Sam Bankman-Friedman is the second biggest Democratic donor in the country, and he's not even close to being released from prison yet. How can there be a strong moral centre if you're hailing a trillionaire? And how can you be a socialist if you don't have money? And what does that have to do with the Democratic Party? And why does it matter if he's in prison or not? And who's paying the price for it? And what s going to happen to him if he does get out of prison? All that and much more on this week's episode of RUMBLE. Hit us up at and let us know what you thought of this episode! Timestamps: 1:00 - Who is Sam Bankman Friedman? 2:30 - What does it mean to be socialist? 3:15 - How much money can a socialist make? 4:20 - What s the difference between a socialist and a liberal? 5:20 6:00 - What is the role of money in American politics? 7:10 - Is he a socialist or a capitalist? 8:40 - How can he have a moral centre? 9:30 Does he have it all? 10:40 11:10 What s going on? 12:15 13:00 -- Who is Warren Buffett? 14:30 -- What does he think of his relationship with Saudi Arabia? 15:40 -- What s he really think of the US government? 16: Is he really like? 17: What is his role in the US economy? 19:00:00 | What are we should do about it? 21:30 | What s his relationship to the Middle East? 22:00 // Is he the most powerful man in the most important country in the world? 26:30 // What s our relationship to Saudi Arabia s relationship with the US? 27:40 | What do we need to be worried about? 29:00-- Is he an American billionaire? 32:00, 35:30, What is he's going to do about the snow? 31: Does he really have a problem? 33:40, 35, 36, 33, 34, 37, Is he going to go to jail? 36:00 ,
00:02:17.000There's enough challenges, isn't there, and enough corruption in the world without it infiltrating the very systems here that we are dependent upon.
00:02:24.000We'll be talking about Sam Bankman-Friedman in a minute.
00:02:46.000I 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.
00:02:53.000But actually, what we're saying is, how can there...
00:02:57.000Posturing and moral grandstanding be of any value when there's so much evident corruption in their funding.
00:03:15.000He's, like, been on stage at the WF with Clinton and Blair and he's sort of their boy, isn't he?
00:03:23.000And so I suppose there's many people sort of reveling in... Hailed as the first trillionaire, well... Trillion!
00:03:29.000First future trillionaire in the new Warren Buffett, apparently.
00:03:36.000How can you have a strong moral centre if you're hailing a trillionaire?
00:03:41.000In 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.
00:03:50.000But one of those railroads is owned by Warren Buffett, another posturing apparent socialist.
00:03:55.000This 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?
00:04:59.000And snow is always a cause for hysteria.
00:05:02.000Remember, we're going to talk about a lot of stories over the course of the show.
00:05:05.000We'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.
00:05:13.000So if you're watching us on YouTube now, Flip over to the other side.
00:05:16.000This is what you're being invited to care about.
00:05:18.000And in a minute, we'll tell you perhaps what you should be caring about.
00:06:38.000It'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.
00:06:50.000Because this is written in 2014, it's written with such nuance and transparency.
00:06:55.000It's such a balanced piece of journalism.
00:06:56.000But 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.
00:07:07.000We'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.
00:07:18.000Or Matt Taibbi, another friend of the show, condemned as a sort of, I don't know, like a conspiracy theorist or a fringe wacko.
00:09:15.000No, 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.
00:09:22.000It's when Elvis Presley went into the army.
00:09:24.000Here's the image of dear Elvis going through the exact same process there.
00:09:30.000There's Elvis being shaved, and of course when Elvis was shaved and went into the army, It was a kind of a castration.
00:09:38.000Now, I don't know what BTS represent to their millions of fans, but I imagine it's some sort of sanitized rebellion.
00:09:45.000And back in the 1950s, rock and roll seemed like a genuinely revolutionary force.
00:09:50.000And 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.
00:09:58.000But that was seen as the castration of a cultural pop, a pop cultural movement.
00:10:05.000Interesting metaphor for now though, isn't it?
00:10:29.000Yeah, it's a record $858 billion military budget given to the Pentagon, half of which goes to private companies, we
00:10:36.000now know, over half of which goes to them.
00:10:38.000We're going to be talking about that at length and in depth.
00:10:42.000If you're watching us on YouTube, you should always let me do a proper sign off on YouTube.
00:10:46.000I'd really like the opportunity to sort of go like to always do it properly so that I can go.
00:10:50.000So 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.
00:11:21.000Listen, my research has yielded quite a lot of, I would say, fruitful results.
00:11:28.000Elsewhere 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.
00:11:48.000Old 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.
00:11:57.000He has this sort of air of an inmate there.
00:11:59.000They said he's bringing Carhartt to the capital, apparently.
00:12:06.000Zelensky is Person of the Year, have a look at that.
00:12:09.000And 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.
00:12:24.000I can't imagine there's an actual trophy, can you?
00:12:27.000I don't reckon this is a place to comedically riff because I'll start thinking about what the Soap Trophy is.
00:12:33.000It's going to get into some tricky territory.
00:12:39.000While 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.
00:12:54.000Yeah, 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.
00:13:06.000So 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.
00:13:17.000But 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.
00:13:26.000But in 2020, British tech firm Onfido called its immunity passport in development the linchpin of a new normality in a post-COVID-19 society.
00:13:38.000No, 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.
00:13:51.000So it's literally, there is a literal link between the two.
00:13:53.000So 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.
00:14:31.000Well, strong suspicions to do with this wet market, not that nearby laboratory.
00:14:35.000So 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.
00:14:42.000Now, are you hearing now more and more stories that there will be climate lockdowns in the future or curfews introduced?
00:14:50.000I wish we'd been a little more recalcitrant.
00:14:52.000I 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.
00:14:59.000Do you remember that kind of narrative?
00:15:00.000The Great, there was the First World War, that was a good one.
00:15:03.000Second 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.
00:15:14.000Our war is total compliance and surrender.
00:15:18.000Now, what we're seeing is that it was an attempt to normalise conditions that would have previously been regarded as extreme.
00:15:26.000If you think about it, we already live in extreme conditions.
00:15:29.000The way that we work, the way that we live, the way that we pay taxes.
00:15:32.000The way that we are extracted from nature, both inner and outer, is extraordinary.
00:15:37.000In fact, obviously, if you analyze it a little longer, there's no such bloody thing as normal.
00:15:41.000There are just sort of regularly occurring phenomena that we normalize.
00:15:46.000And it seems now that many of the conditions and measures undertaken during the pandemic period facilitate ongoing regulation going forward.
00:15:56.000And certainly they're advantageous to some pretty bloody powerful interests.
00:16:01.000Silky 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.
00:16:17.000You 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.
00:16:38.000All of these things happened, not just in the United States or the UK, but in numerous countries.
00:16:42.000I think at least 93 when we looked at Luke Kemp's research.
00:16:47.000And obviously, some of the most powerful interests in the world significantly benefited, whether that's big pharma or big tech.
00:16:53.000Now, 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
00:17:12.000Or 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.
00:17:26.000We'll say, look, we can demonstrate your corruption.
00:17:28.000We don't need to get into the lizard people or the craziness or the madness.
00:17:39.000I'd love to think that there are people worshipping an owl and burning stuff, even making human sacrifices.
00:17:45.000It would make it easier to oppose them.
00:17:48.000But 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.
00:17:57.000That stuff is pretty demonstrable and observable.
00:18:00.000And on that note, there's a story here, Gareth, that we wanted to touch on about the arms industry owning Congress.
00:18:06.000You just told us that there's a new bill for $858 billion of new military expenditure.
00:18:20.000Yeah, 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.
00:18:39.000So it's a literal demonstration of These military contractors give money through donations, campaign donations, to politicians.
00:19:41.000So 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.
00:19:53.000Out of that, the military-industrial complex are making $450 billion.
00:21:39.000But if you say that, what is the result of American diplomacy and American foreign policy in exacerbating these conditions?
00:21:48.000People think that you're a lunatic and an apologist.
00:21:50.000Yeah, I think that's why we were talking about Letterman yesterday and the trailer that dropped for his show with Zelensky.
00:21:57.000It 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.
00:22:11.000It's just two heroes fighting an evil dictator.
00:22:14.000Zelensky It might well be a heroic person, an individual, and the struggle of the Ukrainian people could be described as heroic.
00:22:30.000It's the media reporting and the lack of reporting on the complexity, which just eight years ago was plainly spoken about.
00:22:36.000Check out this bit from the same article.
00:22:38.000You 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.
00:23:02.000In 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.
00:23:23.000Yeah, and then you get someone like Max Blumenthal from the Grey Zone.
00:23:25.000And, 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.
00:23:34.000And 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.
00:23:44.000And, you know, this is again another kind of operation with ties to neo-Nazis.
00:23:51.000It was reported back in 2014 in The Guardian and now anyone talking about this as an issue is branded far-right.
00:23:58.000This 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?
00:24:16.000Being funded by those kind of figures necessarily results in a kind of corruption.
00:24:23.000The Democratic Party's posturing and cultural ephemera is disingenuous.
00:24:32.000From 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.
00:24:46.000It's that using these arguments to mask massive financial corruption is unconscionable.
00:24:52.000Similarly, 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.
00:25:05.000It'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.
00:25:33.000If you want to be left alone to be who you are, can't you make that argument from both places?
00:25:38.000And 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.
00:25:45.000And what's required is a new form of populism, a new politics that ties together these ideas and simultaneously transcends them.
00:25:54.000And we can't get there without a nuanced conversation.
00:25:57.000We can't get there by doubling down on tribalism and de facto condemnation of who we regard as our opponents.
00:26:39.000It's just everything he does look like, why does he turn around that way?
00:26:43.000Why does he do the full rotation like that?
00:26:47.000It's like at the end of speeches, he just lets his mind go fully blank.
00:26:51.000They 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.
00:27:14.000Don't film what happens in the ten seconds.
00:27:16.000Because 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.
00:28:30.000Well, 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.
00:28:50.000We'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.
00:28:58.000We're going to be talking about his relationship with Saudi Arabia and how he's betrayed the working people of America.
00:29:14.000Thank 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.
00:29:26.000That's why he's made members of the Saudi royal family an absolute pariah by pushing for them to get immunity from prosecution.
00:29:37.000Joe 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.
00:29:53.000It wouldn't be anything to do with oil deals and weapons deals, would it?
00:29:58.000I mean, that would mean that Joe Biden is just another corporatized president running a corporatized country who doesn't care about ordinary people.
00:30:42.000Khashoggi 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.
00:30:55.000We were going to in fact make them pay the price and make them in fact the pariah that they are.
00:31:06.000A 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.
00:31:20.000Oh, that's really weird because that sounds like the opposite of a pariah, doesn't it?
00:31:24.000Seems 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.
00:31:33.000Hey you, we're gonna be needing some oil.
00:31:38.000District Court judge with a long history of presiding over cases involving national security, acknowledged uneasiness in making the decision.
00:31:44.000Listen, I'm just gonna make this decision that's hypocritical and against electoral pledges.
00:32:08.000District 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.
00:32:21.000So they simply bypassed the legal system that's supposed to administer justice.
00:33:04.000Although the case was not brought by U.S.
00:33:06.000prosecutors 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.
00:33:19.000Because that's the right thing to say.
00:33:21.000After an election, do what you like, mate, actually, because we've got financial interests that align quite nicely with our own interests.
00:33:26.000Saudi 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.
00:33:41.000Well, 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!
00:33:53.000You 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
00:34:16.000Two sources close to members of the Saudi Royal Family Administration confirmed to The Intercept that Saudi had asked the Biden administration grant MBS immunity.
00:34:24.000At the same time, the US wanted the kingdom to turn up oil production.
00:34:28.000The request for sovereign immunity was a ploy, Dawn, a non-profit funded by Jamal Khashoggi, wrote, laying out a simple argument.
00:34:35.000Head of state immunity is typically reserved for a country's leader, Which, in the case of Saudi Arabia, is its king, MBS's father.
00:34:41.000King Salman, senior to Crown Prince Mohammed, is head of state.
00:35:13.000In August, the Biden administration approved a potential multi-billion dollar arms sale to Saudi Arabia worth an estimated three billion dollars.
00:35:19.000So 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.
00:35:29.000Other 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.
00:35:40.000It's a national disgrace that millions of our fellow citizens don't have a single day of paid sick leave available to them.
00:35:48.000What 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.
00:36:22.000Last 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.
00:36:30.000The move is the latest and possibly starkest example of the chasm between Biden's pro-worker
00:36:35.000rhetoric during his campaign and presidency and the numerous pro-corporate actions he
00:37:11.000What 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.
00:37:18.000Then the whole system is pointless then isn't it?
00:37:20.000Ultimately what we're delivering you is a message.
00:37:22.000There is a requirement for radical systemic change.
00:37:25.000Neither of the parties that you could possibly vote for will deliver that change.
00:37:28.000You 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.
00:37:35.000The 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.
00:37:45.000The 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.
00:37:56.000Yeah, but Warren Buffett, he's a good guy, he's a socialist guy, he's a liberal guy, he's helping out.
00:38:01.000Those foundations, there's definitely no tax benefits to that.
00:38:04.000It's more efficient than just helping them for giving them sick days.
00:38:17.000While opposing a plan that would have required them to spend $320 million to give workers
00:38:21.000seven paid sick days, the main railroad companies raked in more than $7 billion in profits and
00:38:26.000paid out over $1.8 billion in dividends in a year where they and their lobbying groups
00:38:30.000spent more than $13 million lobbying Congress.
00:38:32.000Much of the corporate media's coverage of the looming rail strike has focused on how
00:38:36.000the work stoppage would make a slowing economy worse and cause havoc over the holidays.
00:38:40.000So 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.
00:39:37.000Are you and your members willing to stop the rails, in effect, and accept those costs to the US economy?
00:39:44.000Now 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?
00:39:58.000Do you believe a strike is worth it if it cripples the US economy and costs up to $2 billion a day?
00:40:42.000Look at how they frame information for you.
00:40:44.000Not 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.
00:40:53.000We've been conditioned and trained to such a degree that even the words start to be offensive to you.
00:40:57.000You start to see reality in the way that they want you to see reality.
00:41:02.000The strike's gonna hurt the goddamn economy!
00:41:05.000Well, if we don't support one another, we're going to be annihilated.
00:41:08.000And that's gonna hurt, not the economy, but your life.
00:41:10.000So joining me now to talk about this and a lot more is Bank of America.
00:41:13.000We need an objective perspective on this.
00:41:17.000Okay, now how are we gonna get an unbiased view on profiteering railroad companies that have made billions and given out billions in dividends?
00:41:25.000Also, we've gotta as well bear in mind the rights of these workers who currently only have one sick day a year.
00:41:45.000He doesn't know what it's like to work on a railroad, feel too unwell to go in a couple of times a year.
00:41:51.000Well, when I'm at the bank, I'm just trying to drag myself in.
00:41:55.000Come fair weather or shine, I'm there, fat-catting away every single day.
00:42:00.000And maybe if you want a sick day, perhaps you should run one of the world's biggest banks.
00:42:04.000With 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.
00:42:15.000Instead, he called on Democrats and Republicans alike to side with highly profitable railroad companies and crush their workers.
00:42:22.000When it comes to granting immunity to Saudi royalty, The rules can be bent.
00:42:27.000When it comes to helping ordinary Americans, the very ordinary Americans that throughout the campaign, we're going to help you fair and just.
00:42:33.000And Trump, he was a bastard, wasn't he?
00:42:35.000We're going to make Saudi Arabia a pariah.
00:43:30.000But right now we are joined by Silky Carlo from Big Brother Watch UK.
00:43:35.000Thanks for coming in and being on our show.
00:43:37.000What 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.
00:43:49.000To 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.
00:44:01.000Let's have a look at him talking about his admiration of Chinese power.
00:44:06.000...of admiration I actually have for China.
00:44:12.000Because 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.
00:44:46.000You know, China is a genocidal regime.
00:44:49.000There are estimated a million Uyghurs in concentration camps right now who are being tortured and detained.
00:44:57.000So, but, you know, I think we always see that there is an appeal to authoritarianism and power will always try to accumulate.
00:45:04.000And so we need to be vigilant about that, whatever country we live in.
00:45:07.000And we certainly need to be vigilant about it in the UK and the US where there is already enormous surveillance apparatus.
00:45:14.000So, 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.
00:45:23.000In 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.
00:45:32.000Now we see that kind of method being replicated in China.
00:45:40.000You 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.
00:45:49.000Where in particular would you say in the UK we're emulating Chinese-style surveillance?
00:45:54.000And 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?
00:46:06.000Um, well, there's many different levels to look to look at this.
00:46:10.000So London, for example, is the most surveilled city in the world after Beijing.
00:46:16.000And proportionate to the population size, the UK has as many surveillance cameras as China.
00:46:23.000So we are an incredibly surveilled country, but we also have a lot of electronic surveillance.
00:46:30.000And here's where we know less about what they do, which is why the Snowden revelations were so important.
00:46:34.000You know, we've got intelligence agencies that have spoken about seeking to master the Internet and have total information awareness.
00:46:42.000Again, 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.
00:47:18.000Of 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.
00:47:34.000Were there ways then that we were tracked during the pandemic that were not explicit?
00:47:38.000We 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.
00:47:50.000It 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.
00:47:59.000What kind of unprecedented measures, aside from lockdowns, do you think that there were present?
00:48:05.000Well 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.
00:48:20.000I 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.
00:48:28.000We 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
00:48:57.000Yeah, 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.
00:49:06.000And so, you know, for example, you know, specifically about tracking during the pandemic, we found we do investigations as well.
00:49:13.000So we found that there were people's phones, in fact, millions of people's phones were tracked.
00:49:19.000There's very little fanfare about it during the pandemic.
00:49:22.000In 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.
00:49:33.000I just think that, you know, so often authorities see People as cattle.
00:49:39.000You know, it's very dehumanising and people aren't given dignity.
00:49:58.000The 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.
00:50:19.000And the extreme conditions of the pandemic meant that that was able to be implemented, perhaps without the level of opposition that was due.
00:50:29.000Now, 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.
00:50:47.000You 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.
00:51:03.000But, 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.
00:51:15.000An 80-year-old is currently the most powerful person in the world.
00:51:19.000He 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.
00:51:25.000It's for his own safety that I would argue for that.
00:51:28.000So, 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.
00:51:47.000What about something quite innocuous, Silky?
00:51:50.000Like 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.
00:51:57.000And 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.
00:52:25.000I think increasingly modern life is managed through surveillance and we just expect cameras everywhere for everything.
00:52:32.000But yes, so I do think that they're gearing up for facial recognition.
00:52:35.000In fact, we've been running a massive campaign against the growth of facial recognition in this country.
00:52:40.000For 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.
00:53:13.000Specific individuals or just types of people?
00:53:15.000We 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?
00:53:23.000But 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.
00:53:38.000I used to smuggle drugs when I was taking drugs, only personal use of course, not for dealing.
00:53:42.000And 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?
00:53:49.000But 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.
00:53:59.000How do you stop being treated like a criminal forever?
00:54:02.000You know, if you have these facial recognition watch lists that are just, you know, acting like privatised police, really.
00:54:08.000And 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?
00:54:24.000Isn't that something that's been recently proposed or am I exaggerating?
00:54:26.000No, it sounds like it's fiction, and it should be, but it's not.
00:54:31.000We'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.
00:54:44.000Again, it's just like treating people like cattle, although cattle shouldn't be treated like that either.
00:54:49.000But you can be tracked everywhere and you can also have your internet activity controlled.
00:54:56.000And 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.
00:55:10.000So 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.
00:55:19.000I would be shocked if we heard that China were pursuing a policy like that.
00:55:23.000But that's what Parliament is debating today.
00:55:26.000When 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.
00:55:41.000And we can only assume that comparable things are happening.
00:55:44.000Elsewhere, 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.
00:56:02.000I wonder why there is such a trend towards the introduction of anti-protest legislation around the world, and also the militarisation of the police.
00:56:13.000Sometimes 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.
00:56:24.000Do you ever wonder about stuff like that?
00:58:29.000We're at bigbrotherwatch.org.uk and we're at Big Brother Watch on Twitter and the other social media platforms.
00:58:36.000We 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.
00:58:45.000Vigilance is the price of liberty, as they say, and we have to be absolutely vigilant.
00:58:49.000So 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.
00:59:03.000Oh no, I got that on my mind immediately.
00:59:05.000Yes, it's quite good, isn't it? What about that?
00:59:58.000There are more legal safeguards around when it can happen to a perpetrator than a suspect.
01:00:03.000But actually, we've just won that fight and there has now been legal change.
01:00:09.000Again, we'll have to be vigilant about how it plays out.
01:00:11.000But it's another campaign that we've won.
01:00:14.000And 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.
01:00:30.000You can find out far more about someone by looking through their phone than you can through doing a house raid.
01:00:34.000You've got photos, emails, work stuff, banking, texts, stuff that can go back 10 years all in one place.
01:00:41.000So it was really, really important that we fought that and that we won.
01:01:17.000Like it's a magnetic force that will consume whatever it can.
01:01:22.000So hard to hear that you've had so much success in your campaigns.
01:01:26.000You can follow Silky at Silky Carlo on Twitter and we'll post a link in the description for Big Brother Watch UK.
01:01:33.000Gareth, 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.
01:01:44.000I was interested in the kind of politicization that's occurred over the last few years,
01:01:48.000especially with the pandemic, in the way that, for example, with the COVID passports
01:01:53.000and anyone who was opposed to that, that it was turned into a kind of political statement
01:02:00.000that you were automatically, for example, right wing for caring about your privacy.
01:02:04.000And you see it happening again with even the stuff that's going on with Elon Musk
01:02:08.000at the moment, that if you're a supporter of these kind of revelations about the convergence
01:02:13.000as you talk about of state and big tech, that you're somehow right wing
01:02:17.000or, and then you get called, you know, all these kinds of terms and labels that they give you.
01:02:29.000In my view, I think that it's delegitimizing.
01:02:34.000I 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.
01:02:50.000All 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.
01:03:04.000And 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.
01:03:32.000And 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.
01:03:45.000So, 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.
01:03:55.000There 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.
01:04:07.000I reckon, you know the way that different towns like twin with each other?
01:04:11.000I think our show should twin with Big Brother Watch.
01:04:13.000You know, like you go to town and it goes, we're twinned with somewhere.