In this episode of Stay Free With Russell Brand, Russell Brand talks to Edward Snowden about his experiences with the deep state, UFOs, the CIA, the Deep State and much, much more! Stay Free with Russell Brand is available on all good podcasting platforms. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/OurAdvertisers and use the promo code: "ELISSA" to receive 10% off "Hunt a Killer" for 10 days. To buy tickets to our upcoming live show at the PodX Festival, click here. To get your tickets to the live show, go here. To find out more about our sponsorships and show related promo codes: stayfreewithrussellbrand.co.uk/sponsorships and to get 10% all-inclusive when you book your first-ever stayfree membership membership, go HERE. To buy your own t-shirt, head over to keepup-to-date with our VIP membership offer and receive 20% off your first purchase when you become a patron! We'll be giving you a discount code: STILL FREE! at stayfree.ca/STROKEFRIENDS and we'll be matching you with 10% of your total purchase price for the rest of the year, up to $99.99, plus shipping and handling fees, plus a free shipping throughout the world, plus we'll send you a free printable printable copy of the book we're working on the show! Stay free with us on all of your favourite t-shirts, hoodies and hoodies! Thank you for listening to stay free with the Stay Freebie and more! Stay free, stay free! - we'll see you in the next week! You'll get 5% off the whole show next week, and get 15% off shipping anywhere else in the world! Thanks, you'll get a free ad-free version of the show, plus an extra discount when you sign up to stayfree and get a discount on the next episode! and a free copy of our ad-only version of our podcast, Stay Freezing with the show is available in the coming weeks! stay free, no matter where you get your ad-code: stay free and all that means you'll be able to watch the show and get all the best of what you're listening with us next week and get the most of it!
00:01:32.000Because we respect your individual rights.
00:01:33.000Because we respect democracy and community.
00:01:36.000We even respect the great Melodies of the sky, the UFO phenomena is all around us.
00:01:43.000Have you seen Edward Snowden tweeting about it?
00:01:46.000Edward Snowden, he's a man who's experienced the deep state.
00:01:50.000Edward Snowden, do you remember like when that Citizen Four film came out about Snowden, the thing I loved most was he was clearly a person that had seen too much.
00:01:59.000Like this film, this This could be bugging us!
00:02:23.000I was going on about aliens, like, Ironically, like when I was a kid I used to listen to sort of David Icke stuff and it was all like extraterrestrials are real.
00:02:29.000Careful, you can't say that word anymore.
00:02:32.000No, I was a boy then, I was a youngster.
00:03:16.000I wish it were aliens, but it's not aliens.
00:03:18.000It's just the old engineered panic and attractive nuisance ensuring that national security reporters get assigned to investigative balloon bullshit.
00:03:31.000We had such a great conversation yesterday, didn't we, with Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh, who told us that actually our reporting is spot on.
00:03:41.000The Nord Stream pipeline bombing, if indeed it was the United States of America, serves so many purposes.
00:03:48.000Militarily, economically, depriving Europe of that gas means that Europe are looking for different relationships.
00:03:56.000You also did say that one of those UFOs or unidentified objects is like a meteorological thing, didn't he?
00:04:02.000He said there's a meteorological centre up there in Alaska that they can't get anybody to work at because it's too cold and they've got balloons up there being operated remotely and everyone knows that they're there and no one thinks for a second that it's UFOs.
00:04:13.000They're simply under a lot of pressure to reduce their defence budgets.
00:04:15.000They're trying to get through the biggest defence budget in history so they need to escalate hysteria.
00:04:21.000Listen, we wouldn't normally ask for a huge budget but I've got to tell you There are aliens, okay?
00:04:41.000As a matter of fact... Where did you find out about that?
00:04:44.000But the one thing they could do that's worse than antagonising Russia is antagonise China, but they're doing that as well.
00:04:50.000And across the course of the show, we're going to be talking about the ongoing demonisation of Russia.
00:04:53.000We're going to be talking about the way that the media has been amplifying the significance of James O'Keefe from Project Veritas' wrongdoing.
00:05:01.000I'm certainly not suggesting that he hasn't done anything wrong.
00:05:04.000I understand he took a pregnant lady's sandwich, didn't he?
00:05:10.000How much bullying can there be when you're taking a whole staff with you to see Oklahoma?
00:05:15.000I've never heard of bullying included.
00:05:18.000The reason Project Veritas are in the news, if you're aware, because it's not allowed to be on certain platforms, it's certainly not covered on the mainstream media, is because he did a sting operation on a former Pfizer employee who made revelations about Pfizer that are unfavourable to Pfizer and their shareholders.
00:05:33.000And now, mysteriously, this guy, James O'Keefe, has been sent on paid leave.
00:05:37.000So we wondered, how have the establishment reached Project Varites?
00:05:41.000Because they're sort of like an outsider organisation.
00:05:53.000And now we have a little bit of an understanding how Project Veritas have been pressured by the mainstream, by Big Pharma.
00:06:02.000Well, we don't, we don't know, but we don't know.
00:06:05.000But also it seems like a massive coincidence.
00:06:08.000If they haven't, it feels like it's a massive coincidence that this is happening at this time.
00:06:12.000I've been investigative journaling all day, like it's 1999.
00:06:15.000Well, Seymour Hersh has vouched for you.
00:06:17.000Seymour Hersh, he's a Pulitzer Prize winner.
00:06:19.000He says I'm one of the best out there.
00:06:20.000Now, look, if you're watching this right now on YouTube, you've got to click over and watch us on Rumble, because in a minute, we'll be exclusively on Rumble.
00:06:27.000And that's when we're going to be telling you about Fauci's secret meetings on natural immunity that took place during the pandemic.
00:06:33.000I came out of it, of course, and said natural immunity, that's not a real thing that's existed throughout human evolution.
00:06:38.000In fact, without which there could be no such thing as human We'll be talking about that and revealing some interesting information, but only on Rumble, so click over and join us there when you can.
00:09:11.000But I want you to bear in mind Pfizer's actions during the last couple of years, I want you to remember Albert Baller saying it would be unconscionable for Pfizer to profit from this two-year process, from this healthcare crisis.
00:09:28.000Now, I want you to carry all of this in your mind while looking at, uh, there's a few questions I want you to ask yourself.
00:09:33.000I want you to ask, I wonder how much profit they made.
00:09:36.000I want you to ask yourself how much money Pfizer spent on lobbying.
00:09:39.000I want you to consider the conditions of Pfizer's ongoing COVID vaccine trials, none of which I'm willing to talk about, not until we're exclusively in our safe place Of Rumble.
00:09:50.000I want you to ask yourself all those things, and if they did kind of receive public funding in so much as they partnered with BioNTech who received hundreds of millions of dollars from the German government.
00:10:01.000But while you're mulling over all those questions, because I know you can do numerous things simultaneously, because I believe in your intelligence.
00:10:53.000I'd start saying, excuse me, excuse me, and even that's a track isn't he?
00:10:56.000He's not got musicians there with him.
00:10:58.000So like the music would be playing and stuff and it'd be weird and they'd have to sort of turn it down while James O'Keefe... I'd snatch that out of her hand like it was a sandwich and she was a pregnant lady.
00:13:15.000Okay, so we don't need to see no more of Oklahoma.
00:13:19.000I'd love to see Pfizer's litany of earnings and expenditure.
00:13:24.000So, right, so He spent that 20 grand, he took that pregnant lady sandwich and he may have done some bullying.
00:13:29.000But what I'm interested in actually, if I can be serious for just a moment, is the way that the media is framing this event, neglecting and not reporting on a story that is significant.
00:13:38.000Many people had suspicions about Pfizer's activity and more broadly the handling of the pandemic.
00:13:43.000And during the period of these revelations, that story has been selected against in the news cycle.
00:13:51.000We've seen the Oklahoma scandal in all of its vivacity.
00:13:55.000Let's look at what Pfizer have been up to.
00:13:57.000They said they would not overcharge for that vaccine.
00:13:59.000Albert Baller said it would be reprehensible.
00:14:52.000Yeah, I didn't think he was going to be as good as he was.
00:14:55.000Okay, listen guys, if you're watching this now on YouTube, click the link, get over and watch us on Rumble where we can give you a little more detail on some of this Extraordinary data.
00:15:04.000And I'd like to be reminded, before we get into Fauci's secret meetings on natural immunity, of how James O'Keefe entered into most people's consciousness via a certain meeting with this former Pfizer employee.
00:16:15.000We're talking somewhat about the tendency to demonise and escalate the threat of external forces when you need to generate funding from your domestic population.
00:16:27.000A little while ago, last year, UK congressman, US congressman, excuse me, Tom Malinowski
00:16:34.000said that Russia ought be made a terrorist state.
00:16:38.000Once you start using that kind of language, maligning a nation like Russia using such
00:16:43.000pejorative and incendiary language, ultimately what you're calling for is an end to diplomacy.
00:16:50.000And many of us have been struck by the lack of calls for peace around this process.
00:16:54.000Let me know in the chat, let me know in the comments whether you've been kind of shocked by their removal of peace from the discourse around this conflict.
00:17:02.000Russia ain't a country you can just write off as a terrorist state.
00:17:07.000It's appalling enough when you can pass those kind of ideas using, I suppose, unconscious occidentalism around states like Iran, or whatever, or Vietnam, or... In the long history of proxy and colonial wars, it's been necessary to demonize enemies in order to continue to fund these often proven to be subsequently illegal wars.
00:17:41.000We have a shared history, fought in numerous wars, huge population, a history of being actually quite good in wars as well.
00:17:50.000Pretty tenacious is how I describe Russia.
00:17:53.000So to start thinking that Russia can be written off as a terrorist state is Beyond naive, and it makes me question the ideology of the unipolar globalists that appear to be seizing control of the news agenda.
00:18:09.000Yeah, but we know what can be then achieved once you're labelled a terrorist, don't we?
00:18:13.000I mean, we know what happened in Iraq.
00:18:14.000As soon as that happened, they were able to essentially go to war with Iraq.
00:18:18.000But the way in which terrorism is used now as a word and the kind of shifting uses for it, I mean just the other day we actually did a presentation about the WHO and how they've stated that online anti-vaccine activism is now deadlier than global terrorism.
00:18:33.000So I think what they're saying about this now is that anti-vaccine activism is worse than Russia.
00:18:38.000So if you thought that Putin was the worst thing out there, actually now it's anti-vaccine activism.
00:18:46.000Geopolitical dissent through a conflict that has a complicated origin of mutual escalation at best and at worst the ongoing NATO agitation of Russia through encroachment on former territories that when we spoke to Seymour Hersh he told us there were not treaties but agreements to not encroach upon.
00:19:07.000And When it comes to using a word like terror, as Gareth just said, and as we've pointed out, what you're doing is delegitimising dissent, whether it's at the level of the nation state or the level of the individual.
00:19:21.000Increasingly, I think what we're seeing is the desire to surveil and control and monitor, that your freedom is inconvenient.
00:19:31.000Your sentience, your volition, have become enemies of this globalist project.
00:19:37.000And whether it's as nefarious as it sometimes feels and sounds or not, I'm unable to say.
00:19:42.000But I do know that what the overt and increasingly explicit desire of these globalist entities that are, broadly speaking, unelected, the WEF, the WHO, Is to maintain control, is to bypass democracy, is to be able to assert control at the level of the nation and beyond the nation.
00:20:01.000And in order to do that, they have to, I don't want to say create crises, but they benefit from crises and use them to implement this legislation that is favorable.
00:20:13.000Would you like to hear about the secret meaning of unnatural immunity before we get into the news?
00:20:20.000Four of the highest ranking US health officials, including Andy Fauci, met in secret to discuss whether or not naturally immune people should be exempt from getting COVID-19 vaccines.
00:20:29.000So all of the time when people were getting, I think, kicked off of platforms like Instagram for even mentioning natural immunity.
00:20:35.000That hashtag was banned, wasn't it, on Instagram?
00:20:37.000It's really censorious and extraordinary that that kind of, that level of conversation becomes the subject of measures.
00:20:45.000So Draconian, let me know what you think.
00:20:47.000Let me know what you think in the chat.
00:20:50.000The officials brought in four outside experts to discuss whether the protection gained after recovering from COVID-19, known as natural immunity, should count as one or more vaccine doses.
00:20:58.000There was an interest in several people in the administration in hearing basically the opinions of four immunologists in terms of what we thought about natural infection as contributing to protection against moderate to severe disease and to what extent that should influence dosing, said Dr. Paul Ofit.
00:21:13.000So, Seems like, I suppose, a little like a conversation we had recently regarding the origins.
00:21:22.000While publicly there was a lot of certainty, Privately, there was a lot of doubt and discussion.
00:21:29.000And I suppose what that shows is a concerted effort to manage the narrative and the conversation by excluding certain ideas, banning, censoring certain ideas.
00:21:39.000Also, you know, Fauci came down very hard against natural immunity.
00:21:46.000And so I guess the other thing that this is showing is that there were experts, there were scientific experts involved in this conversation.
00:21:53.000that we're stating their opinions within this you know within these emails and these meetings we're saying no we really feel that natural immunity even when it was alongside of vaccines a hybrid immunity was you know extremely effective and what Fauci and Walensky of the CDC chose to do was disregard those opinions and again a little bit like we were saying earlier on about about Wuhan is that they were considering other options they were considering that it could be a lab leak but then they came out and basically flatly refused that A lot of people in our chat are saying this is peace, love, light, our immune systems are incredibly powerful and then someone's done this fan art of Gareth saying that you should take your top off and I think that's actually off topic.
00:22:41.000Gareth's trying to explain how even hybrid immunity ought to have been a topic for discussion.
00:22:47.000And in fact, Gareth's not even saying anything divisive or polarising like, you know, the vaccines are dangerous or that people oughtn't take them.
00:23:08.000He's the scientist that also came out and said I'm uncomfortable that we would move forward with giving millions or tens of millions of doses to people based on mouse data.
00:23:17.000Do you remember that person who said that?
00:23:18.000Well they worked on up to eight mouses.
00:23:20.000We did tests on eight mouses and we are very confident that this booster shot is spot on.
00:23:30.000Get your top off, only to receive a vaccine in this instance, but get your top off nevertheless.
00:23:36.000So yeah, I suppose the reason we're using this, so far where we are, hysteria around UFOs and balloons in order to facilitate future funding.
00:23:46.000Demonisation of a sovereign nation in the case of Russia.
00:23:51.000The ludicrous exaggeration, it seems to me, of the wrongdoings of James O'Keefe and neglecting to mention the at least advantageous position, there's that joke by the way, the advantageous position that Pfizer gleaned and gained from the horrors of the pandemic.
00:24:11.000This is why people are so annoyed though, Russ, because it's, you know, with Pfizer and Fauci, you know, there's a link, there's obviously plenty of links there.
00:24:17.000You know, with Moderna recently, there was that story, wasn't there, and I think Paul Offit was involved in commenting on that also, where Moderna basically hid the fact that the new booster doesn't work any better than the last one.
00:24:30.000And so when you've got, and you know we're obviously talking about Pfizer's profits and things, when you've got now evidence coming out that was saying that there were meetings between Fauci, Walensky, various other scientists, where literally they were having discussions about these things.
00:24:43.000They dismissed other scientific opinion.
00:24:46.000I guess fine if you need to go with one opinion at the end of it, but then don't go on CNN, don't go on other news shows.
00:24:56.000You should be saying, oh we've had this conversation already and actually these are some of the findings and actually this is some of the research that we've favoured.
00:25:02.000It's good that you're saying that because we were just talking about that in this top secret meeting that we've not given you the information from, leading you to perhaps presume that one of the outcomes was beneficial to pharmaceutical interests that, by the way, award incredible royalties to Fauci's organisation NIADH.
00:25:22.000So, in the end, you start to sense corruption because of the management of the information.
00:25:28.000Hey, you there, LaneViews, will you make us some mugs, please?
00:25:48.000We're trying to bring down bloody systems of globalism, unelected bodies, usually funded by Bill Gates.
00:25:55.000We're going to be telling you more about that later in the week, but now in our item here's the news.
00:25:58.000We're going to be talking about People are now asking for funding to the Ukraine, the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia, to end.
00:26:08.000So, we believe that the reason that we're seeing more hysteria, more weather balloons, more UFOs, amping up of agitation between the US and China, is to ensure that conditions to reduce expenditure on weapons more broadly do not become a common, dominant, or even popular mainstream narrative.
00:26:30.000We're going to be looking at that in depth and in a minute we're going to be talking to Michael Tracy about the
00:26:34.000Ukraine and perhaps the five most significant stories that you may
00:26:37.000have missed and pieced together a glorious narrative, investigative journalism at its best.
00:26:41.000But first it's time for Here's the News.
00:27:04.000We've been talking for a long while about the Ukrainian war and how the humanitarian disaster, which is doubtlessly real as all wars generate human suffering, is being used to mask different, less favourable truths, i.e.
00:27:15.000it's extremely profitable, black rock are gonna profit, the military-industrial complex are gonna profit.
00:27:19.000Those stories are actually gaining traction now, and I'm certainly not suggesting that we're responsible for that, but that means that new stories are required.
00:27:30.000Is it a reason to spend more money on the military?
00:27:33.000Yeah, it's a reason to spend more money on the military.
00:27:35.000Let's get into this story about how UFOs and increasing the threat and presence of the Chinese is being used essentially to facilitate expenditure and hysteria.
00:27:45.000The US military shot down another unidentified flying object over Lake Huron in Michigan on Sunday, the third in three days and the fourth overall.
00:27:55.000And I don't want you thinking this newscaster looks like a sexy lady Michael Jackson.
00:27:59.000That's childish and it's just happening in your mind.
00:28:02.000Now to a developing story this morning, an unidentified flying object shot down by the US over Alaska.
00:28:10.000This of course follows the downing of that Chinese spy balloon last weekend.
00:28:14.000You'll notice that the mainstream media narrative in this instance appears to be about the generation of mystery and inquiry rather than conclusion.
00:28:23.000In fact, do you remember that film, Don't Look Up?
00:28:25.000This is the opposite of that film, Don't Look Up.
00:28:28.000Look up here and don't look what's going on around here.
00:28:31.000In the relationship between Congress and the military-industrial complex, which people in Congress own shares in companies like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, essentially part of this story is about a distraction.
00:28:40.000Andrew, before it was shot down, pilots were able to get close enough to that unknown object to see that it was unmanned and drifting in the wind.
00:28:58.000And also it's passing through Congress now in new measures to escalate tensions between us and China and generate profits for Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, my friend.
00:29:07.000President Biden ordered the takedown that was executed by an F-22 fighter jet Friday afternoon.
00:29:13.000The unknown object was spotted off the coast of Alaska Thursday night at 40,000 feet in the air and floating
00:29:58.000Do you have anything further on this point?
00:30:11.000The Nord Stream Pipeline, people are questioning that, the amount of profits, BlackRock's role, subsequently Zelensky being used potentially as a kind of puppet figure, that what's required is a sort of a distraction and some sort of potentially successful, unequivocal success story, like shooting hot air out of the sky just so he can perch outside of a government building and literally say the word success at nothing.
00:30:33.000The White House says the object was about the size of a small car.
00:31:55.000As domestic dissatisfaction with the government increases, cost of living crisis, energy crisis, people suffering, inequality, social tensions, you have to increase the external threat because otherwise the internal menace grows.
00:32:12.000Where do you think the threat's going to come from?
00:32:13.000Who's going to have a bigger impact on your life?
00:32:15.000Who's going to have a bigger impact on your economic life, your personal life, your social life?
00:32:19.000Is it going to be China or is it going to be your current actual government that you're paying for?
00:32:23.000So by escalating the idea that the Pentagon is a force for good, that military expenditure is necessary, you dampen down and quieten dissenting voices.
00:32:34.000Voices that are saying, hey, with this economic crisis, $100 billion going to Ukraine, shouldn't we slow down that train of expenditure flowing out of our pockets into the pockets of elites?
00:34:12.000Some people say that war began in 2014 when you did that coup.
00:34:15.000Other people say that war began when you reneged on the agreement between the former Soviet Union and America not to impinge on former Soviet Union territories.
00:34:22.000Saying it begins when Russia amassed troops on the border of Ukraine is convenient.
00:34:27.000Saying that this is potentially China, potentially UFOs, we don't know what it is, give us more money, we're doing sanctions against China.
00:34:34.000The objective comes first, then the narrative.
00:34:36.000Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper tells CBS News, if it is in fact Chinese, it would be a very troubling escalation, Andrea.
00:34:44.000Oh, that will be a troubling escalation.
00:34:46.000Once again, the news is doing the job of the government, of the military-industrial complex.
00:34:51.000Do you ever stop to think that's not what they're meant to be doing?
00:35:18.000Capital Alpha Partners analyst Byron Callen said on Friday the incident could limit the risk of a reduction in the defence budget for 2023-2024.
00:35:26.000Oh that's interesting because a lot of us were getting a bit sick and tired of this war and the way that public money was finding its way into private hands.
00:35:34.000I mean I know it's aid for Ukrainian people but of course that aid should go first through Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, that's the best way to get it.
00:35:40.000Don't just start buying them food and trying to end the war and providing shelters and No, first give the money to people that make missiles and weapons and hopefully the rest of it will all sort itself out somehow.
00:35:51.000Yeah, an element of fear, which is the element that's required.
00:35:53.000add another element to the debate over defense, he wrote.
00:35:56.000Yeah, an element of fear, which is the element that's required.
00:35:59.000Certain defense contractors may gain from the balloon incident, Callen wrote.
00:36:03.000One angle would be the potential for defense measures, although these may be niche programs.
00:36:07.000The other is if the US decides there is a balloon gap and fields its own fleet, Callen
00:36:22.000Lockheed Martin is one company that could benefit from this situation, as there may be potential to build or add surveillance to new balloon systems.
00:36:30.000Lockheed Martin shares were up 0.4% Friday.
00:36:33.000Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed a trip to China.
00:36:37.000He should probably get himself to Taiwan.
00:36:38.000It's been a while since we've wound him up with that little holiday.
00:36:41.000President Biden made a thinly veiled reference to the balloon as a national security breach in his February the 7th State of the Union address declaring, if China threatens our sovereignty, We will act to protect our country.
00:36:52.000We're going to give more money to defence companies.
00:36:57.000Hey, we need to do a select committee on China because defence spending might dip otherwise and the domestic population might start questioning the ineptitude of the incumbent government.
00:37:10.000So let's do this China committee to start amplifying the threat of China.
00:37:14.000People don't care about semiconductors.
00:37:17.000Rather than questioning this sabre-rattling, US media have dispensed panicked spin-offs of the original story, ensuring that the balloon saga, no matter how much of the diplomatic decay ensues, lasts as long as possible.
00:37:38.000NBC News, The Washington Post and CNN, among countless others, breathlessly cautioned readers that a high-altitude device hovering over the U.S.
00:37:45.000may have been launched by China in order to collect sensitive information.
00:37:48.000Local news stations marveled at its supposed dimensions.
00:37:52.000The size of three school buses, Reuters waxed fantastical, telling readers that a witness in Montana fought the balloon might have been a star or a UFO.
00:38:17.000But hedge the claim with the following.
00:38:19.000We assess that this balloon has limited additive value from an intelligence collection perspective, but we are taking steps, nevertheless, to protect against foreign intelligence collection of sensitive information.
00:38:29.000So it seems that really the balloon is the perfect metaphor for what's happening.
00:38:32.000It might be visual, and it might be somewhat novel, and in some ways fascinating, but it is filled with nothing.
00:38:39.000Despite this uncertainty, US media overwhelmingly interpreted the Pentagon's conjecture as fact.
00:38:44.000You can see the compliance of the media in the manner of this reporting.
00:38:47.000That's what's interesting about it for us.
00:38:50.000Let me know what you think is interesting.
00:38:51.000Is that they don't sort of inquire about it or ridicule it or joke about it.
00:38:55.000They sort of do the job of carrying the momentum of the emergent message.
00:38:59.000And that is because they know already that their interests converge with government interests, converge with military-industrial complex interests.
00:39:06.000Even more than that, you will have people that own bits of all of them.
00:39:09.000This more than convergent, it is literally intertwined.
00:39:12.000Anyway, it's not like spying is just part of international espionage.
00:39:16.000That's what the CIA, FBI, MI5, that's what all those agencies are for.
00:39:45.000In 2019, the Pentagon was testing mass surveillance balloons across the US.
00:39:49.000Three years later, Politico reported that the Pentagon plans to spend $27.1 million in the fiscal year 2023, adding that the balloons may help track and deter hypersonic weapons being developed by China and Russia.
00:40:30.000It's a flying robot armed with missiles.
00:40:33.000Sometimes it does this with the express permission of the country's government, and other times it does so regardless of how either a country's population or its government feels, as with Afghanistan, which Washington continues to drone bomb despite having withdrawn ground troops in 2021, or with Yemen, which has been on the receiving end of nearly 400 US airstrikes this century.
00:40:51.000Yeah, but it's not a balloon though, is it?
00:40:54.000Air strikes, where drones come down and like blow up your weddings and families and stuff like that.
00:41:04.000The US considers it its sovereign right to spy on any nation it chooses, and the average American tends more or less to see it the same way.
00:41:12.000This is highlighted in controversies around domestic versus foreign surveillance.
00:41:16.000For example, Americans were outraged over the Edward Snowden revelations, not because spy agencies were conducting surveillance, but because they were conducting surveillance on American citizens.
00:41:25.000It's just taken as a given that spying on foreigners is fine.
00:41:28.000And maybe you do feel that as a patriot.
00:41:30.000Maybe you think it's part of the purpose of the military and the government to protect the nation.
00:41:33.000And in fact, I suppose that is according to the current model.
00:41:36.000But knowing how you're regarded by these same forces, I think is significant.
00:41:41.000Joe Biden marches outside that government building, White House, wherever it is, and says, success, as if the shooting down of this surveillance tool is somehow protecting you.
00:41:50.000But you know who is spying on you continually?
00:41:53.000Joe Biden's government, in cooperation with big tech.
00:41:57.000You know they're looking for opportunities to justify that surveillance.
00:42:00.000In the same way this balloon story is ultimately being used to legitimise more expenditure on the military, they will similarly say, we have to surveil you more for your own safety, you need digital ID, social credit.
00:42:12.000It's the way we can protect you from a balloon or a germ or a terrorist or whatever it is that week.
00:42:17.000The idea that they are your friend, that they're there to protect you, has to be smashed.
00:42:23.000Neither is the culture that they use to beguile you.
00:42:26.000These are a set of tools that are used to keep you passive, compliant and malleable.
00:42:30.000And when you look at the left-right debate and their media arms, you don't see enough willingness to vigorously attack all of the institutions, corporate, financial, military, government.
00:42:39.000All of these centralised systems are about controlling you.
00:42:42.000They'll surveil you when it's convenient to surveil you.
00:42:44.000They'll distract you when it's necessary to distract you.
00:42:47.000They'll extract your resources, whether that's your time, your attention, or your money, whenever they want, and they'll manage the condition so that it's not noticed, and sometimes so you'll bloody well vote for it.
00:42:55.000Now let's contrast all this with another news story that's getting a lot less attention.
00:42:59.000has secured access to four additional military bases in the Philippines, a key bit of real estate which would offer a front seat to monitor the Chinese in the South China Sea and around Taiwan, writes the BBC's Rupert Wingfield Hayes.
00:43:27.000empire has been surrounding China with military bases and war machinery for many years, in ways Washington would never tolerate China doing in the nations and waters surrounding the United States.
00:43:39.000is the aggressor in this increasingly hostile standoff between major powers.
00:43:42.000So what you could say is this is like Ukraine-Russia five years ago.
00:43:47.000So at least with our ability to access this information, we're able to assess and diagnose the problem more quickly.
00:43:53.000While we're thinking about balloons in the sky and UFOs and stuff, the US military are encroaching on Chinese space in a comparable way that NATO encroached on former Soviet territory 10 years ago back in 2014 and since then.
00:44:05.000What you have to question now is, if you are watching this from America, is are the American government acting on your behalf?
00:44:12.000Or on behalf of secondary interests like the military industrial complex and other financial interests, let's say just for sake of easy understanding, black rock, to give us a convenient image like a balloon that we can understand, have the image of a black rock and have the image of a missile with the word Lockheed Martin written on the side of it.
00:44:27.000Who do you think they're provoking China for?
00:44:30.000For you, do you think this means we're going, oh my God, I'm really worried about people in Delaware and Tennessee.
00:44:35.000Let's get over there and build a noose right around China.
00:44:37.000Or are they thinking about ongoing expenditure, distracting the domestic population, pursuing geopolitical aims, which might actually bring about the demise of our entire species?
00:44:47.000I think that it's time for us to look at these narratives in real time.
00:45:42.000As soon as there's some evidence... And then KY Jelly says, and that's by the way a saucy name, they used my voice for the Here's the Fucking News Baby.
00:45:50.000We did, and that's my little daughter.
00:45:51.000She's one of my children that I'm getting swearing for a living.
00:45:55.000We've got a fantastic guest for you now.
00:45:57.000It's an investigative journalist, that's like me, who's written extensively about the war in Ukraine on his substack.
00:46:03.000He's talking to us about Russia being recast as terrorist.
00:46:06.000In fact, that's something he's been investigated and subject to an infamous slur as a result of those lines of inquiry.
00:46:11.000We're very excited to introduce on to rumble a man we know as Michael Racey Tracey.
00:46:21.000Well, I'm going to keep it rated PG for this particular Rumble colloquy, so I'm going to avoid getting too racy such that, I don't know, maybe there might be some new censorship stricture imposed on Rumble solely to do with preventing me from getting too racy for the daytime audience.
00:46:39.000Don't push this to such a limit that Rumble, that has organised itself around the principle of free speech, has to renege on that pledge because you are so disgusting in the things that you say.
00:46:51.000That would be funny if I'm just so repulsive that they have to totally abandon their stated sort of core principles for... Speech is wrong!
00:46:59.000You can't just shout fire in a crowded theater!
00:47:18.000And was it just one lone congressperson advocating for that or was it a broader movement?
00:47:23.000Well, yeah, earlier you mentioned that there was this particular Democratic congressman named Tom Malinowski who was booted out of the House of Representatives actually at the midterm elections and replaced by a Republican who pledged to be even more aggressive and antagonistic toward Russia.
00:47:39.000So that kind of well encapsulates the bipartisan consensus on this topic.
00:47:44.000But I interviewed Tom Malinowski because he happened to be a sponsor of a resolution in the House calling on the State Department to formally designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, so putting Russia into the same category as Syria, Cuba, North Korea, etc., Iran, and thereby kind of formally abrogating any semblance of Official diplomatic ties that could be forged between the United States and Russia, and you'd think that would have a pretty decisive deleterious impact on brokering some sort of settlement to the war.
00:48:25.000And far be it for anyone to assume that this was just some sort of rogue plan on the part of one particular Democratic congressman, Last July, the U.S.
00:48:37.000Senate unanimously assented to a resolution that was championed by Lindsey Graham, so UberHawk of all UberHawks, former, you know, chief sort of buddy of John McCain.
00:48:49.000And by the way, John McCain, for all he was castigated during his lifetime as being this kind of insane hawk and outside the mainstream, believe it or not, in death, John McCain's foreign policy disposition has become strikingly kind of subsumed into just mainstream bipartisan consensus, which I think is an undercover development of this past year or so vis-a-vis Ukraine.
00:49:16.000But Lindsey Graham championed this resolution with a Democratic colleague, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, and all 100 U.S.
00:49:24.000senators Ascended to it was enacted by unanimous ascent so everybody from Rand Paul to Josh Hawley to Bernie Sanders to Elizabeth Warren anyone who you might think be might be somewhat on the margins or somewhat more of a dissenting sort of standpoint on this particular topic they all whether through overt intentionality or just omission
00:49:49.000assented to the enactment of this particular resolution, which would, I think it's fair
00:49:53.000to say, basically obliterate any hope that the United States could engage diplomatically
00:49:59.000with Russia in pursuit of some sort of negotiated resolution to the war.
00:50:04.000Now, that move actually has not been formally taken yet, despite the arded lobbying of the
00:50:10.000Ukraine government and Zelensky as well.
00:50:12.000When Zelensky was in the United States in late December for his vaunted first trip abroad
00:50:17.000since the war began, or at least the first trip that's been publicly reported that he's
00:50:21.000taken abroad since the war began, that was one of his lobbying agenda items for that
00:50:26.000step to be taken to basically nuke, to use a...
00:50:29.000Somewhat ominous pun, the diplomatic ties between the United States and Russia.
00:50:34.000And the United States has not, for whatever reason, formally gone there yet.
00:50:40.000But the Biden administration tends to be a somewhat lagging indicator in what kind of aggressive steps it's willing to accede to, whereas Congress and the media kind of are at the forefront of kind of banging on for whatever the latest threshold crossing step is.
00:50:59.000You talked in our conversations offline about the seamless congealing of folklore and myth into conventional wisdom.
00:51:12.000How, I suppose, abstract ideas that are not underwritten by facts are starting to be used as platforms, foundations and arguments, I guess, for escalated activity within this conflict.
00:51:26.000Can you give us some examples, or did you just give us one, i.e.
00:51:29.000the sort of the attempt to label Russia a terrorist state?
00:51:32.000Are there further examples that have accrued around this conflict?
00:51:36.000Yeah, and there are multiple dimensions to this phenomenon, and this being the first year anniversary of the invasion starting, or we're approaching that anyway, it's a good time to reflect on how this dynamic has worked discursively.
00:51:53.000So when Russia first launched the invasion February 24th of last year.
00:51:59.000There was this instantaneous congealing of myth and folklore, as I would put it, around a sort of triumphalist narrative That showed the resilience and the resourcefulness and the heroism of Ukraine.
00:52:16.000And certainly in particular instances, there might have been cases that were legitimate of, you know, individual Ukrainians displaying valor of some sort.
00:52:26.000That's not even what I'm commenting on here, because, you know, the immediate counterargument will be, oh, you're trying to Denigrate the sacrifices of Ukrainians and cheapen their suffering?
00:52:38.000No, I mean, I personally went to... Why don't you care about them?
00:52:45.000Well, no, I mean, actually, the reason why that rebuttal or that theoretical rebuttal is so cheap is because, you know, an actually serious sort of moral Assessment would have to take into account the genuine suffering of those Ukrainians who, through no fault of their own, actually have had their lives disrupted.
00:53:03.000When the war first started, I went to Poland on the border area with Ukraine and I personally, you know, without trying to get myself set up for interviews through NGOs or through some sort of fixer or through some sort of, you know, orchestrated PR initiative, I actually personally interviewed lots of, you know, mostly women with young children Who did have their lives genuinely disrupted through, uh, as a result of an aggressive military action.
00:53:31.000And I think there is sympathy that is justly afforded to them.
00:53:35.000So, you know, I think somebody who is a careful moral reasoner would have to take that into account.
00:53:42.000And so I'm taking that into account, but I'm also simultaneously noting that there was this onslaught of just propaganda and fabrication In service of advancing one particular triumphalist Ukraine narrative that was then arrogated for the purpose of intensifying a primarily U.S.
00:54:01.000So I don't know if you recall, but within days of the invasion happening last February, there was this anecdote that got circulated and then just beamed across the entire information kind of landscape where Zelensky supposedly offered an evacuation route out of Ukraine by the United States, and he responded Triumphantly and boldly and audaciously by saying, I don't need ammo, I need a ride.
00:54:27.000And that became this rallying cry showing not just the valorous spirit of Zelensky, but of Ukraine as a whole.
00:54:37.000And t-shirts were immediately produced with this slogan, and it became one of the core tenets of this war mythos.
00:54:46.000And if you actually go and look at what that originated from, there was an AP story In late February, that was sourced to an anonymous intelligence official, so nobody was willing to put their name to the conveyance of this, you know, titanically inspiring quote.
00:55:07.000intelligence official is the one who relayed it, apparently, to the AP reporter.
00:55:10.000We still don't know who that intelligence official was, but as you might agree, U.S.
00:55:16.000intelligence officials have a variety of potential motives for why they would want to place information out for public consumption.
00:55:23.000And then by October, one of the very few instances of an actually sort of robust journalistic evaluation of the nature of the U.S.
00:55:33.000intervention in Ukraine was published in the New Yorker.
00:55:37.000And it quoted another official kind of laughingly acknowledging that that entire anecdote, including the quote itself presumably, was just a sheer fabrication for propagandistic purposes.
00:55:48.000Which, you know, if you're thinking about it from the standpoint of the self-interest
00:55:51.000of or the perceived self-interest of whoever those, you know, Ukraine government officials
00:55:56.000might be, you can see why they would want that information out there to kind of construct
00:56:01.000this affirming kind of noble narrative on their behalf, because what were they doing?
00:56:06.000Well, they were lobbying for more and more intense U.S.-Western military escalation.
00:56:12.000Remember, at that time, Zelensky, despite being crowned as this, you know, incarnation
00:56:18.000of Churchill and the most beloved leader that has graced the world stage since the Second
00:56:24.000World War, he was lobbying in March and April of last year for a no-fly zone, which even
00:56:31.000Joe Biden himself said if that demand were actually acquiesced to, that would instigate
00:56:37.000World War III, and yet we were all being told that we must be, you know, singing the praises
00:56:43.000of somebody whose preferred policy interventions would actually bring about the most cataclysmic
00:56:50.000world conflagration that anybody could ever dream of.
00:56:56.000So that was one element of the mythos.
00:57:00.000And I think, you know, on another level, you have just kind of the way that the logic around U.S.
00:57:06.000interventionism has been inverted to justify support for this particular U.S.
00:57:11.000Now, a lot of self-styled leftists and liberals and even leftists kind of Purport to be very well acquainted with the history of interventionist U.S.
00:57:30.000Maybe there are some blind spots in their knowledge, but there are certain sort of core kind of features to what they understand to be the reality of U.S.
00:57:38.000Foreign policy, and it produces a rather cynical view of the utility of U.S.
00:57:42.000foreign policy, because number one, it tends to be predicated on state duplicity, meaning that the actual nature of the policy is not forthcomingly communicated to the public At first.
00:57:56.000And it tends to be accompanied by this kind of conjoining what's called mission creep in that the scope or the contours of that U.S.
00:58:06.000policy tend to expand and lurch out into new areas and to entail a much far greater investment of both financial resources and even human resources if it escalates to the level of an actual Intervention involving boots on the ground, so to say.
00:58:26.000But all that kind of got shunked into the side with regard to this particular intervention, at least as it began in February of last year, because it was seen as advancing these kind of grandiose objectives of protecting the rules-based international order, protecting international liberalism against the encroachments of, you know, right-wing connotated Global authoritarianism as personified by Putin as the chief exporter of that insidious tendency.
00:59:01.000It, you know, even in the US, the legacy of World War II itself was specifically invoked time and time again, almost to the point of tedium.
00:59:10.000No, not almost, definitely to the point of tedium, where, you know, you get, of course, the obligatory Hitler comparisons that, you know, Putin must be stopped or else he's going to do a blitzkrieg throughout all of Europe.
00:59:22.000needs to resume its role that was articulated by Franklin Roosevelt as the arsenal of democracy by furnishing armaments all across the world, including to, you know, Britain, Soviet Union, etc., in that phase before the U.S.
00:59:35.000formally entered the war in December of 1941.
00:59:38.000Nancy Pelosi went on the floor of the House of Representatives and demanded the enactment
00:59:42.000of the lend-lease policy for the first time since the 1940s on account of these ideological
00:59:50.000imperatives toward, like, protecting global liberalism from these villainous sort of,
00:59:57.000you know, depredations of Putin and what have you.
01:00:00.000I guess also Lukashenko, who we're also supposed to be terrified by.
01:00:05.000And so all of, you know, given these, like, ideological sort of nostrums that got so,
01:00:10.000you know, kind of fervently pumped out into the public consciousness.
01:00:15.000Any kind of analytical, objective, impartial, rationally minded assessment of the nature of this particular U.S.
01:00:22.000military intervention got subordinated to those wider ideological goals, such that no one really had the sense that there could be mission creep associated with this particular U.S.
01:00:34.000No one got the sense that there could be state deceit involved in the selling of the intervention, and yet we found, as could have been I think easily predicted by anybody who was trying to maintain a bit of a mooring and sort of rational Yeah, kind of assessment.
01:00:52.000So for one thing, I don't know if you recall, but when Biden and top administration officials were talking about the nature of U.S.
01:01:00.000intervention post-Russian invasion on February 24th, they were almost invariably framed in terms of sort of a very narrowly confined aid mission, almost like it was just like a strict humanitarian intervention where the aid would be mostly about, you know, blankets and, you know, you know, food and water and basic sort of nourishment for the besieged civilians.
01:01:29.000And they specifically use the word aid, I think.
01:01:32.000Because it has a particular propagandistic utility, and this doesn't get much talked about either, but when you think of aid, like if the U.S.
01:01:39.000is going to be providing aid to a besieged nation, what does that kind of conjure a mental image of?
01:01:44.000I don't know, like a first aid kit or something, right?
01:01:46.000Just strict sort of medical aid, whereas by June, of last year, the U.S.
01:01:52.000was basically agreeing to the demands of the Ukraine military to furnish them with an entirely new military in the midst of a hot war, which we are constantly reminded is the most wide-scale war in Europe since the 1940s.
01:02:08.000Now, is that aid as commonly understood by just the general member of the public?
01:02:13.000I don't think so, but that word was sort of very much fixated on, I think, for a particular
01:02:20.000And then it kind of escalated from there.
01:02:21.000I mean, at the beginning, the idea was just to send some aid, along with maybe some small
01:02:25.000arms, so the courageous Ukrainians could, you know, defend their homes, and also, you
01:02:32.000know, a Javelin missile here and there so they could take out an invading Russian tank.
01:02:36.000Then by June it was heavy artillery that the U.S. would also be sending, the HIMAR rocket
01:02:41.000systems, that later came, of course, the Patriot missile batteries that would then be deployed
01:02:48.000to Ukraine, as was announced in December by Biden.
01:02:53.000And it kind of culminated, at least as yet, with the U.S.
01:02:55.000saying, oh, by the way, we're going to send our most advanced battle tanks into Ukraine.
01:03:01.000That's the next iteration of this aid.
01:03:03.000So if that's not mission creep, if that's not in keeping with sort of the quintessential
01:03:11.000trajectories that you would expect of a U.S.
01:03:14.000foreign policy intervention, I don't know what would be.
01:03:17.000And yet there's just not really much popular consciousness of this very predictable cycle, because the overarching sort of ideological imperatives that have been imbued onto this particular conflict have taken such primacy.
01:03:34.000Michael, you extraordinary insomniac, you great river of vocabulary, you.
01:03:38.000What extraordinary analysis you took us there on the journey from blankets to clear escalation via that word lethal aid.
01:03:47.000I remember when they made that peculiar portmanteau, that new linguistic hybrid.
01:03:52.000And as language evolves, as censorship increases, you start to recognize how power is newly
01:03:59.000operating. Michael, I could listen to you all day. Sometimes I felt like I might not have a
01:04:03.000choice. We'd love to have you back on our show for further conversations. It would be
01:04:08.000brilliant to get more of your insights and I'm really excited to talk to you more. You can follow
01:04:14.000Michael on Substack by going to mtracey.substack.com.
01:05:24.000You're sort of a topless... you look like Giroux.
01:05:29.000I thought it was amazing that thing because when he's talking about the mission creep it's something we've talked about the aid before isn't it the way it started off as aid and then it was lethal aid and now it's military aid and you know Biden coming on the telly you know towards the start of the war saying we're not going to go to war with Russia and then he's got the point I mean Michael's one of the things he's written is that America now controls virtually every rocket fired by Ukrainian forces at Russian targets.
01:05:52.000We only control virtually every rocket?
01:07:28.000He's a great friend of the show and we're very excited to have him on.
01:07:31.000Sign up to Locals to see the show behind the show.
01:07:34.000How do we conjure up this ingenuity, this chemistry, this majesty that Pulitzer Prize winning journalists like Greenwald, like Seymour Hersh are queuing up to say is the greatest little news show on the planet.
01:07:48.000I'm pretty sure you just misquoted them.