Stay Free - Russel Brand - This Is Why The Democrats Being Sh*t Matters! - #045 - Stay Free with Russell Brand

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

00:01:25.000 In this video, you're going to see the future.

00:01:38.000 Hello there, you Awakening Wonders.

00:01:39.000 We are actually in that building.

00:01:41.000 You could be watching us on... Yeah, I know what the microphone does.

00:01:45.000 You might be watching us on YouTube right now, or you could be watching us on Rumble.

00:01:49.000 If you're watching us on Rumble, which is very much a self-styled home of free speech.

00:01:53.000 That's where you get our free speech, and you get Glenn Greenwald's free speech.

00:01:57.000 You get all the free speech money can buy.

00:02:00.000 It's here on Rumble.

00:02:01.000 We're here to talk about Democrat donors.

00:02:03.000 The second biggest donor to the Democratic Party, Sam Bankman-Friedman.

00:02:09.000 No, Sam Bankman-Fried, yeah.

00:02:11.000 Why does it say Sam Bankman-Fried in my... I don't know.

00:02:14.000 Someone's trying to mess with you.

00:02:16.000 Someone's trying to mess with me.

00:02:17.000 There's enough challenges, isn't there, and enough corruption in the world without it infiltrating the very systems here that we are dependent upon.

00:02:24.000 We'll be talking about Sam Bankman-Friedman in a minute.

00:02:28.000 Sam Bankman-Fried.

00:02:29.000 Because the reason I'm going to talk about him, I suppose, is probably... Is it to get his name right?

00:02:33.000 My aim, ultimately, is to... One of these... The dream is to get his name right.

00:02:39.000 He'll still be in prison and I'll still be mispronouncing his name.

00:02:43.000 If he goes.

00:02:44.000 Why would he go?

00:02:44.000 That's my biggest fear.

00:02:46.000 I suppose that the reason we're interested in him and this story in particular is because every so often it feels like we're bashing the Democrat Party for the sake of it.

00:02:53.000 But actually, what we're saying is, how can there...

00:02:57.000 Posturing and moral grandstanding be of any value when there's so much evident corruption in their funding.

00:03:04.000 This guy, Sam Bankman Freedman.

00:03:07.000 Sam Bank Freedman.

00:03:08.000 Just Freed.

00:03:09.000 Ironically.

00:03:09.000 Sam Banks.

00:03:11.000 Just Freed.

00:03:11.000 Freed.

00:03:12.000 Yet to be incarcerated.

00:03:15.000 He's, like, been on stage at the WF with Clinton and Blair and he's sort of their boy, isn't he?

00:03:23.000 And so I suppose there's many people sort of reveling in... Hailed as the first trillionaire, well... Trillion!

00:03:29.000 First future trillionaire in the new Warren Buffett, apparently.

00:03:36.000 How can you have a strong moral centre if you're hailing a trillionaire?

00:03:41.000 In Here's the News we're talking about Biden's broken promises, in particular the promises he broke to railroad workers and to all of us with his ongoing relationships with Saudi Arabia.

00:03:50.000 But one of those railroads is owned by Warren Buffett, another posturing apparent socialist.

00:03:55.000 This is why it astonishes me when people talk about the left because the left is a Supposed to be about the empowerment of ordinary people, and of course that became corrupted, as you know, in Maoism and Stalinism, and the left has become... Oh God, what is it now?

00:04:08.000 What is it?

00:04:09.000 Later, we're going to be talking to Silky Carlo from Big Brother Watch UK.

00:04:12.000 She's a surveillance expert, and she's going to be talking about the importation of Chinese-style surveillance into Western nations.

00:04:20.000 literal pieces of tech along with the ideologies that you are by now surely familiar with,

00:04:27.000 we suppose became aware during lockdown when we were incarcerated in the manner that Chinese 1.00

00:04:34.000 people previously had been and we thought, no, that won't happen, that won't happen to

00:04:38.000 us, won't happen to you. Remember to hit rumble because it helps us in ways that I can never

00:04:42.000 never explain to you. We see it as a G-spot, it's a cyber G-spot.

00:04:47.000 Now, wherever you are in the world now, well, actually only if you're in certain

00:04:51.000 parts of America or in the UK, the main news, the main story is a simple one.

00:04:55.000 It's snow.

00:04:57.000 Snow is happening.

00:04:59.000 And snow is always a cause for hysteria.

00:05:02.000 Remember, we're going to talk about a lot of stories over the course of the show.

00:05:05.000 We're going to be talking about global issues at depth and sharing with you information and data that we simply couldn't share while still on YouTube.

00:05:13.000 So if you're watching us on YouTube now, Flip over to the other side.

00:05:16.000 This is what you're being invited to care about.

00:05:18.000 And in a minute, we'll tell you perhaps what you should be caring about.

00:05:20.000 Let's have a look at snow.

00:05:23.000 But first, a monster winter storm system is dumping snow from coast to coast and bringing dangerous weather along with it.

00:05:30.000 California's Sierra Nevada.

00:05:32.000 Yeah, because they do try and like personify the weather.

00:05:37.000 Like it's this monster snow going around dumping snow from place to place.

00:05:41.000 Yeah, the language. 0.96

00:05:42.000 Dump, monster, dangerous.

00:05:46.000 I think that sounds like IPS rather than a weather condition.

00:05:52.000 Right, so look at the amount of attention they give into it. 0.97

00:05:56.000 Alright, so it's terrifying.

00:06:03.000 But also what's terrifying is the story that a NATO Secretary General, let's have a look at that, that a NATO Secretary General...

00:06:11.000 has said that a full-blown war between Russia and NATO is a real possibility,

00:06:17.000 a rare acknowledgement of the dangers of backing Ukraine. I feel that the war in Ukraine will get 0.83

00:06:21.000 out of control and spread into a major war between NATO and Russia. He said if things go wrong they

00:06:25.000 can go horribly wrong. This is as the Pentagon gives the go-ahead for Ukraine to begin launching

00:06:31.000 long-range attacks on targets inside Russia. We're going to be in a minute we're going to show you

00:06:37.000 something that's extraordinary.

00:06:38.000 It's a piece of legacy media news from 2014, where the British newspaper The Guardian were writing about NATO infringement upon former Soviet territory and how irresponsible it was.

00:06:50.000 Because this is written in 2014, it's written with such nuance and transparency.

00:06:55.000 It's such a balanced piece of journalism.

00:06:56.000 But when you see it compared to the kind of The hyperbole and jingoism that constitutes mainstream media news these days, you will be astonished at how quickly the world's changing.

00:07:07.000 We've commented many times that a figure like Glenn Greenwald, our chum over here on Rumble, went from being a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist to sort of a de facto fascist, at least in mainstream media spaces.

00:07:18.000 Or Matt Taibbi, another friend of the show, condemned as a sort of, I don't know, like a conspiracy theorist or a fringe wacko.

00:07:24.000 Chris Hedges.

00:07:25.000 Chris Hedges as well.

00:07:26.000 Similarly, all sort of like credible journalists have become condemned as the center shifts.

00:07:31.000 It's the center that's changing.

00:07:33.000 Now, as to indicate the way that these stories are prioritized in the mainstream media, we're using the great thermometer that is Google.

00:07:44.000 Look at this.

00:07:44.000 There are 118 million Google News searches.

00:07:47.000 That means 118 million stories on snow.

00:07:50.000 And only 334,000 stories on NATO and a potential NATO war with Russia, right?

00:07:58.000 But that means, look, there are more stories about old clock parts.

00:08:02.000 Ten times as many stories about old clock parts than a full-blown war between NATO and Russia.

00:08:07.000 I don't even know you can write about an old clock part.

00:08:09.000 No.

00:08:09.000 Do you think it's a story or a search?

00:08:11.000 Because I can't imagine, how many stories can you read?

00:08:13.000 Old clock parts found in a boy's attic, and it's like a robot from the 50s, but is it conscious or just intelligent AI?

00:08:20.000 There's one.

00:08:21.000 Do another.

00:08:23.000 I've got literally three million of these.

00:08:26.000 And also, look, there are 54,000 stories on whether squirrels are becoming more intelligent,

00:08:30.000 which I now realize is a storyline from Rick and Morty, the excellent adult swim cartoon

00:08:36.000 that's somehow penetrated my consciousness to the degree where it just unconsciously

00:08:41.000 becomes a reference in me head.

00:08:45.000 Now, the way that the mainstream continually legitimizes itself

00:08:49.000 is through the repetition of particular templates.

00:08:52.000 This may, on the surface of it, seem like a superficial and senseless story.

00:08:56.000 A member of BTS, that's that Korean pop band.

00:08:59.000 Yeah.

00:09:00.000 Jin has become a... He's entered into the military.

00:09:03.000 He's got a duty in, you know, a South Korean boot camp.

00:09:06.000 There he is, the lad.

00:09:08.000 And he shaved his head.

00:09:10.000 I don't know, like, what Jin is like normally, because I've not memorized K-pop.

00:09:14.000 You're not?

00:09:15.000 No, I don't memorise anyone from K-pop or BTS, but of course this is a repetition of a story that's, God, I'm terrified to say, like 70 years old.

00:09:22.000 It's when Elvis Presley went into the army.

00:09:24.000 Here's the image of dear Elvis going through the exact same process there.

00:09:30.000 There's Elvis being shaved, and of course when Elvis was shaved and went into the army, It was a kind of a castration.

00:09:38.000 Now, I don't know what BTS represent to their millions of fans, but I imagine it's some sort of sanitized rebellion.

00:09:45.000 And back in the 1950s, rock and roll seemed like a genuinely revolutionary force.

00:09:50.000 And I suppose that led John Lennon to famously say on learning of the death of Elvis Presley, you know, when he was told Elvis is dead, he went, hey, Elvis died when he went into the army.

00:09:58.000 But that was seen as the castration of a cultural pop, a pop cultural movement.

00:10:05.000 Interesting metaphor for now though, isn't it?

00:10:05.000 Hey, listen you lot.

00:10:07.000 Especially with, I guess, Ukraine and stuff going on at the moment.

00:10:10.000 The military, industrial complex, or the military in general, still in control when it comes down to it, isn't it?

00:10:15.000 You can have all your culture and your music and your K-pop, but when it comes down to it, it's about the military.

00:10:20.000 And we've just seen that there are, is it, what we've seen at the moment mate, that there's further funding, further

00:10:27.000 Pentagon funding being...

00:10:29.000 Yeah, it's a record $858 billion military budget given to the Pentagon, half of which goes to private companies, we

00:10:36.000 now know, over half of which goes to them.

00:10:38.000 We're going to be talking about that at length and in depth.

00:10:42.000 If you're watching us on YouTube, you should always let me do a proper sign off on YouTube.

00:10:46.000 I'd really like the opportunity to sort of go like to always do it properly so that I can go.

00:10:50.000 So if you are watching this on YouTube, we're going to leave you right now, but do switch over to Rumble right now, please, because we're going to cut the stream because it's about to get extremely salacious over here.

00:11:00.000 So I will always do that.

00:11:02.000 So please take my lead on that if you don't mind.

00:11:04.000 Thank you.

00:11:05.000 Thank you.

00:11:06.000 Are we off?

00:11:07.000 Yeah, well, they came up on there off YouTube.

00:11:11.000 Do you want to know more about that?

00:11:15.000 OK.

00:11:15.000 Not now.

00:11:16.000 I will want to.

00:11:18.000 I've got other stuff.

00:11:20.000 Yeah.

00:11:21.000 Listen, my research has yielded quite a lot of, I would say, fruitful results.

00:11:28.000 Elsewhere in the mainstream, Elsewhere in the mainstream, there are numerous awards being doled out to figures for a variety of reasons, some of which seem to be at odds with reality.

00:11:48.000 Old Fetterman there is being awarded for being stylish, but like, you know, whatever qualities he has, I'm not sure that style is one of them.

00:11:57.000 He has this sort of air of an inmate there.

00:11:59.000 They said he's bringing Carhartt to the capital, apparently.

00:12:03.000 If that's what's required.

00:12:05.000 Is that good?

00:12:06.000 Zelensky is Person of the Year, have a look at that.

00:12:09.000 And Kanye is Anti-Semite of the Year, which I suppose, in a way, I don't think you should encourage people, but if anti-semitism is a bad thing, and I believe it is, I'd say abolish the entire ceremony.

00:12:24.000 I can't imagine there's an actual trophy, can you?

00:12:27.000 I don't reckon this is a place to comedically riff because I'll start thinking about what the Soap Trophy is.

00:12:32.000 Good point.

00:12:33.000 It's going to get into some tricky territory.

00:12:39.000 While we're focusing on the pillars of the establishment and the way that they are decorated, here are some stories that we're not being told.

00:12:49.000 The first one is about ID cards.

00:12:52.000 Let's have a look at that, Gal.

00:12:54.000 Yeah, okay, so this is a story about the EU digital ID contractor who basically was all over the UK COVID pass in the first place.

00:13:06.000 So at a time when the COVID pass was introduced, it was obviously a tracing app and we were told that, you know, this is just for COVID, don't worry, we're not going to do anything with it, we're not going to keep your data or anything like that.

00:13:17.000 But Judith Levine wrote in The Intercept in January, every government introducing a vaccine certification vowed that no personal information will be held beyond its necessity.

00:13:26.000 But in 2020, British tech firm Onfido called its immunity passport in development the linchpin of a new normality in a post-COVID-19 society.

00:13:37.000 It's the same company?

00:13:38.000 No, that was on Fido, who are another British tech firm, but the same company, which is Net Company Infrasoft, were behind the UK's official Covid pass, are behind the EU digital ID.

00:13:51.000 So it's literally, there is a literal link between the two.

00:13:53.000 So that pledge and those promises that that information would not be used in any other way as being broken, We don't know if the information has gone anywhere else yet.

00:14:04.000 It's just the same company.

00:14:05.000 It's just the same companies being used.

00:14:07.000 I guess what we were told at the time is that this is a unique thing, like a lot of things that went on during COVID.

00:14:13.000 This is uniquely being undertaken or these laws are uniquely being passed because we're dealing with something that's a one in a lifetime.

00:14:22.000 Let me see how you lot feel in the chat.

00:14:25.000 I remember it being like this.

00:14:27.000 This COVID situation has come right out of left field.

00:14:29.000 We don't know what's caused it.

00:14:31.000 Well, strong suspicions to do with this wet market, not that nearby laboratory.

00:14:35.000 So to deal with this very unique and particular situation, we are going to introduce unique and particular measures that will not be repeated down the line.

00:14:42.000 Now, are you hearing now more and more stories that there will be climate lockdowns in the future or curfews introduced?

00:14:50.000 I wish we'd been a little more recalcitrant.

00:14:52.000 I wish we'd been a little more rebellious, because I think in our compliance, which was sold to us as, like, this is your war.

00:14:59.000 Do you remember that kind of narrative?

00:15:00.000 The Great, there was the First World War, that was a good one. 1.00

00:15:03.000 Second World War, another good war against bloody Nazis, bad Nazis that time, not some of the Nazis that are corralled into the Ukrainian fighting forces.

00:15:11.000 Now, this is your war. 0.99

00:15:12.000 Your war is sit down and shut up. 0.88

00:15:14.000 Our war is total compliance and surrender.

00:15:18.000 Now, what we're seeing is that it was an attempt to normalise conditions that would have previously been regarded as extreme.

00:15:26.000 If you think about it, we already live in extreme conditions.

00:15:29.000 The way that we work, the way that we live, the way that we pay taxes.

00:15:32.000 The way that we are extracted from nature, both inner and outer, is extraordinary.

00:15:37.000 In fact, obviously, if you analyze it a little longer, there's no such bloody thing as normal.

00:15:41.000 There are just sort of regularly occurring phenomena that we normalize.

00:15:46.000 And it seems now that many of the conditions and measures undertaken during the pandemic period facilitate ongoing regulation going forward.

00:15:56.000 And certainly they're advantageous to some pretty bloody powerful interests.

00:16:01.000 Silky Carlo we were chatting just before we came on out and she was saying the same thing that the pandemic was kind of used in a way to get across a lot of these laws a lot of these new things were kind of brought in under the guise of we're protecting you and yet these things are now stuff that we're having to battle against.

00:16:17.000 You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe in that because say if you approach these things in a somewhat naive or at least open-hearted way and say well they were trying their best but Nevertheless, these measures are advantageous to states who benefit from the ability to pass laws and regulate, prohibit protest, increase surveillance.

00:16:38.000 All of these things happened, not just in the United States or the UK, but in numerous countries.

00:16:42.000 I think at least 93 when we looked at Luke Kemp's research.

00:16:46.000 We can pull that up, I'm sure.

00:16:47.000 And obviously, some of the most powerful interests in the world significantly benefited, whether that's big pharma or big tech.

00:16:53.000 Now, that doesn't mean There's a conspiracy theory it just means a convergence of interests and perhaps we'll just what I suppose we're doing as we evolve our argument and evolve our position is look at what is plausible and what is provable because then when we find ourselves or it's you lot arguing with relatives over the forthcoming holiday period

00:17:12.000 Or one day a revolutionary force rising up globally to create new confederacies and we present our argument for why the establishment is corrupt and needs to be replaced by new systems of self-governance and self-controlled autonomous communities.

00:17:26.000 We'll say, look, we can demonstrate your corruption.

00:17:28.000 We don't need to get into the lizard people or the craziness or the madness. 0.99

00:17:32.000 It's irrelevant.

00:17:33.000 That stuff's...

00:17:34.000 It's fun sometimes, but it's not helping.

00:17:36.000 Good costumes.

00:17:37.000 I love the owl.

00:17:39.000 I'd love to think that there are people worshipping an owl and burning stuff, even making human sacrifices.

00:17:45.000 It would make it easier to oppose them.

00:17:48.000 But the fact is, at the moment, all we can demonstrate is financial corruption and a convergence of interests, ineptitude in government and a revolving door between Washington and Wall Street, big tech.

00:17:57.000 That stuff is pretty demonstrable and observable.

00:18:00.000 And on that note, there's a story here, Gareth, that we wanted to touch on about the arms industry owning Congress.

00:18:06.000 You just told us that there's a new bill for $858 billion of new military expenditure.

00:18:13.000 Is that right?

00:18:13.000 And we estimate that half of that will end up in the hands of Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.

00:18:19.000 That's right.

00:18:20.000 Yeah, so basically the kind of politicians that voted for this budget, that voted for this record spending of 858 billion, as we say, half of which is going to military-industrial complex, the politicians that voted for it got seven times more money from those military contractors than their opponents.

00:18:39.000 So it's a literal demonstration of These military contractors give money through donations, campaign donations, to politicians.

00:18:47.000 And then they vote in favour of it.

00:18:50.000 It's quite a good system.

00:18:54.000 If we were part of it, maybe we would stop complaining about it.

00:18:54.000 It is.

00:18:57.000 This is how I like to visualise it. 0.98

00:19:00.000 Imagine you could pop a penny piece in the anus of the system and it would spew dollar bills out of its mouth. 0.88

00:19:06.000 Why's it got to be the anus? 0.97

00:19:08.000 I couldn't think of another hole. 0.94

00:19:09.000 I didn't want to make it necessarily female. 0.99

00:19:11.000 It seemed misogynistic for it to be an anus. 0.98

00:19:14.000 And an ear's too close to the mouth. 0.98

00:19:15.000 Too close.

00:19:16.000 That could actually happen.

00:19:17.000 Like then people where you see someone with a prophylactic go, Like he goes up the snout hole and out the mouth hole.

00:19:24.000 Doesn't work as well, does it?

00:19:25.000 It's certainly not going to prevent pregnancy or STDs. 0.84

00:19:29.000 I think, in the wrong context, that's the calling card of the madman.

00:19:33.000 Absolutely right. 0.99

00:19:33.000 To have a condom. 0.99

00:19:36.000 Never do that.

00:19:36.000 Don't floss your consciousness, is what I would say.

00:19:40.000 No.

00:19:41.000 So look, just to kind of return to this, so just so you know how good of a deal this is, the 430 members who cast votes on the bill received $14.5 million from the military-industrial complex.

00:19:53.000 Out of that, the military-industrial complex are making $450 billion.

00:19:57.000 It's a hell of an investment.

00:19:59.000 It's good money well spent.

00:20:02.000 Exactly.

00:20:03.000 While we advance our argument that the mainstream media has become corrupted,

00:20:08.000 I want to bring you this article from 2014 by Seamus Milne in The Guardian,

00:20:13.000 which is a British newspaper, which is an establishment liberal newspaper,

00:20:17.000 which these days is reporting on the Ukrainian conflict, is full on flag in the bio type reporting,

00:20:25.000 like where if you question the circumstances that led to this conflict,

00:20:29.000 people will say stuff like, don't you care about Ukrainian people suffering, what are 0.97

00:20:33.000 you supporting Putin and saying that he didn't shit himself falling down them 0.97

00:20:36.000 stairs, what are you, the new Hitler, right? 0.99

00:20:38.000 Right? Well just in 2014 this article which was published in the Guardian presents such a nuanced case for the way

00:20:39.000 Well, just in 2014, this article, which was published in The Guardian,

00:20:44.000 presents such a nuanced case for the way that NATO's actions have exacerbated

00:20:48.000 that NATO's actions have exacerbated and indeed led to this conflict that it's difficult to imagine that it's still in

00:20:50.000 and indeed led to this conflict, that it's difficult to imagine

00:20:54.000 fact on the Guardian's website.

00:20:56.000 But you can have a look at it there. This is the kind of talk that would make you a conscientious objector, a naysayer,

00:21:02.000 a traitor.

00:21:03.000 Listen to this. It says like, the threat of war, so this is Seamus Neal in 2014, the threat of war in Ukraine is 0.67

00:21:09.000 growing as the unelected government in Kiev declares itself unable to control the rebellion in the country's east.

00:21:14.000 John Kerry brands Russia a rogue state.

00:21:18.000 The US and the European Union step up sanctions against the Kremlin accusing it of destabilising Ukraine.

00:21:24.000 The White House is reported to be set on a new Cold War policy with the aim of turning Russia into a pariah state.

00:21:32.000 It's amazing to think that eight years ago they were saying that when you look at where we are now.

00:21:36.000 That's precisely What has happened?

00:21:39.000 But if you say that, what is the result of American diplomacy and American foreign policy in exacerbating these conditions? 0.94

00:21:48.000 People think that you're a lunatic and an apologist.

00:21:50.000 Yeah, I think that's why we were talking about Letterman yesterday and the trailer that dropped for his show with Zelensky.

00:21:57.000 It wasn't to kind of say, You know, there's anything necessarily wrong with either Letterman or Zelensky but what it is to say symbolically what that represents is both Ukraine and the US there's nothing to see here.

00:22:11.000 It's just two heroes fighting an evil dictator.

00:22:14.000 Zelensky It might well be a heroic person, an individual, and the struggle of the Ukrainian people could be described as heroic.

00:22:24.000 They are suffering.

00:22:24.000 They're up against a much greater and more powerful foe.

00:22:27.000 We're not querying any of that.

00:22:30.000 It's the media reporting and the lack of reporting on the complexity, which just eight years ago was plainly spoken about.

00:22:36.000 Check out this bit from the same article.

00:22:38.000 You don't hear much about the Ukrainian government's veneration of wartime Nazi collaborators and pogromists, or the arson attacks on the homes and offices of elected communist leaders, or the integration of the extreme right sector into the National Guard, while the anti-Semitism and white supremacism of the government's ultra-nationalists is assiduously played down, and the false identification of Russian special forces are relayed as fact.

00:23:02.000 In a way, if you were able to have that conversation now, it would be a much broader and nuanced debate around the causes and conditions of this war, particularly when you bear in mind what we were just discussing about the enormity of these Pentagon budgets and how much of those budgets end up in the hands of the military-industrial complex.

00:23:23.000 Yeah, and then you get someone like Max Blumenthal from the Grey Zone.

00:23:25.000 And, I mean, he literally is called, you know, right wing now because he's releasing stories where they're talking about, you know, the Azov Battalion.

00:23:34.000 And there was one in a fair the other day about a New York Times piece about the Bratswove Battalion who gave them access to one of their operations.

00:23:44.000 And, you know, this is again another kind of operation with ties to neo-Nazis.

00:23:51.000 It was reported back in 2014 in The Guardian and now anyone talking about this as an issue is branded far-right.

00:23:58.000 This is where these two themes that we're discussing today, the corruption of the Democratic Party via its funding by figures like, what's his name?

00:24:07.000 Batman Freedman.

00:24:09.000 Sam Bankman Freed.

00:24:10.000 Sam Bankman Freed.

00:24:11.000 Or what's the other dude?

00:24:13.000 Buffett.

00:24:14.000 Warren Buffett.

00:24:16.000 Being funded by those kind of figures necessarily results in a kind of corruption.

00:24:23.000 The Democratic Party's posturing and cultural ephemera is disingenuous.

00:24:32.000 From my particular perspective, it's not that I'm against identity politics, or that I don't think racial equality is important, or that the struggle of various civil rights movements oughtn't be celebrated and rewarded with success and equality.

00:24:46.000 It's that using these arguments to mask massive financial corruption is unconscionable.

00:24:52.000 Similarly, when reporting on this war, I don't want to find myself as a person that's not supportive of the struggle of Ukrainians and neglects the potential heroism of a leader like Zelensky.

00:25:05.000 It's the irresponsibility of the media that won't tell you how we got into this situation and the huge benefit of this war to a huge number of very powerful interests.

00:25:17.000 I feel like a political vagrant.

00:25:19.000 I feel like no one is offering me a home.

00:25:21.000 I don't belong on the Republican right.

00:25:23.000 I agree with certain aspects of libertarianism, i.e.

00:25:26.000 individual freedom, but can't you see how that individual freedom would have to be mapped onto identity politics as well?

00:25:32.000 Isn't it the same argument?

00:25:33.000 If you want to be left alone to be who you are, can't you make that argument from both places?

00:25:38.000 And I don't think that republicanism or the politics of the right will deliver a better America or a better Britain or a better world for any of us.

00:25:45.000 And what's required is a new form of populism, a new politics that ties together these ideas and simultaneously transcends them.

00:25:54.000 And we can't get there without a nuanced conversation.

00:25:57.000 We can't get there by doubling down on tribalism and de facto condemnation of who we regard as our opponents.

00:26:05.000 Was that a good speech?

00:26:07.000 Really good.

00:26:07.000 That's one of my speeches.

00:26:08.000 I've done that now.

00:26:09.000 That speech has been done.

00:26:11.000 Before we go into our hero presentation, here's the news now.

00:26:17.000 No, here's the effing news, where we'll be talking about Biden's broken promises.

00:26:22.000 Again, from the perspective of necessarily critiquing a corrupt party.

00:26:26.000 Have a look at what Biden's been up to.

00:26:29.000 I feel like he's been led off stage by a little kid of some description.

00:26:32.000 to have a look at that.

00:26:39.000 It's just everything he does look like, why does he turn around that way?

00:26:43.000 Why does he do the full rotation like that?

00:26:47.000 It's like at the end of speeches, he just lets his mind go fully blank. 0.98

00:26:51.000 They should, right, I don't see myself as a PR whiz kid or a spin doctor, but this is a bit, I do actually a bit, but day one of working with Biden, right, if I was the person whose job that was, where I used to be the lass, the ginger lass, and now it's the black lass, If it was me now, I'd go, when his speeches end, turn the fucking cameras off straight away. 0.95

00:27:14.000 Don't film what happens in the ten seconds.

00:27:16.000 Because even if he gets through the speech without saying some mad thing about numbers or dozing off, you know where he's really in trouble is the last bit.

00:27:26.000 That's his weak spot.

00:27:27.000 They should just always have some curtains in front of him that close.

00:27:31.000 Sweep them shut! 0.99

00:27:32.000 With a musical crook. 0.93

00:27:33.000 That's right.

00:27:34.000 Yank him off to the side.

00:27:36.000 That's right.

00:27:36.000 Then it don't look like he's got no choice.

00:27:37.000 Always send the little lass there. 1.00

00:27:39.000 At least he's managed not to sniffer on the head.

00:27:41.000 Which used to be his problem, didn't it?

00:27:43.000 He used to see a child like that, sniff the hell out of its head.

00:27:46.000 I never see a child who didn't like their head sniff of...

00:27:50.000 Actually, you should display your degree of impatience there, isn't she?

00:28:00.000 It's like she's been for... Look, come, we're leaving now.

00:28:03.000 Don't dodder and falter and teeter.

00:28:06.000 We're going this way, Grandpa.

00:28:07.000 She's the most effective member of the Democrat Party at the moment.

00:28:09.000 I like her.

00:28:10.000 She's a breath of fresh air, this kid.

00:28:12.000 Put her in charge, I must say.

00:28:13.000 Although he's gripping her at the wrist, is what I would say.

00:28:16.000 Go for a lower clasp.

00:28:18.000 Yeah, she's marched in promptly off That's good. 0.98

00:28:27.000 She saved the day, that kid there, I would say.

00:28:29.000 All right.

00:28:30.000 Well, we'll be talking to Silky Carlo in a moment about surveillance and the attempts to impose Chinese style totalitarianism on British folk like you and potentially me.

00:28:41.000 I believe I'm British.

00:28:43.000 And to impose these measures elsewhere in a moment, so stay with us for that.

00:28:47.000 But first, in our item, here's the news.

00:28:49.000 No, here's the effing news.

00:28:50.000 We're going to be talking about Biden there, reneging on his promises, even his promises to himself, to this time walk off the stage properly.

00:28:58.000 We're going to be talking about his relationship with Saudi Arabia and how he's betrayed the working people of America. 0.60

00:29:04.000 Here's the news.

00:29:05.000 No, here's the effing news.

00:29:05.000 news. Have a look.

00:29:14.000 Thank God he's turning America around, reintroducing morals, values, protecting workers, and making sure Saudi Arabia are a pariah, quite rightly, because of the murder of that journalist Jamal Khashoggi. 1.00

00:29:26.000 That's why he's made members of the Saudi royal family an absolute pariah by pushing for them to get immunity from prosecution.

00:29:33.000 Hold on, mate. 1.00

00:29:34.000 They're all fucking liars! 1.00

00:29:34.000 That doesn't make sense. 1.00

00:29:37.000 Joe Biden, who liberals celebrated the ascendancy of because of pledges to, for example, protect railroad workers, because of pledges to, for example, not start a nuclear war, because of pledges to turn Saudi Arabia into a pariah, is reneging on those promises.

00:29:53.000 It wouldn't be anything to do with oil deals and weapons deals, would it?

00:29:57.000 No, that would be so cynical.

00:29:58.000 I mean, that would mean that Joe Biden is just another corporatized president running a corporatized country who doesn't care about ordinary people.

00:30:05.000 And that can't be real, can it?

00:30:07.000 Because that would mean that everything you read in the mainstream media, everything you see on mainstream TV was absolute lies.

00:30:12.000 And that can't be the case, can it?

00:30:13.000 But let's just remind ourselves of the pledge he made back in the giddy, happy old, silly old heydays of campaigning for presidency.

00:30:21.000 Remember, it was all good stuff in the news then.

00:30:23.000 No one talked about laptops then, because that was a conspiracy theory back then.

00:30:27.000 And this was conspiracy fact.

00:30:29.000 The CIA has concluded that the leader of Saudi Arabia directed the murder of US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

00:30:36.000 President Trump has not punished senior Saudi leaders.

00:30:39.000 Would you?

00:30:40.000 Yes.

00:30:40.000 And I said it at the time.

00:30:42.000 Khashoggi was in fact murdered and dismembered and I believe in the order of the Crown Prince and I would make it very clear we were not going to in fact sell more weapons to them.

00:30:55.000 We were going to in fact make them pay the price and make them in fact the pariah that they are.

00:31:00.000 Yeah!

00:31:02.000 I don't need any more oil deals or any weapons.

00:31:02.000 Make my pariah!

00:31:05.000 Let's see what's in the news now.

00:31:06.000 A US judge has dismissed the lawsuit against Saudi Arabia's Mohammed bin Salman that claimed he conspired to kill journalist Jamal Khashoggi, saying the crown prince was entitled to sovereign immunity despite credible allegations that he was involved in the murder.

00:31:06.000 What?!

00:31:20.000 Oh, that's really weird because that sounds like the opposite of a pariah, doesn't it?

00:31:24.000 Seems like you say you're gonna make someone a pariah when you need to be elected, you say that a laptop's a conspiracy theory when you need to be elected, then once you're elected, oh yeah, that laptop was real.

00:31:33.000 Hey you, we're gonna be needing some oil.

00:31:35.000 Need some weapons.

00:31:36.000 Judge John Bates, a U.S.

00:31:38.000 District Court judge with a long history of presiding over cases involving national security, acknowledged uneasiness in making the decision.

00:31:44.000 Listen, I'm just gonna make this decision that's hypocritical and against electoral pledges.

00:31:49.000 Imagine being that judge. 0.96

00:31:50.000 Hear ye!

00:31:51.000 Order!

00:31:52.000 Order now to get to the bottom of this case!

00:31:54.000 Was he culpable or was he not?

00:31:56.000 I've got a wig on!

00:31:57.000 I've got robes!

00:31:59.000 Um, he's been granted immunity by the Biden administration.

00:32:02.000 Well, everyone might as well just go home then.

00:32:05.000 But I've still got my wig!

00:32:06.000 Judge John Bates, a U.S.

00:32:08.000 District Court judge with a long history of presiding over cases involving national security, acknowledged uneasiness in making the decision, but said that his hands were in effect tied by the Biden administration's recent recommendation that Prince Mohammed be given immunity.

00:32:21.000 So they simply bypassed the legal system that's supposed to administer justice.

00:32:25.000 Easily done.

00:32:26.000 And necessary if you need to do oil and arms deals.

00:32:29.000 The crown prince has been sued in the U.S.

00:32:31.000 by the fiancée of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

00:32:34.000 He was murdered in Saudi's Istanbul consulate in 2018, and U.S.

00:32:39.000 intelligence believes MBS ordered the killing.

00:32:42.000 Meantime, for months... Hey!

00:32:45.000 Good ordering of a killing!

00:32:46.000 Allegedly. 0.98

00:32:47.000 Sir, you're fist-bumping with someone who we said we were going to make a pariah.

00:32:51.000 The Biden administration has been pushing Saudi Arabia to increase oil production amid high gas prices.

00:32:57.000 The dismissal of the civil claim against Prince Mohammed and two of his close associates means the Saudi heir can now travel to the U.S.

00:33:03.000 and other jurisdictions freely.

00:33:04.000 Although the case was not brought by U.S.

00:33:06.000 prosecutors with the power to arrest him, if it had been allowed to proceed, the case would have created a legal minefield for the Crown Prince, and if he had been found guilty, he could have put his financial interests in the U.S.

00:33:15.000 in jeopardy.

00:33:16.000 Now we understand how power operates.

00:33:16.000 Aha!

00:33:18.000 Prior to an election, pariah.

00:33:19.000 Because that's the right thing to say.

00:33:21.000 After an election, do what you like, mate, actually, because we've got financial interests that align quite nicely with our own interests.

00:33:26.000 Saudi dissidents and critics of Prince Mohammed have previously expressed grave concerns about any possibility of the Crown Prince being granted immunity, saying any such decision would seal the aura of impunity around the 37-year-old prince and could be seen as offering him a licence to target other journalists and dissidents around the world.

00:33:41.000 Well, a little bit, because if you allegedly have one journalist killed for reporting negatively against you, and then you're granted immunity, it does seem that maybe, down the line, if any other journalist did anything, you might kill them!

00:33:53.000 Oh! 0.60

00:33:53.000 You think just because I've been granted immunity, for what the murder of Jamal al-Khashoggi that we would murder other dissenters allegedly that murder of Jamal al-Khashoggi was part of a surprise for your birthday to ensure that it ran smoothly oh you're just like your father 0.60

00:34:14.000 But we've also granted immunity.

00:34:16.000 Two sources close to members of the Saudi Royal Family Administration confirmed to The Intercept that Saudi had asked the Biden administration grant MBS immunity.

00:34:24.000 At the same time, the US wanted the kingdom to turn up oil production.

00:34:28.000 The request for sovereign immunity was a ploy, Dawn, a non-profit funded by Jamal Khashoggi, wrote, laying out a simple argument.

00:34:35.000 Head of state immunity is typically reserved for a country's leader, Which, in the case of Saudi Arabia, is its king, MBS's father.

00:34:41.000 King Salman, senior to Crown Prince Mohammed, is head of state.

00:34:44.000 There can't be two heads of state.

00:34:45.000 They're only under an obligation to grant immunity to the head of state.

00:34:48.000 This dude ain't even the head of state.

00:34:50.000 They've really had to push the boat out and stretch the boundaries of what's typical in international diplomacy to grant this immunity.

00:34:55.000 Oh, there's nothing we could do.

00:34:57.000 Our heads were tied.

00:34:58.000 He's the head of state.

00:34:59.000 Rules is rules.

00:35:00.000 He's not the head of state.

00:35:01.000 You could have him prosecuted if you wanted to, and he would be subject to the judicial procedures that would provide justice normally.

00:35:06.000 Oh, I'm getting very tired.

00:35:08.000 Hunter!

00:35:08.000 We beat Big Pharma this year!

00:35:10.000 We didn't beat Big Pharma either.

00:35:12.000 I'm going back to sleep.

00:35:13.000 In August, the Biden administration approved a potential multi-billion dollar arms sale to Saudi Arabia worth an estimated three billion dollars.

00:35:19.000 So these oil deals and arms deals are a simple side note, an irrelevant distraction to their procession of justice and immunity and just good old-fashioned international diplomacy.

00:35:29.000 Other pledges that Biden has shamelessly broken include domestic pledges to ordinary workers, who he claimed he would support in their quest to have a mere seven sick days per year.

00:35:40.000 It's a national disgrace that millions of our fellow citizens don't have a single day of paid sick leave available to them.

00:35:48.000 What I'm always surprised by is that they know what is right because they say what is right in order to get you on board.

00:35:54.000 You should have sick pay. 0.86

00:35:55.000 You should make Saudi Arabia a pariah for the murder of that journalist. 0.86

00:35:58.000 You should support people's right to express themselves however they want to.

00:36:02.000 We should have a fairer society.

00:36:04.000 We should take care... Let's just say whatever's necessary to get whatever they want.

00:36:07.000 What do you want to hear right now?

00:36:08.000 I don't know, that I look nice and that you love me.

00:36:10.000 You do look nice and I do love you.

00:36:11.000 What's that filling on my bottom?

00:36:13.000 An arms deal?

00:36:14.000 I've supported paid sick leave for a long time.

00:36:17.000 I'm going to continue that fight till we succeed.

00:36:19.000 In getting into government?

00:36:21.000 Then I will drop that fight.

00:36:22.000 Last week Joe Biden urged Congress to pass a law to block the first national rail strike in 30 years and impose a deal that includes just one paid sick day.

00:36:30.000 The move is the latest and possibly starkest example of the chasm between Biden's pro-worker

00:36:35.000 rhetoric during his campaign and presidency and the numerous pro-corporate actions he

00:36:39.000 has taken in the White House.

00:36:40.000 As part of his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden pledged that he would ensure all workers

00:36:45.000 have at least seven paid sick days.

00:36:47.000 The more you look at this presidency, the more it is revealed that there is nothing

00:36:51.000 unique and special about it.

00:36:53.000 All of the excitement, all of the fanfare.

00:36:56.000 What does it involve?

00:36:57.000 Potential manipulation of the election through repressing stories that would be unfavourable to their campaign.

00:37:03.000 Pledges that have not been fulfilled.

00:37:05.000 Grandstanding as a friend of ordinary Americans and workers and controlling pharma prices.

00:37:09.000 No delivery on any of these things.

00:37:11.000 What kind of government are you electing if whenever they can't deliver on the promises they make they go, oh my hands are tired, there's nothing I can do.

00:37:18.000 Then the whole system is pointless then isn't it?

00:37:20.000 Ultimately what we're delivering you is a message.

00:37:22.000 There is a requirement for radical systemic change.

00:37:25.000 Neither of the parties that you could possibly vote for will deliver that change.

00:37:28.000 You need to participate in a different style of politics or you're just going to get this for the rest of your potentially quite short lives.

00:37:35.000 The US Senate voted to deny 125,000 rail workers a handful of paid sick days that would have cost the equivalent of just four days of recent profits made by Senators Railroad Industry donors.

00:37:44.000 What a coincidence.

00:37:45.000 The cost of paid sick days for this year, roughly $321 million, would be less than half the amount that a single railroad tycoon, Warren Buffett, funneled to his family foundations last week.

00:37:56.000 Yeah, but Warren Buffett, he's a good guy, he's a socialist guy, he's a liberal guy, he's helping out.

00:38:01.000 Those foundations, there's definitely no tax benefits to that.

00:38:04.000 It's more efficient than just helping them for giving them sick days.

00:38:07.000 Oh, I feel so ill. 0.98

00:38:08.000 Well, get to fucking work, safe in the knowledge that the Buffett Foundation has just received your money. 0.99

00:38:13.000 Oh, that's good news! 0.99

00:38:15.000 Night night!

00:38:17.000 While opposing a plan that would have required them to spend $320 million to give workers

00:38:21.000 seven paid sick days, the main railroad companies raked in more than $7 billion in profits and

00:38:26.000 paid out over $1.8 billion in dividends in a year where they and their lobbying groups

00:38:30.000 spent more than $13 million lobbying Congress.

00:38:32.000 Much of the corporate media's coverage of the looming rail strike has focused on how

00:38:36.000 the work stoppage would make a slowing economy worse and cause havoc over the holidays.

00:38:40.000 So we can see that the mainstream media is always looking out for the rights of ordinary Americans, not just propping up corporate interests, drawing a veil over the disingenuity and downright dishonesty of reneged-upon government pledges.

00:38:53.000 The mainstream media Your friend.

00:38:54.000 A real strike is one of the most disruptive and expensive things that can happen to an economy.

00:39:00.000 A real shutdown or strike would disrupt supply chains.

00:39:03.000 Can't do strikes.

00:39:04.000 It's not good to strike.

00:39:05.000 Why are they not telling the other side of the story?

00:39:08.000 People that are working hard, without support, asking for just a handful of sick days per year.

00:39:12.000 What side are you on?

00:39:13.000 Let me know in the comments.

00:39:14.000 Let me know in the chat.

00:39:15.000 A strike means food prices could skyrocket.

00:39:17.000 I mean, this is playing right into Putin's hands.

00:39:19.000 He's going to love this.

00:39:20.000 Putin will.

00:39:21.000 Many experts are saying it would be an economic catastrophe.

00:39:24.000 That could mean a big shortage and massive price hikes.

00:39:27.000 Even gas prices could increase. 0.99

00:39:29.000 Your dick is gonna turn mauve. 0.99

00:39:30.000 And it also could cost the economy a billion dollars within the first week. 1.00

00:39:34.000 That would cripple the economy.

00:39:36.000 One boy's tit fell off.

00:39:37.000 Are you and your members willing to stop the rails, in effect, and accept those costs to the US economy?

00:39:44.000 Now I know in your country you've got a complex history with socially responsible politics, but how else are workers going to have any influence in their own lives with a government and a media that, ironically, is railroading them right out of history?

00:39:58.000 Do you believe a strike is worth it if it cripples the US economy and costs up to $2 billion a day?

00:40:04.000 More than $2 billion per day.

00:40:06.000 Is it worth it?

00:40:07.000 See how the media does the job of the state and corporate interest.

00:40:11.000 There's no mention of 1.8 billion in dividends.

00:40:13.000 Why are they not reporting on that?

00:40:14.000 Why not say, well, I suppose, you know, some of the profits, for example, from these companies could go to those workers.

00:40:20.000 And on top of all of that, the holidays are right around the corner. 1.00

00:40:23.000 Also, you bastards, you're ruining Christmas. 1.00

00:40:26.000 You're fucking striking Grinches. 1.00

00:40:27.000 It's a little less than a month right before Christmas here. 1.00

00:40:30.000 Especially right before the holidays. 1.00

00:40:32.000 Why don't you just take baby Jesus and kick him in his dick? 1.00

00:40:34.000 President Biden warning if that happened it would devastate the economy if we had a strike like that. 1.00

00:40:39.000 It would devastate it.

00:40:40.000 It's almost as bad as Putin.

00:40:42.000 Look at how they frame information for you.

00:40:44.000 Not one mention of there are huge dividends, incredible profits are being made, those profits should find their way into the hands of the people that are working and toiling in order for the services to operate.

00:40:53.000 We've been conditioned and trained to such a degree that even the words start to be offensive to you.

00:40:57.000 You start to see reality in the way that they want you to see reality.

00:41:00.000 Yeah!

00:41:01.000 It's coming up to Christmas, man! 0.99

00:41:02.000 The strike's gonna hurt the goddamn economy! 0.99

00:41:05.000 Well, if we don't support one another, we're going to be annihilated. 0.99

00:41:08.000 And that's gonna hurt, not the economy, but your life.

00:41:10.000 So joining me now to talk about this and a lot more is Bank of America.

00:41:13.000 We need an objective perspective on this.

00:41:17.000 Okay, now how are we gonna get an unbiased view on profiteering railroad companies that have made billions and given out billions in dividends?

00:41:25.000 Also, we've gotta as well bear in mind the rights of these workers who currently only have one sick day a year.

00:41:30.000 Should we get the head of a bank in?

00:41:32.000 Yeah!

00:41:33.000 The head of a bank!

00:41:34.000 What about someone from the military-industrial complex?

00:41:37.000 Yeah, get one of those in as well, why not?

00:41:38.000 It's Brian Moynihan, chairman and CEO of one of the biggest banks in the world.

00:41:42.000 What's the biggest bank in the world?

00:41:44.000 He's not going to be sympathetic.

00:41:45.000 He doesn't know what it's like to work on a railroad, feel too unwell to go in a couple of times a year.

00:41:51.000 Well, when I'm at the bank, I'm just trying to drag myself in.

00:41:55.000 Come fair weather or shine, I'm there, fat-catting away every single day.

00:42:00.000 And maybe if you want a sick day, perhaps you should run one of the world's biggest banks.

00:42:04.000 With Democrats in full control of Congress for just a few more weeks, Biden could be using this moment to push lawmakers to pass the party's landmark union rights legislation or implement a national paid leave policy.

00:42:15.000 Instead, he called on Democrats and Republicans alike to side with highly profitable railroad companies and crush their workers.

00:42:22.000 When it comes to granting immunity to Saudi royalty, The rules can be bent.

00:42:27.000 When it comes to helping ordinary Americans, the very ordinary Americans that throughout the campaign, we're going to help you fair and just. 0.99

00:42:33.000 And Trump, he was a bastard, wasn't he? 1.00

00:42:35.000 We're going to make Saudi Arabia a pariah. 1.00

00:42:35.000 He was an animal. 1.00

00:42:37.000 We're going to make things better with nuclear tensions around the world.

00:42:40.000 And we are going to support the rights of workers.

00:42:42.000 We beat Big Pharma this year!

00:42:44.000 Look at reality and look at how it's sustained by a compliant media and a corporatized state.

00:42:49.000 And if we don't stand up to it, if we don't find new ways of confronting this corruption, it's going to get worse.

00:42:54.000 Worse and worse until we're all annihilated.

00:42:57.000 That's the news, baby!

00:42:59.000 But that's just what I think.

00:43:00.000 Let me know what you think in the comments.

00:43:01.000 Let me know what you think in the chat.

00:43:02.000 See you in a minute.

00:43:03.000 Thanks for refusing Fox News.

00:43:05.000 Good day.

00:43:06.000 No. 1.00

00:43:06.000 Here's the fucking news. 1.00

00:43:08.000 Who was that masked man? 1.00

00:43:11.000 And how does he bring the news to life in that manner?

00:43:14.000 Thomas Beard says, howdy.

00:43:16.000 Thank you, Thomas Beard. 1.00

00:43:18.000 Jossie's dog says, modernity is rubbish. 0.98

00:43:21.000 Ashela, I've never laughed so hard in my life. 0.99

00:43:25.000 Remember, we will follow your comments.

00:43:27.000 Glenn Greenwald is joining us tomorrow.

00:43:27.000 They inform us.

00:43:30.000 But right now we are joined by Silky Carlo from Big Brother Watch UK.

00:43:35.000 Thanks for coming in and being on our show.

00:43:37.000 What I want to talk to you about is the relationship between China and Chinese style surveillance and state power and the kind of increasing measures in those areas in countries like the UK and the US.

00:43:49.000 To start us off Silky, we're going to have a look at this clip, this famous clip of Justin Trudeau, who of the world leaders has, I think, the best or second best hair of all world leaders.

00:43:59.000 That's official.

00:44:01.000 Let's have a look at him talking about his admiration of Chinese power.

00:44:06.000 ...of admiration I actually have for China.

00:44:12.000 Because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say, we need to go green as fast as we need to start, you know, investing in solar.

00:44:24.000 I mean, there is a flexibility...

00:44:26.000 There you go, there he is, sort of espousing his admiration of China.

00:44:30.000 How much are nations like Canada, the UK, the US, using measures and technologies that we associate with Chinese totalitarianism, Silky? 0.92

00:44:42.000 Well, first of all, we have to say that statement is disgraceful. 0.94

00:44:45.000 It's disgusting. 0.98

00:44:46.000 You know, China is a genocidal regime. 0.95

00:44:49.000 There are estimated a million Uyghurs in concentration camps right now who are being tortured and detained.

00:44:57.000 So, but, you know, I think we always see that there is an appeal to authoritarianism and power will always try to accumulate.

00:45:04.000 And so we need to be vigilant about that, whatever country we live in.

00:45:07.000 And we certainly need to be vigilant about it in the UK and the US where there is already enormous surveillance apparatus.

00:45:14.000 So, you know, if we look at some of the things that we rightly are very concerned about in China, mass surveillance, cameras on every corner, you can be arrested for protesting.

00:45:23.000 In fact, you can be, there was a, A campaigner who was threatened with arrest outside Parliament a couple of weeks ago for holding up a blank sheet of paper.

00:45:32.000 Now we see that kind of method being replicated in China.

00:45:38.000 Journalists being arrested.

00:45:40.000 You know, there are parallels between the kind of crackdowns that you see on democracy in China and in the West, but in a very, very different outcomes.

00:45:48.000 But we have to be vigilant.

00:45:49.000 Where in particular would you say in the UK we're emulating Chinese-style surveillance?

00:45:54.000 And would you say that, you know, most of us understand now that everywhere you go there's cameras on you, but is this technology and information being used in ways that are not explicit and clear?

00:46:06.000 Um, well, there's many different levels to look to look at this.

00:46:10.000 So London, for example, is the most surveilled city in the world after Beijing.

00:46:16.000 And proportionate to the population size, the UK has as many surveillance cameras as China. 0.61

00:46:23.000 So we are an incredibly surveilled country, but we also have a lot of electronic surveillance.

00:46:30.000 And here's where we know less about what they do, which is why the Snowden revelations were so important.

00:46:34.000 You know, we've got intelligence agencies that have spoken about seeking to master the Internet and have total information awareness.

00:46:42.000 Again, the kind of thing that we get upset other countries about You know, governments that want to control the Internet, censor people on the Internet, watch every single thing that they do and create records about them.

00:46:53.000 We have that.

00:46:53.000 That's all in the Snowden documents.

00:46:55.000 The question is, when do we start to feel it?

00:46:58.000 So, for example, in China, there is ethnic persecution.

00:47:01.000 And so people are in concentration camps.

00:47:05.000 In this day and age.

00:47:07.000 Here, when will we start to feel it?

00:47:09.000 When could there be somebody who gets into power that uses this extraordinary architecture for evil?

00:47:17.000 It's a real possibility.

00:47:18.000 Of course, we saw some of it during the pandemic, where these extraordinary surveillance powers and all of this technology started to be used in really unprecedented ways to limit people's freedoms, to keep us in our homes, to track us, and all sorts.

00:47:34.000 Were there ways then that we were tracked during the pandemic that were not explicit?

00:47:38.000 We were talking earlier about a story of one of the organisations that were advocating for Covid passports are researching the possibility of like national ID cards and that kind of thing.

00:47:50.000 It seems that there is a continuum Some of the measures that were applied during the pandemic to some of the measures that are being suggested more broadly beyond it because it was obviously sold as a very unique situation.

00:47:59.000 What kind of unprecedented measures, aside from lockdowns, do you think that there were present?

00:48:05.000 Well of course the line was moved, so now people are used to the idea of having to present medical papers to do normal things, having to comply, you know, and technology was used in almost all of these circumstances.

00:48:20.000 I actually think that we've done remarkably well, and in no small part because of Big Brother Watch's work in the UK actually, at pushing a lot of this back.

00:48:28.000 We really fought tooth and nail against all of these emergency regulations and and you know it's because so many people stood up and said including you and said no we're not having it that you know we actually including me or especially me especially me so that's what big that's the point of big brother watch is to oppose these measures that would otherwise be incrementally introduced almost in ways without you sort of noticing that's what you do at big brother you oppose them through activism

00:48:57.000 Yeah, we campaign to protect civil liberties and human rights and often through the lens of looking at the threats that new technologies pose to us.

00:49:06.000 And so, you know, for example, you know, specifically about tracking during the pandemic, we found we do investigations as well.

00:49:13.000 So we found that there were people's phones, in fact, millions of people's phones were tracked.

00:49:19.000 There's very little fanfare about it during the pandemic.

00:49:22.000 In one of these examples, it was actually people being tracked around vaccination centres to see if they changed their behaviours before and after being vaccinated.

00:49:33.000 I just think that, you know, so often authorities see People as cattle.

00:49:39.000 You know, it's very dehumanising and people aren't given dignity.

00:49:43.000 That's why privacy matters so much.

00:49:45.000 It's the buffer between you and power.

00:49:48.000 And it's the difference between, you know, how far a government can go towards trying to control a population when they monitor them.

00:49:54.000 Of course, that's the purpose of the monitoring.

00:49:55.000 I hadn't considered that, Silky.

00:49:58.000 The ability of a technological dictatorship to observe And corral data means that more and more the rough edges of humanity are lost and we begin to be regarded as kind of blocks of population that can be controlled and managed.

00:50:19.000 And the extreme conditions of the pandemic meant that that was able to be implemented, perhaps without the level of opposition that was due.

00:50:29.000 Now, the Western media are ready to support anti-lockdown protesters in China, but they were propagandist in their condemnation of anti-lockdown protesters during the pandemic in these countries, or the height of the pandemic, perhaps we should more rightly say.

00:50:47.000 You weren't allowed to... They tried to... So, under human rights law, you can't ban protest, but the Home Secretary at the time tried to tell people that they legally couldn't protest, and we fought really hard to get an explicit exemption for protest back in the emergency regulations.

00:51:03.000 But, yeah, I mean, people were... You know, I've seen 80-year-olds put into the back of police vans because they were protesting, expressing their dissent about what was happening at the time.

00:51:15.000 An 80-year-old is currently the most powerful person in the world.

00:51:19.000 He should be put in the back of a police van, Joe Biden, when his speeches end, just to ferry him to the edge of the stage.

00:51:24.000 That's when he's most vulnerable.

00:51:25.000 It's for his own safety that I would argue for that.

00:51:28.000 So, okay, so what we're seeing is that Whilst the aesthetic of Chinese totalitarianism might be distinct, and there are areas of course where Chinese authoritarianism is more extreme, there is a clear desire from establishment liberal democracies to emulate this type of power, and surveillance is already quite, quite immersive.

00:51:47.000 What about something quite innocuous, Silky?

00:51:50.000 Like when you go down a supermarket and you pay for stuff and there's like a little camera there, like I was buying something the other day.

00:51:55.000 I guess I'm just a regular guy.

00:51:57.000 And I saw my, when I was doing the scanning, which I find quite odd actually, and I never know which bit to put it in, and you've put it in the bagging area.

00:52:03.000 Get that out of the bagging area.

00:52:05.000 What is the bagging area? 0.98

00:52:07.000 Don't be disgusting or childish. 0.91

00:52:11.000 Sorry, sorry, there's something wrong with me. 0.94

00:52:15.000 Why are you on a camera during that?

00:52:18.000 There's no need for that to be a camera there.

00:52:20.000 What's going on with that?

00:52:21.000 Is that some facial recognition stuff?

00:52:23.000 What are they up to?

00:52:24.000 It's excessive.

00:52:25.000 I think increasingly modern life is managed through surveillance and we just expect cameras everywhere for everything.

00:52:32.000 But yes, so I do think that they're gearing up for facial recognition.

00:52:35.000 In fact, we've been running a massive campaign against the growth of facial recognition in this country.

00:52:40.000 For a few years now and so I think that some of the supermarkets a bit reticent about rolling it out but they will absolutely try and if nothing else just to cut jobs so that you don't have to have someone like check ID when you want to buy a bottle of wine so get facial recognition to determine how old you are but yeah actually some supermarkets the Southern co-op of all supermarkets is already using live facial recognition so when you go into those stores your face is being compared against the watch list of people that they don't want in their stores even if you're not a criminal.

00:53:13.000 Specific individuals or just types of people?

00:53:15.000 We don't like looming scruff bags you can get out or is it like you've been in the car before we see you there nicking some razor blades and batteries?

00:53:23.000 But everyone knows what it feels like to be, well a lot of people know what it feels like to be wrongly followed around a store by a security guard or that feeling you have when you go through airport security, you just feel a bit like you've done something wrong and you haven't.

00:53:35.000 I have done something wrong.

00:53:38.000 I used to smuggle drugs when I was taking drugs, only personal use of course, not for dealing.

00:53:42.000 And also I did used to shoplift a lot and then sometimes you know when you've got the Then they would eventually say, have you been stealing stuff?

00:53:49.000 But then this is a very good example, because imagine if you were put onto a watch list, you know, even if you had done something wrong, and then, you know, you're trying to move on with your life.

00:53:59.000 How do you stop being treated like a criminal forever?

00:54:02.000 You know, if you have these facial recognition watch lists that are just, you know, acting like privatised police, really.

00:54:08.000 And also, Silky, isn't there a point where these kind of measures will converge with these anti-protest laws that are being passed where if they suspect you of being a little bit recalcitrant they can stick a bracelet on your ankle and you won't be able to leave the house?

00:54:24.000 Isn't that something that's been recently proposed or am I exaggerating?

00:54:26.000 No, it sounds like it's fiction, and it should be, but it's not.

00:54:31.000 We're campaigning against sections of the Public Order Bill, which is yet another anti-protest law going through Parliament, where there are powers to fit campaigners with GPS ankle tags.

00:54:44.000 Again, it's just like treating people like cattle, although cattle shouldn't be treated like that either.

00:54:49.000 But you can be tracked everywhere and you can also have your internet activity controlled.

00:54:56.000 And so even if you're not a criminal, so you're someone who goes to protests, I go to protests, if you're deemed to be disruptive, yet not criminal, then you can be fitted with a GPS ankle tag and watched everywhere you go.

00:55:10.000 So that means your hospital appointments or church or whatever it is that you do, the state can know where you are and what you're up to.

00:55:19.000 I would be shocked if we heard that China were pursuing a policy like that.

00:55:23.000 But that's what Parliament is debating today.

00:55:26.000 When Matt Tabe was on our show yesterday, he further elucidated us to the degree of infiltration at Twitter by state agencies such as CIA and FBI and the amount of editorial control that they've been exerting over Twitter's policy and publications.

00:55:41.000 And we can only assume that comparable things are happening.

00:55:44.000 Elsewhere, and I suppose when you start to tie that together with the revelations of Edward Snowden, it starts to become likely that there are deep infiltration within all manner of aspects of technology and communication that we're being observed to a degree that we would not be comfortable with.

00:56:02.000 I wonder why there is such a trend towards the introduction of anti-protest legislation around the world, and also the militarisation of the police.

00:56:13.000 Sometimes Silky, I wonder if they might be preparing for a phase of uprising and protest, which in my view would be a legitimate and necessary response to increasing centralised authority.

00:56:24.000 Do you ever wonder about stuff like that?

00:56:26.000 Completely.

00:56:27.000 And I think, you know, it's coming.

00:56:30.000 This is a very unstable time.

00:56:33.000 And, you know, we've got the economic crisis, climate issues, all kinds of reasons, a generation of people that want change.

00:56:43.000 There are lots of reasons that people are going to be taking to the streets and wanting to protest and wanting to change things.

00:56:49.000 And these powers are going to make it very, very difficult.

00:56:53.000 But I wouldn't be doing this job if I didn't have faith in the public to stand up when it matters and overcome these kinds of barriers.

00:57:01.000 And I absolutely think that we will.

00:57:03.000 Plus you've had some victories already.

00:57:05.000 What kind of laws have you been able to repeal?

00:57:08.000 That's the first thing.

00:57:08.000 And then the second thing is this question I'm going to ask in a minute, Gareth, that's going to blow your mind, where

00:57:12.000 I say, do you think it's possible for there to be a new sort of

00:57:17.000 global decentralized movement where people come together to demand autonomy for individual communities so that they

00:57:23.000 could be run truly democratically in a reversal of this sort of globalist,

00:57:27.000 centralized authoritarianism that's turning people against one another and increasing the ability of states everywhere

00:57:32.000 to regulate people at the behest of corporatism under the guise of increasing safety?

00:57:38.000 But I want to say to you, answer both of those questions, please, as part of this program.

00:57:45.000 Yeah. So we've had a lot of victories and we've held back facial recognition that the police have been been using for

00:57:53.000 many years.

00:57:55.000 I mean, all of these are ongoing battles because the authoritarians will never stop.

00:57:58.000 You know, we brought two legal challenges against mandatory Covid passes and of course they were dropped.

00:58:04.000 And that led to the biggest parliamentary rebellion since the Iraq war.

00:58:08.000 The vote against COVID passes was a massive rebellion against the government in Parliament.

00:58:16.000 We have had so many successes.

00:58:18.000 We just beat digital strip searches.

00:58:22.000 There's loads.

00:58:22.000 People can find out more on our website about the stuff that we're doing.

00:58:26.000 Is that your website?

00:58:29.000 We're at bigbrotherwatch.org.uk and we're at Big Brother Watch on Twitter and the other social media platforms.

00:58:36.000 We always have to keep our eye on the ball of what's happening today and what the next fight is, because like I say, these are ongoing battles.

00:58:45.000 Vigilance is the price of liberty, as they say, and we have to be absolutely vigilant.

00:58:49.000 So we've got these anti-protest powers in Parliament today, online safety bill in Parliament today, where we're seeing extraordinary convergence of Gareth, I hope you're not going to spoil all this by thinking about digital strip searches.

00:59:03.000 Oh no, I got that on my mind immediately.

00:59:05.000 Yes, it's quite good, isn't it? What about that?

00:59:07.000 Very good, yeah.

00:59:08.000 You're in down with it?

00:59:09.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:59:10.000 Gareth, I hope you're not going to spoil all this by thinking about digital strip searches.

00:59:14.000 Oh no, I'd got that on my mind immediately.

00:59:17.000 What are they?

00:59:19.000 So, police got into the habit of, when people were reporting serious offences, in particular

00:59:26.000 rape and sexual offences, police were asking people almost immediately for their phones

00:59:32.000 take a copy of everything on their phones.

00:59:35.000 And then they would find reasons to distrust them or, of course, a lot of people just didn't want to hand over everything on their phone.

00:59:42.000 So, this was a massive, massive barrier for people, particularly women, to seek justice after going through horrendous... The victims?

00:59:51.000 Yes, exactly.

00:59:53.000 Victims were being treated like suspects.

00:59:55.000 I thought it was bad when it was the perpetrators.

00:59:57.000 Well, that's actually the victims.

00:59:58.000 There are more legal safeguards around when it can happen to a perpetrator than a suspect.

01:00:03.000 But actually, we've just won that fight and there has now been legal change.

01:00:09.000 Again, we'll have to be vigilant about how it plays out.

01:00:11.000 But it's another campaign that we've won.

01:00:14.000 And the reason that is so important, not only because rapists should be brought to justice, but because that precedent setting of authorities being entitled to your whole digital life... Think about the amount of data that's on our phones.

01:00:30.000 You can find out far more about someone by looking through their phone than you can through doing a house raid.

01:00:34.000 You've got photos, emails, work stuff, banking, texts, stuff that can go back 10 years all in one place.

01:00:41.000 So it was really, really important that we fought that and that we won.

01:00:45.000 These are brilliant victories.

01:00:47.000 And there's been a tendency over the last decade or so, perhaps with the rise of this kind of technology,

01:00:54.000 to equate privacy with guilt.

01:00:57.000 Like privacy, it was once understood to be a right because it was, I suppose,

01:01:03.000 it was implemented by default.

01:01:06.000 But now you can encroach on people's privacy in so many brilliant and perfidious ways

01:01:12.000 that people just, there's just a tendency, you said before, like authoritarianism

01:01:16.000 requires continued vigilance.

01:01:17.000 Like it's a magnetic force that will consume whatever it can.

01:01:22.000 So hard to hear that you've had so much success in your campaigns.

01:01:26.000 You can follow Silky at Silky Carlo on Twitter and we'll post a link in the description for Big Brother Watch UK.

01:01:33.000 Gareth, you seem like you've been, in a sense, nurturing an inquiry and I wouldn't like this to bring this interview to an end without giving you the opportunity to make it.

01:01:44.000 I was interested in the kind of politicization that's occurred over the last few years,

01:01:48.000 especially with the pandemic, in the way that, for example, with the COVID passports

01:01:53.000 and anyone who was opposed to that, that it was turned into a kind of political statement

01:02:00.000 that you were automatically, for example, right wing for caring about your privacy.

01:02:04.000 And you see it happening again with even the stuff that's going on with Elon Musk

01:02:08.000 at the moment, that if you're a supporter of these kind of revelations about the convergence

01:02:13.000 as you talk about of state and big tech, that you're somehow right wing

01:02:17.000 or, and then you get called, you know, all these kinds of terms and labels that they give you.

01:02:22.000 Why is this happening?

01:02:23.000 And how is this kind of playing into the hands of the people that want to introduce these things?

01:02:28.000 It's a really good question.

01:02:29.000 In my view, I think that it's delegitimizing.

01:02:34.000 I think that by instantly brandishing anyone who questions some of these very, very important policies for authoritarians, You can call them conservative, you can call them right wing, you can call them conspiracy theorists or whatever.

01:02:50.000 All the things that were lobbed at people that opposed mandatory COVID passes, although it was a real policy and law that was there, you know, that we ultimately fought and won.

01:03:01.000 You know, it's just delegitimising.

01:03:04.000 And it's very hard, you know, I personally actually found it very hard as well, campaigning very strongly against mandatory COVID passes because there is a lot, there was a lot of stigma, you know, but at the end of the day, it was a mandatory digital ID that forced people to show medical compliance.

01:03:25.000 And, you know, it was just mad.

01:03:26.000 I mean, I don't want to kind of rerun the arguments, but I'm very proud of everything that Big Brother Watch did during that period.

01:03:31.000 It wasn't right-wing at all.

01:03:32.000 And actually, you know, so we worked with, often in British politics, and I think it's the same in American politics, they say that the civil libertarians on both sides of politics meet around the back.

01:03:45.000 So, you know, we were campaigning with the left of the Labour Party and the right of the Conservative Party, both of whom were opposing COVID passes.

01:03:55.000 There needs to be a broader alliance between those groups to once and for all instantiate a new political movement that is transcendent of those labels, which is one of the things that I mentioned and I believe was in my manifesto.

01:04:07.000 I reckon, you know the way that different towns like twin with each other?

01:04:11.000 I think our show should twin with Big Brother Watch.

01:04:13.000 You know, like you go to town and it goes, we're twinned with somewhere.

01:04:16.000 In Bulgaria, for example.

01:04:18.000 We should twin with Big Brother Watch, I reckon.

01:04:21.000 Even overlooking the fact that you said that Gareth's question was good and didn't say that about any of my questions.

01:04:25.000 Now, that would be puerile to mention that, in fact, when you've been such a brilliant guest.

01:04:28.000 Thank you for coming on, Silky, and thank you for the excellent work that you do with Big Brother Watch and your excellent campaigning.

01:04:33.000 We'll draw as much attention as we can to these... Are we called, like, Small Sister Watch, then?

01:04:37.000 What are we?

01:04:38.000 That sounds a bit strange.

01:04:40.000 I was going to say dirty classroom. Tomorrow we've got Glenn Greenwald coming on the show

01:04:46.000 and God knows what we're going to put him through. He's coming on, he's our friend,

01:04:49.000 he's our affiliate on this glorious platform. On Thursday, Steve-O's coming on. I love Steve-O,

01:04:54.000 he's brilliant. I call him a kind of a rasping troubadour of exotic stunts. And Thursday,

01:05:01.000 Tim Robbins is coming on. You can join that conversation live at 8am ET, 5am PT because

01:05:07.000 we record it and you can ask questions if you want to if you're a member of our community.

01:05:12.000 Remember, you can watch everything first and in full on Stay Free AF.

01:05:15.000 That's our members community available to you on Locals, where we will be in a minute fielding some of your questions.

01:05:22.000 Silky, thank you so much for this fantastic conversation once again and for the brilliant work that you've done.

01:05:28.000 And I hope you'll join us again on the show, will you?

01:05:30.000 Thanks very much for coming on.

01:05:32.000 All right, you lot.

01:05:32.000 We're going to clear off now.

01:05:34.000 And if you're a member of Stay Free AF, which you can easily join by clicking on the link in the description, we'll see you in a minute.

01:05:39.000 Otherwise, see you tomorrow with Glenn Greenwald.

01:05:42.000 What are we going to talk about with Glenn Greenwald?

01:05:44.000 We can't just recycle it.

01:05:46.000 It's got to be a new, innovative conversation.

01:05:48.000 Well, you do some investigative journalism.

01:05:50.000 My investigations will no doubt throw up some stuff to get Glenn Greenwald thinking.

01:05:54.000 I'll challenge him.

01:05:55.000 I'll try and pull it as a prize.

01:05:57.000 But I don't know about all that.

01:05:58.000 Thanks very much.

01:05:59.000 Stay free.

01:05:59.000 See you tomorrow.

Stay Free - Russel Brand - December 13, 2022

This Is Why The Democrats Being Sh*t Matters! - #045 - Stay Free with Russell Brand

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