good for Lockheed Martin.

00:52:48.000 So yes, I mean, because if you expand NATO, your military has to be up to NATO standards, which means spending billions and billions of dollars on weapons.

00:53:00.000 So there is a huge connection there.

00:53:01.000 And that's why Jan Stoltenberg, the NATO Secretary General, He's not really a general of anything.

00:53:08.000 He doesn't have a military role.

00:53:10.000 He's just basically an arms dealer.

00:53:11.000 He's an arms lobbyist.

00:53:12.000 That's what he is.

00:53:13.000 He's there to sell the public on the need to spend more money on weapons.

00:53:18.000 Aaron, you know Russia arrested that Wall Street Journal reporter, Evan Gerskovich, and the Biden administration are up in arms saying you can't just arrest journalists and put them in prison without trial.

00:53:32.000 What do you think You can't just use the Espionage Act as a catch-all way of arresting people of dissident voices that you don't agree with or approve of.

00:53:41.000 What do you make of that while dear old Julian Assange is banged up in Belmarsh here in Blighty and dear Edward Snowden abides in exile in Russia?

00:53:52.000 Is there some hypocrisy there?

00:53:56.000 I mean, yes.

00:53:57.000 I mean, I think this arrest of this Wall Street Journal happened just as Assange marked 1,000 days inside Belmarsh, this maximum security gulag inside Britain.

00:54:10.000 And that was on top of all the years he spent locked up in the Ecuadorian embassy because he couldn't leave or else he would be Put in prison then. 0.79

00:54:19.000 So yes, of course, it's massively hypocritical.

00:54:22.000 It's a joke to see NATO state leaders in the US and UK and elsewhere complain about the arrest of this Wall Street Journal reporter.

00:54:30.000 And it's just like, I can't even think about Assange sometimes.

00:54:34.000 It's so depressing.

00:54:35.000 I don't know how you feel about it, but it's so depressing.

00:54:39.000 It's like I have to try and think, there must be something I'm not understanding about this because otherwise it shows that aside from aesthetics we do live in a kind of banalised tyranny because otherwise you wouldn't be able to put journalists in prison.

00:54:56.000 without trial and claim it was somehow legitimate. So yeah, I went to see Julian Assange when he was

00:55:03.000 in that embassy. He later described that in his diaries as the worst day of his incarceration.

00:55:09.000 Like, yeah, so I'm in touch with Julian Assange's wife and I feel like it's, in a way,

00:55:19.000 I hold on to the idea of Assange and Snowden when I'm attacked for being far right or a

00:55:25.000 conspiracy theorist because they're kind of the ace aren't they?

00:55:29.000 They're dual aces in the pack.

00:55:31.000 You know your liberal, righteous agenda?

00:55:34.000 What is it doing about this and why can't it address it? 0.98

00:55:37.000 It's kind of a Vulcan death grip on their bullshit because they have to sort of go, They have to sort of shut down the debate there. 0.97

00:55:46.000 And that's when you know what the establishment is. 0.98

00:55:48.000 So I suppose, aside from the sort of deep personal agony that they as a family and the individuals must be facing, I feel that they are sort of avatars of what the reality of our sort of deep state corruption is.

00:56:05.000 Absolutely.

00:56:05.000 I mean, no one in the world has done more to expose state crimes than Julian Assange.

00:56:09.000 And Forest Services, rather than being given every journalistic award in the world, which he deserves, he's being caged in a gulag with no sign of him being able to get out.

00:56:22.000 I think the plan from those torturing him and imprisoning him is just to hold him for as long as they can behind bars and hope he dies behind bars.

00:56:32.000 That seems to be the plan.

00:56:33.000 And the media in the US especially is totally complicit in this.

00:56:38.000 There are sometimes, you know, establishment journals speak up in defense of Julian, but not nearly to the level that they should be.

00:56:44.000 And they still run all these smear pieces that take part in the propaganda effort to demonize him.

00:56:50.000 And so we're all just sitting by and watching it happen as, you know, this, the most important journalist in, I think, in Western history is being murdered, tortured.

00:57:04.000 It's just unbelievable.

00:57:06.000 And so, yes, so what Russia has done to this Wall Street Journal reporter, by all accounts, it looks terrible.

00:57:14.000 I do, though, have to question the wisdom of his editors who sent This reporter to a really sensitive Russian military industrial complex site and asking questions of people.

00:57:26.000 They must have known that this would arouse suspicion from Russian authorities and would possibly put this reporter in danger.

00:57:33.000 So I hope, of course, that he's freed, you know, immediately.

00:57:37.000 But I do have to question the wisdom of whoever sent him to this really sensitive site to ask these questions, especially at a time Of such high tensions between the U.S.

00:57:44.000 and Russia, people are going to be used as pawns to negotiate for the release of other prisoners, and it looks like this Wall Street Journal reporter has gotten caught up in that.

00:57:53.000 Yeah, well, you would say that, Aaron, because you are a conspiracy theorist and you never miss an opportunity to attack the establishment.

00:58:01.000 Aaron, I'm going to have to wrap it up there.

00:58:02.000 It's always fantastic to speak with you.

00:58:04.000 Thank you for your honesty and your wisdom and your ongoing integrity.

00:58:08.000 Aaron Maté is an investigative journalist for the Grey Zone and co-host of the Useful Idiots podcast.

00:58:13.000 We'll put a link to both of those in the chat straight away.

00:58:16.000 Aaron, thanks for joining us, mate.

00:58:18.000 Thanks Russell.

00:58:19.000 Cheers, take it easy.

00:58:20.000 I always feel mad saying mate to a mate because their name is spelt mate but that has got that accent on it that makes it mate.

00:58:28.000 If you want to come and see me live at Stay Free HQ, you can!

00:58:32.000 I'm going to be talking to, and this is live, I don't think we're even going to broadcast this.

00:58:35.000 No, we probably will broadcast it in some form.

00:58:37.000 It's Brian McDermott, former Premier League manager and my personal friend who has recently just joined NATO.

00:58:44.000 He's being militarised even as you speak.

00:58:47.000 Raytheon and Lockheed Martin are putting missiles all up and down the nape of his neck

00:58:51.000 and they're, I'm sorry to say, that they're aimed at Russia.

00:58:55.000 So that's going to provoke even more problems. You can come and see me talking to

00:58:58.000 Brian McDermott about his recent membership of NATO

00:59:01.000 on Saturday the April 15th, doors at 6, tickets £35, all profits go to the Stay Free Foundation which I own and

00:59:09.000 keep. Now I don't keep them, we give them to drug addicts.

00:59:12.000 That's where that money goes.

00:59:12.000 We don't need no more money. Hey, listen, thank you very much for joining us,

00:59:16.000 Gary. I think you need to let people know Brian McDermott and a bit of context there or...

00:59:21.000 Yeah, he's going to be talking about... Alright, I will.

00:59:24.000 Brian McDermott used to play for Arsenal, top flight football club. He managed Reading when they got

00:59:28.000 to the Premier League. He managed Leeds, one of the biggest clubs in this country, and he's

00:59:32.000 talking about mental health, winning and losing and how our framing of success is built on

00:59:37.000 materialistic and individualistic notions rather than on community and connection. And from

00:59:43.000 his personal experience as a top flight athlete and manager. He tells us that...

00:59:48.000 Winning and losing have to be accepted as part of life and you can't tether your identity to external success and plaudits.

00:59:55.000 You have to find a deeper connection with meaning and purpose.

00:59:59.000 Nice.

01:00:00.000 But he would say that because NATO... Exactly, they told him to say that.

01:00:04.000 Told him to.

01:00:05.000 Probably Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, they've probably gotten in his ear as well.

01:00:08.000 Of course they have.

01:00:09.000 They're not fools, these people, are they? 0.67

01:00:12.000 Hey, thank you very much for joining us for the show.

01:00:14.000 We've got one more show this week before we take a little well-deserved break, but we'll continue to put out content every single day while our Lord Jesus Christ is resurrected, as if by magic, something beyond magic, the miraculous.

01:00:29.000 Almost as if there is a field of unmanifest energy that can be channeled and directed by us if we are able to overcome the limitations of the self.

01:00:36.000 And that is true, Gareth.

01:00:37.000 Don't... Gareth Roy, look to the side there, as if negatively, I would say, well, I've seen, that's not defiance, that's pure loathing, that's what that is.

01:00:46.000 Join us tomorrow, not for more of the same, but for more of the different.

01:00:49.000 Until then, stay free.

01:00:59.000 Man he switchin', switch on, switch on.

Stay Free - Russel Brand - April 06, 2023

Oh SH*T! NATO EXPANDS! Russia To Retaliate?! - #107 - Stay Free With Russell Brand

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