Join Russell Brand for the latest episode of Stay Free With Russell Brand, exclusively on Rumble. In this episode, Russell talks about the latest in the war on terror, Hunter Biden suing a repair shop owner for allegedly intruding on his privacy, and Tucker Carlson's mea culpa on the way he handled Julian Assange on his new show 'The Daily Show' and much more! Stay Free with Russell Brand is available on all major podcasting platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Podchaser, and Stitcher, wherever you get your favourite podchips. If you're watching this on your favourite streaming platform, you can see the whole show if you want to watch it anywhere else, but only the first 15-20 minutes of the entire show is available. If you re watching this anywhere else - you can catch up on the full show on Rumble, which is available exclusively on the platform that champions free speech and free speech. In the news today, the US actively don't want a ceasefire, all we're saying is give war a chance. Has anyone advocated for war? Couldn t war be the answer? And then we'll be talking later, exclusively, on Rumble about, no wonder they don t want to talk about that lab leak theory, perhaps because they carried on doing gain-of-function research during the pandemic? Did you know that? Let me know in the chat whether or not you were aware that during the Pandemic in London where I live, where I take deep inhalations where I could easily be infected? We'll be covering that in detail in detail on Rumble in a minute, in detail, in a second! In a minute! That's why you should click on the link in the description. Here's the effing news. in our item here's the epsiode here's The Effing news! No wonder they won't be talking about that? Here s The Fucking News! Stay free with me on Rumble on Rumble on Rumble! on the . and stay free with Russell for Stay Free! and Rumble on Stay Free in the future! in The Future! - The Future. - Stay Free, by Brenden Brand - ( ) for your ad-free version of . . . for the Stay Free Podcast to stay free, Stay free, by
00:01:09.000Thanks for joining me for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
00:01:12.000If you're watching this on Rumble, you can see the whole show.
00:01:14.000If you're watching it anywhere else, just the first 15 or 20 minutes is accessible till we have to yield to our pangs for free speech and be exclusively available on a platform that champions it.
00:01:26.000In the news today, the US actively don't want a ceasefire.
00:01:31.000All we're saying is give war a chance.
00:01:37.000And then we'll be talking later exclusively on Rumble about, no wonder they don't want to talk about that lab leak theory, perhaps because they carried on doing gain-of-function research during the pandemic.
00:01:48.000Let me know in the chat whether or not you were aware that during the pandemic in London, where I live, where I take deep inhalations, where I could easily be infected, they were Combining COVID variants.
00:02:00.000We'll be talking about that in detail exclusively on Rumble in a minute.
00:02:03.000That's why you should click on the link in the description.
00:02:08.000We'll be talking about how Tucker Carlson extraordinarily is the only person that openly admits to regretting the way that the war was reported on from a personal perspective, a bit of a mea culpa.
00:02:18.000And he's also one of the only mainstream media broadcasters that will house Julian Assange.
00:02:23.000So even if you see Tucker Carlson at his worst, even if you have a very negative perspective of him, like say, I've heard people say he's racist and that he's unsympathetic towards vulnerable people.
00:02:36.000How do we square that with, you know, you ain't getting any other mainstream show saying, what are we going to do about Julian Assange?
00:02:42.000Or maybe I'm wrong, let me know, because I'll watch those shows if there are any.
00:02:45.000But, firstly, Hunter Biden is suing the repair shop owner who worked on his laptop, accused him of trying to invade his privacy.
00:02:56.000That's really interesting that that's what Hunter Biden has deduced.
00:03:04.000Just that, I don't know, we were accepting payments from Ukrainian energy firms, Chinese energy firms, some stuff about my private life, which I actually don't... I agree with him there.
00:06:28.000I was unaware until Gareth mentioned it as a result of his own research that China have precedent for brokering complex peace deals in the Middle East.
00:06:41.000I actually didn't know they weren't getting on.
00:06:42.000I've got to pay more attention to the news.
00:06:44.000For quite a while, for seven years I think it's been going on and China stepped in.
00:06:48.000There's an agreement that's been signed in Beijing to re-establish diplomatic relations.
00:06:53.000So it's not like China, I mean it does seem like they're doing stuff and being effective about it.
00:06:58.000Of course we're not naive enough, just about.
00:07:01.000To just assume that China are benevolent pacifiers traveling around the world with no intention other than spreading the light of the Lord Buddha and Jesus Christ's twinkling wonder, because there'll be more Christians in China than anywhere else in the world in a couple of years.
00:07:17.000You've not spent time studying Christianity in the way that I have.
00:07:22.000Generally speaking, even if China have their own worldview, their own agenda, which undoubtedly they do, if part of that agenda is brokering a peace deal, surely that's something that has to be considered.
00:07:31.000Let us know in the chat and the comments if you agree with that.
00:07:34.000The other, like, worrying aspect of this, I suppose, is that if Zelensky has expressed openness to China's proposal, but it's been rejected by President Biden, Who is in charge of Ukraine, and who is this war between?
00:07:46.000I mean, we've said proxy war for a long time, but if it's got to the situation where Zelensky's like, yeah, I'm kind of up for this, and Biden says no, what is going on?
00:07:56.000Given that we've been continually told that this is not a proxy war, President Biden rejecting
00:08:03.000the peace deal, is that what's happened?
00:08:35.000Because, you know, firstly, Biden is opposed to the peace deal, even though America are
00:08:39.000not involved in the world, other than just cheering from the sidelines.
00:08:43.000But also, it seems that Putin is not a person who finds handshakes that easy.
00:08:47.000I didn't know this right up until today.
00:08:50.000I always saw Putin as a self-assured, empowered man, as an alpha leader, as testosterone-fueled.
00:08:58.000Sure, I've seen the propaganda that he can't help crapping himself every half hour.
00:09:02.000Of course, I would agree that the devastation wreaked upon Ukraine is disgusting, and particularly after we read that list of war crimes the other day, and the degree of suffering is...
00:09:13.000Incomprehensible, actually, what's been going on.
00:09:15.000Those war crimes that the US has equally committed.
00:09:18.000The sad news is that every single war crime that Russia has committed in Ukraine, the United States have committed elsewhere since 1998.
00:09:25.000We were disgusted to find that out, I'm concerned, and that's why they can't cooperate with the ICC attempt to arrest Putin for war crimes.
00:09:33.000But one thing that would make Putin Teflon in any attempt to arrest him is if the arrest commenced with a handshake.
00:09:41.000Sir, on good faith, I'd like to arrest you.
00:09:44.000Put it there, my man, because Putin is a man who simply can't shake hands.
00:09:48.000I've always been, myself, concerned about, like, whether to go for the high five, the fist bump, the conventional handshake, that handshake.
00:10:45.000Actually, lovely man, don't speak out on about our meeting with Carlson for our attempt to bring together new alliances because we're politically astute people.
00:11:52.000Certainly he's... I mean, he's a war criminal.
00:11:55.000Like, at least that's what the ICC is saying.
00:11:56.000Certainly he's, like, making choices that lead to the death of children.
00:11:59.000But maybe even with those hands that he can't seem to shake on cue, he might have actually throttled... I don't know how the KGB do their murders.
00:12:08.000There was that umbrella murder they did over in our country in Salisbury, of all places.
00:12:57.000I don't want to reveal that my Jordan Peterson impression comes from a Kermit impression, so I'm going to stop right there and have a look at Putin bungling social norms.
00:13:49.000Like, do you double-check it's you before... Yeah, I know, I tend to just... You just respond.
00:13:54.000Yeah, I'm just happy... I can't take the shame.
00:13:56.000I'm happy someone may be communicating with me.
00:13:59.000Like, if, like, I go like that, and then I sort of look over my shoulder, and it's someone else, I just think, oh, I've really just wasted it.
00:14:25.000And, like, my mate said that the other people there all did that one, letting Eminem lead the way, but then he forced Eminem out of that one into that one.
00:14:33.000And this is not... He wasn't saying that like he was, like, on IARD.
00:14:36.000He was saying... I don't know why he did it.
00:14:38.000He forced a British handshake on Eminem.
00:15:01.000These are the world's most powerful people.
00:15:03.000They're either atrophying, cadaverous presidents of the United States who can't remember the sentence they started by the time they're six words in.
00:15:10.000They're Putin, who can't carry out a normal social interaction like a handshake.
00:15:13.000There's Kim Jong-un, who, like, what I will credit him with is he's switched off from reality, isn't he?
00:15:32.000There's a point, somewhere in an orgasm, or somewhere at the absolute high point of a poo, where I'd like, sort of like... Oh, it's worth staying alive!
00:16:31.000It'd be better... Like, we're disgusted, aren't we, by that?
00:16:34.000But it'd be better that they did that if world leaders were put in a room and said, make love with each other until you come up with a viable solution for this endless war.
00:16:58.000Um, like, if you're watching this on YouTube, we're going to click over in a minute.
00:17:00.000Remember, we're going to talk about how gain-of-function re- not actually gain-of-function, how, um, excuse me, how amalgamations of variants within the coronavirus cinematic universe were being irresponsibly amalgamated in City of London, right in the very midst of the pandemic.
00:19:00.000But anyway, Biden, who's nothing to do with that war, as far as we can understand, blocking a peace deal surely is not connected to this.
00:19:07.000The US has announced a $350 million weapons package for Ukraine.
00:19:12.000Again, obviously, Ukraine will have the right to protect themselves and all of that, but a peace deal would be better, I think.
00:19:19.000$350 million including ammunition for the HIMARS rocket launchers, artillery rounds, high speed, it just looks like a bunch of dangerous stuff.
00:20:26.000I don't know, it's about the right amount.
00:20:28.000So, like, 20 years since the Iraq War, here's some terrifying facts about the Iraq War before presenting to you Julian Assange's long-cherished edict that the function of war is to funnel money from you, the taxpayer, and us, the public, to private interests.
00:20:47.000So, during the Iraq War, in the last 20 years, money spent on weapons has doubled to nearly $2 trillion a year.
00:20:56.000In 2020 alone, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, ay-up, accounted for nearly a third, ay-up, were in weapons gear.
00:21:05.000If you're English, you'd know that Northrop Grumman sounds like a Yorkshireman who's like selling weapons as part of, he's a bit part clown or creatures great and small.
00:21:14.000It sounds like a place I would have worked as a teenager.
00:22:17.000You have to acknowledge also that the Iraq war was not a popular war at the time.
00:22:22.000It was a war in all good, on a lie, on a deception.
00:22:26.000The deception being, of course, that there were weapons of mass destruction.
00:22:29.000Millions of people protested in the street.
00:22:30.000It was a pivotal moment in our history.
00:22:33.000You should look at our conversation with Glenn Greenwald that we had a couple of days ago.
00:22:37.000He gives a beautiful description how the events of 2003 and the events of 2008 still define the world that we are living in.
00:22:45.000Perhaps, you know, like I suppose since 9-11 it's been a surveillance state.
00:22:51.000Only thanks to figures like Julian Assange and his bravery are we even aware of many of the atrocities that took place in that war and that's of course why he's in Belmarsh prison to this day without Yeah.
00:23:02.000having had a trial. It doesn't seem right that someone's in a maximum security prison
00:23:07.000without a trial. Is that how we do business? Apparently it is. Halliburton in 2009 was
00:23:11.000the world's second largest oilfield service company. What's all this? You know, they've
00:23:17.000made a lot of money. Halliburton made a lot of money. And I remember reading about Clinton,
00:23:21.000Hillary Clinton this was, and in terms of that quote that we saw of her recently post-Iraq
00:23:26.000where she spoke about Iraq as a business opportunity for American interests.
00:23:31.000She did literally a speech where she was talking about it as a business interest, and then you discovered the people who made a lot of money out of it, some were weapons manufacturers, others were energy companies, all incredibly donated to the Hillary Clinton Foundation.
00:23:46.000If you're watching this on YouTube, we're going to tell you about Landon Tan and their ludicrous experimentations that went on even at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
00:23:56.000And we are going to give you some unique insights into the life of Hillary Clinton directly from Alex Jones.
00:24:03.000So click over right now if you want to hear him.
00:24:08.000You won't hear them on YouTube, I won't say them there!
00:24:10.000Alright, join us on Rumble, where we can speak freely, dammit.
00:24:15.000So, um, listen, I'm not gonna say that on the show, that's just a joke.
00:24:18.000That was us mucking around, like, we've not spoke to Alex Challenge for a long time.
00:24:22.000That was clickbait, is what you just did there.
00:24:24.000I baited you there to click that, but we are going to tell you some stuff about gain of function.
00:24:28.000The other thing I want to talk about on the anniversary of the Iraq War, Gareth, is that Tony Blair, who sort of grinned his way through that Iraq War, certainly did, is rigging his hands, smiling his artist.
00:24:39.000Yeah, I remember seeing him and George Bush with their hands in their little jackets, walking up the, you know, when he went to see... War jackets, like camo.
00:24:46.000Do you know, I don't think politicians should be allowed to do that, unless they have been in the army, like Churchill or... Right, we saw Russia soon enough recently.
00:25:33.000Now that you've joined us over here and we're unable to feed you any Alex Jones-style information about the private business of Hillary Clinton, which, frankly, I don't mind about.
00:25:41.000In fact, I have no personal dislike of any member of Any family, anywhere!
00:25:48.000Just what I feel like they are good at helping us understand is how politics functions, how there's sort of aristocracies within various political parties in the United States of America, that they're undemocratic, that it's pretty well understood now that within the Democratic Party they scuppered the campaign of Bernie Sanders because they wouldn't be able to stay true to their paymasters if Bernie got elected.
00:26:10.000And I know loads of you don't like Bernie because you think he's got too many houses or stuff like that.
00:26:14.000And I did hear, when I was on Bill Maher the other day, there was a bit where he goes, yeah, no, you've got to have centralised forces!
00:26:20.000And I thought, hang on, what's that all about?
00:26:24.000Could that be a centralised response that is positive and democratic, rather than unelected bodies like the WHO, WEF, all that kind of stuff, dictating global policy?
00:26:33.000All I think about Bernie Sanders is he's got a hell of a lot better policies than, for example, Hillary Clinton.
00:26:38.000You wouldn't argue with that, would you?
00:26:39.000Let us know in the chat, let us know in the comments.
00:26:41.000And while you're thinking about, you know, moving around deck chairs on the Titanic with different political figures within established political movements that are funded in exactly the same way, we'll tell you this.
00:26:54.000I can't believe this is true, and tell me if you can believe it.
00:26:56.000Right in the middle of that pandemic, when we were concerned about how it came about, how it was going to end, what the proper response was, whether people were being honest about vaccine medications and the consequences of them, In London, where the Queen was living at that time.
00:27:51.000That's what I'd feel if I found out Her Majesty the Queen was compromised because of these experiments.
00:27:56.000Well look, while they were naysaying the potential for that lab leak coming out of Wuhan, quibbling that it would be of natural origin regardless if it went via a bloody lab with the Newly emergent raccoon dog magic bullet theory, courtesy of Anthony Fauci.
00:28:16.000Did you know that they were carrying on with what I'm going to refer to obliquely as scientific skullduggery in London?
00:28:23.000British experiments risked making the Covid pandemic more lethal.
00:28:27.000You shouldn't be doing any experiments where there's even the slightest risk of making it more lethal, should you?
00:29:13.000It's a dystopian, centralised, authoritarian nightmare.
00:29:18.000And another thing that came out of the conversation with Glenn Greenwald is that oligarchs just a century ago Greenwald charmingly described would toss dollar bills from their passing limousine in an attempt to curry favour with the great unwashed in post-Dust Bowl America.
00:29:35.000But now, you oligarchs, my God, the way they carry on!
00:29:54.000Do you ever feel that what's changed in the last few years is the realisation that you no longer need to appease the population, you can now crush the population?
00:30:04.000It's a brilliant point Greenwald made.
00:30:06.000After this, go and have a look at that.
00:30:59.000It could have infected scientists or leaked from the laboratory.
00:31:02.000Coronaviruses like SARS-CoV-2 are well known to evolve by exchanging genetic material when two distinct viruses infect the same cell, he said.
00:31:11.000This makes it much more likely that these strains will recombine and create a more dangerous variant which could infect those doing the experiments who could then spread it into the community.
00:31:20.000In recent decades... Right, so you might think this is conjecture.
00:31:23.000This is little more than senseless speculation, tumbling from the lips of an avowed conspiracy theorist.
00:33:47.000Tucker Carlson, even though he's the most controversial person in history, even though he's loathed by the liberal establishment, even though he let me pee in his garden, that's not a euphemism.
00:33:56.000He is one person who's willing to sit in front of a camera and say, or in this case I think it was in a podcast.
00:35:08.000Tucker Carlson, who some people hate because they're so perfect,
00:35:13.000has apologised for promoting the Iraq war.
00:35:16.000Why don't more mainstream figures apologize for promoting wars and lying to us just a couple of years ago?
00:35:22.000Is it because there's so many lies the whole system would fall apart?
00:35:27.000Tucker Carlson in a recent interview admitted that he regrets the way that he promoted the Iraq war, a war that now looks like it was illegally undertaken.
00:35:37.000Almost as if sometimes the media promotes an agenda because of their affiliation with corporate partners and the state doesn't represent you, doesn't protect you, except for the minimum amount it I've spent my whole life in the media.
00:35:50.000underwrites the desires, wishes and agenda of their corporatist, globalist partners.
00:35:56.000And if more people were like Tucker Carlson and apologized, even if you disagree with them on some
00:36:01.000issues, you'd start to see that the system could improve, that the media could change,
00:36:05.000the government could change, that there are different ways of running society and running
00:36:11.000your own life. Let's have a look at that now. I've spent my whole life in the media. My dad
00:36:15.000was in the media. That is a big part of the revelation that's changed my life, is the media
00:36:43.000It's 20 years, of course, since the Iraq War, and a perfect time to review some of the attitudes that led to it, some of the poor decisions, the rallying that the media undertook.
00:36:54.000It's very rare to see anyone in public life make a mea culpa of that nature.
00:37:00.000Let alone someone as frequently vilified as Tucker Carlson, who's frequently, consistently held up as the epitomization of right-wing hatred and divisiveness.
00:37:12.000But having recently personally met Tucker Carlson, I found him to be a person that was convivial and warm, and that you have to go some.
00:37:19.000To dislike people that are honest and open.
00:37:23.000I'm not saying that Tucker Carlson might have different opinions to me on politics and economics and race and gender and all sorts of subjects, but frankly, I have disagreements with people that are right up close in my life and I manage to love them anyway.
00:37:36.000What is significant is the ability to allow people to live differently than you and have different views than you and to apologize critically for mistakes made in the past.
00:37:47.000If you can say, I was wrong about my stance on the Iraq war.
00:37:52.000I was rallying on behalf of the establishment.
00:37:55.000I am to some degree responsible for the death of Iraqi civilians who need not have died, it was wrong that they died.
00:38:01.000Now we've got this kind of collective amnesia, this full steam ahead, never look back, don't worry about what we said at the beginning of the pandemic, that's history!
00:38:10.000Don't worry about what we're saying about the war between Russia and Ukraine or what happened in 2014 or what Remember the promises America and the Soviet Union made when the Berlin Wall came down?
00:38:49.000That stuff, I'm on the side of that's necessary progress and it's good that those conversations are happening and people aren't ignorant to the effect and impact of their language and actions on others.
00:38:59.000That's good, that's positive, it should happen.
00:39:02.000Forgiveness, moving forward, particularly in geopolitical issues where millions of lives are lost.
00:39:07.000If you're gonna foreclose that, put that to one side and focus fastidiously instead on what I would regard as minor cultural differences, emphasizing those differences in order to prevent progress.
00:39:18.000What kind of culture are you gonna get?
00:39:20.000What kind of real progress are we gonna get?
00:39:22.000What is one of your biggest regrets in your career?
00:39:26.000Well, I've had a million regrets not being more skeptical, calling people names when I should have listened to what they were saying.
00:39:32.000Look, when someone makes a claim, there's only one question that's important at the very beginning, which is, is the claim true or not?
00:39:40.000And for too long, I participated in the culture where I was like, anyone who thinks outside these pre-prescribed lanes is crazy, is a conspiracy theorist.
00:39:51.000And I just really regret that. I'm ashamed that I did that.
00:39:54.000And partly it was age, partly it was the world that I grew up in. So when you look at me and you're
00:39:58.000like, yeah, of course they're part of the means of control. I'm like, that's obvious to you
00:40:03.000because you're 28, but I just didn't see it at all, at all. And I'm ashamed of that. Isn't that what
00:40:34.000So who are the real conspiracy theorists and what's the blunt and simple truth?
00:40:38.000Is it as Tucker Carlson claims that the media simply amplify and magnify the preferred opinions and agenda of the powerful or is it that all of a sudden loads of people have become conspiracy theorists?
00:40:49.000Let me know in the chat, let me know in the comments.
00:40:51.000Some interesting claims, ideas and an interesting perspective from a media insider who has become critical almost to the point of becoming a whistleblower.
00:40:59.000But let's look now at some of the claims that were made by the mainstream media at the advent of the Iraq war, the reasons that war happened and how the media behaved during it.
00:41:08.000See if we can learn anything about not only current wars but the media agenda more broadly today.
00:41:15.000As mainstream US media outlets pause to remember the US invasion of Iraq, it's clear that there's a lot they hope we'll forget.
00:41:22.000First and foremost, the media's own active complicity in whipping up public support for the war.
00:41:28.000Have the media been complicit in whipping up support for any wars lately?
00:41:33.000But the more you dig into mainstream news coverage from that period, the harder it is to forget how flagrantly news networks across the broadcast and cable landscape uncritically spread the Bush administration's propaganda and actively excluded dissenting voices.
00:41:48.000You'll notice that of course it was Bush, a Republican president then, and it's Biden, a Democrat president now, and the differences are, in my view, not significant enough.
00:41:59.000A 2003 report by the media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting found that in the two weeks leading up to the invasion, ABC World News, NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News and the PBS NewsHour featured a total of 267 American experts, analysts and commentators on camera to supposedly help make sense of the march to war.
00:42:20.000Of these 267 guests, Okay, let's get 267 guests!
00:42:23.000Make sure that three quarters of them are current government or military officials.
00:42:50.000Meanwhile, in the fast-growing world of cable news, Fox News' tough-talking pro-war jingoism was setting the standard for ratings-weary executives at most of the more liberal cable networks.
00:43:00.000MSNBC and CNN, feeling the heat of what industry insiders were calling the Fox effect, were desperately trying to outflank their right wing rival and one another by actively eliminating critical voices and seeing who could bang the war drums loudest.
00:43:16.000So I suppose what became the game was not reporting information, but amplifying a perspective that was based, I suppose, on conflict, not even the war that they were reporting on, but A doubling down on polarity.
00:43:31.000I suppose polarity in the world of physics is what creates energy and I suppose in the world of media is what creates eyeballs and so their function as truth-tellers has been eroded to the point of invisibility and non-existence and ultimately what they do is cheerlead for a set of perspectives.
00:43:47.000At MSNBC, as the Iraq invasion approached in early 2003, network executives decided to fire Phil Donahue, even though his show had the highest ratings on the channel.
00:43:56.000A leaked internal memo explained that top management saw Donahue as a tired left-wing liberal who would be a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.
00:44:05.000Noting that Donoghue seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and sceptical of the administration's motives, the memo warned ominously that his show could end up being a home for the liberal anti-war agenda, at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.
00:44:20.000Don't worry you that they don't care at all about important subjects like war or truth or what you feel or what's best for you.
00:44:27.000That it's a completely insular mindset that's based upon economic and commercial incentives.
00:44:34.000Now, I recognize the world we live in, we have economic and commercial requirements, but fortunately they're in alignment with our principles.
00:44:44.000And I think that all of us have to somehow aggregate those choices.
00:44:53.000And obviously Tucker Carlson is a person who is on a journey recognizing that in this particular example, the Iraq war, he made a mistake.
00:45:01.000But there are very few people who can have that conversation because they are not free.
00:45:05.000They are trapped within a very, very particular role.
00:45:08.000Are you not sort of astonished by the lack of open conversation on MSNBC and CNN and even these right-wing media outlets that I've been condemned for appearing on at least have done that.
00:45:44.000Do I agree with promoting wars when I don't understand the conditions that have led to them?
00:45:49.000Also, MSNBC and CNN glory and marvel in their differences from Fox News, continually attacking and condemning Fox News, but the facts suggest that they emulate and So how can you say, hey, we're different, we're better, they're shit, when in fact, you're copying them?
00:46:05.000to a not insignificant subject like war, which will necessarily involve dead children
00:46:47.000I think it's important to have experts explain the war and to describe the military hardware, describe the tactics and talk about the strategy behind the conflict, Jordan explained.
00:46:54.000I went to the Pentagon myself several times before the war started and met with important people there and said, here are the generals we're thinking of retaining to advise us on the air and off about the war.
00:47:04.000And we got a big thumbs up on all of them.
00:47:23.000What you want is, no, no, you're holding us to account.
00:47:27.000All of the moral piety, all of the, how dare you, no, no, no, Fox is awful.
00:47:31.000Remember when I went on Bill Maher, that guy was as if I was attacking a church or a widow or something.
00:47:35.000It's like, it's just some bunch of media sluts pumping out crap into a dump.
00:47:41.000As journalist Norman Solomon observes, the bedrock democratic principle of an independent adversarial press was simply tossed Out of the window.
00:47:50.000Hey, whoa, what about the bedrock principle of an adversarial and objective press?
00:47:54.000Oh yeah, no, I've been thinking about that.
00:48:42.000We are working hard to deserve your time because we value you and respect you.
00:48:46.000They think you're dumb and you're stupid and that you'll take whatever you're given.
00:48:49.000That's why you've got to join us on this journey.
00:48:51.000The result was a barely-debated, deceit-driven, headlong rush into a war of choice that would go on to destabilise the region, accelerate global terrorism, bleed trillions of dollars from the US Treasury, and kill thousands of US service members and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, most of them innocent civilians.
00:50:09.000It's you motherfuckers the whole time!
00:50:11.000Yet two decades later, as we hurtle even closer to potentially catastrophic new wars, there's been virtually no accountability or sustained reporting in mainstream news media to remind us of their own decisive role in selling the Iraq war.
00:50:24.000How MSNBC and CNN should begin every newscast every night.
00:50:28.000Hi, we're the guys that actively promoted the Iraq war.
00:51:27.000Memory is a strategic resource in any country, especially the memory of wars, the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen has written.
00:51:35.000No doubt they'll be damned as a conspiracy theorist within the week.
00:51:38.000By controlling the narrative of the wars we fought, we justify the wars we're going to fight in the present.
00:51:42.000Yeah, of course, it's just common sense, isn't it?
00:51:44.000You can't ever Delegitimise the authority of the media because otherwise you go, well, you are the media now, so we couldn't trust you then.
00:52:07.000It's exactly because of that point That you have to be discerning, sceptical, that you have to campaign for peace and diplomacy, and above all else, you have to not trust them.
00:52:15.000As we mark the 20th anniversary of the murderous US invasion of Iraq, it's imperative to reclaim the memory of this war, not only from the Bush administration officials who waged it, but also from the corporate media system that helped sell it and has tried to control the narrative ever since.
00:52:30.000And they continue to try to control that narrative to this day, but they cannot do it if we do not comply, if we remain informed, if we refuse to accept their condemnation, smearing, criticism, prejudice, propaganda, bigotry and bias, if we stay awake, if we celebrate values like redemption, forgiveness, apologizing, making amends, spiritual principles and values, if we exhibit them in ourselves, And welcome them in others.
00:53:26.000Do you want to be on the side of justice, freedom, individual liberty, redemption, love, peace, Valour?
00:53:32.000Or do you just want to be another drone, another passive consumer, staring dumbly at a screen, subject to a global evil empire that wants you distracted and numb?
00:53:52.000You'd like to drop those leftover pandemic pounds that you put on during the pandemic because you were sad inside because of the pandemic.
00:53:59.000But how sick are you also of all the ads for weight loss pills and fad diets that probably don't even work anyway and might make your feet change colour?
00:54:12.000Eating five healthy servings of fruit and vegetables every single day.
00:54:16.000Who among us has time to prepare that every single day?
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00:55:37.000I'm trying to just shine love out of my heart into your hearts.
00:55:40.000Now, Julian Assange, we told you about Julian Assange believes that the function of government is to filter Uh, public money into the hands of private organizations.
00:55:50.000We're going to have a look at Julian saying that, and then we're going to talk to our guest Dave Smith, who's an advocate for anti-war and host of the Part of the Problem podcast, who will, I believe, strongly agree with that metric, because he believes in as little government as possible, being, as I understand, a libertarian.
00:56:07.000Because the goal is not to completely subjugate Afghanistan.
00:56:11.000The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the United States, out of the tax bases of European countries, through Afghanistan, and back into the hands of a transnational security alliance.
00:56:46.000And it's one year now of the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia, all the terrible deaths incurred, particularly, you know, Ukraine, who are obviously under attack.
00:57:35.000I don't know if that's the only motivating factor.
00:57:38.000I think sometimes they also wanted, you know, they might also want to, say, tank Donald Trump's chances of getting re-elected, but their pharmaceutical companies are also raking in profits.
00:57:49.000I think they did want to overthrow Saddam Hussein for other reasons, but that's definitely part of it.
00:57:54.000Dave, with the ICC announcing that it's their bizarre intention to arrest Vladimir Putin, a man who I don't imagine would cooperate with an ordinary arrest.
00:58:04.000Although, having seen him attempt to shake hands, I can see that if you were to approach him from the front, he could be vulnerable.
00:58:10.000What do you feel about the war in Syria and the bombing of Yemen, which indicts Biden, Trump and Obama all as war criminals to the same standard of Putin, the same standard by which Putin is being charged?
00:58:29.000Well, I mean, I think it far exceeds it, if we're just being objective.
00:58:33.000I mean, Ukraine is a catastrophe, and Putin has a lot of responsibility for that, so he doesn't have all the responsibility, but the humanitarian crisis in Yemen is objectively, if that's a catastrophe, this is a catastrophe times ten.
00:58:47.000There's just way more people dying, and it wasn't soldiers dying over the last eight years in Yemen, it was like babies starving to death and dying of cholera and stuff.
00:58:56.000So yeah, look, there's a great video, I don't know if you've ever seen,
00:58:59.000where Noam Chomsky just breaks down the war crimes of every post-World War II president
00:59:06.000So like, I'm fine if we want to indict war criminals, but let's get them all, you know?
00:59:10.000And you see something like, if you look at Yemen particularly,
00:59:15.000you just see how much, like the whole military industrial complex,
00:59:20.000American empire establishment, they care about humanitarian issues when it's convenient.
00:59:25.000You don't see every day in the corporate press people talking about the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, or in Palestine, or in Syria, or in Somalia.
00:59:36.000But we do see the one on Russia's border that we can blame on Russia.
00:59:42.000That's the one that they hyper-focus on.
00:59:46.000And even when we raise these points, we are often smeared.
00:59:51.000And it's difficult not to assume, even though it seems reductive even when I'm saying it, that the financial benefits of these conflicts are the determining factor.
01:00:01.000and the alliances between the military-industrial complex and the media and the government
01:00:05.000are what determine the way these stories are presented, because you're right,
01:00:09.000if that were not the case, you would hear as much about Yemen,
01:00:12.000you would hear as much about other conflicts.
01:00:14.000If the metric by which we measured catastrophe was deaths and destruction,
01:00:20.000and nobody's saying that those things are not present in the tragedy in Ukraine,
01:00:24.000and that it oughtn't be stopped as quickly as possible, but other criminals would be brought to the forefront as
01:00:30.000well, In our recent show, we talked about the lack of moral authority for any agency that would seek to arrest Trump.
01:00:38.000That's not saying that Trump isn't guilty of wrongdoing.
01:00:41.000In fact, we're ignoring that altogether because if Trump is guilty, then, you know, the Clinton campaign will be guilty by the same measure.
01:00:48.000But what we're saying is that The lack of faith in institutions that we are currently experiencing means that we clearly need systemic change.
01:00:57.000Am I right in understanding, Dave, that that's precisely your personal perspective?
01:01:02.000And if you are a libertarian, and I know you are, I'm just using this rhetorically, what is the role of government?
01:01:12.000Can government involvement in the lives of ordinary Americans, ordinary people of all persuasions, be?
01:01:18.000And do you not agree that the role of the government and the function of the government is supposed to be to, in a sense, provide some kind of edifice against corporate corruption?
01:01:28.000Even if it obviously doesn't do that now, it does the bloody opposite.
01:01:31.000It'd just be good for you to unpack some of those ideas for us, please.
01:01:35.000I mean, well, I think I'd like the government to be about as small as we could possibly get it.
01:01:40.000And I think from my perspective, the idea that the government was ever supposed to be a shield for the people against big corporate interests, as always, there might be some people who really believe that.
01:01:51.000I think in reality, it has never been that, and it's always been, you know, much more a tool for big money interests than anything that was ever working against them.
01:02:01.000And if you ever see, any time that you ever saw the government working against big business, it was almost always on behalf of some other big business who wanted their competition stomped out.
01:02:12.000It's like power corrupts, and there's nothing more powerful than a government.
01:02:16.000And so if you're saying that you need the government to check the power of a corporation, Well, in order to do that, it's going to have to be more powerful than that corporation.
01:02:24.000And so now, once you have this power center, it's going to become a race to see who can buy it off and who's going to have a better shot of doing that than the biggest businesses.
01:02:34.000So I think the whole paradigm, like you talked earlier about, like the left-right paradigm being all kind of like it doesn't really apply anymore.
01:02:41.000I think that basically it's not a question of like, are you anti-big business or anti-big government?
01:02:47.000I think if you oppose one, you have to oppose the other because they're all in bed together.
01:02:51.000And, you know, just to touch on what you said there about the kind of like getting called all the names because you oppose the war, you know, on this anniversary of Iraq, just remember that the people who were opposed to this war, the war in Iraq, The line back then was, you're either with us or you're with the terrorists.
01:03:07.000They basically said, if you don't want to overthrow Saddam Hussein, then you're happy that 9-11 happened.
01:03:15.000And now, years later, even John McCain, on his deathbed in his memoir, wrote that he acknowledged the war was a mistake.
01:03:21.000Everyone now acknowledges that those people were right to oppose the war.
01:03:25.000So just to keep that in mind with all the people, they'll call you like a Putin apologist or something like that now if you oppose the West's involvement in the war in Ukraine.
01:03:34.000But yeah, the whole thing is a racket and it's all big business interests that control the governments.
01:03:41.000That's really interesting that you say that, mate.
01:03:45.000That it plainly was a transgressive war, and the way, and I didn't remember that, that they said, yeah, that they equated it with terror, made it unpatriotic, and made it like you were dishonouring those that died on 9-11.
01:03:59.000And now, even if you're non-compliant around coronavirus, remember there was the same kind of shaming narrative that, well, like as if you were a friend of coronavirus, like here is little mate carrying it about and stuff.
01:04:13.000It's weird, the role, the palette that is drawn from, even though sometimes we think of these systems as sophisticated, secular, and of course, by their nature, political, the game they're playing is emotional.
01:04:24.000They're dealing with things like shame and fear.
01:04:28.000And sort of destroying your personal ability to live life, you know?
01:04:33.000So I can understand... I appreciate libertarianism from that perspective.
01:04:37.000I think a lot of attacks that I hear on libertarianism is that it's somehow disavowing communal responsibility and collective power.
01:04:45.000But I don't believe that those things should be imposed by some centralized agency anyway.
01:05:33.000is there with the threat of a gun to your head like you pay your taxes or you go to jail you know like
01:05:39.000every every law has a gun behind it saying you violate this and we will throw you
01:05:44.000in a cage it's really insane when you think about it
01:05:46.000in like how advanced modern human civilization is and that we still will
01:05:51.000throw human beings in a cage like an animal for the for ridiculous crimes
01:05:56.000now i mean okay i'm you know yeah if you if you murder someone or rape someone or
01:06:00.000you know stab someone or you know set someone's house on fire okay fine
01:06:04.000maybe that's the best we can do it you you kind of think still we could find
01:06:07.000something better but regardless of that the idea of like Funding this monopoly on violence at the threat of we'll ruin your life, and it's such a binary to say, oh, if we didn't do it that way, then there'd be no community, then no one would care about taking care of the sick, or no one would think about like, oh, there's someone who's hard on their luck, we have to help them out.
01:06:27.000I don't believe that these people, these genocidal maniacs, these blood-soaked monsters, are like the only way we would make sure grandma had a sandwich, is if they're funded.
01:06:41.000Because actually, that sort of misanthropic assumption is what underwrites centralised and legal authority anyway.
01:06:49.000The assumption that if you leave people alone, you know what they're going to do?
01:06:52.000They're going to run into the streets and start masturbating and killing each other.
01:06:55.000That's like the idea that legitimises the state power.
01:06:58.000I suppose early sovereign power was underwritten by the idea of protection.
01:07:02.000There are bandits, there are threats, there are dangers.
01:07:05.000If you give the king your taxes, the king will protect you from from those threats. But it's mutated into something
01:07:11.000extraordinary. And it's pretty obvious that even the most unquestioned version of democracy is
01:07:16.000laughable in 2023, that you need a representative to go 400 miles or whatever on horseback
01:07:23.000to tell the central authority, this is what this parish believes.
01:07:28.000It's antiquated and it's irrelevant and it's only being kept alive because it's beneficial to the kind of state and corporate interest that you rightly diagnose as being a kind of hybrid, a hydra, and as you said very eloquently, Dave, a blood-soaked monster.
01:07:42.000Dave, thank you so much for joining us for this conversation.
01:07:45.000I hope we get to have many more like it.
01:07:48.000Dave Smith is an advocate for anti-war, clearly, and an advocate for freedom, host of Part of the Problem podcast, which you can find wherever you find podcasts.
01:08:22.000What I think, mate, is that, this is what I think, is that the same way that anarchism would be attacked and libertarianism is attacked, same way that socialism is attacked, they all are subject to smear campaigns from the existing system.
01:08:36.000But I reckon probably what's also true is there's the potential for unquestioned utopianism as well.
01:08:43.000Hold on, how are these things going to work?
01:08:45.000If we're serious about changing the world, we probably have to have conversations about how we're going to reorganise it.
01:08:49.000I say, I do agree, keep governments small, keep communities small, keep them autonomous, keep them democratic, leave people alone has got to be one of the first principles, unless you can, like I say to my kids, either be nice to each other or leave each other alone!
01:09:07.000All right, well, listen, we've got plenty more time.
01:09:09.000We've got the rest of our lives to come to some conclusions, which might not be long, because it seems that people are advocating for a global holy war.
01:09:15.000So that would get in the way, of course.
01:09:17.000Tomorrow's show is promising to be a banger, because we got Graham Hancock from the hit Netflix series Ancient Apocalypse.
01:09:26.000He's coming on to talk about arcane civilizations, psychedelics.
01:09:31.000If you entered our competition, you could be here at Stay Free HQ.
01:09:35.000If you're a member of our locals community, you can be online while we're having the conversation, sticking your oar in, you know, asking Graham questions.
01:10:21.000A little bit less chat chat and a bit more that that from you Graham my man.
01:10:26.000A bit less comic could have hit the earth and called a cataclysmic event and there's water erosion on the pyramid and a bit more noshy noshy.
01:11:19.000Don't you fucking talk bad about me wellness.
01:11:21.000Here, lend us 20 quid for me wellness, will ya?
01:11:25.000Cos if I don't get some wellness, I'm fucking gonna kill someone!
01:11:33.000People think that, you know, I'm clean and everything, I'm not taking no drugs and I'm zero drugs for nineteen and a half years, one day at a time.
01:11:54.000But people think that maybe now, because it's been so long, that I can take things like ayahuasca, the spiritual drugs, the wellness drugs.
01:12:00.000If you don't know, it's like people take it like it's a sort of a tea that's made from a couple of plants you can take in sort of usually Central and South American countries that you take under the tutelage of a shaman.
01:12:13.000You know, and like people tell me, like, oh, maybe you could take that, because it's like, you know, it's not like a drug.