In the wake of the Nashville school shooting, Russell Brand reflects on the loss of three 9-year-olds in the latest mass shooting in the United States of America, and offers his thoughts on how we can move forward from this momentous event, and the lessons we can learn about how we should grieve for the families who lost their children in this senseless act of senseless, unnecessary violence. He also offers his condolences to the families whose lives will forever be scarred by these events, and asks how we, as a society, can move on from the grief that we feel at the senseless loss of these young lives, and what we can do to support them in their grief and recovery from the trauma of losing a loved one in a senseless, preventable act of violence. Russell Brand is a comedian, writer, podcaster, and public speaker. He is the host of the podcast Stay Free with Russell Brand and hosts the podcast, Stay Free With Russell Brand, which is celebrating its 100th episode on the anniversary of the Stay Free podcast, and is celebrating the life of Russell Brand with a new episode of Stay Free on Stay Free, which will be available on all major podcasting platforms, starting next week. Stay Free! Stay free! - Russell Brand - Stay Free Music: "In Need of a Savior (feat. John Singleton) by Fountains of Wayne Parris and "The Good Fight" by The Good Fight by The Wangerous Company Join us on social media: Subscribe to stayfree.co/Stay FreezingWondering? Learn more about Russell Brand's new album, "Rumble.co.nz/RussellBrand/Rumble/RUMBLE/RUNNERDSR? , "RUNNING" , "RUMROZ " "Thank You Awakening Wonders? " " by & "Rumore's " by . " " and (RUMORING WORD " by RUMORCHARD " by "RATE" by , and "RADIO in our new album "ROBERT MURDERER " by @ is a new song by ( ) or "RAPHER " & of "RUDY RAYRIVING WELCOME by "The Bad Girl
00:00:01.000Thanks for joining us on Stay Free with Russell Brand.
00:00:05.000It's actually our 100th show, which we had a kind of pre-ordained celebratory tone established for before we heard about the recent or the current Nashville shoot-in.
00:00:17.000So it's, in a sense, put us in a position where we're uncertain as to how to cover that story.
00:00:25.000Because in particular, to be entirely honest with you, I've noticed how Stories of school shootings or mass shootings that are obviously, as you're aware, all too common tend to become politicised and particular pieces of information emphasised or amplified according with the media outlet and presumed political alliances of that channel or broadcaster.
00:00:50.000And I suppose one of the things we consider to be our obligation is to look for commonality among all humanity and among all nations while recognizing that we are of course subject to the same or comparable biases to any other group or any other individual.
00:01:07.000So for me I feel initially that I will declare that as a parent when you hear about this unnecessary traumatic merger of children the first Impulsive response in fact is one of like dread and anxiety because I've been with my children today as I have every day and all of us live with the assumption of safety and perhaps we should live with that assumption of safety for what is a society other than a set of accepted beliefs, relationships and assumptions between us.
00:01:40.000And as the fabric of society appears to deteriorate around us, seems to be more undergirded by conflict, bias, stoked conflagration and loathing, perhaps it is unsurprising that there are these occasional symptomatic outbursts of violence, whether they are large-scale geopolitical expressions of violence, and we've been pretty expressive and clear about what we think the underlying motivations for that It's commonly understood in media analysis circles that the fetishisation and focus on the perpetrator is unhelpful, in particular in that it increases the likelihood of emulation.
00:02:25.000And I think many of us struggle with how tonally are we going to deal with that.
00:02:30.000knowing that in a matter of days, of course, people are going to talk about other things,
00:02:36.000that we are going to recover a sense of normality. And in fact, it's our ability to adapt as human
00:02:42.000beings that here appears particularly galling for who could grieve enough for the unnecessary
00:02:49.000murder of three nine-year-old children.
00:02:54.000For certain, there are families whose lives will forever be scarred by these events, classmates who will be forever affected.
00:03:03.000And the fact that this is something that appears to be particular to the United States of America, is something that emphasizes the tragedy in my mind as a
00:03:15.000green card holder, a regular visitor and occasional resident of your country.
00:03:20.000I have incredible compassion and love for the United States of America, so I'm certainly
00:03:24.000not being haughty or condescending or saying that there's something uniquely bad about
00:03:29.000America and I'm certainly not presenting any kind of solution.
00:03:32.000And I certainly don't want to participate in the politicization of an event that really is a human event.
00:03:39.000And I ultimately consider it to be my, not duty or role, because both of those things seem pretty grandiose, perhaps function to participate in conciliatory conversations.
00:03:49.000Because I've noticed that even with something as tragic as mass shootings, the subsequent reporting appears to focus on aspects of the story that are politically expedient for certain groups and doubtless that will happen in this case as it often perhaps even usually does and what I feel perhaps we ought to turn our attention to is what are the underlying
00:04:14.000Circumstances that lead to this in a way the manifestation of it whether you want to particularize it around the characteristics of this particular shooter or shooters in the past and gain points from it or somehow Express and process the grief through loathing, through certainty, to arrive at some place where it's like, this is what we must do, this is what we must never do, these are the people that it's okay to hate.
00:04:42.000I feel like, personally, and again, let me know in the chat and the comments, whether you're watching this on YouTube or over on Rumble, that How you express your pain and your grief is as personal and particular to you as mine is to me.
00:04:55.000And what my own life has taught me as a person that is fallible, that's made numerous mistakes, has been granted a second life in recovery because of my own issues with mental health and addiction, that compassion and empathy always has to be part of it.
00:05:08.000Compassion and empathy to the people directly affected first and foremost.
00:05:12.000The now dead children, the now at this moment grieving parents.
00:05:16.000And I feel that when I hold that in my mind, some of the other issues recede and the kind of rapacious race towards solution and conclusion, important though those things are, are secondary to love and compassion.
00:05:31.000And I don't mean that in a woolly or ephemeral way.
00:05:36.000When you think of the non-violence of some of the great people of history, of Martin Luther King and of Gandhi, to To insist on non-violence, to insist on the principle of unity in love, to acknowledge that this is obviously a shared problem that our entire culture is experiencing.
00:05:54.000But when we rest upon the certainty of condemnation, what we simultaneously do is prevent progress.
00:06:03.000I feel like this is a situation where you want leadership, where you want certainty, where you want solutions.
00:06:09.000And the kind of leadership and the kind of solutions that suggest themselves to you will probably, undoubtedly, inevitably be informed by your own cultural background, by your own allegiance and biases.
00:06:21.000And this is why I suppose the call that I am offering is for a deeper allegiance a deeper alliance to all humanity but once again this seems to me to be an opportunity to recognize our common humanity that none of us want to experience the death of our children none of us want to experience a tragedy like this in our community so while we're talking about this and hopefully we won't talk about it for the whole episode and hopefully we'll find a way of
00:06:50.000One of the things we don't want to do is fetishize the identity of the individual that did it to be reductive or in some way darkly celebratory around the gore and horror of the events and to try to find in it some kind of lesson.
00:07:08.000Some kind of lesson that includes doubt.
00:07:10.000Some kind of lesson that includes our common fragility and fallibility rather than bipartisan and oppositional certainty.
00:07:19.000Some kind of I told you so because if this show teaches me anything is that I don't know very much about human beings and how they're capable I've been a desperate and uncertain adolescent that ultimately sought comfort in addiction.
00:07:37.000Doubtless, there are many people in the world right now that feel lost and alienated and dispossessed.
00:07:44.000Perhaps the success of the film The Joker, which many said unduly fetishised the position of the loneliness, is a kind of eulogy for a culture of dispossession, loss, feeling like you don't belong to anyone or anywhere.
00:08:00.000And none of these things are being meted out by me as excuses, not for the inexcusable, not for the inexcusable causing of immeasurable and unimaginable grief.
00:08:13.000The type of which has been inflicted today, simply as an offering of, if we are truly to look for solutions to the problems that our culture is clearly experiencing, we're going to have to start considering things that we haven't previously considered.
00:08:29.000We're going to have to discover a different type of language.
00:08:32.000And my sense, and I would not claim to be certain about this because I know as little as anybody else, Is that what we must have recourse to are deep spiritual values, the kind of values that are difficult to access in a culture that prioritises tribalisation, oppositionism, commodification, individualism and materialism, progressivism, and I mean progressivism in terms of technological progressivism, i.e.
00:08:54.000humankind is heading somewhere, we're better than we've ever been.
00:08:57.000When those kind of certainties abound and define the conversation, then I don't feel that we're going to reach any conclusions together.
00:09:05.000I feel that this is one of those times where perhaps we should be really deliberately listening to people who we don't agree with and taking on board what their concerns are.
00:09:14.000Why do you feel so certain about that?
00:09:17.000Why do you have such certainty around, let's face it, the divisive subjects of gun control, identity politics, all of the things that I predict, imagine, assume, will come up as the talking points around this issue and will ultimately play out in accordance with a predetermined set of ideals that each side have.
00:09:37.000And what I've been struck by lately is when it comes to the political divide, Both sides appear to be, in a way, operating on behalf of interests that are not explicit and not declared.
00:09:52.000And all of us really, really have the same interests.
00:09:59.000All of us are going to experience loss.
00:10:01.000And if we don't find that North Star, something between us and among us that Causes connection rather than division, then I don't feel that there will be much of a chance for healing.
00:10:13.000I hope that nothing I've said here is in any way met you as condescension or haughtiness or worst of all possible things, Britishness, because I know what our historic relationship is with your country.
00:10:27.000But I feel that really we have to establish a tone together don't we?
00:10:31.000A tone and a place for conversation and mutual love because really whether it's this particular shoot-in or the other numerous shoot-ins or the future shoot-ins because let's face it this isn't going to be a watershed or a benchmark we can start to grieve the forthcoming ones too.
00:10:47.000We have to start recognizing that people have really Varying perspectives on this, and that should be the starting point for a conversation, not ossified division.
00:10:58.000So I suppose what we can all do is look at our own certainty and see where there is room for doubt.
00:11:04.000Look at other people's convictions and see where there's opportunity for compromise and conversation.
00:11:10.000And therefore, and as a result of that, perhaps move forward together.
00:11:15.000Later on the show, we are going to be talking to Vandana Shiva, one of the great mothers of our culture.
00:11:21.000She'll be talking about the issues of agriculture and obviously we'll talk to her about this situation because Vandana Shiva is one of the voices that I most enjoy listening to when it comes to what I would refer to as a kind of new populism.
00:11:33.000Not right-wing populism, not left-wing populism, a type of politics that includes everyone's voices and looks for ways that we have perhaps the opportunity and possibility of moving forward.
00:11:45.000We're going to be looking at the French protests, which again indicate that people are en masse hugely dissatisfied with the machinery of politics, that it isn't working for them, that it's undemocratic, that it is not inclusive.
00:11:59.000Once we click away from being on YouTube and other platforms on Rumble, we're going to be looking at Ram Paul versus Moderna, that recent hearing and conversation.
00:12:08.000We can't show that on YouTube because there are sort of guidelines there that are restrictive.
00:12:14.000And perhaps if we are able to establish a Tone of conviviality and even joy on a day like this one.
00:12:21.000We'll talk about some funny stuff that's happened in the world.
00:12:24.000I mean, I suppose one of the things, Gareth, that was pretty surprising is when Joe Biden had to address this issue.
00:12:34.000I was trying to work out when he was called upon to address this subject.
00:12:38.000Whether he'd already been informed of the Nashville shooting because he talked inexplicably about ice creams but here are the things I'm considering because what it's reminded me this whole event of is the necessity for compassion and not to lean into assumptions so maybe because he says some weird stuff about ice creams but he's in in a room with children so maybe he was trying to keep a tone of I don't know congeniality and not the sort of horror of murder of children just like the children in the room that he's literally standing in and maybe he didn't No yet.
00:13:19.000I think what you just said was... There's so much to take from it.
00:13:24.000I think in terms of the reaction to this, something has to change in terms of how we react.
00:13:30.000Other than the people who are literally involved in this, as you say, the parents, the people grieving, the people affected directly by this.
00:13:37.000There has to be a change in the way we react to events like this and I don't necessarily even mean just politically because when you're talking about the politicization of the way these things go, you know, we don't want to kind of draw comparisons and it seems maybe a bit distasteful to bring up Foreign policy and war but the very same politicians who will politicize this who will turn this into and that's why we're better or that's why we're better are involved in Dreadful atrocities around the world where things like this occur all the time, you know And I know that will be pointed out and it's not to kind of in any way Diminish or take away from what's going on, but we also can't pretend that if
00:14:20.000Politicians who react to this in a way that's favourable to our politics or not favourable to our politics aren't also directly involved in some terrible events around the world as well.
00:14:31.000A broader problem with partisan politics and partisan coverage is it allows people to score points from one another without addressing underlying issues.
00:14:40.000That people will find ways that this can be leveraged around obviously the issue of gun control and there are aspects of that argument that would Seem reasonable and other people will make points about the identity of their individual involvement.
00:14:56.000I feel that what principles and values are and what they refer to, I suppose, and you let me know in the chat and the comments about how you feel about this, obviously we value your opinion, is that If you say, oh, well, what about the kids that die in drone strikes and, you know, were killed in sort of Yemen and Syria and like a while sort of Barack Obama's literally getting a peace prize or whatever, you know, like that kind of culture.
00:15:22.000And that kind of myopia means that there is no legitimacy to the discourse beyond it, wouldn't you say?
00:15:29.000Because obviously the death of children in other countries by other means is also bad.
00:15:36.000I mean, in a sense, when you make it personal, and I know there's always a problem when you make the political personal, but also there are lessons in making the political, personal, you sort of wouldn't really care how
00:16:46.000Just in the same way that we would look at the motivations for war.
00:16:51.000All the motivations for a piece of legislation or the lack of motivation for a piece of legislation.
00:16:57.000With that, let's have a look at some of the coverage.
00:17:01.000I wonder if we might start with, yeah, let's start with the MSNBC coverage.
00:17:06.000And so just look for a moment at how a mainstream outlet tells this story.
00:17:12.000And I suppose we'll look uh at it and analyze it as we go and think oh yeah look they're emphasizing this they're excluding that or would you say it's relatively banal vanilla check it
00:17:59.000The things I once saw, this brilliant piece of analysis on a show called Newswipe, which is a UK show that was made by Charlie Brooker, who's a genius that wrote Black Mirror, actually, subsequently, was when it comes to the reporting of mass shootings, this psychoanalyst said, you should never make the shooter sound like some kind of antihero.
00:18:18.000You should never start the report with a bunch of sirens going off.
00:18:22.000You should never sort of focus on the death toll like it's a sort of a sports score.
00:18:28.000So I've said all these things and then they showed how commonly it's reported on in exactly that way, antithetical.
00:18:34.000Now that the news media has lost much of our credibility due to the kind of alliances it has with commercial interests, you have to apply the analysis gleaned from that when looking at their reporting on a different subject.
00:18:49.000Once you recognise that they report on wars in a way that bears particular biases, or medical matters that bear particular biases, do you imagine these biases are shed when it comes to different, more evocative and immediate issues?
00:19:01.000Even though wars are pretty evocative and health crises are pretty evocative, When it comes to something that has the potential for immediate, urgent, visceral sentimentality, like this particular subject, you have to bear in mind that there will be an expression of those same biases.
00:19:17.000The psychoanalyst that I'm citing pointed out that the likelihood of subsequent school shootings after a school shooting is very high, and I'm sure that your own research has pointed out ...and helped you to clarify that when there are serial killings or other types of bold and lurid murders there's an increased likelihood they'll occur with sort of social and suggestible creatures.
00:19:44.000...shattered by gunshots at the Covenant School in Nashville.
00:19:49.000A school shooting, multiple victims down.
00:19:54.000Because it should be the most particular thing that's ever happened.
00:19:56.000Like if it's the day that when you're losing someone that you love, it should be the most kind of particular, specific and awful day of your life.
00:20:02.000But the grammar of the whole news is so recognisable and identifiable.
00:20:07.000Again, the sirens, the sort of the police call turned into entertainment.
00:20:11.000What's sort of somewhat galling about this, and I guess we're engaged in it because we're a media organisation of some description as well, is that they will have to get those assets.
00:20:19.000Right, someone get the call, the 911 call.
00:20:24.000You can see him push in on the police cars.
00:20:26.000Make sure you get the audio of the siren.
00:20:29.000Then, in coming days, the clamour for interviews of people that are affiliated with or connected to the shot of the kids holding hands as they're led out of the classroom.
00:20:37.000It's, I suppose, terrifying that something that should be as extraordinary as this already has an identifiable lexicon.
00:20:45.000Yeah, and I can't imagine that they're not aware of This theory of emulation when the media reports events in the ways that they do.
00:20:53.000I mean, literally, we have a list of like seven ways in which the media reports this that has a tendency or the theory is to lead on to copycat cases.
00:21:24.000Four, reports of character of the shooter.
00:21:27.000Five, media branding, the packaging of a massacre.
00:21:30.000Six, official response and official report.
00:21:32.000And seven, oh it's gone back to a tragic shot.
00:21:34.000It literally is a cycle and that's the way that cycles operate.
00:21:40.000We've got like a bunch of statistics around school shootings but you know that they're pretty common and also we've got sort of various reports of how different School shootings have been utilized for political expediency.
00:21:54.000There was a shooting in Buffalo where the reporting focused on racism and far-right ideology.
00:22:01.000And then secondly, we've got this one Colorado Springs where homophobia was suggested as the motive.
00:22:06.000And then this one here in Boulder where the Muslim community feared backlash.
00:22:14.000Because of the sort of nature of that particular shooting.
00:22:19.000And I suppose already in those relatively recent spate of killings, you can see that there is a variety that crosses the spectrum of identity.
00:22:30.000So again, when we're talking about it, it feels to me that Because this will, unfortunately, be an episode in an ongoing drama, you have to look at the solutions and the likely causes.
00:22:45.000And for me, social violence is an indicator of a kind of deep cultural and social and spiritual malaise, a kind of deep darkness that needs to be addressed in people.
00:23:01.000This is sort of odd actually, because when I first made this point, when I was much younger, when I was still using drugs, there was a sort of a murder, some children were murdered in our country, the UK, it was a very famous murder.
00:23:11.000And I oddly made the point that as a culture we should be willing to accept that there must be aspects of our social conditioning and our values and there also must be the absence of other principles that lead to this and indeed the condemnation of the Yeah, individuals involved, and this is me talking about that case, while understandable, ultimately won't lead to conclusions.
00:23:35.000And I've still got the scars, actually, like literally, because I did a stand-up comedy at the Edinburgh Festival and I was a drug addict, so I said it in an insensitive and pretty stupid and dumb way.
00:23:44.000I did many insensitive and stupid things back then.
00:23:48.000But actually, the point I was trying to get to--
00:23:51.000say you believe in God and I believe in God.
00:23:53.000Part of my belief in God is a kind of a unitary principle, that the reason I have to act compassionately and lovingly
00:24:00.000is because in other people's eyes, I see God.
00:24:03.000That we are connected to one another, that there is a divinity and a right to compassion
00:24:08.000in each of us, and a requirement for forgiveness, and a requirement for redemption and salvation,
00:24:13.000and all these ideas that are found, generally speaking, across religions, these perennial ideas
00:24:21.000And that, for me, means that when people transgress against me or against the culture--
00:24:26.000in this instance, it's obviously not about me--
00:24:29.000then I have to try to find my route to forgiveness and find my route.
00:24:33.000And of course, in a situation where there are people personally affected or affected because they're
00:24:39.000part of that community or part of that state, people may have various ways of connecting to that tragedy.
00:24:46.000I suppose then you feel, oh, well, we can forgive them for their anger and for their own urge for violence or retribution or vengeance.
00:24:55.000But we, those that are ultimately just observers and just participants in common humanity, We have to find in ourselves, where is the resource?
00:25:04.000Where is the cultural and social resource that we're going to rely on to change this?
00:25:08.000Because the shared goal must be to change it.
00:25:11.000The shared goal must be a better world.
00:25:13.000The shared goal must be a culture that's a reflection of our higher values rather than our lower drives and our kind of shared dementia.
00:25:22.000We have to, and in order to do that, those of us that are not in the game, as it were, are going to have to strive to be The maximum amount compassionate, I suppose.
00:25:33.000And I think even more because when you look at, for example, the media response, which is cyclical, as we've just shown, and continues across various platforms or networks and political responses, that they are always going to be the same.
00:25:49.000And As sad as it is to kind of think they will utilise this for their own means and gains in, you know, whatever sense that is.
00:25:58.000And so I guess the responsibility does lie with the rest of us to respond in a different way, in a way that can actually make some meaningful change.
00:26:07.000I think as well that I just want to make clear again we don't think we're better than you.
00:26:11.000Like I know that you're a person that knows things that I don't know so if you have a really particular and sort of politicized perspective on this then I really don't want you to not have it.
00:26:20.000I don't think that my opinion is better than yours or superior in any way.
00:26:36.000And I feel that that, perhaps above all else, is the emergent lesson of our recent conversations and our recent broadcasts is, ah, if we're going to progress, we can't approach other people with certainty and judgment.
00:26:48.000Certainty, like the judgment I will reserve for myself, like how can I be better?
00:26:52.000How can I treat the people in my life better?
00:27:16.000Right now, in Nashville, People just probably in the numb agony and out of respect to that I'm not going to wade into this from a perspective of certainty because I don't think that that's my role but if you are going to do that I also respect that because I'm not you and I suppose that's really all we're left with huh?
00:27:33.000Okay so listen if you're watching this on YouTube you can click over to Rumble now because we'll talk about some stuff that's against the community guidelines we'll Leave this subject temporarily with respect to the people directly involved and we'll talk about this conversation between Rand Paul and the Moderna CEO and some of the issues that's brought to the forefront and the possibility that it presents to us to create cross-partisan alliances that might transcend the entrenched corruption that appears to define not only American politics, but particularly American politics, but global politics right now.
00:28:32.000So if you're going to boot everyone out of Congress or the Senate that owns stocks and shares in big pharma, big tech, big energy, then you're going to have an empty Senate.
00:28:52.000You'll have seen it already, but it's pretty fantastic.
00:28:54.000Mr. Bancel, Moderna recently paid NIH $400 million.
00:28:59.000Do you believe it creates a... I like that him and Bernie are just sat there together, do you?
00:29:04.000Well, again, what you were talking about kind of cross parties, this is where like Bernie Sanders have been so heavily critical of Moderna recently, mainly to do with like the price hikes and how much they're charging and how it was all taxpayer funded in the first place.
00:29:16.000And so this is like one of those, I guess, cases that happens every now and again, where they're attacking things from slightly different positions, but ultimately their target is the same.
00:29:28.000What could be more exciting in the context of new and emergent populism than a conversation with Vandana Shiva.
00:29:33.000Vandana, thank you so much for joining us.
00:29:37.000So Vandana, one of the things I want to start with was this, the new Dutch party, the BBB, who recently have acquired A surprising number of seats in the Netherlands, a party that represents agricultural interests.
00:29:51.000I don't know much about this party at the moment, what their other affiliations or perspectives are, but I do know that they're representing ordinary farmers against centralized interests.
00:30:03.000And I know that farmers across the world, wherever it's in your country, India or Sri Lanka or
00:30:06.000Germany or our country or America, are facing what feels like
00:30:11.000a sort of a globally coordinated opposition, which often appears to be couched
00:30:50.000It's the citizens of Netherlands who don't want their economy, their land, their country hijacked.
00:30:57.000And the three inconsistencies with focusing on the nitrogen problem at a time where Mr. Bill Gates, with his fake solutions, has photographs all over on his website and in his book called How to Deal with the Climate Catastrophe, I love nitrogen fertilizer.
00:31:16.000He's standing in front of a fertilizer factory in Tanzania.
00:31:20.000Now, the problem with nitrogen is synthetic nitrogen fertilizers.
00:31:25.000Otherwise, nitrogen is a source of life.
00:31:28.000That's what leguminous plants, the pulses, do for free for us in a non-violent way, not in a violent way.
00:31:37.000So no, even the AR6, the climate IPCC report that's just been released, doesn't even talk about nitrogen.
00:31:44.000They've jumped from carbon reductionism into methane.
00:31:48.000Second is, the nitrogen problem is leading to huge dead zones.
00:31:55.000It used to be 10 in 1960, became 169 in 2007, and now it's 415 dead zones because the nitrogen runs off, kills the life in the waterways and sea type.
00:32:08.000Netherlands is not the primary problem.
00:32:10.000The Baltic Sea and its coastal countries, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Sweden.
00:32:19.000So if there's a nitrogen problem, look at all of these countries and shift all farmers.
00:32:24.000And I worked with farmers and fishermen in the Baltic region, where fishermen and farmers are making treaties.
00:32:30.000That farmers are being told, don't put synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, please put organic so that the sea can live and we can have a life.
00:32:40.000All of these are new partnerships that are the real solutions.
00:33:01.000For the corporations and the billionaires and the colonialists, land is real estate, land is property.
00:33:07.000For the people of the land, including the citizens and the farmers,
00:33:10.000land is the mother, land is the identity.
00:33:14.000And food for the corporations is a commodity.
00:33:16.000Food for each of us as free citizens, for whom food freedom is the basis of freedom, is the very basis of our identity, our relationship with the Earth.
00:33:26.000So, the reductionism by which the Dutch farmers' protest was put into a right-wing slot is really the right wing wanting to hijack the whole planet, our water, our soil, our seeds, our food.
00:33:42.000It seems that the most essential resources, and even the word resources itself,
00:33:48.000suggests utility rather than a symbiotic relationship with the earth, which is difficult to achieve
00:33:56.000on a global scale and seems more natural when there is a more integral and local relationship
00:34:03.000between the earth, between food, between the people that grow it, it becomes impossible.
00:34:09.000I've noticed that this space has become cultivated and censored by voices that appear to be operating
00:34:17.000on behalf of sensorial forces, authoritarian forces.
00:34:25.000How is it that someone like Bill Gates has become the face of agriculture, has become the authority on agriculture, when his interests so plainly appear to be motivated by capital and dominion?
00:34:43.000What is the media structure around this man?
00:34:48.000And why is it that it's so difficult to criticise him?
00:34:52.000And why are people that criticise him smeared so aggressively?
00:34:57.000Well, the reason Bill Gates is interested in agriculture and food is because that's his new empire.
00:35:44.000And he is the biggest land, farmland owner of America.
00:35:48.000You know, the thing, oh, it's only this much percent.
00:35:51.000It's like when I was dealing with the mining case for our government and the industry would say, oh, but, you know, the limestone is just this much percent of the value.
00:36:18.000Gates has already taken control of the sea, not only through The seed banks, the global seed banks, but also, and the soil bad seed banks, but through the new gene editing techniques and has just passed this crazy law of total deregulation.
00:36:36.000He wants to destroy real food everywhere.
00:36:39.000And he wants to work with bio for more row crops.
00:36:43.000Farming with drones, no farmers anywhere.
00:36:45.000He really is looking at the future of farming without farmers.
00:36:49.000And that's why the violence against the farmers of the world was bad enough when the Green Revolution was introduced in India, in Punjab, which is where the protests began.
00:37:01.000But today, it's everywhere where farmers stand up.
00:37:04.000They are labeled in all kinds of ways, rather than people defending their food sovereignty, their seed sovereignty, their land sovereignty, their livelihood sovereignty.
00:37:14.000I've seen farmers vilified so aggressively, in particular with the Netherlands.
00:37:18.000People saying, oh, these farmers are destroying the very land that they cultivate.
00:37:22.000Why are these professional liberal media voices so quick to criticise and condemn working people?
00:37:28.000Why are they so willing to shill for globalist interests as so plainly epitomised by Bill Gates and his agenda?
00:37:45.000First, they don't really have a relationship, either with the land or with the farmers.
00:37:51.000And when you don't have a relationship, you can be fed anything into your head.
00:37:57.000And the PR spin and the narratives are replicated.
00:38:00.000And especially if you're rewarded with all kinds of platforms, then if you don't think through your conscience, You just echo.
00:38:09.000But the second reason is, there are many people who have fallen into this nonsensical eco-modernist trap.
00:38:17.000And they don't really see a world without farmers, because they've defined... Basically, they've forgotten that we are part of nature, that farming with nature is part of nature.
00:38:31.000And they've defined humans as the enemy of nature, and farmers who are the closest to the earth Agriculture means the care of the land.
00:38:40.000They are being criminalized, as I said, not only because that is the historical narrative of colonialism, but more seriously, food and land is where the future profits are seen by the billionaires.
00:38:54.000So, if land sovereignty and food sovereignty becomes the ultimate defense—and I applaud the Indian farmers who fought for 14 months.
00:39:11.000Some makes it to the news, and the others don't.
00:39:13.000And the interesting thing is, they really tried to criminalize the Dutch farmers, and the Dutch citizens joined the farmers and said, it's not just about farmers, it's all people, it's about democracy.
00:39:24.000That is most encouraging when you say that land and food sovereignty are defining issues of our time and will ultimately affect all of us.
00:39:33.000our ability to control our food, our ability to control our land
00:39:37.000will perhaps become a unifying issue and perhaps one of the themes and ideas that might unite
00:39:44.000the people of the world against these centralizing forces that
00:39:48.000want to technologize and industrialize yet further agriculture, take it out of the hands and the souls
00:39:55.000of the people that have these intimate relationships with the soil and the land in order to--
00:40:00.000whether or not they believe that they're pursuing something that is righteous, they are ultimately
00:40:05.000facilitating and shilling for very, very powerful interests that ultimately would disempower billions of people.
00:40:14.000And I started to look at agriculture after 1984 with what happened to the land where I studied in Punjab
00:40:36.000So the water crisis, the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis, our health crisis, are all interconnected with a system that they want to accelerate further.
00:40:46.000More industrial farming, more industrial food, which is at the root of the problem.
00:40:50.000But food is our communication with the soil, with the biodiversity, with our gut microbiome.
00:41:02.000And whoever doesn't want community, either in human community or in the ecological community, they will assault in every way.
00:41:12.000And this is just the contemporary witch hunts.
00:41:15.000It's just a contemporary version of witch hunts.
00:41:19.000Even in secular cultures, food remains a sacrament, a connection to the land, to the divine, to the unknowable forces that mean that food is presented, that food grows and sustains and through husbandry and agriculture can be managed.
00:41:39.000But there is a component that we can never Fully, truly understand, and I can see why they want to turn everything into data and make everything about control, even as always, while presenting it as being about safety and security.
00:41:54.000Ultimately, these things end up being about control.
00:41:56.000Thank you, Vandana, for your incredible focus and ability to communicate.
00:42:01.000Certainly, your ability to focus is not shared by whoever's operating that camera.
00:42:05.000There's been some extraordinary shots, some zooms and some pulls out.
00:43:23.000A few quid to be made there, I'll warrant you.
00:43:25.000If you were wondering what happened to the end of the France video, we're going to post that now on Rumble.
00:43:30.000You'll be able to watch it in full on Rumble right now.
00:43:33.000And hey, if you want to come and see me live this Thursday in Reading, trying out a new show where we're letting you vote on a variety of issues, almost as if the technology for democracy already exists and everything could be democratised, there's a link.
00:43:46.000And if you use the code FRIENDS10, you can get a 10 quid ticket.