Stay Free - Russel Brand - Stay Free with Russell Brand #015 - So Who DID Sabotage Nord Stream? Plus Vandana Shiva

00:00:00.000 I'm going to go ahead and get the camera.

00:00:26.000 I'm going to get the camera.

00:10:06.000 In this video, you're going to see the C-Circuit.

00:10:16.000 Hello and welcome to Stay Free with Russell Brand.

00:10:20.000 It's a very special episode, as you know by now, on Tuesdays.

00:10:24.000 What we do is we bring you a legit piece of exclusive content, a deep conversation.

00:10:29.000 Today it's with Vandana Shiva.

00:10:32.000 You are going to love this conversation.

00:10:33.000 Members of the Stay Free AF community joined us for that conversation live and it was absolutely fantastic.

00:10:40.000 We Bring some of your questions to Vandana, and I'm going to be telling you over the coming week about a unique and fantastic competition that we are going to be running that gives you a chance to attend Vandana Shiva's university and take a course there.

00:10:54.000 Can you imagine that?

00:10:55.000 We're going to be talking to Vandana about her new book, Terra Viva, and Subhi joins me here, passing on your questions to Vandana Shiva.

00:11:05.000 Of course, we'll be doing Here's the News.

00:11:06.000 No, Here's the Effing News.

00:11:08.000 I can't bring myself to swear because I've just now finished the conversation with Vandana and it's like a kind of cleanse.

00:11:14.000 Whenever I speak to Van... What did you do down there?

00:11:16.000 Sorry, I was coughing.

00:11:17.000 I was trying to drink some water.

00:11:18.000 You went just down there to have a little bit of a cough, did you?

00:11:20.000 I mean, you just disappeared out of my life and I just heard the most bizarre noises emerging.

00:11:26.000 I tried to do it without, like, touching your eyeline.

00:11:26.000 Sorry.

00:11:28.000 You were doing some weird stuff, you.

00:11:29.000 That's what I'm starting to say.

00:11:30.000 Whenever we have you in these rooms, you say weird things, you disappear behind that pulpit.

00:11:35.000 I've heard gulping.

00:11:37.000 It was absolutely terrifying what just went on there.

00:11:40.000 You're an extraordinary person.

00:11:42.000 Of course, so, hey, listen, we need you to hit that rumble button right now whenever you watch our content do that.

00:11:49.000 And if you want to make a donation to us, any money you donate to us goes to great causes.

00:11:53.000 It helps mentally ill people through our Stay Free Foundation.

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00:11:59.000 People will get helped.

00:12:01.000 We're involved in all sorts of fantastic campaigns and ideas.

00:12:04.000 To change the world.

00:12:05.000 Increasingly I'm learning that the only way we're going to change the world is by setting up systems outside of the current dominion.

00:12:12.000 Whether that's through elevating our own consciousness through meditation, or through participating with new leaders in new ideas.

00:12:19.000 And Vandana is one such leader.

00:12:22.000 So if you don't have this book yet, get this book now.

00:12:24.000 We'll give this away as a competition as well.

00:12:26.000 We'll give this book to whoever in the competition can answer the question... Hold on a second, let me find something for you.

00:12:34.000 Ah, yes.

00:12:35.000 What does Vandana Shiva say that GMO, which stands for Genetically Modified Organism, what does Vandana say it should really stand for?

00:12:44.000 The first person to answer that question, we will send you this book.

00:12:48.000 Unfortunately, it won't be signed by Vandana because we've already got it here.

00:12:53.000 One way you can change your life is through regular meditation.

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00:13:00.000 Have a look.

00:13:01.000 Hello and welcome to Stay Awake with Russell Brand.

00:13:04.000 This is my weekly guided meditation.

00:13:11.000 Well, it's time now to have a deeper look at the news for today.

00:13:15.000 A explicit look at the stories that affect us all, whether it's the military-industrial complex, big media, big government, big food, centralised corporate globalism, big tech, the military-industrial complex.

00:13:28.000 We give you the news that the news will not give you, and we give you techniques and tools to awaken yourself.

00:13:35.000 Here's the news.

00:13:36.000 No, here's the effing news.

00:13:38.000 Thank you for choosing Fox News.

00:13:40.000 Here's the news. 1.00

00:13:41.000 No, here's the fucking news. 0.99

00:13:43.000 Who blew up the Nord Stream 2 pipeline? 0.99

00:13:47.000 Was it America?

00:13:48.000 Was it Russia?

00:13:49.000 Sweden have done an investigation, but it's too top secret for us ever to know about it.

00:13:54.000 Luckily, the mainstream media can be relied upon to tell us the absolute truth in an unbiased way.

00:14:03.000 Let's have a deeper look at what's happening with the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and Sweden's investigation that was so secret they can't even tell us about it.

00:14:10.000 All we'd love to tell you about is too secret.

00:14:12.000 This Volvo we've made so safe you can't even get in it.

00:14:15.000 Right, let's see what's going on with this bloody pipeline.

00:14:18.000 This is from FAIR who are a media watchdog who look at the way the information is conveyed so that we can assess whether or not we're being given biased or honest information.

00:14:26.000 The Nord Stream explosions triggered a lopsided whodunit in US media, with commentators almost universally fingering Russia as the culprit, despite the lack of a plausible motive.

00:14:35.000 Russia get blamed for bloody everything these days, eh?

00:14:38.000 They're collaborating with Trump, they're dabbling in elections.

00:14:41.000 Official US opposition to the pipeline has been well established over the years, giving Washington ample motive to destroy the pipelines, but most newsrooms uniformly suppress this history and attack those who raised it.

00:14:53.000 Okay, so we know that in the past America have said that it's part of their long-term economic and geopolitical strategy to ensure that Europe gets its energy needs met through North America.

00:15:05.000 If this was a murder mystery, you'd have to get M. Night Shyamalan, or however he's called, involved to make it a bit more mysterious, because at the moment, it's really obvious.

00:15:14.000 It'll be like... At the beginning of Usual Suspects, Kevin Spacey going, look, I'm Kaiser Soze, do what I fucking tell ya, I'm putting this limp on.

00:15:22.000 Tonight, European leaders are accusing Russia of sabotaging two underwater gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea.

00:15:29.000 Authorities are investigating the leaks in the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, a vital source of natural gas for Europe.

00:15:35.000 Wouldn't you like the news just to say, look, it's a bit weird, like, if it ain't America, this is what the news

00:15:41.000 should look like.

00:15:42.000 For ages, we've been saying stuff like, it would be to our advantage if those pipelines were exploded,

00:15:46.000 but in some weird, almost unbelievable coincidence, Russia have done it for reasons that are not clear.

00:15:52.000 For the latest on the war in Ukraine and more apparent sabotage from Russia on the critical Nord Stream pipeline.

00:15:57.000 The US calling this a deliberate act of sabotage while NATO threatens to retaliate.

00:16:02.000 Russia have done this on purpose to themselves making a gaseous fried egg like bubbly explosion on the surface of the Baltic Sea for no real reason and it is super convenient for us. 0.77

00:16:13.000 I like them, sunny side up.

00:16:14.000 Our next guest wrote the book on Putin's playbook and says all signs point to Russia.

00:16:20.000 Any guest that says, I think America might have done it, won't be allowed on the show.

00:16:24.000 Quite a statement as well.

00:16:25.000 So there's no balance, there's no transparency, there's no honesty, there's no willingness to examine both sides of any argument.

00:16:34.000 I think that the culture war is exacerbated by the lack of willingness for people from different cultural positions to have discussions, let alone with something complex like a After the explosions, much of the press dutifully parroted the Western official line.

00:16:47.000 The Washington Post quickly produced an account, citing nothing but EU officials who claimed that while they had no evidence of Russian involvement, only Russia had the motivation, the submersible equipment and the capability.

00:17:03.000 Who around here has submersible equipment?

00:17:05.000 I don't know.

00:17:06.000 Does that mean submarines?

00:17:07.000 Pretty much every developed military nation?

00:17:10.000 Yeah, but who would mostly do it?

00:17:12.000 It's the Russians, isn't it? 1.00

00:17:13.000 Much of the media cast their suspicion towards Russia, including Bloomberg, Vox, Associated Press, and much of cable news.

00:17:20.000 With few exceptions, speculation on US involvement has seemingly been deemed an intellectual no-fly zone.

00:17:25.000 Why would you not at least cover the possibility that seems most likely?

00:17:30.000 I suppose these stories in the end become an opportunity to witness in real time the way that media and state imperatives co-align and operate together.

00:17:40.000 You're simply not allowed to countenance the possibility of complexity.

00:17:45.000 The idea that only Russia had the means and motivation is clearly false on both counts.

00:17:49.000 Washington has made it clear for years it doesn't want the pipeline and has taken active measures to stop it coming online.

00:17:55.000 As for the means, it's painfully absurd to suggest the US doesn't have the capability to lay explosives in 200 feet of water.

00:18:02.000 You get Joe Biden on the news saying that if you don't do exactly as we say there's going to be a nuclear war, then they're saying they can't blow up something just because it's in a fish tank.

00:18:10.000 Any serious coverage of the Nord Stream attack should acknowledge that opposition to the pipeline has been the centerpiece of the US grand strategy in Europe.

00:18:18.000 They've never liked that pipeline.

00:18:19.000 They've never liked it. 1.00

00:18:21.000 At least they'd be going, we're glad that fucking pipeline's blown up. 0.99

00:18:24.000 That's the minimum. 0.99

00:18:25.000 Oh my God, that pipeline, that's fantastic.

00:18:27.000 Oh, I'm devastated for it.

00:18:28.000 Let's get a new pipeline in there as quickly as possible. 0.98

00:18:31.000 That's one of my most favorite parts.

00:18:32.000 I mean, I thought I liked Nord Stream Pipeline 1, but 2 was so much better.

00:18:36.000 Oh God.

00:18:37.000 The long-term goal has been to keep Russia isolated and disjointed from Europe, and to keep the countries of Europe tied to US markets.

00:18:43.000 Ever since German and Russian energy companies signed a deal to begin development on Nord Stream 2, the entire machinery of Washington has been working overtime to scuttle it.

00:18:51.000 We've gotta scuttle this!

00:18:52.000 We've gotta scuttle it!

00:18:54.000 What was that noise?

00:18:55.000 Oh, wow!

00:18:56.000 By coincidence, it's just blown up!

00:18:58.000 Well, guess we don't need to scuttle it no more!

00:19:01.000 A 2019 Pentagon-funded study from the RAND Corporation on how best to exploit Russia's economic, political and military vulnerabilities and anxieties.

00:19:09.000 Bit of all this is their anxieties as well.

00:19:10.000 Why don't we just tell them they're not good enough, that their mum never loved them and that the reason their dad left was their fault?

00:19:15.000 Oh, this is very good.

00:19:17.000 Included a recommendation to reduce Russian natural gas exports and hinder pipeline expansions.

00:19:17.000 Very good.

00:19:23.000 That means you can literally point to a report from the RAND Corporation going, well, what about this bit here where it says hinder pipeline expansions?

00:19:31.000 Oh, no, no, we were like that was just that's a poem.

00:19:35.000 That's a poem that I wrote there.

00:19:37.000 The pipeline is a metaphor for The study noted that a first step would involve stopping Nord Stream 2.

00:19:43.000 That's their first step!

00:19:44.000 That's their priority.

00:19:45.000 Well, first and foremost in our study of how to exploit military vulnerabilities and anxieties is stop, gas, and hinder pipeline expansions, and point one, Nord Stream 2.

00:19:55.000 Look, how do you explain this?

00:19:58.000 As I say, this is a poem, this is abstract, all these things are metaphors.

00:20:02.000 But Putin, oh, that guy, this is right out of his playbook, you know, the way that he blows up his own pipelines and sabotages his own economic interest. 0.98

00:20:10.000 Crazy! 0.64

00:20:12.000 You know, Putin, that natural gas from the United States and Australia could provide a substitute. 0.90

00:20:16.000 So they had a motive and they've sort of admitted they were going to do it.

00:20:20.000 And I've got a study that they paid for that says that it's their number one priority.

00:20:25.000 Let's look at the rest of this like it's a sort of court case that we're trying to work out.

00:20:28.000 Was it Russia or was it the United States?

00:20:30.000 We should just base it on evidence.

00:20:31.000 And FAIR, they're like an organisation that are about media bias.

00:20:35.000 You can't trust the mainstream media.

00:20:36.000 You know that already.

00:20:37.000 That's why you're watching us.

00:20:39.000 Even in spite of my obvious flaws and fallibilities, I think what you trust is I'm trying my best and I care about you, human to human.

00:20:47.000 In spite of the fact that I'll obviously make mistakes along the way, I'm not going to deliberately Lie to you because of my own economic interests because I've always hated that pipeline.

00:20:54.000 Imagine if you found out I'd blown out that pipeline. 0.95

00:20:56.000 Fucking hell, that guy, he took us on a journey but I haven't done it because I actually don't have the submersive. 0.98

00:21:02.000 I haven't got a submarine out the back. 0.99

00:21:04.000 We're at full pace just trying to deliver this video.

00:21:08.000 This is the best we can do.

00:21:10.000 The Iran study also prophetically recommended providing more US military equipment and advice to Ukraine.

00:21:16.000 Haha, advice!

00:21:17.000 Do you know what you should do?

00:21:19.000 Have a war with Russia. 1.00

00:21:21.000 And also, let's fuck up that pipeline. 1.00

00:21:24.000 What did you say about pipeline? 0.99

00:21:25.000 Nothing.

00:21:26.000 Pipeline?

00:21:26.000 I don't think anybody said pipeline.

00:21:28.000 In order to lead Russia to increase its direct involvement in the conflict and the price it pays for it.

00:21:33.000 Even though it acknowledged that Russia might respond by mounting a new offensive and seizing more Ukrainian territory.

00:21:38.000 In a way, it was an extraordinarily prophetic document, that RAND study.

00:21:42.000 It's like telling you, they're going to blow up that pipeline, we're going to arm Ukraine, that's going to lead to military action. 0.99

00:21:49.000 So if concurrent with that, You can see that there were events in 2014, NATO impingement, like, whatever this is, and obviously I don't feel qualified to start attributing blame in a global conflict.

00:22:01.000 Who the hell is qualified to do that?

00:22:03.000 But it's pretty clear that it's not just, oh, we're all out of mind in our own business, just trying to live life to the full and everything, like in a vitamins advert.

00:22:11.000 And in Russia, for no reason, just started bombing Ukraine, and then blew up their own pipeline.

00:22:16.000 They're absolutely crackers! 0.99

00:22:18.000 Remember, this study has probably come from a bunch of lunatics with no influence in government. 0.99

00:22:23.000 Oh, the Pentagon. 0.86

00:22:25.000 That was studied by the Pentagon.

00:22:26.000 Yeah, but the Pentagon?

00:22:27.000 They're not involved in military activity, or funding foreign wars, or the strategies around American foreign policy, or a nexus for the relationship between military-industrial complex and the American military, are they?

00:22:39.000 Oh, no, that is what they are.

00:22:41.000 The Obama administration opposed the pipeline.

00:22:43.000 As part of the major sanctions package against Russia in 2017, the Trump administration began sanctioning any company doing work on the pipeline.

00:22:50.000 The move generated outrage in Germany, where many saw it as an attempt to meddle with European markets.

00:22:56.000 In 2019, the U.S.

00:22:57.000 implemented more sanctions on the project.

00:22:59.000 We're starting to build a case that's at least as strong as, oh, Putin.

00:23:04.000 He's crack at him. 1.00

00:23:05.000 He's the sort to slam his cock in a car's door just to cause an argument. 1.00

00:23:08.000 Fair enough. 1.00

00:23:09.000 There are crazy people in the world, and I'm sure some of those crazy people rise to positions of power.

00:23:14.000 But this is a pretty good rational, logical, cohesive argument for the US sabotage that pipeline, isn't it?

00:23:21.000 Not that I'm saying they did.

00:23:22.000 Yeah, but then Joe Biden came in.

00:23:23.000 That's a new broom.

00:23:24.000 You see Joe Biden.

00:23:26.000 He's sweeping with vitality, whether he's sniffing someone on the head or bringing in a new foreign policy.

00:23:26.000 He's a new broom.

00:23:32.000 Joe Biden won't let this crap carry on. 0.99

00:23:34.000 Let's see what he did. 0.99

00:23:35.000 When he came into office, Joe Biden made opposition to the pipeline one of his administration's top priorities.

00:23:42.000 One, we're against that pipeline.

00:23:43.000 And two, we'll say some stuff about cannabis and then not actually do it.

00:23:46.000 Come on, man.

00:23:47.000 Say some stuff about Saudi Arabia, not actually do it.

00:23:49.000 Come on, man.

00:23:50.000 Say some stuff about Big Pharma, not actually do it.

00:23:52.000 Come on, man.

00:23:53.000 But let's bloody well make sure we do something about that pipeline.

00:23:56.000 That pipeline's blown up.

00:23:57.000 We didn't do it.

00:23:58.000 During his confirmation hearings in 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Congress he was determined to do whatever I can to prevent Nord Stream 2 from being completed.

00:24:08.000 Like if someone had said that about like a wedding and then you'd found like the bridegroom with his head stoved in with a candlestick you'd go...

00:24:15.000 What about Antony Blinken who said he was determined to do whatever he can to prevent, like you go, oh well I mean god you've took that out of context.

00:24:22.000 Well here's the context to prevent the Nord Stream 2 from being completed.

00:24:26.000 Could we get some more context?

00:24:28.000 Less context?

00:24:28.000 There has to be an amount of context that's going to hide the fact that we We did this!

00:24:32.000 Months later, the State Department reiterated that any entity involved in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline risks U.S.

00:24:38.000 sanctions and should immediately abandon work on the pipeline.

00:24:41.000 As Russia was gathering troops at Ukraine's border at the beginning of the year, U.S.

00:24:46.000 administration officials issued threats against the pipeline's operation in the event of a Russian invasion.

00:24:51.000 In January, under the Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, one of the main players during the 2014 maiden coup in Ukraine, issued a stern warning against the pipeline.

00:25:00.000 If Russia invades one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.

00:25:06.000 How do you walk that back?

00:25:08.000 Well, hey, that pipeline's actually been blown up.

00:25:12.000 Do you know anything about this, Victoria?

00:25:14.000 Well, what about when you said, if Russia invades one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will, period, two, period, not, period, move, period, forward, period.

00:25:14.000 No?

00:25:22.000 That was a joke.

00:25:23.000 I was saying that sarcastically.

00:25:25.000 What you've not added there is inverted commas, an aubergine, a smiley face, and a monkey going like that.

00:25:31.000 That's what I meant to say.

00:25:31.000 In sharp contrast to the US's antagonism, Russia has taken the opposite approach to the pipeline it spent billions of dollars to complete.

00:25:40.000 As recently as three weeks ago, Putin expressed willingness to supply more gas if the EU would lift the sanctions against the newer pipeline.

00:25:47.000 He said, if things are so bad, just go ahead and lift sanctions against Nord Stream 2 with its 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year.

00:25:53.000 All they have to do is press the button and they will get it going.

00:25:55.000 Diplomatic sources told The Cradle that Russia and Germany were in talks about both NS1 and NS2 on the day of the explosion.

00:26:02.000 So like, one argument is that Russia did it while they were...

00:26:06.000 Economically dependent upon it, trying to protect it and guaranteeing its success.

00:26:11.000 The other one is that America did it after decades of threats that they were gonna do it.

00:26:17.000 This is why people don't trust the mainstream media because that isn't even being included in the conversation.

00:26:24.000 That's insane to me that you wouldn't make that clear.

00:26:27.000 All you can possibly argue at this point is, look, you lot, you don't know what you're talking about.

00:26:31.000 If Russia were in charge of the world, your life would be so much worse and you'd all have to wear, like, grey boiler suits, although I'd just sew stuff on it, I've been quite into it, and you wouldn't be happy. 0.99

00:26:41.000 So at this point, the only argument you can make is, even though America is tyrannical and despotic and uses consumer capitalism to keep people spellbound in a state of continual hypnosis, appeased only by our ability to access screens and sugar, it's better than what you'd get under Russia and China. 0.86

00:26:58.000 The one country, though, that does stick their oar in in weird places like Southeast Asia, North Korea, all over the gaff, is the one that's been saying stuff like, we'll blow up that pipeline just you try making a pipeline. 0.98

00:27:11.000 I'll fucking give you pipeline. 0.99

00:27:11.000 Pipeline? 0.99

00:27:13.000 I'll show you pipeline, you motherfucker. 1.00

00:27:15.000 I'll pipeline you till it hurts. 1.00

00:27:18.000 Like, That's the one that we should be investigating, isn't it?

00:27:22.000 The day after the attack, German government sources leaked to the German daily Der Spiegel that weeks earlier the CIA warned Germany of a potential attack on the pipeline.

00:27:29.000 However, sources told CNN that the warnings were vague and it was not clear from the warnings who might be responsible for any attacks on the pipelines.

00:27:39.000 Hello, my name is Vladimir Russia.

00:27:43.000 There's gonna be some attacks all over those pipelines, buddy.

00:27:46.000 I mean comrade.

00:27:47.000 So you Germans better get out of town. 1.00

00:27:51.000 I mean out of Brezhnev.

00:27:53.000 Now listen, it's a grrrr communism!

00:27:56.000 Sorry, this is a very vague and confusing threat.

00:27:59.000 Hang up, Joe! 0.99

00:28:00.000 Hang up! 0.97

00:28:03.000 A high-level source in German intelligence told The Cradle that they were furious because they were not in the loop.

00:28:08.000 After the attack, Blinken called the bombing a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy, and said that this offers tremendous strategic opportunity for years to come.

00:28:18.000 Bloody hell!

00:28:19.000 On the other hand, Russia has already announced plans to begin repairing the pipeline. 0.93

00:28:22.000 So, I mean, look, either Russia are so strategically engaged in this that it's like a total mindfuck beyond what I'm capable of handling, or America have simply made good on a series of threats, promises, and long-term plans that have been published and promoted by them.

00:28:41.000 Which is it?

00:28:42.000 The reality is that Russia has done its utmost to discourage NATO from further involvement in the war.

00:28:47.000 A Russian attack on the pipeline would all but guarantee greater NATO involvement in Ukraine.

00:28:52.000 Antagonising Germany to teach the rest of Europe a lesson. 0.90

00:28:54.000 Yeah, that's their financial partner in this.

00:28:56.000 Which would only work if Russia was understood to be behind the sabotage would be the opposite of Russia's interests.

00:29:01.000 This argument amounts a little more than Putin is evil and hates Europe.

00:29:04.000 And that is why, I suppose, they try to keep you in a saccharine, sentimental, and mawkish state.

00:29:11.000 Ah, poor Ukrainian people. 1.00

00:29:12.000 Yeah, of course, poor Ukrainian people. 1.00

00:29:14.000 Ah, Putin is evil. 0.99

00:29:16.000 Yeah, maybe Putin is evil. 0.89

00:29:17.000 But should we also look at this long litany of evidence that America have wanted to destroy that pipeline for a long time?

00:29:24.000 Don't include that!

00:29:25.000 That's disrespectful to the Ukrainians, and you're not acknowledging how evil Putin is.

00:29:30.000 Now, look over there at how evil Putin is, and how sad that war is, while I just do something 200 foot under the sea that only Russia could do, because they're the only ones with submarines and Navy SEALs.

00:29:40.000 I mean, whatever their Navy SEALs are.

00:29:42.000 And I'm going to be over here, not doing anything, under... Damn you, pipeline! 1.00

00:29:48.000 Right! 1.00

00:29:49.000 Now what the fuck's Putin been doing now? 1.00

00:29:51.000 Ah, you gun destroyed your own pipeline, you crazy son of a bitch! 1.00

00:29:55.000 So there you have it. 1.00

00:29:56.000 Who are you going to trust?

00:29:57.000 The mainstream media, the American government, and the military-industrial complex, or your own lying eyes and ears? 0.98

00:30:03.000 I think we should have a long look at both sides of the argument, then come to our own conclusion that it was Russia, because Putin is evil. 0.92

00:30:10.000 But that's just what I think.

00:30:10.000 Let me know what you think in the chat and the comments.

00:30:12.000 See you in a second.

00:30:13.000 Time now for our conversation with Vandana Shiva.

00:30:16.000 You are going to love this conversation.

00:30:17.000 Those of you that are members of the Stay Free AF community, you probably joined us.

00:30:21.000 Did you join us?

00:30:22.000 Let us know in the chat right now.

00:30:24.000 Let us know in the comments.

00:30:25.000 You will already know that it was a fantastic conversation.

00:30:27.000 We are going to do conversations like this every single week.

00:30:30.000 To get the conversation in full, remember, follow us on Stay Free AF.

00:30:37.000 Hello, Vandana Shiva.

00:30:38.000 Hello, Russell.

00:30:41.000 At this time where the world is consumed by a cost-of-living crisis, what role does the control of agriculture and big food play?

00:30:52.000 Do you feel that there is a concerted effort to exert control over the basic components of human life?

00:31:01.000 Well, you know, trained as a physicist, I wouldn't have dedicated the last four decades of my life trying to figure out The food and agriculture system that first is very violent.

00:31:16.000 It is based on instruments of war.

00:31:19.000 Otherwise, farmers of Punjab wouldn't have been dispossessed and got into debt.

00:31:25.000 Innocent women, children, men wouldn't have died in the city of Bhopal in 1984.

00:31:31.000 That's the year I started to study the agriculture system.

00:31:34.000 And I have not stopped since that time.

00:31:37.000 Big corporations had no role in growing food.

00:31:39.000 Growing food was an act of care, an act of love.

00:31:43.000 The corporations got into agriculture first after the wars.

00:31:48.000 Same corporations that made chemicals for Hitler's concentration camps, poison gases for the war. 0.65

00:31:56.000 Corporations that started to trade in food as a commodity rather than food as nourishment and food as life.

00:32:02.000 And then, of course, a bunch of them created junk food and ultra processed food that's responsible for 75% of the chronic diseases in our times.

00:32:13.000 Globalization, you know, the rules of WTO literally were rules of handing control over agriculture to them.

00:32:20.000 This has brought us the multiple crisis, including the fact that after the financial crisis, the Wall Street collapse of 2008, the financial system has got into food.

00:32:33.000 And if you look at the current cost of living crisis, whether it's energy or it's food, both basic needs should be public goods, should be regulated as public goods.

00:32:44.000 Most of the hype in the prices is related to speculation and financialization.

00:32:51.000 So food and agriculture have become another commodity, an outward node of the financial system as understood through trading, city trading.

00:33:04.000 I suppose it's another abstraction of life and another opportunity for control.

00:33:11.000 What is the role of Bill Gates and other big tech moguls and titans in this increasing Technologization.

00:33:23.000 That is indeed the correct phrase of food and agriculture.

00:33:26.000 So, you know, years ago, Gates visited India and visited our president.

00:33:34.000 And, you know, the Indian presidential palace is a leftover of the British rule.

00:33:38.000 And really brilliant banquets are put out for international guests.

00:33:44.000 And here was all this wonderful Indian food.

00:33:47.000 And Bill Gates ordered a hamburger.

00:33:50.000 Now, you know, that's the level of his food literacy.

00:33:55.000 How is he getting into the food system?

00:33:58.000 You know, two years ago, actually, no, a few years ago, he started to, A, try and control the seed.

00:34:09.000 And I know in England there is huge uproar around deregulation of GMOs, particularly the new GMOs which are called gene-edited.

00:34:18.000 But life is complex, self-organized.

00:34:21.000 It's not a word program which you can cut and paste with no consequence.

00:34:26.000 Every change in the editing, one gene editing, 1,500 other genes get destabilized.

00:34:34.000 And now the results are there because there's enough experimentation.

00:34:38.000 And the first company that brought a gene-edited food, Calix, was going to be an absolute big return on investment.

00:34:49.000 Well, it just collapsed about three days ago because you can't fake Growing food.

00:34:56.000 You can't fake self-organization of the seed.

00:34:59.000 So Gates started to try and control the seed through gene editing.

00:35:04.000 Monsanto had tried to control it through genetic engineering, you know, putting toxic genes into the plants and then taking a patent.

00:35:12.000 Gates is taking patents through editing.

00:35:17.000 And you can't edit.

00:35:18.000 It's a wrong term.

00:35:19.000 It's just the wrong term.

00:35:20.000 He actually has a company called Editas, which rakes in all the patents.

00:35:25.000 I mean, we know what happened with the vaccines.

00:35:28.000 The very people who were supposed to be regulating were taking the patents for the vaccines, rather than be detached, work in the public interest, work as independent regulators.

00:35:42.000 The second way in which Bill Gates is getting into agriculture is by what he calls digital agriculture.

00:35:48.000 You can't do digital agriculture.

00:35:50.000 Agriculture is about living seed.

00:35:51.000 It's about living thought.

00:35:52.000 It's about trillions of organisms, trillions of organisms outside and trillions in our gut.

00:35:59.000 What is he meaning by digital agriculture?

00:36:02.000 Basically a surveillance agriculture.

00:36:04.000 If the farmers first were forced to get addicted to chemicals and chemical fertilizers are what some of the most destructive elements in the world.

00:36:12.000 They're killing the oceans with dead zones.

00:36:15.000 They're leading to emissions of nitrous oxide.

00:36:17.000 which is 300 times more damaging to the climate.

00:36:21.000 And the soils are being killed because soil organisms need organic matter.

00:36:26.000 They don't want a chemical that was made first for explosives and ammunitions and is now being used for the soil.

00:36:35.000 Gates is taking the next step after the Monsanto control.

00:36:41.000 The Monsanto control was adapt engineer seeds to take more chemicals.

00:36:46.000 So the explosion of glyphosate and use of Roundup is because of the Roundup ready crops.

00:36:53.000 Gates is now wanting a new dependence.

00:36:55.000 The farmers have to have their minds.

00:36:57.000 Farmers have knowledge.

00:36:59.000 Key is trying to treat them as empty heads, just like they define the soil as an empty container.

00:37:05.000 And He has signed agreements all over with the Mexican IT, you know, the person who controls the smartphones of Mexico that farmers will have to take instructions.

00:37:20.000 From the billionaires and the poison cartel of the world.

00:37:24.000 So they depend on chemicals, they depend on seeds, now they have to depend on their knowledge.

00:37:30.000 And this total control can only happen.

00:37:33.000 It can't happen on a farm like Navdanya's where we are just concluding a beautiful course with people from around the world called Return to Earth.

00:37:42.000 For us, doing good farming is returning to the earth as earth beings.

00:37:46.000 Taking care of the earth, growing diversity.

00:37:48.000 Our farm is so diverse, there is no way a drone.

00:37:52.000 could monitor it, it'll get thoroughly confused.

00:37:55.000 But to do the kind of agriculture Gates wants, he wants an agriculture that will have very large scale monocultures, will be chemical, except that you will now, you know, have precision agriculture to tell the farmer, you know, put five kilograms of nitrogen here and put 5.2 kilograms of nitrogen here, and would try and engineer the entire industrial agriculture operation.

00:38:20.000 But even more seriously, Gates wants to control our food, you know.

00:38:25.000 He is the biggest financier of fake food, lab food.

00:38:30.000 So, Bayer and Monsanto are already planning a large-scale agriculture, where agriculture doesn't produce food that we eat, but raw materials of carbohydrates and proteins for fake food to be manufactured in the lab.

00:38:44.000 So, it's the ultimate fake.

00:38:45.000 It's fake science, it's fake food, it's fake knowledge.

00:38:49.000 And, you know, stay free.

00:38:50.000 Your program Russell, you know, staying free today is about seed freedom and food freedom.

00:38:56.000 This is the movement I've been building for 40 years.

00:38:59.000 Each of us, each of us has a right to food freedom.

00:39:03.000 And food freedom means to know what you're eating, how it was grown, and to eat what's healthy for you, rather than eat what will kill you with disease and will kill the planet with chemicals, fossil fuels, because industrial agriculture is a fossil fuel agriculture.

00:39:19.000 It feels like extremist materialism to the point of ecocide, where the idea of spirit or mystery or symbiosis or Gaia has been extracted by this advanced rationalism, this obsession and fetishization of measurement and control.

00:39:43.000 To the point where our planet becomes unviable.

00:39:48.000 It's almost a trope, Vandana, in the sci-fi world, that the mechanical mind of an AI entity will one day, in a dystopian twist, decide that there's no point in humanity, that life itself is unviable.

00:40:05.000 But it appears that we're doing this already by adopting a kind of AI rationalist mentality that excludes the immeasurable value of that which is difficult to know.

00:40:19.000 Other than what you've just said, and I reckon it is contained in what you said, other than returning to practices of agriculture and indeed life that are at odds with and oppose this advancing ideology, How do we re-engage with nature in a way that can oppose something that's so vast, so powerful and hegemonic, something as potent as Bill Gates and all of his wealth and power and infrastructure, all veiled under philanthropy?

00:40:53.000 What kind of movements can we practice and support?

00:41:00.000 Well, you know, what I've always done is first understand what are the instruments of control.

00:41:07.000 When I understood the instruments of control were the chemicals and poisons in agriculture, I said, let's grow food without chemicals.

00:41:14.000 And that's totally possible in ecological agriculture, agroecology, organic farming, biodynamics, give it whatever name you want to.

00:41:22.000 Then I found seeds were to be patented, and genetically engineered seed forced on us.

00:41:27.000 So freedom, staying free was saving the seed.

00:41:30.000 Now we have this horrible convergence of failed biotechnology, the genetic engineering biotechnology edifice, totalitarian information technology, and the financialization of the world, Through a new technologizing of money, turning it more and more fictitious.

00:41:56.000 And, you know, the Gates and the Rockefellers and the New York Stock Exchange are already talking about owning every bit of nature through natural asset companies.

00:42:08.000 And making money on the financial markets, you know?

00:42:11.000 A river flows, it's got that much water.

00:42:14.000 You can't fictitiously multiply water.

00:42:17.000 But if you turn it into a financial asset, you can multiply fictitiously while appropriating the natural resources.

00:42:24.000 So, they're talking of four thousand trillion dollars of Of gambling on nature and making money out of it.

00:42:33.000 So if this is the instrument, I mean this fourth industrial revolution that Mr. Klaus Schwab keeps talking about, is this convergence of power.

00:42:41.000 And its illusions include, just like our seeds were called primitive, we in the colonial period were called primitive and we could be colonized.

00:42:51.000 Humanity is being called primitive and you know, unevolved.

00:42:55.000 Being, and therefore needs to be enhanced by being totally enslaved, you know, through the algorithms and the computers, the machines.

00:43:04.000 And, you know, Gates has a patent called 060606, exactly when COVID was locking us all in.

00:43:12.000 He had already applied a Microsoft patent of us as users and the gadgets as the determinants of our value through the algorithms and the social credit system.

00:43:24.000 Would they decide whether we are worth having freedom or not?

00:43:29.000 That, to me, is an unlivable word.

00:43:32.000 I think there are two forms of resistance.

00:43:35.000 One is when farmers whose livelihoods are threatened by laws like the Dutch laws.

00:43:40.000 The last time we met and we talked, that was what was the big issue, the Netherlands laws that would wipe out small farms, that would wipe out animals, or the Indian protests.

00:43:53.000 Everywhere, everywhere where laws are brought in to make it more difficult for farmers to farm, there are protests.

00:43:59.000 But I think an even bigger movement is the movement of reclaiming food sovereignty and growing your own food.

00:44:08.000 And this got accelerated during COVID because people, A, the supply chains were shut down, but more than that, people started to make the connections between food and health.

00:44:18.000 And they realized there's no food better than food you've grown with your own hands and your own heart.

00:44:23.000 And the explosion of organic gardens around the world You know, in our movement, about 6,000 gardens of hope were created by the women in this period of when we were locked down.

00:44:37.000 So, both are resistances.

00:44:39.000 One is a creative resistance.

00:44:41.000 The other is a resistance that says a clear no.

00:44:45.000 But every no that comes from a deep conscience is a powerful no.

00:44:50.000 You asked about coordination.

00:44:52.000 There are two kinds of coordination.

00:44:54.000 There's a coordination from the top.

00:44:56.000 Where a centralizing force puts autonomous things together.

00:45:02.000 That's the kind of totalitarian control the billionaires, the Gates, the Klaus Schwab's want to be.

00:45:09.000 The second is the autopoietic organization.

00:45:14.000 Think of the fact that there are a hundred trillion microbes in our gut and they're working in coordination.

00:45:22.000 And our body is working in coordination with them.

00:45:25.000 And in community, you know, you celebrate community.

00:45:27.000 What is community?

00:45:29.000 No one controlling from outside, but auto-poetic, self-organized, autonomous beings sharing.

00:45:38.000 Sharing the same concerns, the same love for life, the same love for freedom.

00:45:44.000 That is the bond that brings us together.

00:45:46.000 And Gandhi called it, he had a beautiful word for it, Swaraj.

00:45:50.000 He wrote a book Before he came back to India, he wrote it while he was still in South Africa.

00:45:55.000 He wrote it while traveling from England to South Africa, fighting the racist regime.

00:46:00.000 And the book is called Hind Swaraj.

00:46:01.000 And we do a course every year with Satish Kumar, who's at Schumacher College.

00:46:06.000 Satish and I have been offering this since the year 2000, when we started the Earth University at Navdanya.

00:46:11.000 And Swaraj, that's a beautiful, powerful word.

00:46:15.000 Swaraj means self-rule.

00:46:16.000 Swaraj does not mean atomization.

00:46:19.000 Swaraj does not mean isolation.

00:46:22.000 Swaraj does not mean insulation from each other.

00:46:25.000 Swaraj means each being Governing themselves with the highest consciousness and the highest values.

00:46:32.000 And beings with high value and high consciousness coming together in larger and larger holes.

00:46:37.000 He had a beautiful quotation for this.

00:46:39.000 He said, I do not see the world where the pyramid, where the top of the pyramid crushes the bottom that supports it.

00:46:46.000 That's the pyramid we are trying to create.

00:46:49.000 I see the world as ever expanding, never ascending, oceanic circles.

00:46:56.000 Where every circle gives love, care and strength to all circles within.

00:47:01.000 So I believe that life's self-organization is from the molecule to Gaia.

00:47:09.000 There is amazing coherence.

00:47:11.000 And you know, my dear friend May Wan Ho used to talk about quantum coherence.

00:47:16.000 That every molecule, every cell knows how to function.

00:47:20.000 And every cell together knows how to function.

00:47:22.000 Every organ knows how to function.

00:47:24.000 Every body knows how to function.

00:47:26.000 Every community knows how to function.

00:47:28.000 And all the way to Gaia, as a self-organized being.

00:47:31.000 That's why James Lovelock called her Gaia.

00:47:34.000 She managed her temperature.

00:47:36.000 She managed her...

00:47:37.000 Her earth systems, her planet systems and it's the disruption, yeah? 0.93

00:47:42.000 I see parallels between the disruption of the human body's metabolism with junk food and fast food and ultra-processed food and the destruction of Gaia's metabolism through junk energy, yeah?

00:47:55.000 Gaia has energy.

00:47:57.000 Regenerative living energies.

00:47:58.000 And then we turn to fossil fuels.

00:48:00.000 And in two hundred years, they're totally messed up.

00:48:03.000 Of course, they now are coming up with new jugglery.

00:48:06.000 Gates jugglery.

00:48:08.000 I have his book here to remind me all the time.

00:48:13.000 And he's got a net zero section where he's been saying net zero doesn't mean zero.

00:48:13.000 Yeah.

00:48:18.000 It doesn't mean we get rid of our emissions.

00:48:20.000 Just means we've got to fix it.

00:48:22.000 They want to fix it financially and they want to fix it through a new resource grab.

00:48:26.000 We call it carbon colonization.

00:48:26.000 Yeah.

00:48:28.000 They'll keep emitting carbon dioxide and they want our land.

00:48:33.000 So I've said, you know, our Mother Earth is not your sink.

00:48:33.000 As Carbon Secretary.

00:48:38.000 We're sorry.

00:48:39.000 You know, we are not here to be dumped on all over again.

00:48:43.000 We will live lives of love, taking care of Mother Earth, and we will together generate the kind of power that makes your system redundant.

00:48:53.000 As long as we know you are cooking up structures of further control and extinction, as you said, ecocide, you know, Their idea is destroy the earth and destroy all human freedom and our idea is regenerate the earth and and grow human freedom even deeper.

00:49:12.000 I need to speak to you every day because like I return to a kind of even though I oppose the ideas that I frame in the questions in another way Vandana I am sort of similarly seduced by Ideas of materialism and individualism and competition, and almost in a way it's like I want to challenge these centres of power with the same frequency of force that they espouse, that I feel like a sort of an individualistic, priapic urgency to oppose it.

00:49:52.000 When I hear you describe the organic systems that are in place from the sub-molecular to the cosmic, that in their own almost archetypal rhythms are already assuring a certainty in survival, that there are cooperative systems that don't need like overt masculine assertion in order to be resolved, I feel like, God, I'm sort of just part of this.

00:50:21.000 I'm just another person in the mix, sort of fighting for a kind of form of individualism.

00:50:29.000 Like, what you say, it sounds, you know, when it entered Western culture, so sort of Rousseauian and idealistic, that it's, unless it's directly coming from you, I sometimes feel like, no, this is, like, this is utopianism.

00:50:45.000 Like, I've been schooled in the West.

00:50:48.000 I've been schooled in individualism and the kind of self-centeredness that our system inheres and encourages.

00:50:56.000 Like, I've had my own journeys of feeling weak and unempowered and then my own journey of feeling personal success and personal prowess and personal potency, so that I've, sort of, it's somehow in my body and in my blood to kind of, to even, to unconsciously somehow agree with The systems of power that we are describing and that my questions are directing you to condemn.

00:51:20.000 So, how is it that... What kind of faith is it that you have, as well as the action that you're undertaking?

00:51:26.000 I didn't know, for example, about that Earth University and that Satish Kumar comes there and teaches.

00:51:31.000 And I thought, my God, I want to come to that place!

00:51:32.000 I'd like to go there and... Please come!

00:51:35.000 Do come and offer a course!

00:51:36.000 Come and offer a course!

00:51:37.000 I can do it!

00:51:39.000 Do a course.

00:51:40.000 I've got to sit there quietly for at least a year.

00:51:43.000 I shouldn't be allowed to speak for a couple of terms, at least.

00:51:49.000 Yeah, I mean, do you see what I mean?

00:51:54.000 of the individual, this kind of individual autonomy that you're describing for someone

00:51:58.000 from my culture requires a degree of personal surrender and I wonder if you encounter that

00:52:04.000 a lot with Western people even when they're being condemnatory of the centralised technological

00:52:11.000 forces we're describing, that somehow we are its children.

00:52:14.000 Well you know I am of course grateful that I'm born in India.

00:52:21.000 Of course, there's a huge consumerist India now.

00:52:23.000 There's a globalized India today.

00:52:26.000 There's a careless India today. 1.00

00:52:27.000 I mean, look at the mountains of waste that are being generated and the mountains of plastic that we have been immersed in.

00:52:37.000 So, I mean, I won't think and talk about an India that is not contaminated. 1.00

00:52:48.000 My own worldview comes first and foremost from my own studies and reflections on quantum theory.

00:53:02.000 So much of my thinking is about the interconnectedness of the world that the quantum world teaches us, that there is no separation.

00:53:09.000 Second, that there's only potential.

00:53:12.000 There's nothing like fixed things.

00:53:13.000 This idea of essential entities, fixed entities that can't change, that too is totally obsolete.

00:53:21.000 But my second stream comes from the fact that, you know, now it's, you know, I'm going to be 70 this November and And you know, and that's part of the reason my publishers wanted me to write my movement memoir, The Terra Viva.

00:53:41.000 And I hope we'll have time to talk about it.

00:53:43.000 But you know, it's 50 years since I've been doing ecological.

00:53:46.000 Yes, that's it, that's it!

00:53:50.000 This right here!

00:53:50.000 Best bit of publishing promotion since you held up Bill Gates' book.

00:53:56.000 That's me with my big bindi! 0.64

00:53:57.000 I recognise you.

00:54:00.000 So I think the second, you know, 50 years of ecological work, learning from nature, learning from communities, it allows you to shed some of these mechanistic ideas that are at the foundation of how we think of the economy, how we think of political power, how we think of society, you know.

00:54:23.000 This idea of atomized individuals who need hubs to control them, that's what's blocking community.

00:54:29.000 But our basic urge is relational.

00:54:32.000 Our basic urge is to be cooperative, not competitive.

00:54:37.000 And that's the way nature behaves.

00:54:41.000 I mean, when Gaia The idea of Gaia was created.

00:54:46.000 It was Lynn Margolis with James Lovelock.

00:54:49.000 And Lynn Margolis was the biologist to show the world that the idea that species compete with each other, that parts of a body compete with each other, are so false.

00:54:59.000 If we didn't have cooperation, we wouldn't be alive.

00:55:02.000 And that applies for the microbes, and it applies for the plants, and the forest, and it applies to the human community.

00:55:08.000 So I think, basically, it's partly A paradigm shift in terms of the way we think of science.

00:55:16.000 You know, Cartesian and Baconian science is so disconnected from the world.

00:55:20.000 It was very good for control.

00:55:22.000 It was very good for extraction.

00:55:23.000 It was very good for colonialism. 0.97

00:55:25.000 It was very, very good for trying to subjugate nature.

00:55:28.000 But as you said, you know, nature cannot be subjugated.

00:55:31.000 No matter what kind of powers we bring, there's always a path.

00:55:36.000 You know, I mean, I have seen You know, bridges blown away.

00:55:40.000 I've seen dams washed away.

00:55:42.000 I've seen, you know, everything we think we are building strong, you know, build back better, their slogan.

00:55:48.000 No, with nature, there's nothing you can't build back better if you don't work according to her ecological laws.

00:55:55.000 And that is knowledge.

00:55:57.000 You know, that is following the way the earth systems work.

00:56:02.000 Tell us about your book then.

00:56:04.000 You've just told me that this is what I am to do, and as you know, I do what you tell me.

00:56:10.000 I've already made that clear to you on a number of occasions.

00:56:13.000 You've written this because it's your birthday coming up.

00:56:15.000 Happy birthday for your birthday in November.

00:56:18.000 What is it that you in particular cover in Terra Viva, Van Darnham?

00:56:24.000 Well, I basically cover my life.

00:56:26.000 It's not my autobiography.

00:56:27.000 It's not my personal autobiography.

00:56:30.000 It is, as the title says, Terra Viva, my life in a biodiversity of movements.

00:56:34.000 And my first involvement, of course, with the Chipko movement, a beautiful movement where women came out to hug the trees and stop the logging, which was leading to deforestation, landslides, floods, disasters.

00:56:47.000 And then, of course, my work on the seed.

00:56:50.000 And how and why I started to save seeds, how I absolutely rejected the idea that seeds were a machine and invented Violent Sand.

00:57:00.000 Yeah, and they could have intellectual property rights on this machine.

00:57:03.000 Now, seed is the ultimate self-organized expression of life.

00:57:08.000 And the word for us in India is bija, that which arises on its own forever and ever and ever. 1.00

00:57:15.000 And for me, that's freedom.

00:57:16.000 If we can be like the seed, then we will stay free.

00:57:21.000 I talk about the movement globally we created of diverse women for diversity, because for me, the idea of monocultures, It's so perverse because the world is diverse culturally, it's diverse biologically, and when we got together as a movement of diverse women for diversity, and of course my years of fighting globalization and GATT and WTO and the creation of the International Forum on Globalization, which shut down WTO in Seattle, reminded us that when people get together, they have the power to stop the biggest institution.

00:57:55.000 The whole issue of water, privatization, Including Coca-Cola trying to steal the water and the women rose up and shut the Coca-Cola plant down in Plachimada. 0.50

00:58:08.000 And I have the privilege to support them and join them.

00:58:12.000 Or the Ganges River being privatized by Suez.

00:58:15.000 And now there are attempts to financialize water, biodiversity, nature as a whole.

00:58:22.000 So the issue of financialization will be the big issue in the years to come.

00:58:26.000 And of course, my dedication to reject the idea of patents on life, because a patent is given for an invention.

00:58:33.000 Life is not invented by humans.

00:58:36.000 We can modify, we can modify badly like GMOs, we can modify brilliantly like Indian peasants evolving 200,000 varieties of rice out of one grass.

00:58:46.000 And all my battles on fighting biopiracy, big corporations.

00:58:51.000 Monsanto claiming to have invented our ancient wheat that does not lead to gluten allergy.

00:58:55.000 A Texas company claiming to have invented the basmati rice, you know, the aromatic rice from my valley.

00:59:03.000 Or the big name, you know, 11 years.

00:59:06.000 I fought against the pageanting of neem, a tree that we have used for pest control.

00:59:11.000 My grandmother used it, my mother used it, and then a corporation in 1994 claims they have invented the use of neem for biopesticide.

00:59:19.000 And then the climate issue, and finally, you know, because we are inter-beings, you know, I think the big breakthrough we have to make in our time, if we have to stay free and stay alive, is to realize that we are inter-beings, yeah?

00:59:35.000 90% of us Our other microbes, 90% of us, we're only 10% human cells.

00:59:43.000 And especially with the COVID, you know, just like earlier, every insect had to be killed with insecticides and every plant had to be killed with Roundup, you know, there was so much writing on this war against the virus.

00:59:57.000 But we are the viral, you know, we, our skin, We are just walking my viromes.

01:00:04.000 So I think instead of this cultivation of fear of the diversity of which we are a part, my book Terra Viva is about the celebration of diversity and interbeing.

01:00:15.000 Bloody hell, thank you, that's pretty incredible.

01:00:17.000 A few things.

01:00:20.000 One is, when you get to the point of patenting life itself, I suppose that is the usurping of the divine in a very practical sense.

01:00:27.000 It's almost like the supplanting of God of our understanding as the apex and creator and genesis of all existence.

01:00:38.000 Once you arrive at that point in a kind of a clerical and bureaucratic and indeed patented form, then, truly then, Nietzsche's prognosis is carried out.

01:00:52.000 Russell, if I can interrupt there.

01:00:54.000 You know, the issue of genetic engineering was really a path to patenting.

01:01:00.000 Genetic engineering wasn't being done in order to feed the world or anything like that.

01:01:04.000 They said it at this meeting in 87, about which I've written in Terra Viva.

01:01:08.000 We have to do GMOs in order to own life.

01:01:12.000 And over the years I always say a GMO for them means God move over. 0.97

01:01:16.000 We will now be the creators.

01:01:18.000 We will be the rent collectors from life.

01:01:23.000 We've just, you know, we're looking at our paddy, which sadly, you know, we have 750 varieties of rice growing on our farm.

01:01:33.000 And the rains haven't stopped.

01:01:35.000 By now we should have been harvesting, but there is no sun to ripen.

01:01:40.000 And while I was looking at the rice, you know, and I'm thinking, here is this amazing seed that became a thousand seeds.

01:01:49.000 And here are the Monsantos and the Gates thinking, we will prevent the seed from renewing, we will terminate the fertility of seed and we will be gods.

01:01:59.000 So God move over is what GMOs actually mean.

01:02:02.000 You're so right.

01:02:03.000 Yes, and when Foucault talked about biopolitics, the control of life itself, I can see now how, through technology, life in a botanical sense is being patented and controlled, and in the form of human consciousness, through the management and control of attention, as well as, obviously, behaviour, You can see how every aspect of life is being controlled and curated, how spontaneity is being extinguished.

01:02:39.000 To hear the rest of that conversation, join us on Stay Free AF.

01:02:42.000 It's a very small fee for a hell of a lot of content.

01:02:45.000 And remember, we are interested in building systems that are going to change the world, whether it's the systems of your own neurology and psychology, or the systems of finance and community that can truly change the world.

01:02:57.000 Well, that's all we've got time for today.

01:02:58.000 Please join us every single day this week at this time.

01:03:02.000 Sign up to Stay Free Air for exclusive live sessions.

01:03:05.000 Coming up, we've got Eckhart Tolle and Jordan Peterson.

01:03:07.000 Imagine being there live, trying to ask Eckhart Tolle questions.

01:03:10.000 It takes him 45 minutes to answer anything.

01:03:12.000 Imagine being able to say what you want to Jordan Peterson.

01:03:15.000 And remember, you can listen to Stay Free every day as a podcast wherever you listen to your podcast.

01:03:20.000 See all these places here?

01:03:21.000 You can listen to this here on your journey to work.

01:03:24.000 You can't look at the screen.

01:03:25.000 It's thoroughly risky.

01:03:27.000 Okay, we'll see you tomorrow for more fantastic content.

01:03:30.000 Please stay free.

01:03:32.000 I'll show you the stripper move if you need to see it. 1.00

01:03:34.000 Bear, bear! 0.99

01:03:35.000 Push it real good!

01:03:40.000 Right, this is the proper show.

01:03:42.000 Right then, we're just passing time.

01:03:44.000 Harriet Riley, underscore yoga, asks, at Community Festival you encouraged us to take part in

01:04:03.000 World Food Day on the 16th of October.

01:04:07.000 Any top tips on how to do this?

01:04:09.000 I would suggest to all of you, you know, Either start a garden or have a picnic with your community.

01:04:17.000 Create community around food.

01:04:19.000 Food is community.

01:04:20.000 Food is the embodiment of the community from the soil, the community of the insects and the pollinators, the community of the people who took care of the land.

01:04:30.000 But begin a food community and have a party.

01:04:35.000 Now bake your bread.

01:04:36.000 Hello, welcome to Stay Awake with Russell Brand, a guided meditation.

01:04:49.000 With me every week.

01:04:51.000 This week we're doing a meditation on how to deal with heartbreak, because Jack said, great meditation on transitions and change.

01:05:00.000 I was wondering, could you give me a meditation on falling in love again after heartbreak?

01:05:04.000 Jack, I'm not doing a meditation on falling in love again after heartbreak, but we will talk about letting go of heartbreak and what it indicates.

01:05:11.000 We're not going to go falling straight in love, because that's frankly part of the problem, darling.

01:05:16.000 This meditation today that we're doing for Jack on heartbreak is essentially about letting go and ultimately recognising that all we need is already within us.

01:05:27.000 How can something so archetypally and universally true ever sound like anything other than a cliché?

01:05:33.000 I don't know.

01:05:34.000 How do we navigate between the archetypal and the cliché?

01:05:37.000 I suppose through authenticity.

01:05:56.000 As I continue to talk, observe that pattern of breath.

01:06:01.000 In for five, out for seven.

01:06:03.000 We'll dive deep into the minds of people like Elon Musk, Vandana Shiva, Yanis Varoufakis, Wim Hof, Eckhart Tolle, and whoever you want us to.

Stay Free - Russel Brand - October 18, 2022

Stay Free with Russell Brand #015 - So Who DID Sabotage Nord Stream? Plus Vandana Shiva

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