Oliver Stone joins Russell Brand to discuss his new film, Nuclear Now, and why he thinks nuclear energy is the most important technology in the world. He also talks about how he almost made a documentary with Russell Brand, and how he feels about the current state of climate change. Russell Brand is a stand-up comedian, actor, comedian, writer, and podcaster. He is the host of the podcast Stay Free With Russell Brand and is a regular contributor to the New York Times, CNN, and the BBC. He's also the director of Platoon, JFK and Snowden, and has spent over 20 hours in the company of Vladimir Putin, and now we are going to be talking about nuclear energy and its propensity to change the world, or at least the potential for it to do so. And also, although he has forgotten it, he did once make a film with me... and also... he did not remember it. So, you can see that there's a lot of movement in the water. In addition to a forensic look at nuclear energy, we'll be taking a deeper look at the "fucking news" behind one of the stories behind the news in our item, "Here's the effing news" in our piece, Here's The Effing News, No Fucking News. Here's the F effing News. Stay Free, You Awakened Wonders! Stay Free! by Russell Brand . Stay free, You're Woke, You Woke Me Up! by You're Awoke Me! by You Don't Know What? by You Can't Make It? by on Podchaser to find out more about nuclear power and nuclear energy? To find a list of our sponsorships and show-related promo codes and promo codes, go to stayfreewithrussellbrand.co/Stay Free, stay free, stay woke, you'll get a discount on our new ad-free version of Stay Free with Russell's Stay Free? to get 20% off the entire show, and get 10% off your first month of the show, plus free shipping and free shipping throughout the rest of the month, plus a free shipping offer when you sign up for VIP access to our ad-only version of the ad-posting platform, coming in next week, and we'll get an extra $5/month for a maximum of $50/month.
00:01:03.000Thank you for joining me for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
00:01:06.000In addition to a fantastic guest, we'll be taking a deeper look, a forensic look, in fact, in one of the stories behind the news in our item, Here's the News.
00:01:16.000No, here's the effing news, but I've got a very, very exciting guest to present to you today.
00:01:21.000The Oscar-winning director behind Platoon, JFK and Snowden, a documentary maker who spent 20 hours in the company of Vladimir Putin, and now we are going to be talking about nuclear energy and its propensity to change the world, or at least the potential for it to change the world.
00:01:52.000Thank you for starting with a compliment and I'd like to begin our exchange for apologizing for my broad conduct during a time when we made a documentary.
00:02:02.000If you remember anything about it at all, it will be the moment that I had to write a letter of apology to Donald Trump.
00:02:07.000After I met him, which you organized, because I think you were working with him because of Wall Street 2, and I did an interview with Donald, and then subsequently made a bunch of jokes with him when I was doing stand-up, and it led to a whole furore.
00:02:22.000It was a long time ago, but nevertheless, I apologize.
00:02:25.000I see it hasn't impeded your ability to make other documentaries, and thank you for agreeing to come on our show.
00:02:35.000I remember you as being very exciting and vital, and it was fun.
00:02:39.000Of course, I know a lot of loonies in this business, so you didn't stand out particularly as a madman, but I see you've gotten to be what you are.
00:02:54.000Before we talk about things like censorship and Oliver Snowden, and before we delve into JFK and RFK, I'd love to talk to you about your film Nuclear Now.
00:03:04.000Obviously, this has always been a controversial subject.
00:03:07.000The connotations of Chernobyl, the broad fear around nuclear power is as prevalent now as it always has been.
00:03:17.000Is that why you've chosen to make this documentary?
00:03:24.000The big picture for me was climate change.
00:03:27.000And you can't ignore it, especially since Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth in 2006 made me very aware of it.
00:03:36.000And of course, his solution in that film was renewables, which were essentially sun, solar and hydro.
00:03:45.00014 years have gone by, 15, 16 years have gone by, and the IPCC has just said that the carbon and carbon CO2 in the world and the methane gas just keeps climbing up.
00:04:09.000And I just don't see it get any better.
00:04:11.000And the world is going to get worse and in the sense of quality wise and my children and your children, grandchildren, it's all it's going to be a mess.
00:04:20.000And I think there's going to be more tension and more Dissatisfaction, unhappiness, wars, revolution, and so forth and so on.
00:05:28.000Nuclear energy was confounded from the moment it started in World War II, when we became aware of it with a bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which was an ill usage of the bomb, as you know.
00:05:39.000Well, we don't want to talk about that history, but it was badly used.
00:05:43.000And it scared the shit out of the whole world.
00:06:59.000And it leaked into northern Europe all over the place.
00:07:02.000And they still after all those years the U.N.
00:07:04.000went back and back and back and the World Health Organization went back.
00:07:08.000And they could only find that possibly, they said possibly 4000 people died from cancers after the fact.
00:07:16.000Even that has been in question and some estimates are lower.
00:07:19.000So the dangers of radioactivity have been very exaggerated over time.
00:07:23.000And when you get into it, and we do in the film, I hope you see it, it's really important to understand that low-level radiation is a part of the world.
00:07:47.000It's, you know, get into all that if you want, but essentially we are not We are not in danger from radiation any more than other things like the other, let's call it oil, gas and arsenics, poisons, toxic waste from oil.
00:08:37.000I see that your advocacy is founded on the best conceivable principles, addressing a problem that elsewise seems almost impossible to alter.
00:08:50.000Throughout your career, Oliver, you have presumably intuitively understood stories that have been necessary to tell.
00:09:01.000Stories of high-level corruption, stories of needless war, Geopolitical conflicts reported erroneously.
00:09:10.000Simultaneous historical narratives left untold because they contain, indeed, to cite the title of Al Gore's film, inconvenient truths.
00:09:21.000With the subject of this film, my concern, and like I'm watching the chat now, like people are watching this in our locals community, a lot of people have a strong aversion to nuclear power.
00:09:33.000Perhaps it's because of the reasons that you're addressing, that they understandably associate nuclear energy with nuclear destruction and the notable disasters that you've already cited, in addition to the militaristic use of nuclear weapons.
00:09:48.000But the point I'd like to take you up on is a slightly different one.
00:09:52.000If we don't address our attitude towards consuming Then I feel that we are going to sustain significant problems.
00:10:00.000Or we'd be looking to alter the manner in which we live, rather than looking for methods to sustain what appears to be, by its nature, unsustainable.
00:10:13.000Good point, but I don't agree with you.
00:10:15.000I don't think it's going to be possible to change human nature.
00:10:18.000I think it's if you go to the to the poor countries in the world, you see a stark example of it in India.
00:10:25.000Of course, they're going to look for electricity.
00:10:27.000They want electricity for their tools in order to cut sugarcane.
00:10:31.000It's just natural that people who are poor are going to want easier ways to do things.
00:10:36.000And this is true about China, Indonesia, all these populous countries that are coming into heavier usage of electricity.
00:10:44.000And not only that, cars, transportation, which is not electricity, and industries which have not been electrified yet, such as cement making.
00:10:55.000In all countries, they're going to make cement.
00:10:57.000They're going to continue to have agriculture and fertilizer, and there's going to be demand for For steel.
00:11:05.000So you're not going to stop the demand and that's consumption.
00:11:08.000Now, I know the Greta Thunbergs of the world believe that we should all punish ourselves, but I don't think that's going to happen.
00:11:14.000So that's why nuclear power, which is infinite, infinite in its power, millions and millions of times more powerful than coal or oil, it's just a miracle, actually, that it was found.
00:11:35.000Everything has been misused by human beings.
00:11:37.000But to go to some biblical equation of Abel and Cain, let's say, and say everyone's going to miss you, is not valid because most people will use things well, will use things for positive reasons.
00:11:50.000It's just human nature to want things.
00:11:53.000Wanting does appear to be part of human nature, but there is no question that human nature responds to the systems within which we exist, and certainly I welcome a conversation that is about systemic and resource change, rather than measures that are continually punitive to the individual.
00:12:13.00015-minute cities, for example, Or impeding people's ability to, inverted commas, progress in nations such as you have already listed.
00:12:23.000I recognise that that's an important story to tell, an important conversation to have.
00:12:30.000But what I sense is, you know, God, we're all going to have different approaches to these matters, but my personal approach is how do we start to address the fact that we're living in a deeply corrupt, Deeply hypocritical, deeply war-torn the society currently.
00:12:48.000And I suppose another advantage that your film presents to us is the ability to abate and prevent these resource wars.
00:12:57.000There's no doubt that the Ukraine-Russia conflict has a component that is to do with territory as well as resources.
00:13:04.000The so-called Middle Eastern wars are all undergirded by a necessity for fuels, as you've already listed.
00:13:11.000And your position on war and indeed the reporting on war has significantly shifted many people's perspectives on it.
00:13:19.000Oliver, would you talk to us a little about the current Ukraine-Russia conflict and indeed how energy has often been the driving factor behind military conflicts of a global scale?
00:13:36.000First, I just want to just say one quick rejoinder to what you were thinking about consumption.
00:13:41.000I just want to say the fact is that electricity, the use, the need for electricity is going to grow and grow until the IPCC gives 2050 as an endpoint, saying that from there on, there'll be a tipping point and so forth and so on, the Earth will not be able to recover.
00:13:57.000Be that as it may, by 2050, any realistic estimate of the use of electricity will go up from Two times to four times, four times more electricity will be acquired.
00:14:34.000It's a huge waste of human Resources as we all agree about wars.
00:14:40.000It's like watching World War I all over again.
00:14:42.000And you see the waste and the death and the destruction.
00:14:46.000You have to... War is not good, but you have to look at the reasons for this war.
00:14:51.000And whenever you do, you know, the Americans like to simplify and say it's a question of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
00:15:00.000That's very simplistic and very black and white.
00:15:02.000And I think you know the story behind it.
00:15:05.000I made a film back in 2017-16, I produced it, I didn't direct it, Ukraine on Fire, which explains the origins of this war in the coup d'etat of 2014, which was sponsored and supported thoroughly by the United States.
00:15:24.000It was a very deep plan to penetrate the Soviet, to penetrate the Russian Federation.
00:15:31.000From the beginning, the neoconservative movement who started the war in Iraq going back to the 1990s, they've been at war with Russia, these people, and they're deep inside our government and the State Department.
00:15:43.000Victoria Nuland, you know these names.
00:15:47.000Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor.
00:15:55.000Biden is an old Cold Warrior, and he really hates the old Soviet Union, which he mistakes, confounds again, with the Russian Federation, which is not communist.
00:16:07.000I really bemoan this because I say this because Russia and China, which are our two leading enemies now, a few years ago, are still our allies or friends, potential friends, and we blew the opportunity.
00:16:22.000And we still can make that opportunity work because Russia is the leading producer of nuclear energy in the world.
00:17:35.000He kept calling the United States his partners, if you remember, in the film, my American partners.
00:17:40.000Okay, he may have been a little soft on his perception of the United States, but he is not the monster that has been pictured by the American propaganda machine.
00:17:50.000So this is an unfortunate tragedy, as is China, because we alienated them too.
00:17:55.000They are also coming up very strongly in nuclear energy.
00:17:59.000But most recently, they've announced a program, a half a trillion dollars, $440 billion going into an investment of making 138, 130 some new nuclear reactors.
00:18:05.000into an investment of making 138, 130 some new nuclear reactors and by 2038
00:18:14.000that's almost 10 a year, okay? 10 a year by 2038.
00:18:18.000And President Xi has committed himself to a zero growth policy on carbon dioxide by 2060.
00:18:26.000These are big, significant statements, and they're important.
00:18:31.000But by competing with them instead of cooperating with them, we're making things far worse.
00:18:38.000But with the kind of reductive reporting that surrounds subjects like the war, and when you made your film with Putin, you were called a Putin apologist.
00:18:47.000You remember, I'm sure, the reaction from the audience when you spoke to Stephen Colbert about Putin, like that the audience are just not willing to listen to nuanced information.
00:18:58.000And throughout your career you've been iconoclastic and you've been willing to tell difficult
00:19:03.000stories about war, about corruption indeed, including the assassination of JFK of course.
00:19:12.000So why do you remain confident that you can make an impact on a subject like, you know,
00:20:47.000They should be studying their history if they were interested and they should read alternate media, alternate sources as to what happened in our lifetime.
00:22:55.000The thing is that money It's proven that you have to accept that the way to do nuclear power is not going to do it through private enterprise.
00:23:04.000That's not going to work because it's so difficult to build, and it takes time, and you have to invest, and it's a long haul.
00:23:11.000But it can be done with government agency, and it has to be.
00:23:40.000You've got to cut through the red tape.
00:23:41.000But that's not going to happen in a so-called democracy where people can express, push a button and say, I'm scared of nuclear power because it's in my backyard, blah, blah, blah.
00:23:53.000Scaremongering is the easiest tactic of all, and that's what we've been doing for years in our country.
00:24:00.000So my point is that, my big point is, unless we change our direction and change our thinking, which is the hardest thing to do, We're taking Russia to the edge now.
00:24:24.000This is the same situation as World War I in a sense.
00:24:27.000The stupidity of it because of the alliances and the fears and the built-up phobias.
00:24:33.000If we don't stop this, what Biden is doing, this guy is, I voted for him, I made the mistake of thinking that he was an old man now that he would calm down, he'd be more mellow and so forth.
00:25:33.000They're fighting ethnic Russians in Ukraine.
00:25:36.000This is the madness of it and our media does not recognize that The, what do you call it, the ethnic Russians in Ukraine are really the ones who want their autonomy.
00:25:48.000That's all they asked for in 2014, autonomy.
00:26:10.000It's gotten worse, and it's going to get worse.
00:26:13.000Yes, there is an inability to address the complexity of the conditions that led to this, the ongoing infringement of former Soviet territories.
00:26:22.000As you have said, and as you have documented, the sponsorship of the coup in 2014 and the unwillingness to acknowledge atrocities within Ukraine or
00:26:33.000at least complexities of an ethnic nature within Ukraine, within those regions.
00:26:39.000And indeed an inability to hold complex stories is perhaps one of the
00:26:42.000great determinants of our time and it's something that you've never shied away
00:26:46.000from trying to do whether that's with your fictionalized and scripted movies
00:26:54.000I'd like to ask you a little bit now about your film Snowden, which was, uh, you were unable to make through the studio system, perhaps because he is such a critical figure in modern America.
00:27:07.000A pivotal figure when it comes to understanding the nature of power within the era of big tech.
00:27:15.000Who has exposed the degree to which there has been a globalised exploitation of data, globalised surveillance, ongoing lies around war.
00:27:25.000His story is of course connected to the incarceration without trial of Julian Assange, imprisoned in my country now, potentially awaiting extradition.
00:27:34.000I wonder if you feel that it's going to be increasingly difficult to tell these stories, whether it's your current movie, Nuclear Now, or whether or not if you were an emergent filmmaker that you would have been able to make a movie like JFK.
00:27:49.000I know you were established, but would you have been able to tell stories like Platoon or JFK, let alone Snowden?
00:27:56.000And do you think increasingly we'll see films like Sound of Freedom that have alternative
00:28:02.000economic and indeed PR models that independent media now can viably promote movies, bypassing
00:28:11.000the conventional centralised media structures?
00:28:15.000And that there are indeed audiences for content that perhaps the mainstream media would prefer
00:30:56.000He has been, George W. Bush, and it's difficult to query your verdict there, but he's been very much rehabilitated by the mainstream, portrayed now almost risibly as an avuncular elder statesman, a chummy figure who can hang out with Barack Obama, and perhaps these kind of relationships, this new corrupt Carnal Mount Rushmore of modern establishment criminals tells you, really, that electoral democracy is redundant.
00:31:26.000And I have to query, Oliver, that it seems that the premise of your film, Nuclear Now, is that if you can de-stigmatise nuclear power, if the public, if we, the people, to use a phrase that was once popular in your nation, accepted the efficacy of nuclear power, there would be no resistance.
00:31:41.000But with new censorship laws, Being introduced in the Five Eyes countries, and indeed in the EU, public opinion is becoming increasingly relevant.
00:31:51.000Even while independent media voices and channels like ours, and like Joe Rogan, I've watched your appearances with Joe Rogan, who I adore, even though these new voices are becoming significant, I believe approaching the point where it will be impossible to convey stories that the establishment doesn't want told.
00:32:12.000How have you seen this phenomena of censorship amplify over your career as a content creator and as a man who has always been willing to tell difficult stories?
00:32:29.000Well, personally, we went to Davos with Nuclear Now last year, or earlier this year, I'm sorry.
00:32:36.000And Davos is supposed to be a highly intelligent, educated group who are obviously concerned with the future.
00:32:53.000And we brought the film there, and we were received grudgingly, I have to say.
00:32:59.000We got our screening space at our own expense, and we did our best to promote the film everywhere we went in those few days.
00:33:07.000And what shocked me, I suppose, above all, was here is this group concerned with the future.
00:33:12.000And here, they don't even have nuclear energy on the menu, which is to say, it's been swept aside, somehow forgotten about.
00:33:19.000I compared it to the Cinderella story.
00:33:21.000I said, this is like putting the Cinderella in the kitchen scrubbing floors while the uglier sisters are out there preening and frowning themselves and wearing all their dresses and going out to the parties to meet Prince Charming.
00:33:34.000Finally, they discover, of course, that Cinderella is beautiful, and they bring her out of the closet.
00:33:40.000That's sort of the same story which is going on with nuclear.
00:34:19.000Oliver, I'm sure I don't need to tell you what happened to Prometheus, and I'm astonished that you considered taking that film to Davos.
00:34:29.000Here in our community, the WEF are regarded as the kind of greenwashing, sportswashing, propagandist unit.
00:34:37.000...for the establishment, ensuring that any globalist measures that are taken never impact the interests of the powerful and are always punitive towards individuals.
00:34:47.000The name of Klaus Schwab around these parts is akin to saying Blofeld.
00:34:54.000Maybe you understand the picture better, but we had to try.
00:34:58.000We have to try to penetrate these establishments.
00:35:01.000And to some degree, we have been successful because we find that many people in big business are very pro-nuclear, but they don't get anything done.
00:35:09.000They're not able to push their agendas.
00:35:11.000A lot of the big banks, they're pro-nuclear.
00:35:15.000Nuclear is popular in the sense that 60% of the American public Support nuclear, but you know, getting us to a place where the government, which supports nuclear bipartisan, the Department of Energy, they are not putting big enough money into it.
00:35:55.000I understand all of that and I hear your passion and I respect that you are often, usually ahead of the curve when it comes to making popular issues and controversial and difficult ideas accessible.
00:36:07.000I'm not surprised to learn that a community that prides itself in a scientific approach remains cynical and skeptical because in our own investigations we have found that science appears to be a subset of Commercial endeavors in the last few years has become particularly palpable.
00:36:29.000The particular aspects of science are amplified.
00:36:32.000Other aspects of investigation and science are definitely muted.
00:36:38.000Oliver, while I still have you, I really would love to ask you about the candidature Of Robert F. Kennedy.
00:36:44.000We've spoken to him several times on our show, and in fact, I'm about to embark on a contentious, difficult, and likely doomed pull-up competition against him.
00:36:55.000I don't know if you've noticed his upper body, but the guy's pretty shredded, and I'm challenging him, he's challenged me as a matter of fact, to a pull-up competition that I'm not likely to win.
00:37:05.000I would like to ask you about the ongoing censorship around the murder, assassination of JFK.
00:37:15.000He openly says that it was a CIA operation.
00:37:21.000Joe Biden, after claiming that further documentation would be released, has only released heavily redacted data.
00:37:29.000Why Does this story still consume the American imagination?
00:37:37.000What is it about this story that means that it can never be told truthfully?
00:37:44.000Well, it's the greatest lie of the last century.
00:38:15.000And it's never been scientifically supported except by People who are just, we call them in some cases, just enthusiasts for getting this over with, keeping it buried, that they accept this ridiculous scenario because it's convenient and allows the government to continue.
00:38:34.000But if we really examine the case and you say that there was a change of power in 1963 that was illegal and our government was involved in it, getting rid of a president who was in the way, You raise a whole host of questions that fundamentally undercut the state.
00:39:30.000And I wish you'd see my movie and really comment on it.
00:39:33.000But I think he's got to reexamine some of his positions.
00:39:36.000Not everybody's right about everything.
00:39:38.000John Kennedy, his uncle, was a big supporter of nuclear, as was Dwight Eisenhower, who was a pro-military man, but he was selling atoms for peace.
00:39:47.000Those two presidents would have pushed nuclear onto the United States economy for sure, and if by 2000 we would have been a nuclearized society, let's say 70% of our electricity and energy would have come from nuclear.
00:40:03.000It was cut off, as you know, in the 1980s by people like Ralph Nader and Jane Fonda and so forth, and the accidents that happened at Chernobyl.
00:40:16.000By the way, you asked earlier what happened to me, but I was saying, yeah, no question, I got cut off.
00:40:21.000After I did JFK, the media shifted and it began shifting.
00:40:25.000And when I, of course, voiced my opposition to our anti-Russia policies, Out of fear of going to war, I was completely, how do you say, I've been appearing only on shows like yours and Joe Rogan, you know, offbeat.
00:40:42.000I'm not allowed back on mainstream television.
00:40:48.000And I'm glad because, I mean, frankly, I turned on the TV the other night.
00:40:54.000Jake Tapper, who I suppose represents as much the establishment as As Walter Cronkite in the old days, although a big difference, he had General Petraeus on telling us how Ukraine was winning this war.
00:41:10.000Yeah, well, mainstream media spaces have become deeply anodyne and highly controlled environments, and they, I don't think, can contain voices like yours anymore.
00:41:22.000In fact, almost by definition, it's only permissible to have information that is not threatening.
00:41:29.000And this is a Quality and phenomena that has increased even in the time that I've been working in media.
00:41:38.000That's why I think the emergence of populist figures, whether that's Donald Trump, who our audience are very keen on and whom I can certainly see the pedagogical powers of, there's no doubt about that, and voices like RFK.
00:41:54.000This is, I think, important that there's a new type of populism emerging.
00:41:59.000And I think if there's to be any hope I haven't seen your film Nuclear Now yet, but I will because I trust you and I see you as an educator as well as a creator, so I'll watch it.
00:42:09.000even though there's people in our chat that are still asking questions about nuclear waste,
00:42:13.000although Oliver did touch on the ability to sensibly curtail and contain the propensity
00:42:20.000for uranium contamination elsewhere. But what I will say is that there is no chance of popularising
00:42:28.000difficult ideas at a time when the mainstream media is such a heavily curated space. But
00:42:34.000I would also invite you again to comment on the possibility that new media models are
00:42:39.000emerging. Even your films, I'm sure, are funded now in ways that would have been unthinkable
00:42:46.00020, 30 years ago. And with the phenomena of Sound of Freedom, which has been sort of crowdfunded
00:42:53.000and is like number two in the box office now, and even the candidacy of RFK, and perhaps
00:42:58.000you could even look at the Trump presidency, where it was a social media presidency, where
00:43:02.000as people said at the time, there was governance through Twitter, until of course he was kicked
00:45:09.000But that act was stuffed the other day.
00:45:12.000On Friday night, before the July 4th weekend, make sure that nobody paying attention, it was stuffed by Joe Biden, who was very disappointing.
00:45:21.000He just said no more declassification except by the CIA has to be involved in all that stuff.
00:45:27.000He destroyed the essence of that action by Congress.
00:47:16.000Now, of course, this is a conversation that took place in the 1960s, and you have made, you know, very plain that you want to draw a distinction between the destructive use of nuclear power and the creative use of nuclear power.
00:47:29.000But the point that I feel to be significant is that it's the consciousness itself Our attitudes themselves and systems that need to radically alter if we're to have any chance at all.
00:47:42.000So when I talk about revolution I'm talking about a significant shift in perspective and the necessary disobedience to bring that about and significantly the decentralization of power and the radical re-evaluation of some of our institutions rather than a sort of a conventional armed struggle and all the pain and misery that such a thing would bring about.
00:48:09.000I remember what I said earlier about what Einstein's quote was, the unleashed power of the atom has changed everything except our way of thinking.
00:48:19.000And I don't know if we're going to be able to change that.
00:48:22.000However, as I said, give them what they want.
00:48:26.000And if they want more electricity, let's give it to them, because we can do it.
00:48:42.000Oliver, obviously I agree with you and I also appreciate you a great deal.
00:48:47.000I appreciate the incredible work you've done over the years.
00:48:50.000I appreciate your ongoing passion and your refusal to conform, your intrepidness and your endless endeavors to bring complex stories to people.
00:49:00.000And I thank you very much for joining us today on Stay Free.
00:49:17.000Coming up next week on Stay Free with Russell Brand, we have Vandana Shiva talking to us, of course, about the horrors of big agriculture, her true feelings about Bill Gates, the necessity to support Farmer protest movement.
00:49:33.000Also, Callie Means will be exposing the truth behind big food and big agriculture.
00:49:38.000Plus, Wim Hof talking about, explicitly, how we can heal ourselves without recourse to pharmaceutical measures and the ideologies behind them.
00:49:48.000And also, the scientific undergirding of his methods.
00:50:15.000A Supreme Court judge has banned, or at least limited, Biden administration officials' ability to use social media sites to censor information that ain't favorable to them.
00:50:25.000Now they can only meddle with social media if it's a criminal matter or a matter of national security.
00:50:31.000what it should have been in the first place rather than we don't like that or what if
00:50:34.000I've a hunch that's not true. Not just stuff you reckon, that's how you govern countries.
00:50:39.000Shouldn't even do that in your own life basically or just stuff you reckon. Okay so let's have a
00:50:43.000look at a news report on the subject and we'll delve into it more deeply together.
00:50:47.000Just this afternoon a federal judge barred parts of the administration
00:50:51.000from contacting social media platforms about online content.
00:50:55.000They've basically had to do an injunction on the government.
00:50:58.000Like, the government's like an ex-boyfriend.
00:51:09.000Now, the ruling came in response to a lawsuit brought by Republican-led states alleging that the White House went too far in its efforts to curb content that challenged vaccines or threatened elections.
00:51:21.000The judge said certain departments should not reach out to companies like Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram for, quote, the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing any manner, the removal, the deletion, the suppression, or the reduction of content containing protected free speech.
00:51:37.000I'd like to urge, encourage, pressure and induce you to remove and delete your free speech.
00:51:43.000That shouldn't be happening in the first place.
00:51:45.000There's been an attempt to conflate free speech with hate speech.
00:51:50.000People say hateful stuff, prejudicial stuff, nasty stuff that shouldn't be said.
00:51:54.000But that can't be used to shut down our Ability to communicate freely.
00:51:59.000Free speech is something I believe in strongly.
00:52:02.000Free speech might be a fundamental principle that undergirds all freedom because without free speech you can't freely converse, see what other people believe in, can't talk about what the government might be doing.
00:52:11.000The fact that this is happening suggests that there's obviously Evidence that the government have been doing exactly that, otherwise this judgment wouldn't have to be passed, right?
00:52:20.000So we can imagine what was going on during the pandemic, what gets censored around the war, what happens when there are stories that are not favorable to the Biden administration.
00:52:28.000Let me know in the comments what you think this is about.
00:52:31.000The ruling singles out several government agencies, including the Department of Justice, of State, the CDC, as well as HHS.
00:52:39.000Now when I see those emblems, I've been trained now over time to not see them as like, oh look, there's that flag and that eagle, CDC.
00:52:49.000They almost create a negative response in the way that some more famous flags evoke a negative impact.
00:52:54.000He has made combating disinformation a big part of his agenda.
00:52:58.000How much of a blow is this judge's orders to those efforts?
00:53:02.000Well at the heart of this case, Tom, is what happens when constitutionally protected rights like the right to free speech come into conflict with public health and safety.
00:53:12.000That bloke looks like he don't believe what he's saying.
00:53:16.000Plus he looks like a baby Steve Carell.
00:53:18.000I feel like the minimum amount of regulation possible will always be the aim.
00:53:24.000The maximum amount of community control should always be the intention.
00:53:28.000It seems that overreach when it comes to censorship and authoritarianism is generally on the rise.
00:53:34.000We've told you many times now, and I hope you're listening, that the EU, that's, you know, where we live, although we did Brexit our way out of that little old EU, the EU are looking to introduce regulatory measures to censor and fine social media platforms that don't censor in accordance with their wishes.
00:53:48.000The UN have got a A raft of legislation around similar issues.
00:53:53.000And of course, the five highest countries, Australia, New Zealand, England, USA and Canada, are all drafting bills that seem designed to prohibit free speech.
00:54:02.000This becomes significant, I believe, when you have the WHO lobbying to be able to implement pandemic measures, including lockdown, mandatory medications.
00:54:14.000It's just an example of an area where you might see censorship.
00:54:18.000The more you grant centralised authority unchecked powers, the more likely it is to be exploited.
00:54:23.000And in this case, based on the very long list of individuals and agencies that a judge is saying that the administration cannot be in contact with social media companies, it has to do with what happens when, especially as it relates to COVID-19, the White House, the administration, feels that the public health and safety is potentially harmed by the spread of disinformation here.
00:54:44.000The judge backed claims that the US President's administration, including the White House, had engaged in a massive attempt to stop Americans questioning the efficacy of vaccines online.
00:54:55.000The injunction came after it was revealed last month that UK ministers set up a counter-disinformation unit which was used to target lockdown critics and those questioning the mass vaccination of children.
00:55:05.000I think in any world, the mass vaccination of children has to be something that's only undertaken after significant questioning.
00:55:13.000Even if the conclusion is, yes, let's mass vaccinate children now.
00:55:17.000You'd want that, wouldn't you, as a parent or someone that's been a child or loves children or believes in common decency, that to be at the end of a process of inquiry and investigation and rigour and conversation and surely you would understand if not everyone in the world had the same opinion.
00:55:40.000It seems like hyperbole and hysteria when people talk about tyranny and fascism, particularly because the fascism that we've previously experienced is so garish, lurid and murderous.
00:55:50.000And this is sort of evidently bureaucratic and technocratic.
00:55:53.000But nevertheless, the principle of centralising control without inviting discourse or democracy is tyrannical, isn't it?
00:56:00.000The UK government used an artificial intelligence firm to monitor social media sites and flag opposition to vaccine passports.
00:56:08.000You start to realise that the government is doing things that you didn't ask it to do, that you don't want it to do.
00:56:14.000It's supposed to be an administrative body.
00:56:16.000If you look at the history of our country, the power of the sovereign slowly transitioned to the power of parliament.
00:56:22.000The reason for that was that the sovereign's power was presumed to be feudal and tyrannical.
00:56:27.000Power is somehow emulating its original condition. Do you notice that when there's a
00:56:32.000revolution in Russia and they say it's not fair having this czar, they just replace him with a
00:56:36.000communist fair system. What does it end up being? Exactly like having a czar. There's a tendency to
00:56:42.000centralise and return to systems that are somehow invisibly magnetic and these are the
00:56:47.000observable symptoms of that kind of polarising power. The right to free speech is an issue in
00:56:52.000both administrations but this case is putting a spotlight at least on the Biden administration's
00:56:56.000use of this. How did the right to privacy become repackaged as a right-wing talking point.
00:57:04.000Snowden's revelations were made at a time when it was presumed that it was a liberal issue.
00:57:09.000Liberalism and liberty have a connection.
00:57:12.000Hey, they don't have any right to our data.
00:57:14.000They shouldn't be spying on us like that.
00:57:16.000The pandemic was of course framed as an issue around care and responsibility, wasn't it?
00:57:21.000If you don't follow these measures and you don't take these medications, it's because you don't care about others.
00:57:26.000As the inquiries around those ideas have started to unfurl, unfold and reveal different dynamics, shall we say, It shows that vaccine passports are exactly the kind of draconian spying that previously would have been opposed by the left at the time of the Snowden revelations.
00:57:44.000So, if you have a clear principle, you can't be pulled into, well, this is a left-wing talking point or a right-wing talking point.
00:57:50.000There are some things that are a little more simple, like privacy and individual freedom.
00:57:54.000Prosecutors in the Republican states of Louisiana and Missouri brought the case and accused the federal government of being involved in a censorship enterprise.
00:58:02.000They claim that the Biden administration violated the First Amendment by trying to block social media users exercising their right to free speech.
00:58:10.000It's as simple as that really isn't it?
00:58:47.000In his ruling, the judge banned government departments from contacting social media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.
00:59:00.000That's just like they've had to go back and go, you know free speech, yeah?
00:59:22.000We may have urged and encouraged and pressured and induced people to remove and delete and reduce the content of free speech.
00:59:31.000Yeah, that is what I'm saying, actually.
00:59:33.000Oh, yeah, no, well, yeah, we did do that.
00:59:35.000In the injunction, he said that the Attorneys General from Louisiana and Missouri had produced evidence of a massive effort by defendants from the White House to federal agencies to suppress speech based on its content.
00:59:47.000Why don't they make a massive effort to do stuff that's actually good for people?
00:59:50.000If the allegations made by plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.
01:00:04.000Social media and other technology companies have in the past communicated regularly with the government, including during elections and in the pandemic.
01:00:11.000Since acquiring Twitter last year, Elon Musk has echoed Republican arguments, releasing internal company documents to chosen journalists, suggesting what they claimed was collusion between company and government officials.
01:00:22.000When we spoke to Jack Dorsey, he admitted it was wrong to ban Donald Trump from Twitter.
01:00:27.000He said it was right for the company, wrong for the country.
01:00:31.000Probably the right decision for the company, but the wrong decision for the world.
01:00:35.000And obviously, I'm guessing that Jack Dorsey is not a pro-Trump type person, but in retrospect, looking at it, he says it was wrong.
01:00:44.000It seems to me, even the people that are in these private organisations are starting to recognise that just because you happen to have a particular political perspective, you can't use your position to prevent other people having an alternative one.
01:00:58.000In July 2021, Mr Biden claimed Facebook was killing people by spreading misinformation about coronavirus vaccines.
01:01:05.000It's so easy to imagine that being framed as hysterical misinformation.
01:01:10.000If someone said Facebook are killing people, well, were they?
01:01:29.000That's why I continually return to the idea of decentralization.
01:01:32.000Because I can't see now how you can have one strong, central authority that governs everybody.
01:01:38.000Because I feel that people really do believe different things.
01:01:42.000And in order to diffuse this, you're gonna have to maximize, localize freedom.
01:01:47.000The evidence presented in the case includes an email sent in April 2021 by Rob Flaherty, the White House's Director of Digital Strategy, to Google officials.
01:01:55.000In it, Mr Flaherty wrote that YouTube is funneling people into hesitance about vaccines.
01:02:01.000I don't know that that's a fair analysis there, that YouTube was funneling people into hesitance.
01:02:07.000Since then, Lockdowns have been queried.
01:02:27.000What they're referring to as hesitancy could be called freedom.
01:02:31.000You might be hesitating because you disagree with something.
01:02:34.000Since we have more access to diverse information because of the technological advances of the last few decades, people are likely to survey, consider, and contemplate information in different ways, and sometimes that might take time.
01:02:50.000The removal of hesitancy is actually an invitation to obey immediately.
01:02:55.000Hesitancy implies that you're just sort of pausing before doing what you're told.
01:03:00.000What that actually might be is, well, I disagree with you.
01:03:03.000Hesitancy itself, reflection, pause for thought, is being somehow criminalised, at least delegitimised.
01:03:10.000It's interesting that when the Iraq war happened, millions of people marched around the wall like, hey, wait a minute, there might not be weapons of mass destruction.
01:03:18.000There absolutely are weapons of mass destruction.
01:03:21.000Well, we might hesitate for a minute and have a little march and think about that.
01:04:07.000While all these laws for censorship are being passed around the world, while your moments of reflection and thought and contemplation are being delegitimised and even criminalised, it shows that there is a movement towards a counter-argument because people are starting to recognise that free speech is not hate speech.