Join us as we discuss the coronation of King Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cambridge, and the right wing reaction to it. We also talk about Julian Assange's letter to the King about freedom of speech and why he should be jailed for writing a letter to him about it. And of course, there's a quiz too! Rumbles is a podcast about politics, culture and the world we live in. Hosted by Gav and Gareth, and produced and produced by Alex Blumberg. This episode was brought to you by Vevolution.co.uk and edited by Emma Rainey. The opinions expressed here are our own, not those of our employers, and do not necessarily reflect those of any organisation or organisation. We do not hold any of these views, unless otherwise specified, in any way affiliated with any of them. This podcast was produced for noncommercial use, and is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment of any medical or mental health problem. If you are not a member of our community, please contact your health care provider if you are struggling with anxiety, insomnia, or another medical problem, or are in need of immediate support. or if you would like us to refer you to a doctor. Thank you for all the support you can give us, we appreciate it greatly. You are a wonder, you are an awakening wonder. You are awakening wonder! - a wonder indeed. - you are a marvel, a wonder. xoxo, Lady Lady Grey. xx - Gav & Gareth, Gav xxx - The Rumbles. ( ) (Rumbles ( ) ( ) Gav Gav, Lady Grey ( ) and Gareth ( ) as we talk about all things right wing and left wing, and all things left wing and right wing ( ) in general ( ) on this episode of Rumbles, and we hope you are awakening, you re awakening, too. Lady Lady, Lady, you ve got got it yet? You ve got it, Lady? (?) ( ) Lady Grey, Lady ( ) ? (Lady, Lady?? ( Lady, get it yet, you've got it? ? & Lady, have you got it??) (get it yet?!) and Lady, give us a tumble? ( ) or are you awakening? )
00:00:00.000You are a wonder, you are awakening, you are therefore an awakening wonder.
00:00:04.000Are you joining us on YouTube or have you joined us on Rumble yet?
00:00:08.000That bastion, that citadel, that oasis of free speech.
00:00:12.000There's a link in the description because we'll do the first 20 minutes over here where we're going to be talking about the coronation of King Charles.
00:00:28.000I don't like doing stuff like that and on a Bible type things.
00:00:31.000We could be talking about that and also when we flick over being exclusively on Rumble, right what You know, we're going to talk about Julian Assange, still in Belmarsh Prison, who's written a letter to King Charles talking about free speech.
00:00:43.000And we're going to be talking about what five things are right wing now that surprise you.
00:00:48.000It's astonishing just to see how the taxonomies around politics and the categorisation of politics has altered.
00:00:55.000We'll be talking about pageantry and ceremony.
00:00:59.000And I'm going to offer you, I'm going to be offering you a Foucaultian dialectic, girl.
00:01:34.000and impoverish the people in that country. I'm not even anti-royal. I've got tea towels
00:01:37.000and paraphernalia at my house, royal family tea towels. Of course I have. My nan, she
00:01:42.000loved the royals. Biscuit tins with them on and everything.
00:01:45.000Even that one. I've even got a mug with... Yeah, they're all on there.
00:01:49.000So, like, it's not like I'm anti-royal, even though the mainstream media did a right, like, snidey little anti-royal story on me.
00:01:57.000Because I said, why are we, we're like hostages, why are we still funding all this stuff?
00:02:01.000Do you think it's right with all the energy crisis?
00:02:03.000In fact, I'll offer you this question in the same way I did it before.
00:02:05.000Do you think that we should be funding expensive pageantry, whether it's inaugural events or stuff like in your country, America, or stuff in our country, these kind of ceremonies, when there's an energy crisis, when there's a cost of living crisis, when there's a food crisis, or do you think that we could be redirecting these resources?
00:02:24.000Sometimes I think this about socialism.
00:02:25.000I think like people go, oh we can't be funding healthcare and hospitals and schools and whatnot, but of course you're subsidizing the military-industrial complex, Right now.
00:02:34.000We're subsidising energy companies right now.
00:02:36.000So we're not discussing whether or not there will be redistribution of wealth.
00:02:41.000We're simply discussing where it will be redistributed to.
00:02:45.000In favour of ordinary people or against the interests of ordinary people.
00:02:56.000Yeah, yeah, that's good because there's only one thing worse than being talked about and that's being told to Well, are these words sayable while we're on YouTube, Gareth?
00:03:05.000I'm talking about the first story and the Camilla.
00:04:45.000The big PR campaign for two years, trying to get everyone to forget about Princess Diana and Laika, and then the minute they get her marching down the aisle, Wipe that vagina, Camilla!
00:05:05.000Wait a minute, I don't remember that song!
00:05:08.000What's really interesting, of course, about all ceremony and pageantry is that it's part of the installation and ongoing instantiation of power.
00:05:17.000But we talk continually, don't we, on this channel about decentralization.
00:05:21.000The decentralization of power is one of the things we continually talk about.
00:05:25.000Now, the Royal Family are aware that they are not liked in the city of Liverpool.
00:05:30.000That is why they used this song, famous and popular in Liverpool, the anthem, in case you're not a fan of British football, and if you're not, you should be, the anthem of the great football club of Liverpool, all respect to Everton fans, you're all great as far as I'm concerned, their anthem is You'll Never Walk Alone.
00:05:47.000Now, part of the pageantry, part of the ceremony was they did a cover of You'll Never Walk Alone.
00:05:51.000The people of Liverpool hate The British establishment, because of a disaster, Hillsborough, where 97 people were unlawfully killed, because they feel that they've been ostracised, alienated and ignored by the establishment.
00:06:03.000And really, like many of the working communities of the North of England, they're aware of how the South and Southern-based establishments have rinsed them and turned them over.
00:06:11.000And you know we're always arguing for decentralised power.
00:06:13.000Would Newcastle, Liverpool, Manchester, even Birmingham, Nottingham, would these great cities be better with more autonomy, more devolution?
00:06:22.000How do we benefit from centralisation?
00:06:25.000Would you like to see more federalised, localised power, more food grown in your own community, more democracy, more of your energy problems solved directly?
00:06:33.000That that should be the function and the focus of an organised society?
00:06:40.000Donnie Mack goes, it would have been better if Charlie, the king, had put one of his fat sausage fingers in a roll and fed them to the rest of the royals so he can't get his hands on even more stolen gem gems from around the world.
00:07:08.000And then as a response to that bit where we played that Wipe Your Vagina, Camilla, or whatever that bit was, the blessed old bird goes, isn't it Regina?
00:08:09.000Right, that's from a sitcom called Bread.
00:08:12.000To His Majesty King Charles III, on the coronation of my liege, I thought it only fit in to extend
00:08:18.000a heartfelt invitation to you to commemorate this momentous occasion by visiting your very
00:08:22.000own kingdom within a kingdom, His Majesty's prison, Belmarsh.
00:08:27.000You will no doubt recall the wise words of a renowned playwright, "The quality of mercy
00:08:30.000is not strained, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath."
00:08:34.000I wonder what renowned playwright that is?
00:08:37.000Ah, oh it's the Bard, it's Shakespeare.
00:08:41.000Ah, but what would that Bard know of mercy faced with the reckoning at dawn of your historic reign?
00:08:47.000After all, one can truly know the measure of a society by how it treats its prisoners, and your kingdom has surely excelled in that regard.
00:08:55.000Your Majesty's prison, Belmarsh, is located at the prestigious address of One Western Way, London.
00:09:00.000Just a short fox hunt from the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich.
00:09:04.000How delightful it must be to have such an esteemed establishment bear your name.
00:09:09.000It's here that 687 of your loyal subjects are held, supporting the United Kingdom's record as the nation with the largest prison population in Western Europe.
00:09:17.000As your noble government has recently declared, your kingdom is currently undergoing the biggest expansion of prison places in over a century, with its ambitious projections showing an increase of the prison population from 82,000 to 106,000 within the next four years.
00:09:55.000As a political prisoner held at your majesty's pleasure on behalf of an embarrassed foreign sovereign, I'm honored to reside within the walls of this world-class institution.
00:10:06.000During your visit you will have the opportunity to feast upon the culinary delights prepared for your loyal subjects on a generous budget of two pounds per day.
00:10:14.000Savor the blended tuna heads and the ubiquitous reconstituted forms that are purportedly made from chicken.
00:10:21.000And worry not, for unlike lesser institutions such as Alcatraz or San Quentin, there is no communal dining in a mess hall.
00:10:27.000A bellmarsh, prisoners dine alone in their cells, ensuring the utmost intimacy with meals.
00:10:34.000This is pretty heavy guys, I'm sorry about this but, you know, what did we want?
00:10:37.000I mean, this is a letter by a political prisoner to a newly anointed monarch.
00:10:43.000And really, all of that pageantry and ceremony is the framing of power, the lack of dissent, the inability to offer dissenting opinions.
00:10:53.000And again, let me reiterate, I don't think monarchy is a huge problem or the abolition of the monarchy the solution, but symbols of power and the inability to critique power is a significant part of the problem.
00:11:07.000Beyond the gustatory pleasures, I can assure you that Belmarsh provides ample educational opportunities for your subjects, as Proverbs 22.6 has it, train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.
00:11:20.000Observe the shuffling queues at the medicine hatch where inmates gather their prescriptions, not for daily use but for the horizon-expanding experience of a big day out all at once.
00:11:29.000You will also have the opportunity to pay your respects to my late friend Manuel Santos, a gay man facing deportation to Bolsonaro's Brazil, who took his own life just eight yards from my cell using a crude rope fashioned from his bedsheets, his exquisite tenor voice now silenced forever.
00:11:45.000Venture further into the depths of Belmarsh and you will find the most isolated place within its walls.
00:11:50.000Healthcare, or Hellcare as its inhabitants lovingly call it.
00:11:54.000Here you will marvel at sensible rules designed for everyone's safety such as the prohibition of chess whilst permitting the far less dangerous game of checkers.
00:12:02.000Deep within Hellcare lies the most gloriously uplifting place in all Belmarsh, nay the whole of the United Kingdom.
00:12:07.000The sublimely named Belmarsh End of Life Suite.
00:12:10.000Listen closely and you may hear the prisoner's cries of brother I'm gonna die in here.
00:12:14.000A testament to the quality of both life and death within your prison.
00:12:19.000But fear not, for there is beauty to be found within these walls.
00:12:21.000Feast your eyes upon the picturesque crows nesting in the razor wire, and the hundreds of hungry rats that call Belmarsh home.
00:12:29.000And if you come in the spring, you may even catch a glimpse of the ducklings laid by the wayward mallards within the prison grounds.
00:12:35.000But don't delay, for the ravenous rats ensure their lives are fleeting.
00:12:39.000I implore you, King Charles, to visit His Majesty's prison, Belmarsh, for it is an honour befitting a king.
00:12:44.000As you embark upon your reign, may you always remember the words of the King James Bible, blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy, that's Matthew 5-7, and may mercy be the guiding light of your kingdom, both within and without the walls of Belmarsh, your most devoted subject to Julian Assange.
00:13:02.000The thing that you were talking about in the presentation earlier, you know, you have nothing against necessarily King Charles or any of the royal family, they're just people, they're just born into this in the same way that we're born into our lives.
00:13:14.000Well Julian Assange wasn't born into that life, he was put into that life.
00:13:19.000He was put away illegally for something that shouldn't be illegal, what he shouldn't be there for at all.
00:13:26.000And so it's an interesting way to, you know, an interesting counterpoint to what we're kind of talking about here.
00:13:49.000It's cruel and it's illegal and it's not unrelated to the ceremonies that we witness, whether it's Biden appearing in Poland to talk about Ukraine lit in blue and yellow as if war is a spectacle and entertainment.
00:14:08.000The enactment of that power is violence.
00:14:10.000It will always be violence, whether it's the violation of Assange's rights or the ongoing violence required to sustain the military-industrial complex.
00:14:17.000But to make sure this is so, Julian Assange, may he be freed soon.
00:14:21.000May the people in positions of power see the negligence of their current stance and release Julian Assange, and you should participate in that.
00:14:31.000Spurring that on in any way that you can, and we'll find ways that we can help Stella, his wife, and the leader of the campaign with that campaign.
00:14:38.000But so we don't end, let's not end on too down of a note, because we're meant to have a bit of a laugh, aren't we, for God's sake?
00:14:42.000Julian Assange wouldn't want us going down on a bummer.
00:14:45.000No, I don't mean that in prison parlance, by the way.
00:14:47.000I mean, he literally puts jokes in this letter.
00:15:06.000Jan Hugo, the owner of Australia's largest collection of royal... excuse me... ...belches and memorabilia.
00:15:15.000But I want you to pay attention to see how many things that are Diana-related you can see in the background because I'm going to be asking her about that in a second and I'll be talking to you in a minute.
00:16:14.000Parked right at the gates of Buckingham Palace.
00:16:18.000We saw the coach come out and Camilla was on our side so she waved and I've got a suitcase full of things to take home.
00:16:27.000What do you like about the Royal Family, mate?
00:16:32.000Look, it all started mainly with the history of it all and then of course Diana come along and we just adored Diana and she probably was the one that got me hooked.
00:16:42.000Yeah, she got a lot of us hooked, did Diana.
00:17:11.000What about though, can I ask you this question?
00:17:13.000And just tell me your honest answer, of course.
00:17:16.000When you're Australian, Julian Assange is Australian, how do you feel about hearing that appeal by Julian Assange?
00:17:23.000And do you ever think that while royalty is presented as kind of just a bit of a laugh and it's fun and it's glamorous and it's cool, that sometimes it is used to mask power and to make people look favourably upon powerful institutions that can do bad things?
00:17:41.000I don't really know the answer to that.
00:17:43.000I've never really thought about it too much politically like you have.
00:17:47.000I've sort of learned a lot since I've turned you on at five o'clock.
00:17:56.000But no, I look at it as more as just being a collector, not so much on the political side of any of it.
00:18:04.000Me and all, sometimes I have things, I can't think like this all the time, I go nuts.
00:18:07.000Like when I'm trying to watch football or whatever, I try not to do my own head in by thinking about it too intensely, but I do get caught up in it.
00:18:13.000Hey, what bit of Australia are you in?
00:18:16.000We live in the Hunter Valley in New South Wales.
00:18:29.000Now, I met this person, and this is not a joke, he was known by the name of Pearl Knob, and he'd done diving down there, and he said, with the native folks of Australia, the Aborigines, and it was their custom, if I may say, to keep a pearl somewhere within the private reproductive organ of the male, and he had one, and he showed me it.
00:18:49.000Is this common practice in the nation of Australia, or did I mix with an oddball?
00:21:16.000Not in Australia, because I know that's a terrible evocative issue for the Australians, because you have them too bloody often, frankly.
00:21:21.000While you're here in England, you've brought your cherished pieces here.
00:21:26.000There's a fire and it's the fault of, like, just, I don't know, a negligent Gas Board official probably working for a terrorist organisation.
00:21:33.000We don't need the backstory of the fire.
00:21:36.000In the fire, you have to grab your most cherished piece.
00:22:39.000Thanks for coming on and thanks for spending a bit of time helping us get over the horrible tragedy of Julian Assange's illegal imprisonment with a bit of lightness and a bit of fun.
00:23:52.000If you're a member of the Locals community, not only can you join us now for additional chat with someone, another Australian, Hugh Rimmington from 10 First News.
00:23:59.000We're going to talk about mainstream media.
00:24:12.000He, Gareth Roy, my sinecure and on-screen assistant, comes out with mad questions where I'm boasting about my Andrew Tupperware, my Prince Andrew ashtray, for God's sake.
00:24:31.000Listen, why don't you press the red button on your screen to join us on Locals Baby.
00:24:37.000On tomorrow's show, we're doing a deep presentation on Ukraine and the facts behind the US government's reasons for increased military aid.
00:26:28.000It was being chased by a little paparazzi goldfish through a tunnel and it turned out that there was this big old trout going... Oh, that sounds weird.
00:26:36.000All right, let's stop that joke immediately.
00:26:38.000Joining us now from the mainstream media Oh, oh, it's like there's someone from 10 News First in Australia.
00:26:45.000We invite Hugh Remington on in the spirit of grace and respect, but first one of Jack's crap graphics.
00:29:23.000We talk a lot about how there are almost unconscious archetypal symbols pushing through, like Joe Biden presiding over decline.
00:29:34.000And now, as you say, Charles reigning over decline, some sort of inevitability to his tenure being one of, I suppose, as you say, managed decline and deterioration.
00:29:47.000Now, what's wrong with British scampi?
00:30:45.000Lady Midnight on our chat, mate, says, what do you think about Julian Assange and don't your Prime Minister think he should be pardoned?
00:30:52.000Yeah, I'm glad you read out that letter from Julian Assange.
00:30:56.000I thought what really struck me about that is that he's written a letter to the King and in no part in that at all does he actually petition for his own release.
00:31:05.000He doesn't mention his own circumstances.
00:31:07.000He describes Belmarsh and invites him to come to visit at Belmarsh.
00:31:11.000But here's a guy who's been in one form or another, had his liberty constrained now for so many years, with the prospect of it going longer, that the Australian Prime Minister is on the record as saying enough is enough.
00:31:24.000This has got to be brought to a conclusion.
00:31:26.000He hasn't said whether he raised that with Rishi Sunak when he met him a couple of days ago at No.
00:31:32.000I suspect he didn't, because ultimately Britain is somewhat constrained by the legal reality of extradition treaties and so on.
00:31:41.000It's really for the United States, but he's raised it with Biden as well, and he wants it brought to an end.
00:31:46.000But it was fascinating to me that the tone in that letter was wry, sardonic, eloquent, biblical referencing, but not self-pitying.
00:31:59.000God, yeah, that's some really good analysis, actually, mate.
00:32:01.000You should do this stuff for a living.
00:32:02.000Now, hey, Hugh, on the Australian mainstream media, do people talk about Julian Assange, or is it somehow censored by default, if not design, in your country as it is in ours and in the US?
00:32:53.000Assange was right in his fears about that.
00:32:55.000And also just the notion that he might I really liked your analysis of that and that you pointed to Julian Assange's lack of self-pity, the erudition in his references and the lack of clear petition.
00:33:17.000It's just a shame that we live in a world where that won't be picked up.
00:33:21.000Wouldn't it be extraordinary if Charles actually went, you know what, I should actually go and visit him.
00:33:27.000Even someone with apparent and evident power only has the power that that role affords and really that is the power to sustain itself and form alliances with other systems of dominion rather than to challenge that hegemony in any way at all.
00:33:44.000Even a simple symbolic act like visiting a political prisoner would be practically impossible, wouldn't it?
00:33:52.000Actually, you make a really great point because I love it.
00:34:31.000When I'm in Australia and you're presumably back there, unless you're reporting wryly on more of our institutions, I'll be happy to provide an interview if such a thing would be of interest to you in whatever province you find yourself in.
00:34:46.000And I shall bring you some fine scampi.
00:34:48.000I'll stuff my pockets with crustaceans before I get on the plane.