In this episode of Here's The News, No Here's the Effing News, host Russell Brand is joined by Gareth Barker to discuss Elon Musk's takeover of Tesla and the impact it has on the way we live. Plus, a look at the New Zealand farm protest movement and how the globalist climate change agenda is driving anti-working people out of business. Stay tuned for the second half of the show, where we discuss the mid-term elections and the implications for the economy and the economy as a whole. Stay free, stay green, stay free, and stay free! Stay Free, and Don't Get Lost in the Storm. - The Green New Deal is out now, and it's a good one. You can get all the info you need to know about it on our new website here. Stay green, and don't get lost in the maelstrom that is climate change and globalism. - Don't forget to join our new online community, STAY FREE AF, where you can join the movement and get involved in the conversation about all things environmentalism, climate justice, food and the environment. We're all on the move! Stay free and stay green! - And stay free. And stay green and keep safe, and keep green, baby! - Russell Brand - Stay Free! (ft. P.S. - The Daily Mail) You're Going To See The Future by P.I.B. - This episode was brought to you by Pfizer. You'll get a discount on some of our favourite Pfizer products. You won't Want To See the Future, You'll Have To Be Green by Paving It? - This video was made by PPRIZED by Pfizer. You'll Get It? - This is the Future? by P&O, You're Gonna See The Real Thing? - You'll Hear The Future, This Is The Future (featuring the Future by , You'll Be The Future? and You'll See The Next Thing? by , This Is It All About That? by Mr. Russell Brand, by . , & This is The Green Thing, by Ms Bojangles, and Mr. by IrishViking, , StormCrow59, Heidelberg Girl, And Mr. Bojanes, The Irish Viking, and Ms Boedig,
00:02:57.000Now we're going to be talking about Elon's Twitter takeover and is Elon unique among billionaires in the kind of deals that he makes and has made.
00:03:07.000I suppose probably what it is, is I've not heard back from him for a while because you know he was going to come on the show as a guest and now I'm sort of stepping up the We're not stepping up the criticism of Elon Musk.
00:03:16.000Does he deserve his somewhat unique status as a billionaire?
00:03:20.000And which brings about plaudits and criticism in equal measure.
00:03:24.000Some people really coat him off, don't they?
00:03:55.000You're going to love this, the way that we break it down and the way that we show that even like the COP26 and COP27, those latest two sort of apparently environmental events, don't produce meaningful results that are pro-environmental.
00:04:08.000And also we're sponsored by environmental polluters!
00:04:31.000So we're going to be talking about supporting the agricultural farm movement worldwide.
00:04:36.000Essentially, what I'm looking for, I'll tell you the absolute truth, I'm looking for ways to support local action that can challenge centralised power.
00:04:49.000It does seem strange, doesn't it, at a time when we're talking about the cost of living, when prices are going up.
00:04:55.000And I know when we're talking about the midterms, it's one of the things where Democrats are getting most criticism, is that they're not addressing these points, these fundamental points about inflation and recession.
00:05:07.000And the Republicans are addressing that, or at least talking about it.
00:05:11.000At the same time, you have situations where farmers are potentially being put out of business with the incentive of making food costlier.
00:05:19.000Because, you know, one of the things that we're talking about in New Zealand is that they're being incentivized to actually make food in ways that is, say, organic and things.
00:05:28.000Again, not to say that organic Food is not the way to go, but it is for the elites.
00:05:34.000Yeah, they're making food for the elites, they're finding new ways of claiming land for the elites.
00:05:38.000You know who America's biggest farmland owner is.
00:05:56.000We're only going to be on YouTube for another minute.
00:05:58.000When we flip over to Drum Rumble in a minute, we want you to follow us.
00:06:01.000On Rumble, for a start, I can swear, I don't know where you stand on cursing, but we can talk in depth not only about Elon Musk's Twitter takeover and the complexity of the culture war and freedom of speech, but we'll also be talking about the global uprisings that are being repressed and the uprisings themselves are trying to address, in my opinion, a centralist Agenda to disempower ordinary people.
00:06:24.000We're going to be talking about that in the context of the midterm elections.
00:07:32.000Firstly, I'd like to see Trump coming up with yet another nickname and turning on DeSantis.
00:07:37.000Then I'd love to see that woman accidentally saying, or that woman saying, we've ballsed it on the Democrats.
00:07:43.000You know, the one saying we've focused on the wrong issues.
00:07:45.000So let's have a firstly let's enjoy a bit of Donald Trump who many of you love and who many of you loathe coming out with a new nickname.
00:07:53.000But I used to come out and it used to drive the fake news crazy but today I have the highest poll numbers I've ever had perhaps Partly because the Democrats are doing so badly running our country and people want our tremendous success of no inflation, energy independence, military victory.
00:08:23.000That's one of the things that amuses me most about Donald Trump is his ability to use language in an effective way, whether it's coming up with nicknames or sort of individually taking credit for creating that vaccine and for defeating ISIS.
00:08:36.000Of course, it does bring to the forefront the curious question of where ISIS went during the pandemic.
00:10:00.000Janine Small, she comes from Pfizer, she said they never even tested it for transmission.
00:10:08.000That was a thing that we had to be super careful over on the YouTube.
00:10:13.000I don't want to do conspiracy theory stuff because it diminishes the argument.
00:10:15.000If this is ever going to become a popular movement that meaningfully changes society, and I mean because of you, not because of me.
00:10:21.000Look at me, I can't even peel an orange.
00:10:22.000How can I peel back a global system of corporate domination?
00:10:26.000Then, it can't be sort of marginal crazy ideas at the forefront, but what you can say is, did it seem to you like the vaccine was promoted as something that might stop the spread?
00:10:38.000In fact, did stop the spread become a sort of phrase?
00:12:51.000And it's ultimately penalising New Zealand farmers and could lead to them losing their land in massive numbers.
00:12:58.000And comparable things have happened elsewhere in the world.
00:13:01.000Willie Bond over on our Stay Free AF chat is saying, which is available to you on locals, there's a link in the description if you want to join it.
00:13:08.000Willie Bond says, you're another useless twit brand if you don't save Britain yourself.
00:13:13.000You could easily do it and you're not stupid.
00:14:19.000Who talks like that other than the Cowardly Lion from Wizard of Oz?
00:14:22.000Like, he talks in an unusual way and likes to overtly diss the other potential contenders for the Republican nomination in this manner, including Rhonda Sanders, who I know loads of you guys like.
00:14:32.000Remember, here on this channel, we don't think the Republican Party or Democratic Party are going to make any difference, and we use the Jeffrey Sachs example to demonstrate that one agenda pursued across 30 years.
00:14:40.000Do you think that there will be any meaningful differences for ordinary Americans under either administration?
00:14:46.000And with your particular enthusiasm for our man Donald Trump, who is an orator I certainly admire, you've had four years.
00:14:51.000And I know some of you go, oh, but there was more manufacturing jobs.
00:14:54.000It's not going to make any meaningful difference at the level, the level that's required.
00:14:58.000There is a real need for actual change.
00:16:17.000It's like we were saying beforehand, it's kind of politics with playground rules, but there's a simplicity to that that appeals.
00:16:25.000And in a sense it's like, well, It's really hard, isn't it, to hold two things in your mind at the same time.
00:16:31.000One thing that politics is really important because it affects all of our lives.
00:16:37.000And the other thing is politicians don't seem to treat it that way.
00:16:41.000They say they do, but they've all got stocks in military industrial complex and pharma and all these things.
00:16:47.000So obviously they don't really, and at the same time they're trying to bankrupt farmers.
00:16:51.000How are we meant to hold those two things at the same time?
00:16:54.000Yeah, and also, when the people he's competing against use dull rhetoric rather than raw truth, then there's no chance.
00:17:05.000Because he's just better at doing what they do badly.
00:17:09.000It's not like people are able to go, look, we're going to be 100% authentic.
00:17:13.000We're going to tell you the truth about how this country's run.
00:17:16.000So when he was saying stuff about how the parties were funded, about them evading tax laws, even when campaigning for the presidency the first time round, you can't defeat that.
00:17:25.000He takes them places where they can't win.
00:17:28.000When Matt Taibbi came on the show, he said that when he was campaigning in the primaries against Jeb Bush, Low energy, Jeb.
00:17:49.000The only way To defeat this type of populism is with a true, authentic populism, with a politics that's all about empowering ordinary people, ending cultural conflict by creating decentralised community.
00:18:06.000Yeah, you have to have authenticity and ultimately even a figure like Obama.
00:18:11.000Now you watch Obama speak and obviously they've brought him out at the moment because the Democrats desperately need his help and he's amazing.
00:18:17.000You watch him and there's no arguing with the charisma and the abilities he has as an orator.
00:18:24.000Before Trump he's the last example of someone who Can deliver an incredible speech, but like at this speech, he was given those these stop the war protesters and they were making the point of what about all these attacks and you know, the droning that he was responsible for under his tenure in the war.
00:18:43.000I mean, I think there was a comment of the day that you know, Trump is the only president whilst his use of droning was quite I think severe almost as much as Obama maybe even more that he wasn't actually technically
00:18:53.000at war whereas Obama was and I think that's the thing isn't it you can't you
00:18:57.000Can't if but Obama's gonna say these things he needs to come from a position of well
00:19:03.000I didn't do any of that stuff I lived by the I lived by our code as a Democrat and Joe
00:19:07.000Biden has to and we know that that's not true simply untrue
00:19:13.000And these mid-term elections are the most... they've invested more in campaigning... 10 billion.
00:19:23.000They've both been focusing on cultural hot-button issues but the Republicans have focused more on economic issues and inflation and as a result we're likely to see what has been called a red wave.
00:20:43.000What keeps coming to mind for me, I don't know how you lot feel about this, is that when Biden came in, he talked a lot about the necessity for unity in America.
00:20:53.000Since then there's been those peculiar Empire Strikes Back looking rallies that are all red backlit.
00:20:58.000A lot of talk about The MAGA movement being undemocratic when clearly it's a significant American cultural force and using divisive rhetoric is not the solution.
00:21:11.000Although what I tend to think is that they want a divided population.
00:21:14.000By creating a divided population it somehow nullifies the possibility of new political movements that would meaningfully help people.
00:21:23.000emerging. It seems that the Democrats spent 20 times more than it did on
00:21:28.000abortion related ads in the 2018 midterm so they're really highlighting divisive
00:21:33.000issues. Biden also warned Americans they must vote to save democracy at the polls
00:21:38.000after the January 6th 2021 attacks. So as I saw pointed out elsewhere if you're
00:21:43.000saying that this election is to save democracy then democracy is already over
00:21:50.000It's like saying that there is only one democratic option, and that is plainly a form of ideological tyranny.
00:21:58.000I've got an example of that, actually.
00:22:01.000This is Peter Strzok, formerly of the FBI.
00:22:03.000Interesting backstory for Peter Strzok.
00:22:05.000But if you listen, I think if you look at the scale in terms of a threat to democracy, I mean, 9-11 was a tragedy.
00:22:13.000We lost thousands of lives in a horrific way, and we still mourn to this day.
00:22:17.000But when you look at something that is an attack on democracy, something that could actually bring about a fundamental change to American governance as we understand it, 9-11 is nothing compared to January 6th.
00:22:31.000So, you know, the way in which Jan 6 is being kind of weaponized into a kind of fit, well, clearly a fear mongering tactic.
00:22:40.000And Biden saying that, you know, the only way that you've got a vote to say it's to save democracy.
00:23:04.000So he was part of and launched the Russiagate investigation.
00:23:07.000He was fired in 2018 for swapping anti-Trump messages with his mistress, who was then an FBI lawyer.
00:23:13.000So he was obviously had to be let go because of those situations.
00:23:17.000He was clearly anti-Trump and in charge of this Investigation.
00:23:21.000But it shows that this fear mongering is is going on rather than being, as you said, Russ, like we should be using this as a chance to not polarize even even more.
00:23:33.000And that's the same with Paul Pelosi at the moment.
00:23:35.000You know, again, Biden's bringing up the thing of, oh, you know, it's MAGA people.
00:23:39.000This is what happens when you when you have this kind of rhetoric is that Paul Pelosi gets attacked.
00:23:44.000And I don't know if that's based on anything.
00:23:49.000Yeah, it doesn't seem very helpful to escalate conflict in the manner that they do, except unless, of course, you look at it from the perspective that regardless of whether you vote for Republicans or Democrats, the ultimately powerful institutions will remain unaffected.
00:24:06.000That's what the Jeffrey Sachs example demonstrated, and that's what Our belief is primarily that Noam Chomsky, oh yeah, said that the point of contemporary democracy is to have lively debate but within a very narrow framework so people are distracted from the reality that anything that neither party opposes you already have a tyranny on.
00:24:27.000So if no party is suggesting decentralised power wherever possible, support communities in this variety of ways, control
00:24:34.000corporations in this kind of ways, demonopolize in these ways, unless that's on the
00:24:38.000agenda, unless someone's explicitly going to do that. And no one has done
00:24:42.000that, no administration has done anything like that in the last sort
00:24:46.000You know, Paul Pelosi's backdoor indeed.
00:24:49.000Innocent women wanted, they just wanted the nude photo.
00:24:51.000There's some interesting stuff going on in the chat.
00:24:54.000So whether it's at the level of American democracy or global democracy, it seems that corporate power is able to circumvent ordinary process.
00:25:02.000And I think that becomes in the end a little destabilizing, debilitating and creates a sort of an apathy that you can't do anything.
00:25:09.000So I think what we forget sometimes is that we're human beings.
00:25:13.000Tribal animals that have lived in very particular ways for tens of thousands of years, still at the deepest and most atavistic levels, adjusting to living in urbanised culture, living spellbound continually by screens.
00:25:28.000We're losing our own humanity and I think agitating us into a state of conflict is one of the things that serves that.
00:25:34.000To bring this conversation to a global level for a moment, we're going to turn our attention,
00:25:38.000oh no, to the freedom of speech debate.
00:25:41.000Let's have a little look at whether or not conversation that's being conducted on the
00:25:44.000social media platform Twitter is improving democracy or further denigrating democratic
00:25:53.000Do you think that Elon Musk is a force for good in American culture or a force for evil?
00:25:58.000However you see Elon Musk, it appears that he is regarded uniquely.
00:26:03.000He's spoken about in unique ways, condemned, criticized and celebrated in unique ways.
00:26:08.000Ways that typically aren't applied to other billionaires.
00:26:38.000Let us know what you think in the hits up in the chat.
00:26:50.000Will his acquisition of Twitter aid democracy or damage it further?
00:26:56.000And how do his actions stand in the way of a potential unipolar world rather than a geopolitical triangle of terror between the US, Russia and China?
00:27:07.000And more importantly, why won't he answer my texts?
00:27:14.000Some people are really into it, some people are vehemently against it, broadly on the lines of whether or not they're a sort of libertarian free speech advocate or a neoliberal centre-left Democrat who seem to me to be increasingly interested in authoritarianism in order to meet certain moral and ideological ends.
00:27:31.000An opinion that I think is worth contemplating when discussing this is the opinion of Edward Snowden.
00:27:35.000Here's a person who made a pretty difficult moral choice when it came to censorship, surveillance
00:28:22.000This is a bizarre thing to be worrying about all of a sudden since it's been the absolute reality in America for a while, perhaps even prior to big tech platforms.
00:28:31.000The public sphere has long been controlled by barons and media moguls.
00:28:38.000Jimmy Kimmel, late night talk show host and comedian, was much more succinct in his condemnation.
00:28:44.000The host of Jimmy Kimmel Live on ABC tweeted, after Musk did this, I suppose that that's useful to see that read, even including expletives on mainstream media news, suggesting a tonal change in the reporting on the subject.
00:29:07.000Now just to let you know where I stand on this, whilst I'll be fascinated to have Elon Musk On our show, as a guest, and it's something I've been trying to achieve for a little while.
00:29:16.000I'm obviously curious about the ways in which Elon Musk differs from any other billionaire.
00:29:20.000What's his relationship with the state?
00:29:24.000What is his relationship with his workers?
00:29:27.000Having spoken to Elon Musk on one occasion and exchanged a few communications, I recognize that this is a highly alert and amusing individual.
00:29:36.000But is he distinct and discreet from a figure like Jeff Bezos?
00:29:51.000Do you want to blindly assume that Elon Musk is a kind of a toxic individual?
00:29:55.000Or, similarly, think of him as some kind of post-Richard Branson, big tech, Willy Wonka genius?
00:30:02.000What do you think is most likely to be true?
00:30:04.000Or, as is often the case, is it more complex than that?
00:30:08.000Media figures everywhere are openly complaining that they dislike the Musk move because they're terrified he will censor people less.
00:30:14.000A professional journalist who opposed free speech was not long ago considered a logical impossibility.
00:30:19.000That's already an extraordinary thing to consider.
00:30:23.000Journalists used to just uniformly oppose the idea of censorship, knowing that even if they disagreed with something that someone was saying right now, the principle of free speech was vital.
00:30:37.000We now have so much access to information that it's possible for very marginal views, let's call them marginal, to enter The mainstream, but I would argue perhaps more pertinently, is more necessary than ever for centralised forces, be they governmental, corporal, media or communicative more broadly, to have absolute control over the space.
00:30:58.000That's why we're seeing the rise, in my opinion, of terms like misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, and a kind of willingness to morally underwrite censorship in a variety of ways, usually for safety or protection.
00:31:11.000But safety and protection are generally used to increase regulation of public space.
00:31:27.000That's how they'll finally imprison us forever.
00:31:29.000Things are different now, of course, because the bulk of journalists no longer see themselves as outsiders who challenge official pieties, but rather as people who live inside the rope lines and defend those pieties.
00:31:39.000It's increasingly clear over the last six years that these people want it both ways.
00:31:42.000They don't want to break up the surveillance capitalism model or come up with a transparent, consistent, legalistic, fair framework for dealing with troublesome online speech.
00:31:50.000No, they actually want tech companies to remain giant black box monopolies with opaque moderation systems so they can direct the speech policing power of those companies to desired political ends.
00:32:00.000An authoritarian framework already exists in the speech world, just with different billionaires at the helm.
00:32:58.000I suppose, then, the continued financial support of the Saudi and Qatari regime does question an absolute commitment to free speech.
00:33:09.000You could argue that that's just the way that global capital operates.
00:33:13.000It doesn't have ideological tendrils monitoring the nature of the capital
00:33:19.000in all these spaces. But I suppose now that we know that, we have to incorporate that
00:33:24.000into our understanding of what is being described as free speech absolutism.
00:33:29.000Musk's stated openness to free expression appears not to apply to his employees, Tesla
00:33:34.000customers or journalists covering his companies. In November 2020, former Tesla employee Stephen
00:33:40.000Henk said he was fired from his job at Tesla after raising safety concerns internally then
00:33:45.000filing formal complaints with government offices. Last year, the National Labour Relations Board
00:33:49.000upheld a judge's ruling that Tesla unlawfully fired an employee involved in union organising.
00:33:55.000The Labour Board also affirmed the finding that Musk illegally threatened workers with the loss of their stock options if they decided to form a union.
00:34:03.000Now I'm not saying it's right or wrong that Elon Musk did that.
00:34:09.000It just seems that a judge upheld a ruling, but we know that the judicial system can be complex.
00:34:15.000I suppose that this is just an alternative take on the idea that Musk is a unique figure in that space.
00:34:22.000If he isn't unique, then perhaps he shouldn't be uniquely regulated or despised or condemned by the establishment.
00:34:28.000Seemingly is doing that, that's the news reading out a defamatory tweet, but perhaps he oughtn't be uniquely admired as some sort of outlier in that space.
00:34:38.000It seems to me, not knowing Elon Musk very well other than a few pretty minor interactions,
00:34:44.000that he is a tech, marketing and business genius who has understood some important ideas
00:34:51.000about how to create very successful visions and successful organisations. Beyond that,
00:34:59.000one would have to examine the situation a little further, I suppose.
00:35:01.000David Nassau, Emeritus Professor of History at the CUNY Graduate Centre, wrote that Musk
00:35:07.000is the face of 21st century tech-based extreme capitalism.
00:35:10.000Mr. Musk has exploited the opportunities emerging in a rapidly disintegrating regulatory state apparatus and acquired a small army of investors and a fleet of lobbyists, lawyers and fanboys known as Musketeers.
00:35:21.000We must recognise that he is not the self-made genius businessman he plays in the media.
00:35:25.000Instead, his success was prompted and paid for by taxpayer money and abetted by government officials who have allowed him and other billionaire businessmen to exercise more and more control over our economy and politics.
00:35:35.000Once again, this is a common narrative.
00:35:38.000The idea that there are these emergent, brilliant figures.
00:35:41.000I bet if we were to look into Rockefeller and Carnegie, And other culture-defining billionaires of the last American century we would discover, hold on a minute, there was taxpayer money involved there, there were all sorts of breaks and collaborations and deals.
00:35:56.000That seems to be the real nature of free market capitalism, that it's ultimately at certain points funded by public
00:36:04.000money, that they have unique ways of avoiding taxation
00:36:06.000and participation in civil duty and civic duty, and that the myth of the great man
00:36:14.000doesn't hold up that well to scrutiny and analysis.
00:36:17.000We've seen over the last 20, 30 years how brilliant cultural heroes, Gandhi, Martin Luther King,
00:36:22.000have been subject to a level of scrutiny that's exposed what I would essentially call humanity,
00:36:27.000and brought them down and exposed them as having feet of clay.
00:36:30.000Well, perhaps in the business space as well.
00:36:32.000There's a tendency to say, my God, you know, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, these brilliant people, these great entrepreneurs.
00:36:40.000But perhaps similarly, they have been operating within a system that affords them certain opportunities and ultimately is costly to ordinary people.
00:36:47.000These, again, are questions I'm offering you in the chat.
00:36:52.000Has he been held up by a system that facilitates this kind of endeavour?
00:36:55.000This is an article by Dave Troy that I'm interested in because of the introduction of the idea of long-termism.
00:37:02.000Is there a geopolitical game being played in a larger, broader timeline between nation states like the United States and their corporate partners, China and whatever set of interests they represent, and Russia and their own imperialist projects.
00:37:17.000And does Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter and long-term plan, which Dave Shroy posits is about space exploration and populating like Mars and the Moon, somehow bring him into conflict with US hegemony and unipolar ambition?
00:37:33.000Long-termism, the heavily marketed philosophy being promoted by Musk and his friend William McCaskill, asserts the only thing that matters is humanity's future in space.
00:37:42.000And that the only goal of the living is to maximise the number of future humans alive as well as the number of artificial intelligence instances that could possibly exist in the future.
00:37:51.000If that's true, and I don't know because I've not done enough research to know if that is true, but if what Musk believes is that it's necessary to populate other planets and that there can be an AI revolution that can support humanity beyond terrestrial That's a fascinating philosophy and obviously at odds with what most of us believe or are even capable of contemplating.
00:38:10.000There's obviously an ecological movement that's based on saving the planet in order that humanity can continue to exist on it.
00:38:16.000There's obviously division around whether or not man-made climate change is the problem or whether there are solar and cosmic influences beyond our control.
00:38:25.000But if there's going to be a point where the Earth is uninhabitable, then the idea of exploring other planets becomes fascinating, but it's sort of at odds with my sense that we are the Earth made conscious, and we are the Earth's ambassadors and emissaries.
00:38:38.000We are integral to it, we came from it, we are of it.
00:38:41.000But, you know, perhaps there are ideas that go beyond that.
00:38:44.000This mandate is most often used to brush aside calls for improving conditions and alleviating suffering among the living here on Earth now because, the theory goes, giving a poor person a blanket isn't likely to be as useful for the future of humanity as building a rocket to Mars.
00:38:58.000Long-termism is heavily influenced by Russian Cosmism and is also directly adjacent to effective altruism.
00:39:05.000Musk's stated mission, which he intends to fulfil in his lifetime, is to make humanity a multi-planetary species.
00:39:11.000The anti-democratic urge at long-termism is rooted in the belief that mob rule will lead to nuclear annihilation.
00:39:17.000We should, Musk thinks, be guided by wiser minds.
00:39:21.000Now, obviously there is a lot to unpack there, but the idea of diplomatic solutions to the current war, for example, seems sensible.
00:39:27.000And the idea that Musk's acquisition of Twitter might be part of a strategy that's much broader than one that is financially motivated is a fascinating thing to contemplate.
00:39:37.000Also, there is an immoral abstraction in the notion that Helping the poor people of the world is not our priority if we have the goal of saving all humanity.
00:39:48.000But obviously that's comparable to many of the ideas of the last century that led to the annihilation of whole populations in pursuit of a superior goal.
00:39:58.000And in this case, the transcendent is not a spiritual transcendent or economic or sociological or even psychological transcendent.
00:40:06.000It's a literal cosmological transcendence of this planet into other realms.
00:40:11.000Obviously I'm not suggesting that Elon Musk has the kind of tyrannical goals of the dictators
00:40:16.000of the last century, but it's fascinating to contemplate that this is someone who has
00:40:20.000an ideology that goes beyond terrestrial domination.
00:40:24.000Because at the moment what we appear to be seeing is tectonic shifts between America,
00:40:31.000Russia and China, deep geopolitical factions appearing as Russia pursue their right to
00:40:37.000have their own imperial ideology, as China assert their right to have their own realm
00:40:43.000and territory, and America are literally politically pushing back right now, for example by saying
00:40:48.000that tech workers in China ought return to the US or risk losing their citizenship.
00:40:53.000So we're seeing the beginning of sort of semi-sanctions and certainly the beginning of hostility in those relations that relate precisely to an issue like this.
00:41:02.000Unipolar power versus multipolar power.
00:41:05.000And here we have to consider that in the mix there are entrepreneurial forces that look beyond even this planet.
00:41:11.000Putin and Musk seem to think a multipolar world is a good thing because after all shouldn't Russia get to do its thing and not be bothered by anyone else?
00:41:18.000That's free speech and opposes cancel culture, right?
00:41:21.000But Putin himself doesn't support free speech, his government censors wildly, but it does support speech that breaks the hegemony of Western elites, as do Musk and his friends.
00:41:32.000Musk and the people backing all this are more interested in reshaping the global order than in earning fake fiat currency.
00:41:39.000Their real goal is to usher in hard currency and rebase global currencies around scarcity and physical assets.
00:41:46.000What a fascinating take on a complex issue.
00:41:49.000Perhaps Musk's acquisition of Twitter is not just about the culture war and free speech and who can say what when.
00:41:56.000Perhaps it disrupts global geopolitical narratives, a long-standing effort by the United States of America to be the only power in the world.
00:42:06.000Certainly our conversation with Jeffrey Sachs told a story along those lines.
00:42:10.000Potentially, the United States of America, through apparently global agencies like the WHO or NATO, wants to assert a true global power.
00:42:20.000And Musk's acquisition of Twitter could potentially interrupt that geopolitical goal.
00:42:26.000That's a pretty heavy thing for me to think all on my own.
00:42:29.000Let me know what you think in the chat.
00:42:31.000Let me know what you think in the comments.
00:42:42.000So it says here, Drew Block on our locals chat says, check out
00:42:47.000They've got a framework for decentralized fractal governed organizations.
00:42:52.000I think one of the things we fear is that we live in a stymieing and stagnating time, that the old ideas are clearly dying as embodied by even the Appearance of current global leaders.
00:43:08.000What could be a clearer living sign of democracy's evident decay than dear Joe Biden tottering off stage left or right in the wrong direction towards a yawning grave?
00:43:22.000Back on the subject of Elon Musk's Twitter takeover and whether this is a win for democracy.
00:43:30.000A lot of you are saying that Musk is charismatic and a true advocate for free speech and he's unique and different and neurologically different and stuff.
00:43:39.000With the blue tick thing, like, you know, being charged for blue ticks.
00:43:44.000It was like, $20, all right, $8, all right, 50p, all right, just have it, have the blue tick.
00:43:49.000Someone on Twitter was saying, Twitter employees were selling verification for upwards of $15,000 for certain accounts, mine included, that would refuse to verify you for the standard application, then privately offer to verify you for dollars behind the scene.
00:44:03.000For a minute, I thought that he was never gonna take over Twitter at all.
00:44:05.000I thought it was just like, one of those things that won't actually happen, that it was
00:44:11.000just sort of posturing and like it's been really peculiar the way that it's unfolded, revealing
00:44:16.000that Twitter was being sort of run as a peculiar fiefdom populated by bots and people selling
00:44:22.000blue ticks for 15 grand. But I still wonder if Twitter is going to become a better place.
00:44:29.000It's sort of like, you know, me personally, I don't go on Twitter because I think of it as a gaping, horrifying, hell mouth, just sort of full of ugliness and polemicism.
00:44:39.000Although I guess you could just be on there looking at football or just one particular... That's basically what I do.
00:46:17.000Yeah, but you do it all the time when you're a clinician.
00:46:20.000There you go, so we're having a conversation that's sort of open and I hope a valuable conversation, but with me pushing back on some... No, I'm not... Oh, are you the lot talking to each other?
00:46:34.000Are you talking about me or are you talking about someone else on the chat?
00:46:37.000You know, what I wanted to do is have a conversation with Jordan Peterson where I celebrated the aspects of his work that I really, really I agree with and learn from but challenge him in the areas where I've always felt that it was more important to prioritize compassion.
00:47:07.000A lot of the comments that we had on Underneath were people saying that it was good to be able to see two people have different opinions but to actually find a space where you could do that and not resort to kind of reductivism or like taking petty shots at each other.
00:47:22.000It does show that it's possible to do that.
00:47:26.000I think it's really important to diffuse some of these cultural arguments in order that we can focus on what's truly important.
00:47:34.000In tomorrow's show we're going to be talking about the New Zealand agricultural protests and how this highlights once again the great reset agenda playing out in real time.
00:47:44.000They have found a way to confiscate land and make it look like it's an ecological advancement.
00:47:51.000Make it look like really what they're trying to do is protect the environment while destroying the livelihoods of thousands of farmers.
00:47:58.000And this is something that's happening worldwide.
00:48:01.000You know that on this channel when we talk about Klaus Schwab, people see him as Santa Klaus Schwab.
00:48:06.000That's how he's been sort of regarded.
00:48:07.000You will get no presents and you will be happy.
00:48:10.000I think it's really important that we're able to keep the conversation contained in areas that might meaningfully change in significant outcomes for a significant number of people.
00:48:22.000Now, Gareth, back on our Elon conversation there.
00:48:26.000You were saying that there's a sort of a fundamental paradox between liberalism and a sensorial attitude.
00:48:34.000Yeah, I think there's paradoxes all over the place.
00:48:36.000I mean, I saw someone comment the other day that it's really amazing that Elon Musk has managed to charge people $8 a month and make them feel like they're really sticking it to the man.
00:48:46.000I mean, that is an amazing thing that he's done that.
00:48:49.000First of all, it was $20, now it's $8.
00:48:51.000And he's made people He's turned that into a positive thing.
00:48:54.000I think that's where we see comparisons with something like Trump through their rhetoric and their manner and their style.
00:49:01.000They're able to bring people along to their way of doing things where it's seeming like, yeah, I think it's a good thing that I'm parting with $8 a month now.
00:49:08.000I think it's interesting that he can do that.
00:49:10.000And it's part of, obviously, his charm.
00:49:13.000How he's kind of built what he's built.
00:49:15.000But yeah, this is a piece by Ben Burgess in Jacobin, which is like a, you know, left-leaning or something.
00:49:21.000Yeah, left-wing magazine, I would say.
00:49:23.000So he says, now that Elon Musk's long-anticipated takeover of Twitter has finally gone through, many liberals are angry for all the wrong reasons.
00:49:30.000They seem to be worried that Musk will allow too much free speech on the platform and that this will enable bigotry and misinformation.
00:49:36.000As a democratic socialist, I reject that view, root and branch.
00:49:41.000Empowering ordinary people to run society in their own interests is the whole point of a socialist project.
00:49:46.000And that's flatly incompatible with a technocratic liberal view that ordinary people can't be trusted to decide for themselves what to believe.
00:49:54.000And I guess at the heart of it, that's the paradox, isn't it?
00:49:56.000You can't on the one hand say, are we believing people having the power to form their own societies?
00:50:00.000And on the other hand say, but you can't say what you actually want to say.
00:50:03.000We're going to have to do something about that.
00:50:05.000Yeah, that's what's offensive about new authoritarianism is the assumption.
00:50:09.000That you don't know how to run your own life, that you don't know how to make the choices that are best for you as an individual and best for your community.
00:50:18.000I mean, yeah, that's sort of, I guess, what I'm like personally.
00:50:22.000It's a little bit, you know, when we're talking about the New Zealand farmers, it's got, you know, it's got a similar tone to it.
00:50:29.000They are being instructed to do something and a lot of I mean, the video will be showing it tomorrow.
00:50:37.000But obviously, a lot of the farmers themselves at these processes are saying, we care about climate.
00:50:53.000We know the land better than, you know, like, for example, maybe a Bill Gates coming in and treating all the land in the same way would be.
00:51:01.000And yet they're being kind of told what to do with their own land.
00:51:07.000And again, it's a similar kind of thing, is that the kind of power is being taken away
00:51:22.000And through some of the goals around that we were discussing about lowering the value
00:51:29.000by saying that this is indigenous land and things like that.
00:51:33.000What's happening is that you're lower systemically like lowering the value of that land So that ultimately what ends up happening is that does get bought by for example Bill Gates again That is a an example that we literally have Bill Gates a lot of the land that he's bought was indigenous land and so this is a pattern that is
00:51:50.000emerging it's not like a conspiracy this is happening. It's extraordinary that this tyrannical and
00:51:58.000centralized authority is masked by liberalism rather than what we assumed would be a kind of overt fascism.
00:52:06.000We've been kind of bewildered and tricked by I suppose any centralizing force that will use bureaucracy to nullify local power, whether it's the power of farmers or truckers or ordinary working people across the world.
00:52:20.000you ultimately have to judge it according to its actions. I felt a similar thing was perhaps at play
00:52:25.000during the pandemic. What was the result rather than what was the declaration? Again, I don't
00:52:32.000like to lean into conspiracy theories mostly because we're trying to create a meaningful
00:52:37.000and inclusive movement. But if the result of the pandemic was that the richest interests
00:53:08.000Is it contributing to a cost-of-living crisis?
00:53:10.000Is it enabling energy companies to become more powerful, to charge more money, to glean record profits?
00:53:15.000If the outcome, the outcomes in a sense, will tell you what the intention always was.
00:53:20.000And I feel like the type of authoritarianism that we're experiencing now has become masterful at masking their authoritarianism as a kind of care, a kind of concern for people.
00:53:32.000I mean, the news literally just before we came on, ExxonMobil's record-breaking $20 billion profit nearly matches Apple's now.
00:53:40.000So, ExxonMobil's reportedly, this is in the quarter, this is a quarterly profit of nearly $20 billion, $4 billion more than analysts had forecast.
00:53:50.000This is a time when, you know, Biden is talking about greenhouse gas emissions, where he's talking about controlling these big companies, but it's not happening.
00:54:02.000And then at the same time, we know that 28 US senators have got investments in the fossil fuel industry.
00:54:07.000On the subject of Apple, at the same time, senators own up to $25 million of stock in big tech.
00:54:29.000And when Jeffrey Sachs came on, he alluded to that.
00:54:32.000You know, he said that there have been opportunities for this war to end.
00:54:36.000There have been negotiations that have been ended.
00:54:40.000That isn't nothing when you then go, oh as a by-product all these things are happening as well, these products.
00:54:46.000There is a connection and whether or not, we just don't know how overt that is.
00:54:50.000I'm surprised they're still keeping records for that and still looking at it as if it's a hundred yard dash.
00:54:56.000So in a way, whether we're talking about the midterm elections and the massive expenditure, or if we're talking about New Zealand and the agricultural protests, there is a sort of a common strand.
00:55:06.000On one hand, you have the presentation of reality, where all of the lobbying and campaigning money is apparently spent, creating a spectacle and an illusion.
00:55:16.000Meanwhile, very powerful interests seem to do very, very well, regardless of the outcomes of those elections.
00:55:23.000Or, you know, while in New Zealand agricultural protesters are being sort of vilified or ignored, the powerful interests are able to acquire more land, legitimately claim former farms and centralise their ownership.
00:55:43.000It's extraordinary to me that there are sort of consistent themes in apparently diverse issues.
00:55:50.000Young Putin, what did you just pull up just now about phones?
00:55:54.000Did you just have something there for me?
00:55:56.000Yes, the CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans were following lockdown rules.
00:56:02.000I don't know even if this was consensual, where they just basically tracked it without anyone's consent.
00:56:09.000Yeah, again, that was something that was, at the time, you would be ridiculed if you'd said that.
00:56:14.000That's another of the themes that we pick up continually on in this show, that just six or seven months after an event, you're able to get an entirely different perspective, but invited to forget it.
00:56:24.000Did you see about the sort of suggested pandemic truths?
00:56:27.000Did you see that, like there's an Atlantic article saying, We should declare a truce now about all of that stuff that went, let's just forget about the things we talked about in the pandemic and I'm all for peace and I'm all for people coming together in pursuit of a common goal but I think that a kind of to have amnesia about what went on in the pandemic isn't like a
00:56:50.000A peace-oriented movement is a kind of a dangerous negligence.
00:56:55.000Well that is what Jeffrey Sachs is talking about now with this war, isn't it?
00:56:57.000That we are encouraged to look at it and almost put aside all our, everything we remember about the past wars.
00:57:04.000It's like to say, just to forget Afghanistan, Iraq, all the kind of things that we've later discovered about those wars and just go, this time is different this What about Afghanistan where they were using that to take public money and funnel it towards the military-industrial complex?
00:57:18.000What about Iraq when they said there were weapons of mass destruction and there weren't and it was about bringing about a regime change as a result of the next American century project that was sort of publicly discussed and that anybody can learn about?
00:57:31.000This is genuinely a unique situation and again like I'm not claiming to know enough about the tectonic plates of geopolitics to say for certain that Putin isn't an imperious and imperialistic figure but it does seem at least according to Jeffrey Sachs who's dedicated his life to the The study of these matters that there is one agenda being consistently pursued that crosses various administrations, which in itself shows you that there's an agenda that is unaffected by democratic process.
00:58:02.000So while we're getting whooped up about the midterms, it's probably important to remember that whoever you vote for or don't vote for, you're going to end up in a pretty similar position.
00:58:12.000Yeah, I think it comes to narrative, doesn't it?
00:58:14.000That's what it always kind of comes down to.
00:58:16.000And an interesting one, returning to Musk and Bill Gates, we've just talked about, it are those two when it comes to two very rich billionaires.
00:58:24.000Bill Gates often, I mean, really has He's done very well through the pandemic, certainly in terms of his public perception.
00:58:31.000He's treated as a kind of hero of the pandemic in some quarters.
00:58:35.000And yet we literally just talked about him buying up great swathes of American farmland, much less reported on.
00:58:41.000Elon Musk is getting demonized in a lot of quarters at the moment for what's going on at Twitter.
00:58:47.000And again, that's not to say that he's, I mean, you know, reading here, he's deeply connected to the national security state, giving him a vested interest in enabling the US's giant surveillance regime.
00:58:57.000He's culminated a $300 million military contract.
00:59:00.000He's been paid by the US to equip Ukraine with Starlink, which he said was charity, but it wasn't.
00:59:06.000So there are all sorts of... Again, with all of this, it's not to suggest, oh, Elon Musk is just, he's great, and there's nothing to worry about.
00:59:13.000These things would suggest maybe there are some things to worry about.
00:59:16.000But the narrative is Elon Musk bad, Bill Gates good.
00:59:21.000And I guess what we have to do is challenge those narratives.
01:01:06.000Now, those of you that are members of our Stay Free AF community, we're going to flip over onto the stream in a second that's available on Locals.
01:01:13.000There's a link in the chat and a link in the description right now.
01:01:17.000But I'm going to do it sort of on my phone.
01:01:18.000So it's ever more intimate than usual.
01:01:22.000So this stream will shut down and then we'll be available to you on that one.
01:01:45.000We're looking at how these great works of literature can meaningfully change your perception and understanding of what's happening in the world.