Russell Brand is back with a brand new show on Stay Free with Russell Brand, and this time he's joined by comedian David Sirota (Don't Look Up, Don't Look Down) to discuss the coronavirus crisis, Joe Biden's secret files, and why you should never sing Happy Birthday to someone else's birthday unless it's your own. Plus, Russell and Russell discuss the latest in the Biden scandal, and what the FBI should do about it. Stay free with Russell and Stay Free, wherever you get your news and information. Stay free, and stay free, wherever and however you get it. You can't ask for much more. You're not going to get more information on todays news and gossip than right here, and you're not getting more information about it anywhere else. Enjoy, you're gonna want to check out Stay Free With Russell Brand on YouTube, where you can watch the full show on the Coronavirus and its potential impact on our lives. If you're in the mood for more, you've come to the right place, you'll love it! And if you don't like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, where else can you get the latest news and updates on what's going on in your life? We'll be listening to the latest trending topics on social media, and we'll be giving you the best vids, too! . Thank you so you can be a part of the Stay Free community. and much more! - stay free! XOXOooooooooooooooooooooo - P.S. - thank you so much love you're listening to Stay Free! - Russell Brand - Thank you for listening and supporting the show and listening and sharing it with your friends and spreading the word to the rest of the world! Love ya! and thanks for listening! xoxo, bye - P. - PSA: P.B. - The Best, P.E. - Yours Truly, - EJ & P.M. - SONGS - R. - - JUICY, R.BONCE AGAIN! - JOSEPH MCCARTES - BECAUSE I LOVE YOU, RYAN MCCARTHY, JOSES, JEANES, KELLY, EABY, AND KAVES, RAYAN, JAYE, MAYOOS, AND ACHIEVES, DANGS, AND TAYLOR, BABY BONDS, AND PODCASTING.
00:02:02.000Some people, gal, don't forget so easily what's gone on in the last couple of years.
00:02:07.000We are, of course, on Rumble, which is our home, but you beauties on YouTube, if you're joining us there, you're going to have to go over to Rumble because there are certain things we cannot say on YouTube that we can say on Rumble, and I promise you, I pledge with my open heart That it is not about spreading hate.
00:02:23.000It's not about spreading misinformation.
00:02:25.000It's about giving you truth so that you can assess reality using your own deductive powers and your own magnificent intelligence.
00:02:37.000He's a traditional lefty, but he's an anti-establishment figure.
00:02:40.000You're going to love hearing from him.
00:02:43.000We're talking about Pfizer and big pharma profits.
00:02:47.000In a sense, the way that the bipartisan media makes it difficult for any of us to We're going to talk a bit more about the Biden files and in our presentation, here's the news.
00:03:01.000We're going to be talking about the former head of the FDA lobbying Twitter over a tweet suggesting natural immunity is superior to the vaccine, which because we're still on YouTube, I have to say is something I do not have an opinion on.
00:03:46.000Certainly, there's no information that could be detrimental to the advance of the preferred establishment party that's held back.
00:03:52.000But I believe systemic change is what's required.
00:03:56.000Here, though, I come to Joe Biden with sympathy in my heart, not because he's a stooge of a system that will never deliver real change to the ordinary people of America who deserve Better.
00:04:07.000But because I've been in the situation he was in.
00:04:14.000His wife, Andrea, I think is her name.
00:04:17.000It was her birthday and he wanted to sing Happy Birthday to her.
00:04:20.000And have you ever been in that situation where you're singing Happy Birthday and then you realise that when it's going to get to the bit, Happy Birthday dear!
00:04:28.000And you think, Oh no, I don't know the person's name.
00:04:30.000But what you can do is you can just drop out for that bit and the other people are going to say, There's got to be other people doing it though.
00:04:51.000If you know that you've got a bunch of top-secret files in your numerous residences, don't go, right, Donald Trump's done the worst thing anyone could ever do.
00:06:17.000Your job is be the President of the United States, be the Commander-in-Chief, represent the will of the American people at a divisive time when the systems have become corrupted, when people are terrified about globalism, when people are worried that corporatism has overtaken democracy.
00:06:43.000Happy birthday... I want you to, while you're watching, try and spot the exact moment when he realises, oh no, I do not know the name of Andrea.
00:08:05.000In other Biden-related news from the mainstream media, Biden's classified files, yet more files have been found, and Kevin McCarthy, the new Speaker of the House, goes at the mainstream media, saying that they're not reporting on certain issues in an unbiased and objective way, which, I don't know, tell me in the comments, tell me in the chat.
00:08:24.000That is the role of the mainstream media.
00:08:26.000We know everyone has preferences, we know that we all have biases, but we're not all the bloody media!
00:09:34.000And as you know, here on this channel, we believe in democratising communities, giving genuine power to real people, allowing the media to convey truth to people so that we can make decisions for ourselves.
00:09:45.000Towards the end, old Kevin McCarthy chastises the media members present in a way that I think is somewhat admirable.
00:09:53.000Let me know what you think in the comments and chat.
00:09:58.000And what I'm finding what's happening with President Biden time and again, you go from a laptop saying it not only that it wasn't true, but utilizing your own friends to go into companies to tell them to say the same thing, to try to knock down information, to try to make sure the New York Post story couldn't be printed.
00:10:22.000You should be allowed to write even when you knew it was true.
00:10:25.000Let me reiterate that I don't think that the Republican Party is the solution to the ailment of ordinary American people, but certainly you have to agree with McCarthy's diagnosis around this partisan and biased reporting.
00:10:37.000And even in a more incidental manner, seeing the way that the audience just clap along when Joe Biden just drops that humdinger in a happy birthday that in microcosm is the way that they are willingly entering into a pretense that there's nothing going wrong and we've said before on our show and let me know if you agree with this in a sense Biden is the perfect president for America now because you have to ignore his on-screen deterioration that he provides the perfect symbol for what's happening this aged and decrepit and incapable individual
00:11:09.000Yeah, and whatever you think about the Republicans or Kevin McCarthy as a human being and politician, you know what he's saying about transparency and kind of fairness across the board in terms of media reporting is 100% true.
00:11:28.000I remember Matt Taibbi when he was writing initially about the Twitter files and Hunter Biden and things.
00:11:33.000What he was saying is that Uh you know 20 years ago 30 years ago journalists or the media would have jumped all over a story like that and now what it's what happens is the media actually go it doesn't fit in with either our narrative or what we've been told that we can say and what we can print the media have been
00:11:49.000Completely co-opted by establishment interests whether those are corporate and financial interests or government and regulatory interests.
00:11:56.000But it's actually good news for us because it means that independent journalist voices have more value and more room in the space and normally you can't control it.
00:12:05.000People now are going to get access to counter-narratives no matter what the mainstream media do.
00:12:09.000Although sometimes in their overtness they come up with funny moments like this on ABC News talking about the lack of visitor logs at Biden's residencies.
00:12:18.000The latest on the investigation into President Joe Biden's handling of classified documents.
00:12:22.000Republicans are now demanding to know who may have had access to five more restricted files found in the president's Delaware home last week.
00:12:30.000But as ABC's Em Wynn reports now, the White House says visitor logs likely don't exist.
00:12:35.000They don't exist. In fact, there's no such thing as visitor logs.
00:12:38.000I don't even know why I just said that, because I might as well have said,
00:13:03.000We're going to be talking about Fauci in some depth, and we're going to be showing you a beautiful moment
00:13:09.000where inadvertently the mainstream media booked a guest who's carrying a counter-narrative.
00:13:15.000And we know him well, because we've had him on this show before.
00:13:17.000Asim Malhotra who speaks, shall we say, controversially about certain medications, their outcomes and effects in a way that we cannot talk about on YouTube because as you know that YouTube take the WHO's policy for their guidelines on medical matters and you can determine for yourself whether or not you think that's right.
00:13:36.000on Rumble we're allowed to say what we want and let me emphasize once more
00:13:40.000we use our freedom of speech to create unity, togetherness and opportunity for new alliances
00:13:46.000not to create hatred. I've got no time for it. You can't create anything
00:14:02.000Here's one story that I don't think Klaus Schwab will be, won't be publicised, because I think one of the problems they're tackling is human trafficking and the problem of exploitation of sex workers.
00:14:13.000Prostitutes, or sex workers is the preferred phrase, gather in Davos for annual meeting of Global Elite, where demand for sexual services rocket.
00:17:02.000I'm not suggesting that Klaus Schwab's paying for that, I'm just saying that there are, well I'm not saying it, actually the mainstream media is saying that there are more sex workers there than usual, presumably because the people there are willing to pay to have sex.
00:17:15.000I don't know, it's an interesting sort of realm we've entered into.
00:17:18.000Shall we have a look at the mainstream media's framing of a former guest of our show and hopefully future guest of our show, shall we get him on this week?
00:17:25.000Asim Malhotra, he's a British cardiologist and doctor who dares, has the temerity to suggest that the vaccines are anything other than a golden elixir fallen from heaven via Pfizer that have no adverse side effects at all.
00:18:29.000You know, like when you're on Zoom or whatever, and people are chatting, you think, actually, could I just, do what, I want to, Happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear... Like, you know, that's what it's like talking to Asim, right?
00:18:43.000And he knows, because I told him at the time.
00:18:45.000Mate, like, when I bring my finger up like that, that means you've got to shut up.
00:18:49.000And to tell you the truth, it's nice to give a doctor the finger, because normally it's the doctor giving it to you.
00:19:17.000And soon I will strike with a really long, impenetrable monologue that goes on for an hour about how vaccines are causing cardiovascular complications.
00:19:25.000They'll have to literally take this show off air for me to not say what I'm going to say.
00:19:29.000You can't show this on YouTube, but it's been on the BBC because YouTube follow the guidelines of the WHO.
00:19:34.000So you can't show anything that contravenes WHO guidelines.
00:19:38.000And WHO guidelines are that you can't say anything negative about the vaccines, I think.
00:19:48.000But while we're looking for guidelines, God knows we need guidelines, have a look at the moment that I've seen pivots from talking about stents or whatever the hell they're called.
00:20:52.000This is from Marty Macari, who is professor at Johns Hopkins University.
00:20:56.000He points out that the NIH would not fund research into natural immunity.
00:21:02.000The critical discovery that steroids reduce COVID mortality by one third came only after European researchers did a randomized trial that Fauci's agency should have commissioned quickly.
00:21:27.000Yeah, I was just gonna say... Alright, you do your thing, then I've got a joke.
00:21:30.000Okay, my stuff was just that, you know, again, whatever you think of the vaccines, some of the things that he's been talking about is how much that these heart disease and heart attacks have gone up.
00:21:42.000And that that could be, and it seems like a lot to do with the pandemic itself, people had lifestyles that didn't contribute to staying healthy.
00:21:52.000You know, it's... I think they want, when I say they, I know it's reductive, I know who are the they or whatever, but let's just say a convergent set of establishment interests I'm calling that they want us to be sort of unhealthy, to eat unhealthy food, to stare at screens all the time, to lose our contact with nature, with our innermost selves, with love, with the glory that being human can encompass.
00:22:12.000That not only could we create something a little bit better, we could create something magnificent.
00:22:16.000But you can't do that without disrupting the interests of the powerful.
00:22:20.000And they will never present solutions that disrupt powerful interests.
00:22:24.000That's why I wouldn't get excited about whether it's Biden or Trump, because ultimately they're going to be funded by the same I know Trump was a bit of a berserker and said a load of crazy stuff, but in office, I've got to tell you guys, he did not deliver on those promises.
00:23:00.000Let's have a look at our scene, the old warbler.
00:23:03.000That, unfortunately, I've got respect for Chris Whitty, but I think he's mistaken here, because analysis I've done, and even Carl Hennigan, the director of Centre for Space Medicine Oxford, suggests that Saturn Pill's prescription hasn't reduced since the pandemic, so it's unlikely to be a cause.
00:23:17.000But what is almost... Oh, where are you going, mate?
00:23:23.000Something that's going to make people money?
00:23:25.000Something that's going to allow people to be locked up in their homes?
00:23:28.000This isn't going to be bad news, is it?
00:23:30.000Certainly, and if you allow me to say this, what my own research has found, and this is something that is probably a likely contributory factor, is that the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines do carry a cardiovascular risk.
00:23:57.000You need to give Haseem the one finger!
00:24:00.000And I've actually called for the suspension of this pending an inquiry because there's a lot... The suspension of the vaccine program is such a heavy thing.
00:24:08.000...uncertainty at the moment about what's causing the excess deaths.
00:24:11.000Some of it will be ambulances... Excess deaths!
00:24:18.000My own father, it was reported on BBC News in late 2021, I was the first to actually highlight the ambulance delays because my own father suffered a cardiac arrest at home and the ambulance took 30 minutes.
00:24:29.000And when his post-mortem came... Look at that, the Strap is still doing millions in the UK, already takes statins, despite there being no side effects.
00:24:37.000If I was in that, I'd go, listen, this guy, I don't know what he's saying now.
00:24:39.000This is not agreed upon mainstream narrative.
00:25:05.000He actually does say in this that he doesn't have all the information that he can never be completely right.
00:25:09.000And that's partly because we haven't got all the data.
00:25:12.000But those are the things that need to be discussed.
00:25:14.000Like, you know, we even we have different opinions about vaccines and things like that.
00:25:18.000But I think in a situation where at the moment the CDC are saying that they're now studying the BioNTech vaccines for increased risk of strokes in people over 65, that's the thing that needs to be spoken about.
00:25:31.000The fact that there are all these excess deaths going on, whether they're caused by Difficult, nefarious things.
00:25:37.000Or they're just caused by the fact that we were told loads of stuff during lockdowns that didn't help people.
00:26:37.000Do you feel you can handle opposing views and come to conclusions yourself?
00:26:43.000Or would you like to live in a paternal nannying state where you are treated as like some sort of little Blob of inner matter that just has to do the will of centralised interests.
00:26:54.000You can let me know about that in the chat.
00:27:52.000Did you know that social media companies were censoring truthful, accurate information about vaccines and the Covid pandemic because it didn't suit their narrative?
00:28:03.000That means that when they're talking about misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, gal-information, bi-information, tri-information, saying they're just trying to protect us, we're just trying to protect you, no they were not On August 27th 2021, Dr Scott Gottlieb, a Pfizer director with over 550,000 Twitter followers, saw a tweet he didn't like.
00:28:18.000You should try living in my world, I sleep about a thousand every day I don't like.
00:28:22.000more about it right now. This is Alex Berenson writing on Substack.
00:28:43.000Oh, so Pfizer are a profit-driven company, not a medicine organisation.
00:28:47.000All that time they were saying follow the science, what were they really following?
00:29:21.000And now we have the evidence to demonstrate that you were correct all along.
00:29:25.000It came not from an anti-vaxxer like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but from Dr. Brett Giroir, a physician who had briefly followed Gottlieb as the head of the Food and Drug Administration.
00:29:36.000Further, the tweet actually encouraged people who did not have natural immunity to get vaccinated.
00:29:42.000How tight were the lines of censorship that even if the tweet recommends that you get a vaccination, it's still not good enough?
00:29:50.000It's still not an ardent enough vow to the agenda of the system?
00:29:53.000Also, this person was a former head of the FDA.
00:29:56.000Now, we've done videos where we're critical of the FDA because they get much of their funding from the organizations that they're supposed to be regulating.
00:30:03.000But if, in their eyes, a former head of the FDA can't be trusted, then who can be trusted?
00:30:08.000It's not some, you know, whack job or Alex Jones or David Icke or some crackpot.
00:30:15.000It's the former head of the FDA, according to their analysis.
00:30:19.000So it just shows you, they will censor anybody who stands in the way of their agenda, and their agenda is about profit and power, it always was, it always will be, and you should only listen to ideas that are about attacking those systems of power.
00:30:32.000If what you're being offered is, this is how you can reorganise things without disrupting the interests of the powerful, you're probably getting a message that's coming from the powerful.
00:30:40.000By suggesting some people might not need COVID vaccinations, the tweet could raise questions about the shots.
00:30:56.000Which sounds like a pretty good disease.
00:30:58.000Besides being a former FDA commissioner and a CNBC contributor and a prominent voice on COVID public policy, Gottlieb was a senior board member at Pfizer, which depended on mRNA jabs for almost half of its $81 billion in sales in 2021.
00:31:09.000Pfizer paid Gottlieb $365,000 for his work that year.
00:31:14.000But I'm sure that didn't influence his enthusiasm.
00:31:16.000This is just a guy who wants people to have vaccines for Oh no!
00:31:43.000And when they're also being paid to have that opinion, it makes me question its validity.
00:31:47.000Gottlieb stepped in, you bet he did, emailing Todd O'Boyle, a top lobbyist in Twitter's Washington office, who is also Twitter's point of contact with the White House.
00:31:56.000The post was corrosive, Gottlieb wrote.
00:31:58.000He worried it would end up going viral and driving news coverage.
00:32:02.000These people are obsessed with infectious diseases.
00:32:04.000Through JIRA, an internal system Twitter used for managing complaints, O'Boyle forwarded Gottlieb's email to the Twitter Strategic Response Team.
00:32:12.000That group was responsible for handling concerns from the company's most important employees and users.
00:32:17.000Please see this report from the former FDA commissioner, O'Boyle wrote, failing to mention that Gottlieb was a Pfizer board member with a financial interest in pushing mRNA shots.
00:32:57.000I mean, we can't all just agree with each other all the time.
00:32:59.000I mean, I suppose the point of Twitter is to have a conversation, and wouldn't it be good if that conversation was expansive and included a wide variety of views so that people could come towards truth together?
00:33:32.000That's just first among its many achievements in life.
00:33:35.000He is one of seven members of the board's executive committee and the head of its regulatory and compliance committee, which oversees compliance with laws, regulations, and internal procedures applicable to pharmaceutical sales and marketing activities.
00:33:46.000But you think that that would somehow bias it?
00:33:49.000You think because Gottlieb oversees compliance laws, regulations, internal procedures applicable to pharmaceutical sales and marketing activities, that he'd have a vested interest in preventing people from considering natural immunity as an option?
00:34:00.000His censorship of that tweet was a surprise for your birthday and you ruined it.
00:34:07.000Pfizer has a long history of violating drug industry laws and ethics rules.
00:34:11.000So maybe don't get a tattoo of their logo on your body.
00:34:14.000In 2009, it agreed to pay 2.3 billion dollars, the largest healthcare fraud settlement in American history, up against a pretty hot competition.
00:34:22.000For fraudulently marketing several drugs.
00:34:25.000In 1996, he conducted a clinical trial of an antibiotic in Nigeria in which 11 children died and which became the inspiration for John le Carre's novel, The Constant Gardener.
00:34:33.000But just because they marketed a drug that killed some children, that doesn't mean they're anything other than good guys who should be allowed to censor content that you look at because you are an idiot and not capable of making decisions that might lead to the death of 11 children in Nigeria, which they did do.
00:35:12.000And the entire time I don't ever think you dodged the question or politicized the question.
00:35:19.000You talked about the origins and were very straightforward about what could have happened, what didn't.
00:35:23.000You talked about the efficacy of the vaccines and masks.
00:35:27.000All these areas are completely uncontroversial.
00:35:29.000So uncontroversial you wouldn't need anyone to censor tweets or control the narrative because yeah, whether it's masks, the origin of COVID, There.
00:36:14.000Because, you know, the mainstream media, as you yourself know, Chuck or Jad or whatever monosyllabic name you've got, know is a reliable place for good information, Alex Berenson.
00:36:26.000This is a kind of a convoluted conspiracy theory that somehow you told Twitter to get rid of him because he was asking too many questions about the efficacy.
00:36:47.000Do you just want to respond to that and tell us your side?
00:36:50.000Yeah, look, I'm not going to comment directly on that, and he's threatening litigation, too, so another reason not to respond.
00:36:56.000I've raised concerns around social media broadly, and I've done it on these networks, around the threats that were being made on these platforms and the inability of these platforms to police direct threats, physical threats about people.
00:37:08.000There's two things, two things that are a menace on social media.
00:38:55.000There's a person that's actually done things like gone, hey listen, can you get that other dude off because that's going to affect sales.
00:39:01.000Acting like he's sort of Nelson Mandela.
00:39:03.000Additionally, according to a bombshell new report by Just the News, the Biden White House put immense pressure on Facebook to remove often true content, according to bombshell new documents obtained in a federal censorship collusion lawsuit by Missouri and Louisiana Attorneys General.
00:39:19.000In recently released documents, White House Director of Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty put a huge amount of pressure on Facebook to remove a Washington Post article on vaccine hesitancy.
00:39:28.000So they're removing posts of former FDA officials within social media.
00:39:32.000Now the White House are directly removing things from the mainstream media.
00:39:35.000And of course, you can assume that if these practices are taking place here, do you imagine that these are the only two examples?
00:39:41.000Or do you imagine that it's cultural, institutional, Normal, regular business practice to remove information that's not expedient.
00:39:50.000Do you think that the only information you're allowed access to is the information that's amenable to their agenda and objectives, which are about power and profit?
00:40:00.000In a March 14, 2021 email with the subject line, you are hiding the ball.
00:40:05.000White House Director of Digital Strategy, Rob Flaherty, showed a Facebook executive a Washington Post article on Facebook's research into drivers of vaccine hesitancy on its own platform, including fears of worse than expected adverse events.
00:40:19.000In the email, Fred was also President Biden's COVID response team senior advisor, Andy Slavitt.
00:40:24.000The Facebook executive, whose name was redacted, replied to the email saying there was a misunderstanding.
00:40:30.000Flaherty then fired back, telling the executive that he's been asking you guys pretty directly about the extent to which borderline content is creating vaccine hesitancy.
00:40:40.000Facebook is a top driver of vaccine hesitancy and want to know if you're trying, Flaherty continued, as he put pressure on Facebook to censor COVID information.
00:40:49.000The executive agreed Facebook needs to share information faster with the White House and a week later provided a list of changes Facebook was making.
00:40:58.000One of them was reducing the virality of content discouraging vaccines that does not otherwise violate a policy but can be framed as sensation, alarmist or shocking.
00:41:08.000Facebook then responded to Flaherty with next steps where they would censor often true content just because the White House didn't like it.
00:41:29.000So of course, everything Everything we've been experiencing over the last couple of years, the suspicion, the doubt, the hesitancy, the curiosity, the necessity for a conversation, the need for opposing scientific views to be tried out and tested in the place of true science.
00:41:51.000In a sense, the pandemic was a great privilege, a great luxury, because it was a revelation of what many of us have long suspected, that there is a globalist agenda.
00:41:59.000That's how the globe was able to respond to a pandemic.
00:42:02.000Admittedly, in the event of a genuine pandemic, a global response would be necessary, advisable, expedient, in fact.
00:42:08.000But when you see these kind of exchanges, it shows you that the White House and social media companies are in locks.
00:42:14.000step when it comes to controlling the narrative. Not only that, the mainstream media are involved
00:42:18.000and of course there are corporate interests. What other than that are we telling you on
00:42:21.000this channel? What other than that are you discussing in the comments below? And of course,
00:42:26.000anybody who conveys these counter-narratives, because we cannot be censored and controlled
00:42:29.000because we're bloody careful and we use reliable sources and we try not to slip up, you have
00:42:47.000been focused on reducing the virality of content discouraging vaccines that does not contain
00:42:52.000actionable misinformation. So it's discouraging, but it's true. So just let me say that again.
00:42:56.000It's discouraging, but it's true. Censor it! This is often true content which we allow
00:43:01.000at the post level because experts have advised us that it's important for people to be able
00:43:05.000to discuss both their personal experiences and concerns about the vaccine.
00:43:09.000You shouldn't need an expert for that.
00:43:10.000That's just what communication is supposed to be.
00:43:13.000We got an expert in and the expert said you shouldn't censor people telling the truth about their experience of being alive because that would be, well, tyranny.
00:43:24.000You keep saying it, but you're not doing it.
00:43:26.000But it can be framed as sensation, alarmist, or shocking.
00:43:29.000We'll remove these groups, pages, and accounts when they are disproportionately promoting this sensationalized content.
00:43:35.000More on this front as we proceed to implement.
00:43:37.000Did you, during the pandemic, think the information that was true was being censored?
00:43:42.000Did you notice that discussion was being shut down?
00:43:45.000Did you get called a conspiracy theorist for saying and believing those very things and other things that have since been proven to be true?
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00:46:15.000Lots of lovely stuff from the video as well.
00:46:17.000But I really want to speak to our fantastic guest who's joining us from the Lever, David Sirota, the Oscar-nominated writer of Don't Look Up, and fantastic investigative figure.
00:46:29.000David, thanks for joining us on the show today.
00:46:33.000David, I wanted to talk to you in particular about the pharmaceutical industry and their practice of reinvesting in their own stocks and shares to manage prices.
00:46:41.000And my understanding is that this is something that they invest more money in even than clinical trials.
00:46:47.000In fact, it could be said that that's what defines their business model.
00:46:54.000Look, the pharmaceutical industry, their business model is to take government money, government subsidies for research and development, and turn them into not only profits, but money for stock buybacks, which enrich shareholders.
00:47:08.000There was a recent study out that showed that the pharmaceutical industry spends far more money
00:47:13.000on buying back its own stock to boost its share prices to essentially enrich its shareholders
00:47:20.000than it does on all of its own research and development.
00:47:24.000This goes against the story that the pharmaceutical industry tells us
00:47:30.000What they say when they jack up prices, and there were a recent slew of price hikes just announced,
00:47:35.000what they say is they need to recoup the money that they spend on research and development,
00:47:40.000that the price hikes effectively fund scientific and medical research.
00:47:46.000But what the data actually shows is that those price hikes far more so fund the enrichment of shareholders, even, and this is an important point, even when the medical research, the R&D for those drugs is funded by the government, a.k.a.
00:48:07.000Even in the event that the research has been funded by the public, they claim that the price hikes are the result of clinical trials and research.
00:48:18.000It leaves them in an interesting ethical position, David.
00:48:22.000Did you see that some of the Twitter file revelations include the repression of activists pushing for a generic vaccine that would bypass their ability to continue to patent and profit from that medication?
00:48:37.000And if so, is that further evidence of what the prevailing and driving mentality is within these corporations?
00:48:44.000Right, and I think the intellectual property stuff is really a part of this.
00:48:48.000If you remember, I think it was a year, must be almost two years ago, the Biden administration announced that it was going to secure a WTO waiver for the IP for COVID vaccines.
00:49:02.000And we at The Lever reported at the time, by the way, and we were the only ones really to go out and say this, but we said, you know, this is going to test The Biden administration's pharmaceutical industry ties about whether they would actually push for that waiver.
00:49:15.000The waiver was necessary to give other countries access to the vaccine recipes.
00:49:21.000And they went to the WTO and effectively what happened was the wealthy countries got together and effectively blocked The WTO did come out and say that they granted a waiver.
00:50:08.000IP, intellectual property protections, are in a lot of cases some of the biggest scams
00:50:13.000in the pharmaceutical industry in this way.
00:50:17.000I go back to talking about the United States here.
00:50:19.000I mean, the United States has a market in which under the law, you are not allowed as
00:50:24.000a consumer to purchase medicines from places like Canada or European markets, even though
00:50:30.000those medicines that are FDA approved are made in factories in those other countries.
00:50:37.000So they're a kind of closed market system where, you know, you hear a lot about free trade and the free market, a very closed market system in the United States where the pharmaceutical companies can jack up prices.
00:50:51.000Uh, knowing that the consumer can't go anywhere else and also knowing that the strict IP enforcement makes it much harder for generic companies to produce generic versions of the drug.
00:51:05.000Much harder to produce generic versions of drugs that we, the taxpayers, already paid for.
00:51:11.000There was a study that came out, I think it was three, four years ago, that found most of, the vast majority of FDA-approved medicines, the top-selling FDA-approved medicines in the United States, were originally created with funding from the federal government, through the National Institutes of Health.
00:51:29.000So the business model of the pharmaceutical industry is, let's get lots of money to subsidize our research, then we get to charge whatever prices we want in a closed market where the consumer can't go anywhere else, and in a system in which IP enforcement is so tough that generic competitors that could produce the same drugs at a more reasonable price, those can't be produced.
00:51:52.000I'm astonished that they are able to deploy rhetoric around free markets and entrepreneurialism and individual expertise while simultaneously being so pejorative around aspects of socialism, welfare, mutual support, when their entire business model is funded by taxpayer dollars until it comes to the moment where profit is extracted, then those roots are forgotten.
00:52:18.000David, another area that you've spent a lot of time researching and writing about is the evident bifurcation occurring within media spaces and the tailoring of information for particular, shall we say, constituencies.
00:52:34.000David, I know that The Lever's great work and your storytelling elsewhere has focused on attacking the establishment from the left at this time of divisiveness and division.
00:52:44.000Do you feel that there's a need and a necessity to bring people together, particularly around issues that demonstrate establishment power in controlling media narratives, an inability and unwillingness to hold the powerful to account?
00:53:00.000Even, for example, around the pharmaceutical industry, around the pandemic, numerous narratives have emerged.
00:53:09.000In particular, I would say around the efficacy of lockdown and those medications.
00:53:14.000Is it possible, without straying into the realms of conspiracy or any information that isn't grounded in clear data, to question the way that the pandemic was perhaps utilised to create opportunity for profit, much in the manner that you have described In your previous excellent answer.
00:53:31.000Look, I think we have a situation in media right now where there's more and more use the word bifurcation.
00:53:38.000Where partisan media, media that perceives that its audience are either liberals and Democrats or conservatives and Republicans on the other side, that facts are elevated or suppressed based on whether those outlets believe that those facts will satiate or offend the partisan affinities of those audiences.
00:54:00.000We went through this, just as a separate example, when we reported a lot on Pete Buttigieg, the Secretary of Transportation, when it came to the airlines.
00:54:09.000We reported that he had been warned for months by state attorneys general to get tougher with the airlines.
00:54:16.000Our reporting was then elevated by very conservative media, Fox News and the like, because those media outlets saw a chance to attack a Democratic Secretary of Transportation.
00:54:26.000Our reporting was basically omitted, if not suppressed, shadow banned effectively, by corporate and sort of left-of-center Democratic-affiliated media, because it was perceived to To to go too hard on a Democratic regulator in a position of power.
00:54:45.000Now, the point is, regardless of where you stand on the airline issue, it's a microcosm of a problem where facts cannot be stipulated unless and reported on.
00:54:56.000Unless they are seen to placate a news outlet's given audience.
00:55:02.000And the problem with that is that that protects us, that essentially prevents us from getting to the actual truth of any matter at all.
00:55:11.000It also protects public officials in positions of power who know that their own constituencies, Pete Buttigieg as an example, that lots of Democratic voters aren't going to hear very much.
00:55:22.000about what he could have done to better regulate the airlines.
00:56:22.000Because I feel that what we're lacking are real virtues and principles at the heart of our once cherished institutions.
00:56:29.000Our institutions of government, of reporting, even science, it seems to me, have been biased by the great magnetism and gravity of the pursuit of profit.
00:56:40.000It seems that there are too many routes for corruption into the establishment, whether it's lobbying or conflict of interest or ownership of stocks by people within Congress.
00:56:51.000And now the way that media functions has altered.
00:56:56.000There's proliferation of information across so many platforms now.
00:57:01.000That there is no mainstream narrative that can't be significantly countered.
00:57:05.000And as you say, because it has become so partisan, and because there is a lack of virtue and principles, and because there is almost a lack of honour, and the emergence of contempt in the political space, it's difficult to imagine, David, a new type of union emerging.
00:57:20.000It does leave so much space to demagogic figures.
00:57:24.000And I know that you're close to Bernie Sanders, and wrote to Bernie Sanders, and he's coming on our show, thankfully.
00:57:32.000I wonder, David, if you sometimes query the inability of either political party to truly represent American interests, because it seems that they have both been so thoroughly co-opted by corporate interests.
00:57:45.000And do you ever feel like a vagrant politically, that you're still waving a flag for ideals that were lost in the 60s, if not the 1980s?
00:57:54.000I really appreciate you asking that question.
00:57:56.000Look, I came of age in the late 90s into the 2000s when this political tribalism, and that really is tribal politics, team politics, the team before everything else, really came into its own as the dominant zeitgeist of American politics.
00:58:14.000And it has been a disillusioning experience because Look, I came to journalism and the work I've done in politics with the idea that this is a pursuit of truths, truths that if they're inconvenient, we need to reckon with them and build policies around them that fix real crises.
00:58:33.000I think right now, as you allude to, you have two parties that are so vested in their own self-preservation and on an individual level in terms of the people inside of the establishment.
00:58:45.000On self-enrichment, that the truth is secondary if it exists as a priority at all.
00:58:53.000And that's really the central problem here.
00:58:55.000And to your point about profit, I mean, think about it from an experiential point of view.
00:59:00.000If you are a journalist today, a pundit today, a politician today, there is a huge and vast reward system for you.
00:59:10.000If you serve the people in power and you serve the corporate interests that are making so much money, you have promises of future employment, lucrative employment, you have promises of campaign cash, you have promises of all sorts of opportunities.
00:59:27.000And by the way, this exists whether you're on the Democratic side or the Republican side.
00:59:35.000like that, for doing the opposite of that, for telling the truth, calling out that corruption.
00:59:41.000There are almost no incentives to do that.
00:59:44.000Now look, there are going to be some people who nonetheless call out the truth, who nonetheless try to call out the system.
00:59:52.000But the point is, on a mass scale, in terms of individual decisions, people coming out of college, people coming looking for a way in to work in the political system and the like, All things being equal, the two paths where they diverge, I can go be complicit or I can go challenge power, the rewards for being complicit are greater than they've ever been and the punishments for calling it out are maybe not as bad as they've ever been, certainly dissent throughout human history have been bad, but there's not nearly the reward system or the incentives or the ability to survive if you're trying to call it out.
01:00:32.000In a sense, a kind of banalised tyranny has been achieved when dissent can be excluded systemically without it really being queried.
01:00:45.000I often wonder, and we talk about frequently on this show, Whether the culture wars, wokeism, anti-wokeism, are similarly being escalated in order to create conflagration that prevents a simple union, potential alliance, and a willingness to accept difference, to witness that libertarianism and, for example, the more extreme end, and who decides where extremism is, of identity politics are ultimately about
01:01:19.000And I feel that there is more to be achieved by looking for ways that we can communicate openly, even around contentious issues, and I would say contentious issues is particularly where the conversation is required, that is not being encouraged because I feel that they benefit from ossified camps behaving in the manner that we are, lost in irresolvable conflicts around culture.
01:01:42.000Look, I certainly agree that, I put it this way, the billionaire class, the corporate class, must be overjoyed that while they are fleecing the entire country and the entire world, the big debates are about things like M&Ms.
01:02:00.000The big debates are about, you know, oh, you're going to tear out my gas stove.
01:02:04.000You know, made-up culture war controversies.
01:02:07.000So it certainly serves the fossil fuel industry when it comes to climate change, the establishment, the billionaire class, the corporate class, that the culture war has become most of politics.
01:02:20.000But I also think it's not just that there are a couple of people in a smoky back room twisting their mustaches saying, ha ha ha, how can we distract the public?
01:02:30.000I also think it's bled into the psychology of the country at large in this way.
01:02:36.000If the social contract has been torn up, if we have been taught over years and years and years to never trust what the public sector does, public officials, and we have been taught that lesson by those public officials, lying us into the Iraq war, lying us into the deregulation that gave us the financial crisis, lying us into tax cuts that obviously only benefit the wealthy and do not trickle down.
01:03:05.000Uh, promising programs that are going to help people that end up being bogged down in a bureaucratic morass and not actually delivering help.
01:03:14.000The point is, is that if the social contract is shredded year after year after year, I think lots of people come to the conclusion that nothing can be fixed.
01:03:27.000That politics is just about professional elite politicians and lobbyists arguing with each other about things that don't matter to people's basic lives because nothing from that sector has seemed to matter or and lots of things from that public sector has seemed to be dishonest and not true.
01:03:45.000Then people conclude that politics is just about a culture war.
01:03:57.000It's something like you tune into ESPN or you tune into Sports Talk Radio and you listen to the debate about the last hockey game or the last football game.
01:04:06.000And ultimately, we have to ask ourselves, Whose fault is that?
01:04:11.000Now look, I think that the government, a better government, a more ethical government, pushed to be, not ethical on its own, pushed to be with an actual mass movement of people demanding change, real policies that affect and improve their daily lives.
01:04:27.000I think I don't think getting a public sector that actually delivers is a lost cause.
01:04:33.000What I'm saying, though, is that I fear that people's experience of watching what has happened over the last few decades to that public sector, to that social contract, has made a lot of people conclude that nothing can be done.
01:04:48.000Mark Fisher, the sadly deceased British philosopher and intellectual, wrote that the apathy that people feel has been induced and is a response to conditions rather than some kind of naturally occurring nihilism.
01:05:02.000Similarly, we are denied a kind of political and cultural analysis of events like the opioid crisis in your country,
01:05:11.000preferring instead to offer diagnosis that numerous individuals are just simultaneously becoming addicted to painkillers
01:05:19.000for reasons that are not connected to the culture or political agenda.
01:05:23.000How much do you invest in the significance of events like the WEF and Davos conference
01:05:29.000when it comes to infiltrating national governments with ideals that are ultimately beneficial to corporations?
01:05:37.000In short, David, do you think of the WEF as a sort of somewhat benign conference or do you think it is a crucible for power and a place where significant ideas begin to penetrate nations?
01:05:51.000So I've covered Davos twice, and I was one of the few, maybe the only reporter when I was there, who used the opportunity.
01:06:06.000They're not going to get asked any tough questions.
01:06:08.000And for the most part, it is a safe space, but I used it as a way to just shove my mic in front of You know, CEOs, heads of state and the like, to ask them questions they didn't want to answer.
01:06:20.000At one point, funny side note, at one point I got the CEO of GM to somehow defend marketing cars without safety equipment, airbags, to people in the developing world.
01:06:30.000I don't think she'd ever been asked that question before and the story kind of went viral all across the globe.
01:06:37.000I think my takeaway from being at Davos, covering it as a reporter, is this.
01:06:41.000That it's a place where the profit agenda is laundered as an altruistic initiative.
01:06:50.000That if you understand what Davos is really, what is it really selling?
01:06:55.000It is selling this idea that The billionaires of the world, the corporate class of the world can continue enriching itself, gorging the resources of the world, and in a way that deprives resources from everybody else.
01:07:12.000And it can do that in a way that is moral, And altruistic and actually good for the world.
01:07:18.000That is the ideology being sold by Davos.
01:07:21.000That nobody at the top ever has to sacrifice anything or ever even has to limit their own greed impulses.
01:07:33.000The world will benefit from the corporate and billionaire classes' benevolence and smarts.
01:07:39.000Now, some people call this ideology neoliberalism, right?
01:07:43.000I mean, I know that word's overused a lot, but in a sense I think that is the core ideology of neoliberalism.
01:07:51.000That the rich can get richer and richer and richer, that it is not a zero-sum game, that That those at the top can vacuum up more and more resources from everybody else, but rising tides will lift all boats, as the saying goes.
01:08:05.000I think that's not true on the merits.
01:08:09.000Meaning, I think what the World Economic Forum, that ideology that it is constantly selling, is a lot of nonsense.
01:08:16.000It is a rationale for the rich To fleece and continue fleecing everyone else.
01:08:22.000But I do think it is influential in creating a kind of political ideology, because remember, there are all these politicians that go there.
01:08:30.000Lots of politicians go there, they hear this, hey listen, if I enrich this oil company or I enrich this tech company or I I give this other financial company more bailouts, that will actually help my constituents back home.
01:08:42.000That's what I was told at the World Economic Forum.
01:08:46.000And they don't seem like greedy, greedy capitalists.
01:08:49.000They're talking all about helping the world, saving the world.
01:08:52.000So I think the World Economic Forum, as one of many, I should say it's not unique, it's one of many of these kinds of organizations that sell this ideology, that sell greed as a moral crusade.
01:09:06.000Exquisite analysis, whether it's not having to curb your greedy impulses or gorging on resources that ought be afforded to the world.
01:09:15.000I was thinking, David, that the idea that the rising tide raises all boats neglects to mention that most people can't afford a boat.
01:09:24.000It's the issue that needs to be addressed.
01:09:27.000David, we have to end the show now, but I'd like to recommend that all of you read David's fantastic work at leathernews.com and listen to David's podcast, Leather Time.
01:09:37.000That's how it's pronounced in your country.
01:10:32.000On Thursday, we'll be joined by Alex Berenson.
01:10:34.000Alex Berenson is the journalist that Eddie Munster there was talking about in our hero presentation when he said, these journalists, when they threaten people, that makes me pull my lips together like this.
01:10:46.000So Alex Berenson is going to be on our show.
01:10:48.000Hopefully he'll have some Fauci files fresh for us on Thursday.