In this episode of Stay Free With Russell Brand, we're joined by Annie McMahon, a former MI5 agent and real-life spy. We talk about how she became a spy, the dangers of fake narratives and distractions, and why we need to get a grip on reality. Plus, Elon Musk is reviving his deal to buy Twitter. Is this part of Musk s master plan? Or is it something else? And do you think there's something in the fact that his name is Musk, that's a powerful pheromonal entity that's difficult to understand? Because Musk is, you know, like, someone's Musk. Because you're not alone. In this video, you're going to see the future. Here we are, on Stay Free with me, Russell Brand. Stay Free, Stay Free! - Russell Brand This episode is brought to you by Rumble Catch-up, where you can watch the show wherever you get your shows, at any time, on any platform, wherever you are. You can watch at any given time, and you can be part of the community. . If you like the show, please consider becoming a patron patron, and/or become a patron of the show. If you don't already have a patron, you can get 20% off the show-buying discount code: STAY FREE! at linktr.ee/RumbleCatch-Up. To find out more information about the show and support it, go here: bit.ly/keepfreewithrucrapcatch-up. , use the promo code: stayfree at stayfree with me to receive 20% of a future episode, and get 10% off your ad discount, and receive 5% off of the entire show, plus a free shipping offer, and 5% of your first month of the next episode, you'll get 15% off for the rest of the offer, plus an ad discount when you buy a copy of the ad is available for two months, plus free shipping throughout the next month, and a discount of $50 or a year, and I'll get 5 months of the whole show gets 5 months get $5,000 or a month, plus I'm giving you 7 months free, and they get a discount, plus they'll get 7 months of free shipping, and the other two months get 5 years of the deal starts starting at $50, and there's a discount starts at $99, plus shipping starts start-up gets $25, and shipping starts get $10, and will get VIP access, plus the second place gets 5,000, they'll also get a VIP discount.
00:13:22.000In fact, that's one of the things we're going to be talking about in the show today and in the coming shows as we enter into a phase of brinkmanship in this war.
00:13:33.000In Europe, what games are they playing with our lives?
00:13:59.000Like, I suppose the reason we're asking that is that if you glance at the news on any given day, you're forced to vacillate between stories that are kind of terrifying...
00:14:09.000Like potentially sabotaged pipelines and threats of nuclear war and then people are playing football in space and there are Happy Meals available in McDonald's.
00:14:22.000How are you meant to get a grip on reality?
00:14:24.000How are you meant to find who you really are?
00:14:26.000How are you meant to find your place in the world?
00:14:28.000What principles and values and what meaning are you meant to pursue in this world?
00:14:34.000So, today we're talking to a former MI5 agent, a real-life spy, Annie McMahon.
00:14:41.000Yeah, that's how I see her, as a real-life spy.
00:15:09.000Some people believe that there is one consciousness and we are all expressions of it.
00:15:12.000So when you're looking into someone's eyes, you're looking back into yourself.
00:15:16.000What is this entity of consciousness that we participate in?
00:15:20.000And surely, on some level as individuals and collectively, we have to connect with something essential if we are to overcome these Atrophying systems that seem to be bringing us towards destruction.
00:15:32.000That's something you won't hear in the mainstream media, isn't it, Gareth?
00:17:36.000You don't want to bug them, like remember when you for example... Not the Eckhart Tolle thing again.
00:17:40.000Yep, I ruined my friendship with Eckhart Tolle.
00:17:42.000Eckhart Tolle is also coming to the show, I managed to win him back because he's very forgiving.
00:17:45.000If you're in touch with the limitless love of which the universe is founded, you can forgive someone if they ring you up the whole time, innit?
00:18:14.000This is the thing, you know, like, we're streaming every single day, from five in my country, don't know what it is in your country, but for one hour, but also on Stay Free AF, that's our members area, we do longer interviews, we've got my stand-up special, we've got loads of stuff on there, and, like, that's where there'll be the longer-form interviews of, like, all of this kind of stuff, so consider joining that if you wanna, if you've got time.
00:18:37.000Listen, let me do the main mainstream news.
00:18:39.000In a minute in the show, we're gonna be talking to you about some brilliant stuff about how Political players from like yesteryear, like Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice, who were sort of powerful statespeople in their time, are now sort of openly admitting, in the sort of forum, admittedly, of masterclass,
00:19:01.000Like, we're being invited to believe that Madeleine Albright, God rest her soul, you know, she's no longer with us, and Condoleezza Rice are, like, examples of how women can make it in politics and therefore progress is working, things are going in the right direction.
00:19:17.000That is one narrative that you could look to.
00:19:20.000But another narrative is, both of these figures presided and governed over a time where, like Iraqi people, were needlessly killed Based on stuff out of people's imagination, wasn't it?
00:19:30.000They imagined, oh, let's pretend Saddam Hussein's involved in 9-11.
00:24:01.000In this time of fuel crisis where a lot of people can't afford to heat their homes, what you can do is simply watch that video and allow the embarrassment to rush through your body and warm you up.
00:24:12.000Oh God, I can't afford to pay for actual fuel, but watching Liz Truss sort of jitter out like Elon Musk's AI robot.
00:26:26.000In this situation Liz Truss would either require charisma Like a demagogic figure, the ability charisma is, Quentin Crisp said, the ability to influence without logic.
00:28:22.000Nothing like as good as it's going to be when she leaves that job and takes up a role in a corporation, which is, you know, inevitably what will happen.
00:28:44.000So when you have people on here like, we had Mick Lynch on here the other day.
00:28:48.000Now you lot might be not be into trade unionism, but I would...
00:28:52.000I ask you to open your minds and open your hearts to the possibility of having people in positions of authority and power that are drawn from the communities that they govern.
00:29:01.000And also, even govern's not the right word.
00:29:05.000We have to have a more consensual form of leadership.
00:29:08.000You know that there were models of leadership in a bygone age where people in positions of authority had less.
00:29:13.000That leadership was understood to be about sacrifice, about giving and yielding.
00:29:18.000Our entire modality and mentality has to alter.
00:29:22.000Sometimes I don't think people understand how serious and radical the change that's required actually is.
00:29:29.000But if you take a moment to look at something like...
00:29:33.000Condoleezza Rice and Madeleine Albright's masterclass where we're invited to look at them as two successful politicians, as states people that have overcome the odds to rise to position of power.
00:29:46.000It sort of fetishizes the fact that Madeleine Albright's father mentored Condoleezza Rice.
00:29:52.000I'd say what it really tells us is the differences between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are pretty insignificant.
00:30:00.000Millions of people died as a result of policies that they implemented and were behind, and isn't that the real story?
00:30:07.000How can you pretend for a minute that this is a masterclass to, you know, that's literally the product that this is drawn from, in how to be a good diplomat?
00:30:17.000When, in reality, there's a very different story just a moment away.
00:30:21.000That's why the question of the show today is, is this the age of fake narratives and bullshit distractions?
00:30:29.000Pay attention, because it just casually talks about things like there being an imaginary scenario where Saddam Hussein and Iraq are responsible for the 9-11 attacks.
00:30:40.000It's just that such a short period of time ago for us to already just think, oh, OK, we'll just accept the narratives now, shall we, in the current conflict.
00:30:48.000Every time we even mention that, you have to say, of course, our sympathies lie with the people in Ukraine that are suffering.
00:30:53.000But what happens is, as happened around 9-11, The understandable, necessary sympathy for the victims of that tragedy and that terrorism were pushed to the forefront to stop you thinking about what was going on in the Middle East.
00:31:05.000There never were weapons of mass destruction.
00:31:07.000They knew there were no weapons of mass destruction.
00:31:10.000A war was implemented on the basis of weapons of mass destruction.
00:31:14.000This is primarily what this channel is about.
00:31:17.000Us having the ability to communicate openly with one another, to recognise that we're flawed and that we make mistakes, but at least we're not overtly and deliberately lying in order to implement hegemony, even if it requires genocide.
00:31:32.000I think that's what we're trying to do, isn't it?
00:31:34.000That's exactly what we're trying to do.
00:32:01.000So, you remember that masterclass that George W. Bush did where he repositioned himself as some old lovely old watercolourist grandfather cuddle duck?
00:32:12.000Well, now, Condoleezza Rice and Madeleine Albright are similarly being repositioned as diplomats and statespeople.
00:32:21.000And at a time where there is a war between Russia and Ukraine, Where that pipeline's getting blown up, where we query the motive behind the war, where of course we accept that Putin seems like a crazy, despotic individual but still have questions about the motives of our own nations.
00:32:40.000Broadly, people that were prominent and culpable during a period of American foreign policy that was really dubious and brings up a lot of questions about the nature of war, the nature of government, and what these figures really represent.
00:32:55.000Particularly as on this channel we continually discuss with you how trustworthy politicians are.
00:33:02.000And the idea that there's this cycle where one minute they're in a position where they're killing children, or at least making decisions that lead to the death of children, and then the next they're just sort of smiling and throwing their heads back.
00:33:13.000Laughing about how they can be good role models and making it all about like, you know, women getting to the top like it's 9 to 5 with Dolly Parton.
00:33:29.000It just seems to me that we're framing our reality Incorrectly.
00:33:33.000Just to let you know, I'm a father of daughters.
00:33:36.000I want women to have good pathways to power, self-fulfillment, self-realization in every way imaginable.
00:33:44.000But I feel it's more of a priority to have a culture and sets of systems that are representative of our highest set of values and principles.
00:33:51.000Rather than I'll just chuck a few women into this warmongering.
00:33:54.000Before we get into this masterclass video with Condoleezza Rice and Madeleine Albright, both prominent states people during their Clinton and Bush era respectively, let me give you a little more detail about what they achieved in office.
00:34:09.000In her roles as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, along with the rest of the Bush administration, created an imaginary scenario that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Centers in New York City on 9-11.
00:34:34.000We might as well have invaded Iceland, or like wherever it is that Moana lived.
00:34:40.000This led the US into the illegal invasion of Iraq, killed millions of innocent Iraqis, along with over 4,000 US soldiers.
00:34:48.000Condi approved numerous war crimes on behalf of the Bush administration using visions of mushroom clouds and other scare tactics.
00:34:55.000She also allowed torture to displace diplomacy as the hallmark of US foreign policy.
00:34:59.000Employing circuitous logic and Nixonian explanations, Rice recently explained away our misunderstandings about torture and international obligations by saying, by definition, if it was authorised by the President, it did not violate our obligations in the Convention Against Torture.
00:35:15.000That's the distillation of the idea that if the American government does it, then it's okay that they did it.
00:35:22.000And I suppose that that's a violation of any kind of principle because it means that The principles themselves are irrelevant, it's just whatever you need to do in order to achieve your objective becomes the dominating idea.
00:35:35.000And if that was the dominant idea then, who's to say it's not the dominant idea now?
00:35:39.000How are we supposed to say, oh there's no way they would destroy that pipeline, that would just be wrong?
00:35:44.000But they did do that whole war based on a lie.
00:35:49.000Albright played a central role in America's foreign policy in the 90s, first as United Nations ambassador, then as Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton.
00:35:57.000That period of history and its consequences for the war on terror can't be understood without understanding her actions.
00:36:02.000In particular, Albright spearheaded Clinton's disastrous stance towards Iraq.
00:36:06.000Albright's approach was both vicious in its own right and helped lay the foundation for the 2003 Iraq war.
00:36:13.000And then, let's push it a notch further with war!
00:36:16.000In the context of the ongoing claims that the US and NATO are leading a worldwide campaign against Russian war crimes in Ukraine, the celebration of Albright's bloody record is a demonstration of grotesque hypocrisy.
00:36:28.000Albright was an advocate and apologist for Much more brutal actions than any taken so far by Vladimir Putin in Ukraine.
00:36:34.000We've got very short term memory in some sense.
00:36:38.000In some areas of culture, revisiting the past to analyse the attitudes that were at play then is considered necessary.
00:36:46.000But in a military and geopolitical context, It's only 20 years ago that ideas and beliefs were being used to underwrite military action that were proven to be false and we're pretending that that sort of didn't happen.
00:36:59.000Don't you feel like you're in some giddying kind of illusion that doesn't make sense?
00:37:04.000That history is all speeding up and you can't situate yourself in it anymore.
00:37:08.000You're being told that things that happened only 20 or 30 years ago are irrelevant now.
00:37:14.000Sometimes diplomacy is downright hard.
00:37:16.000You're dealing with people that you'd really rather not be dealing with.
00:38:12.000You can't be distracted by highly contextual successes like improvements in gender relations, even though those things are important when they are contrasted with genocide, for example.
00:38:23.000My relationship with Madeleine Albright goes well back before either of us was Secretary of State.
00:38:29.000I was a failed piano major at the University of Denver.
00:38:32.000I was about to end up teaching 13-year-olds to murder Beethoven.
00:38:35.000But then I decided to murder 13-year-olds for a living.
00:38:38.000We took Beethoven out of the picture altogether, and the pianos.
00:38:42.000We could have dropped pianos on Baghdad and killed 13-year-olds, but in the end we went with bombs just because Raytheon don't make pianos.
00:38:49.000And I wandered into a course in international politics taught by a man named Joseph Korbel.
00:40:08.000If we want to bomb innocent children, or if we want policies that will lead to the starvation of half a million Iraqi people, you go, girl!
00:40:27.000And then we decided it doesn't ultimately matter because the same policies will be pursued regardless of which administration is in power and we're all funded by the same people.
00:40:35.000So we overcame differences and we did this video.
00:40:38.000All bomb kids together at the end of the day.
00:41:13.000The skills required to be a person operating at that level of government ain't going to apply if you're running like a bicycle shop or a CAF somewhere.
00:41:23.000Because those are skills that are backed by state power and the potential for monumental and monstrous violence.
00:41:34.000I should mention actually that Madeleine Albright did die last year, so God rest her eternal soul.
00:41:38.000It's not a criticism of her as an individual, it's more a critique on the vacuous, vapid, artificial, superficial, manipulative, propagandist nature of contemporary politics, where figures that participated in the large-scale annihilation and murder of innocent people can be trotted out as diplomats.
00:41:56.000Also note that it doesn't matter which team they're on, the whole thing's just a ludicrous spectacle.
00:42:01.000So the video's about that and with all due respect to Madame Norbright and people that are grieving her death.
00:42:06.000Perhaps the most notorious episode in Albright's career came in 1996 when she was asked on the CBS program 60 Minutes
00:42:12.000about the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children because of severe economic sanctions imposed on that country as part
00:42:18.000of an effort to undermine the regime of Saddam Hussein.
00:42:21.000More children have died in Iraq than Hiroshima, interviewer Leslie Stahl said.
00:42:25.000The price was worth it, Albright responded.
00:42:27.000I suppose that's the nature of international diplomacy is you have to be willing to sanction the death of half a
00:42:33.000million children and then say it was worth it.
00:42:38.000The colossal death toll among Iraqi children will be repeatedly cited by Islamic fundamentalists like Osama Bin Laden as a reason for their shift from alliance with the United States during the U.S.-backed guerrilla war against Soviet military forces in Afghanistan to targeting the U.S.
00:42:55.000massacre of innocents became the pretext for al-Qaeda's Some people would say there is no objective reality, there are merely narratives that we're invited to participate in.
00:43:05.000And the narrative we're being given here is one where one patriarchal figure stewards two daughters of different hues.
00:43:15.000A triumph of feminism against male power.
00:43:19.000A more chronologically accurate narrative is that sanctions imposed under Clinton and Albright led to deaths in Iraq and the cold response of Albright, it was a price worth paying, leads to Al Qaeda mobilizing against the United States and the 9-11 attacks, which are then in turn used to attack Saddam Hussein again for something he was nothing to do with.
00:43:41.000So in the end, what you're left with is a circle jerk of bogus diplomacy, senseless, needless attacks, resource-led attacks, many people would say, on Iraq.
00:43:51.000And at the end of it, you're asked to believe, oh, look, sisters are doing it for themselves.
00:43:57.000Albright's vociferous support of violence and regime change as US policy helped set the stage for the war that took place a few years later after she departed the government.
00:44:05.000In 1998, she expounded on America's right to bomb Iraq, proclaiming, if we have to use force, it's because we're America.
00:44:13.000We stand tall, and we see further than other countries into the future.
00:44:17.000But remember, if you're an ordinary American person, you may not be benefiting from that hubris, because you know that America is now a country in decline, and ordinary people are neglected and maligned.
00:44:28.000In a sense, when they say America, they mean American elites.
00:44:32.000And those, if you ask me, are globalist elites.
00:44:34.000We're invited to look at the contributions of these two women as a great achievement for their gender, a great achievement for their sex, but actually, politically, their actions led to a series of violent exchanges between America and the Middle East, millions of people dying in Iraq unnecessarily, attacks on America provoked By that action, ordinary American service people losing their lives.
00:44:58.000And then a few years later, they're trotted out to talk about it as if there's a real victory for women in the workplace.
00:45:05.000I don't think this can be seen as a victory for women in the workplace unless the workplace is Guantanamo Bay or the rubble of Baghdad and the victory includes dead children.
00:46:34.000They say Elon Musk will merge Truth Social, Rumble and Twitter together to make one super.
00:46:41.000Elon Musk would be able to do that because, in a sense, he's like part Willy Wonka, part Steve Jobs, part Donald Trump, I mean, part Richard Branson.
00:46:51.000He's sort of an incredible figure, so yeah, if anyone can do it, he can.
00:46:55.000So, Gareth, this story, the masterclass Madeleine Albright Condoleezza Rice story that's sort of presented in a very particular way using, I would say, cultural ephemera to underwrite the Well, deny and distract from underlying power and, you know, massacre.
00:47:16.000Tell us a bit more about it, like, doesn't Bill Clinton enter into this tale at some point?
00:47:22.000Yeah, I mean, I guess we're talking about Madeleine Albright serving under Bill Clinton and we've talked about, you know, post 9-11 and the kind of effects of Of this, um, foreign policy with Iraq, but I just thought it'd be interesting to look a bit of context as how some of these airstrikes happened in the first place and the kind of justification for them.
00:47:49.000On December 16, 1998, President Bill Clinton announces he has ordered airstrikes against Iraq because it refused to cooperate with the United Nations weapons inspectors.
00:47:57.000Clinton's decision did not have the support of key members of Congress, who accused Clinton of using the airstrikes to direct attention away from ongoing impeachment proceedings against him.
00:48:05.000Just the day before, the House of Representatives had issued a report accusing Clinton of committing high crimes and misdemeanors relating to the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
00:48:13.000At the time of the airstrikes, Iraq was resisting unfettered access by UN inspectors to its alleged operations to build weapons of mass destruction.
00:48:20.000After repeatedly refusing the inspectors access to certain sites, Clinton resorted to airstrikes to compel Hussein to cooperate, apparently.
00:48:27.000In a minute we're going to be talking to Annie Mashon, former MI5 spy, whose name I've been saying incorrectly.
00:48:52.000Like Daniel Hale, for example, whose one of his revelations was 90% of airstrikes, drone strikes specifically, in Afghanistan did not kill their intended target.
00:49:43.000What kind of business interest did Madeleine Albright have?
00:49:46.000As well as being, of course, a glass ceiling, smashing femme fatale, girl boss, what other business interest did she have?
00:49:54.000Right, well this is from The Intercept.
00:49:55.000After leaving office, Albright followed the standard path of self-enrichment for figures with her pedigree.
00:50:01.000She founded the Albright Stonebridge Group, a global strategic advisory and commercial diplomacy firm, and its partner firm, Albright Capital.
00:50:08.000Washington is full of such enterprises which allow former public officials to leverage their connections they made while espousing democracy and human rights for less rosy business ends.
00:50:17.000Among Albright Stonebridge's many clients is Pfizer, During the last years of her life, Albright was doggedly urging the Biden administration during the midst of the coronavirus pandemic to protect American intellectual property.
00:50:29.000So it's very much she did, you know, profited and did well out of that.
00:50:33.000Another one, Albright was a longtime brand ambassador for Herbal Life Nutrition, a dietary supplement company.
00:50:38.000According to the New York Post, she was paid $10 million for these efforts over six years.
00:50:43.000In a 2016 settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, Herb Life agreed to pay $200 million in response to charges that it deceived customers into participating as the dupes into a pyramid scheme.
00:50:55.000Yeah, I suppose that's why it's interesting for us to be able to talk to someone like Annie Mashon, who's been on the inside of a deep state organisation, if indeed you like that term.
00:51:00.000Someone who's worked for the MI5, Real Life Spice.
00:51:02.000Dingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingalingaling Who's able to give us insight into the reality of those organizations because at the moment Julian Assange is still in prison, Edward Snowden is exiled in Russia, not the first place that he sought refuge obviously, and these stories are ongoing because we live in a time of continual conflict where there's seeming espionage and sabotage all around us.
00:51:39.000Hey, we're going to talk to Annie in a minute.
00:51:42.000Before that, I want to let you know that we do podcasts every week.
00:51:46.000I do a meditation one, Stay Awake, and it's called that, even when I'm trying to get you to fall asleep.
00:51:51.000And as well as this show is available as a podcast, you can listen to it anywhere.
00:51:56.000And I do Subcutaneous, which is a replacement for Under the Skin, where we have a deep Interview.
00:52:01.000So some of the stuff we stream on here, like conversations with Eckhart Tolle coming up and Elon Musk coming up, we stream about like 40 minutes of it.
00:52:09.000And then we do additional content with the guest in Stay Free AF, which is our members area.
00:52:15.000Have a look at this conversation that we had with Wim Hof on Subcutaneous.
00:52:21.000And in particular, Wim's camera technique.
00:52:41.000It's a western country and when you go walk in Vancouver, beautiful!
00:52:47.000And then you walk into that avenue There you see all these people, homeless, in some tents and they're victims of the pharmaceutical painkiller industry.
00:53:03.000Yeah, modern-day shaman, but his relationship with the camera is, I would say, erratic.
00:53:32.000One of the things I think people don't understand, or certainly I hadn't formally understood, was that actually, as a whistleblower, you place yourself in incredible danger.
00:53:42.000When you first revealed that there'd been illegal activity within MI5, including files being kept on journalists and illegal phone tapping, didn't you have to literally go on the run and fear for your life and think that you were going to get assassinated, like in a film?
00:54:38.000Hey, listen though, I don't want to get pulled into that area because wasn't there a plan to assassinate Gaddafi and wasn't that one of the things that you revealed?
00:54:46.000And I'd like to understand a little bit, if I may, what the process is like of recognising that you have powerful information and what the cost will be of revealing that information and how you undertook that decision and what kind of conversations presumably you and David had before deciding to go public with it.
00:55:02.000It was a very long and difficult process.
00:55:06.000We saw things going wrong in three different sections, and they got significantly worse, culminating in the Gaddafi plot, where MI6 funded, illegally, a branch of al-Qaeda in Libya to try and assassinate Gaddafi.
00:55:19.000And it went wrong and killed innocent people.
00:55:20.000Now, you can't think of anything much more heinous than that.
00:55:23.000So we tried to raise our concerns on the inside.
00:55:25.000And we were just told to shut up and just follow orders.
00:55:29.000So at that point, we thought we've got to do something about this and try and create a little bit of a scandal, get people saying there must be a proper inquiry, tightening up the oversight of the spies, that sort of thing.
00:55:38.000But we also knew that the price we pay would be very, very high.
00:55:41.000So most whistleblowers from other sectors will lose their jobs, their professional reputations.
00:56:01.000What's extraordinary about that is that it feels like it belongs in the realm of fiction and fantasy, and indeed in the current discourse in particular, in the realm of conspiracy, that if you were to say that MI5 are funding a branch of Al-Qaeda in order that they will assassinate Gaddafi, but they've bungled it!
00:56:23.000That seems like stuff that you'd make up to discredit MI5, but it's actually happening.
00:56:28.000How much have we become accustomed to criminality within government agencies like CIA, FBI, MI5?
00:56:37.000And how much have we become, in a sense, inured to criminality as part of foreign policy?
00:57:27.000So that shows a very dangerous moral slide, I think, and a numbing of our sensibilities in the West about what might happen to people in other countries.
00:57:35.000I think this numbing is pretty immersive and pervasive.
00:57:40.000You know that when Gaddafi was assassinated I remember seeing his corpse like
00:57:45.000Jostled about like some grim grizzly version of weekend at Bernie's then
00:57:50.000Like I'm seeing him at speaking at some Arabian summit before saying listen. I think we're in some trouble
00:57:57.000They've killed Saddam Hussein. I think they're gonna kill all of us
00:58:00.000I I suppose it makes me feel that there are various strata of power in continual operation.
00:58:08.000When we spoke to Yanis Varoufakis on the show recently, that's coming up as a podcast on Stay Free AF, he helped me to understand that there is a global financial elite that are immune to taxes and trade laws and penalties when their actions go wrong.
00:58:26.000It seems that similarly there are deep state relationships that are not penetrated by ordinary morality or even law.
00:58:37.000These presumed resource wars that we talk about You know, the petrodollar wars, the persecution of Libya.
00:58:46.000Is this something that you know about as a result of your work since leaving MI5 and now being a kind of advocate for other whistleblowers?
00:59:20.000What do you do in your whistle-blowing alliance, and how do you know, what sort of stuff do you know about these, like, resource war petrodollar schemes?
00:59:30.000Well, a lot of the people in Sam Adams tend to be American intelligence whistleblowers.
00:59:34.000So you tend to hear a lot about the deep state, as it's called, working in America.
00:59:38.000Now, one of the fascinating organizations was a think tank of right-wing neocons that was set up at the end of the last century.
00:59:46.000I think it's now defunct, but it was called the Project for the New American Century.
01:00:22.000You'd need some event to underwrite that.
01:00:25.000So, like, what kind of speculation and contemplation does that lead us towards, may I ask, Annie?
01:00:30.000It certainly leads us towards the conclusion that the media is very easily manipulated and controlled.
01:00:35.000Because if you remember in the run-up to the Iraq war, all this weapons of mass destruction and Britain is only 45 minutes from Armageddon and things like that.
01:00:43.000So there was a stampede to war, even though it has subsequently been disclosed that Tony Blair had already made a deal, I think it was way back in April 2002, that he would support Bush in his endeavours across the Middle East.
01:00:53.000What you've said there is so unpatriotic, it's actually brought the pound down a little bit there.
01:01:08.000So even at that time, we're always sort of given this idea that our children are getting hurt, women's rights, We're given these cultural ideas which are valuable and that's why we're sold these ideas.
01:01:19.000They're important ideas for the protection of children, equality of people regardless of their identity, necessary, important, ethical conversations and ideals.
01:01:30.000But often what's being masked is the relentless pursuit of power and resources and peculiar submerged schematics.
01:01:49.000So if we look at the justification for wars, we're all, you know, told massive lies which have been exposed now to go into Iraq or the fact that Syria is using chemical weapons and All that sort of thing, or Russiagate, that was another biggie, when they were trying to corral Trump into stopping his attack against the CIA.
01:02:05.000One of the big ones at the moment though, is that privacy is a basic human right, but that is being eroded massively, particularly on our lives online.
01:02:15.000We have to live online now, it's not a choice because of post-Covid, we've got used to it.
01:02:21.000People, you know, say this narrative that if you're doing nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide.
01:02:29.000It doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong.
01:02:31.000But without privacy, you can't operate.
01:02:33.000You can't inform yourself and articulate and have freedom of expression as an individual.
01:02:38.000And if you lose that basic right as an individual, that erodes the very concept of a functioning society and a functioning democracy because you can't share information.
01:02:46.000It might have an ontological impact, even in the nature of your being.
01:02:50.000We were talking the other day about Jeremy Bentham's, is it Panopticon?
01:02:54.000Panopticon, that idea of Foucault's, or that Foucault's, some Foucaulian philosophy derived from that, the idea that when you're under constant observation the very nature of yourself is Challenged.
01:03:06.000And I sometimes feel that partly what we're trying to do with this channel is generate a movement where people had the confidence to say that we declare independence from the state.
01:03:17.000We declare independence from the system.
01:03:19.000We don't want to be part of it anymore.
01:03:21.000In the same way as we've had revolutions on the basis of political ideology or cultural or religious ideology in the past where people have said, I don't want to be part of this.
01:03:29.000That we ought to establish the tools for people to declare their independence.
01:03:34.000Not give them an ideology, because some people might want to do it on the basis of religion, or there could be any ideology at its centre, but the right for people to opt out of a sort of fully immersive, tyrannical experience that we're being...
01:03:48.000...presented as if it's somehow progress, as if it's a progress in terms of technology and medicine and cultural understanding, when it seems that what's behind it are very, very old ideas indeed.
01:03:59.000Annie, does it make you cynical and sceptical about current geopolitical conflict, knowing what you know about the machinations that were concealed with previous wars?
01:04:07.000I'm obviously referring to the war in Ukraine.
01:04:09.000The potential sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline and just simply the way that the media cooperate with narratives that benefit people that are currently in power.
01:04:23.000It gives me a certain different perspective when I'm looking at current affairs but I still feel a sense of hope and this is partly why I focus very much on online human rights now as well because if we can learn and get these different perspectives I'm not talking about you know going down some weird rabbit hole But just be aware that the mainstream media can peddle lies.
01:04:44.000We can build a greater sense of community globally with all sorts of dissident groups and people who are concerned about the direction of societies.
01:04:52.000And that is very empowering, which is why they're trying to, they, the elites, are trying to strip out our access to that sort of information.
01:04:59.000So, for example, if you think about the hacker community or hacktivist community, they are effectively opting out of the mainstream thinking about how we use technology.
01:05:09.000So most people don't even know that you don't have to live on Microsoft or Apple software.
01:05:14.000You can actually move on to something like open source software, which is much more secure.
01:05:19.000All the code is out there in the public, which is why it's called open source.
01:05:22.000And it means that a global community of geeks and hacktivists can read that code, And make sure there are no nasty spy back doors built into it, or criminal attacks going into it, or anything like that.
01:05:34.000So it's much more secure, but so few people even know of its existence.
01:05:38.000So it's arguing that there are alternatives.
01:05:40.000I mean, that's just one particular example.
01:06:28.000I mean, why the concept of privacy is so important, what the main threats are to it, which I call the dark triad of the intelligence agencies, state actors, criminals, and the corporations who harvest our data.
01:06:52.000You know, you don't have to be this data farmed consumer online.
01:06:56.000You can take very basic steps, very easy steps to protect yourself, your family, your community.
01:07:01.000And we can get governments as well to do that sort of thing.
01:07:03.000If we can, you know, lobby hard enough.
01:07:05.000Yeah, that's really lovely and quite inspiring and encouraging.
01:07:08.000Now that you've evaded death in spite of betraying MI5, and may I say, Her Majesty, God rest her soul, do you see yourself as invincible and that you can trot around the world, doing as you wish, free from the threat of assassination?
01:07:22.000I wouldn't say that, having only recently fallen down and broken my arm.
01:07:56.000But no, I have been globetrotting over many, many years now and talking about a lot of stuff, but I do know very clear boundaries around the limits of the Official Secrets Act in the UK.
01:08:06.000Well, if I come up with new information I learnt on the inside, they will automatically prosecute me and stick me in prison for two years at the moment.
01:08:12.000Although they're trying to tighten up that law and make it 14 years in prison.
01:08:25.000I'm trying to walk a line of awakening as many people as I can within our limitations while acknowledging my own fallibility so that communities begin to form and individual power becomes less significant.
01:08:36.000Individual rights, yes, are important.
01:08:39.000But like, I don't want to get myself in a position where I'm knotted off or I'm slipping about over a salad or something.
01:08:44.000You might do yourself some damage, son.
01:08:46.000You might be cutting up a carrot and find yourself in a little pickle one of these days.
01:08:54.000Sometimes I suppose many of us question whether or not we would be brave enough to pursue our ideals when the consequences are so fearsome.
01:09:04.000I think, you know, many people, many, many people try and affect change by going public about what they see is wrong, even if it's just internal within the organisation.
01:09:22.000I mean, the sheer scale of what he exposed, it was sort of proof of all the deep, you know, fears that many other whistleblowers had had up to that point.
01:09:30.000Suddenly we knew about programmes like PRISM or TEMPRA that hoovered up all our information between North America and Europe illegally.
01:09:37.000And suddenly we knew about a hideous programme called Optic Nerve.
01:10:47.000If you're being an optic perv, you don't want an optic nerve prying down your spile.
01:10:51.000Do you remember that thing in Citizen Four when Snowden's revelations came to light and they made a film about it with Glenn Green, old friend of the show?
01:11:01.000There's a moment where he's in the hotel room and he's like, there'll be stuff in this!
01:11:04.000He's just picking up objects from around the room going, this phone, this'll be bugged, they can watch you through that!
01:11:10.000Reality looks different to him because he's been exposed to a layer of truth that most of us necessarily ignore.
01:11:16.000That's why the question of the show is, is this the age of fake narratives and bullshit distractions?
01:11:20.000Precisely because, in a sense, it is uncomfortable to confront that.
01:11:34.000There are no self-sabotaging acts in order to undergird military action in foreign countries.
01:11:41.000You want to believe that they're good people.
01:11:42.000You know, because this is It's recently, your discoveries and actions are recent enough for us to conject that perhaps there haven't been hugely significant changes in the last 30 years.
01:11:55.000You know, I feel like when Donald Trump said things like, well you think we don't do stuff like that?
01:12:00.000That's why, that was what I think broke through.
01:12:03.000This is a politician that's not like other politicians.
01:12:06.000Even though I would ultimately argue that economically, this is a dude that's not going to help ordinary Americans.
01:12:46.000One of the organizations out of many I work with and campaign with is called the World Ethical Data Foundation, where we're trying to develop tools that will ensure easy access to information and future proof data, so that everyone who needs to know things about, for example, human rights, can find a way to do it securely, no matter what the threat is that they might face in their home country.
01:13:05.000And we also have a forum coming up at the end of this month.
01:13:08.000And the idea is to get people from all sorts of different specialities and expertise.
01:13:12.000So not just, you know, tech corporations or government people, But whistleblowers and journalists and philosophers and futurists and even sci-fi writers to try and predict what's going to happen and just mash up all these ideas and come up with something creative and new rather than something that's old and stale and, you know, you just get trapped in that paranoid paradigm without seeing that there may be hope to break out of it and perhaps try a new system, perhaps try something new.
01:13:38.000So that's what a lot of us are aiming to do.
01:13:41.000We'll make sure that there's a link in the description to all of the things that you have mentioned, the groups and organisations and of course here's Annie's book again and we'll put a link up for Annie's book The Privacy Mission as well.
01:13:53.000Thank you so much for joining us today.
01:13:56.000Thanks for giving us that information in such an easy to understand and occasionally Rather dramatic way.
01:14:03.000I wish we'd had a little bit more time to get into the farmhouse.
01:14:05.000I wish I'd had a bit more time to say, do you see someone across the road, sort of talking into their sleeve, going, and you think, oh, shit!
01:14:37.000There's a small yearly fee and you can get access to all of our additional content coming up.
01:14:42.000Over the course of this week we've got a wonderful deep dive into Elon Musk, not literally, into Elon Musk's current media activity, his tweets about Ukraine and Russia.
01:14:54.000Is it possible, should Elon Musk have the right to free speech?
01:14:57.000What do you mean when you say that you back Ukraine?
01:15:00.000Do you mean back Ukraine all the way to Armageddon?
01:15:02.000These are questions and conversations that we want to have.
01:15:05.000Yanis Varoufakis is coming up on the show.
01:15:06.000He talks to us a lot about international finance and most importantly, please remain with us.
01:15:13.000Stay with us because we're going to continue to chat and look at some of your, we're going to answer some of your questions on Stay Free AF.