Russell Brand is joined by Neil Oliver to discuss the legacy media's ongoing advocacy of war and the gaffes that go with it, including Joe Biden's latest gaffe and Hillary Clinton and John Barrack Obama's awkward handshake that lasts forever. Plus, a look at how propaganda works and why we should all be worried about what we don't know. Stay Free with Russell Brand is out now on all of the social medias, if you search for Stay Free, you'll find us. Stay Free! To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/OurAdvertisers and use the promo code StayFree at checkout to receive 10% off your first pack! We'll see you in the Badger Den! Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to our other shows on Apple Podcasts, The Anthropology, The Good, The Bad, The Queen and The Ugly! and The Root! Subscribe to stay free with us on all your favourite podcasting platforms so you don't miss out on the next episode! Stay free, stay free, and spread the word to your friends about what's going on in the world of social media and on social media! Love, love, be free, be grateful, be brave, be kind, be lovely, be beautiful, be good! - Eternally grateful, always grateful and keep free. XOXO. - The Best Regards, EJGareth & Gav & Jai & Gareth - P.B. PSYCHOTTERRYANTON OCHTERBERNICK AND JOSH & JOSHAN OCHTSON INSTAGRAM - JORDAN MCCARTAN JOSH MILLER PEN PODCAST - JOSH AND KEVIN OCHDSON BONUS CONTENT: JOSH IS AVAILABLE IN THE GOOD, JOSH SONGS AND PENNY WELCOMES & JAMES MCDARTAN AND JAMES KELLY AND JOSCOYNN ETCOYNN OCHORDSETTER AND JAY LYNNEUGHER AND KAYLE THANCHES AND PRAISE MEETING IS ACHIEVES AND DOUBLES GRABS AND DADDY RYAN MACHINES AND FABULATIONS
00:07:48.000For the first 15 minutes, we're going to be on YouTube, okay?
00:07:52.000But then, and this by the way is water, not vodka, just to clarify.
00:07:56.000Highland Springs are not running freely with vodka.
00:08:00.000Unless Putin is pushing his agenda even that far by making the Highlands themselves full of extremely powerful, I would say, ethanol laden drinks.
00:08:28.000There was a fantastic speech that Trump did, beautiful speech, beautiful speech, where he accidentally said that Viktor Orban was the leader of Turkey instead of Hungary.
00:08:37.000Of course it's Erdogan, isn't it, is the leader of Turkey.
00:08:41.000Now MSNBC fall upon this Ravenous and hungry because they show their hands with stories like this.
00:08:49.000They show their hands, they're even in it go, do you see?
00:08:52.000Oh, they would have gone crazy if Biden had done this.
00:08:54.000What they don't show is that just a few seconds later, Trump corrects himself.
00:08:59.000Sorry, I mean, he's actually, it's hungry, not turkey.
00:09:18.000It's extraordinary to see Hillary again.
00:09:20.000I ain't watched all of it yet, but if you lot want to watch it, let me know, because we've got a whole host, a wide and maddening variety of options.
00:09:29.000We'll start, though, by showing you MSNBC reporting on Trump.
00:09:32.000We're at 5,000 at the moment on the Rumble stream.
00:09:35.000If we get to 20,000, you can choose what you want to see marched out here.
00:09:39.000Do you want to see Gareth Roy as usual?
00:09:41.000Or do you want to see... I mean, you've seen a dog.
00:09:43.000I don't know what else we can drag out here for you.
00:09:44.000I don't know who we could present to you people.
00:09:47.000Let's have a look at the Trump slip-up, but then let's see how it's reported on.
00:10:50.000Sometimes I think when they criticize like Trump's personality, it's a kind of envy, you know, like he's got a sort of ease, conviviality, congeniality, humor and wit that they envy.
00:11:01.000They try and be funny, they try and be jingoistic, they try and be bombastic, but they just don't do it as well.
00:11:07.000Now I've been on this show, do you remember that?
00:11:37.000And if that were Joe Biden, they'd be running wall-to-wall on certain networks with medical experts describing what was happening here and why he needed help and why he should probably step off the stage.
00:11:49.000They're actually sort of meta-commenting on what they themselves do.
00:11:55.000And with the first newscaster, when she talks about autocrats, you know that Joe Biden has personally enabled the sale of weapons to 57% of the world's autocracies.
00:12:09.000You know, when Trump was doing arms deals with Saudi Arabia, Biden said he would make Saudi Arabia a pariah and yet they sell more arms than Trump sold to Saudi Arabia.
00:12:22.000So, actually, when it comes to it, they can't criticise Trump on policy because, hey, what about the wall?
00:13:38.000He runs it strong with crime and everything else.
00:13:41.000He runs it strong and he doesn't let terrorists into his country.
00:13:46.000They said, what do you recommend for Joe Biden if you could tell him anything?
00:13:50.000I tell him to resign and let Trump become president because nobody ran Let me know, are the liberal mainstream media hypocritical when it comes to their coverage of Trump?
00:14:10.000This is talking about Trump's personality in relationship to war and Hillary Clinton's claim that Trump's personality in and of itself was a creator of conflict.
00:14:20.000A little bit later, we'll show you Hillary Clinton In an extraordinary showdown with a heckler.
00:14:55.000I was the first one in, I think they say, 76 years.
00:15:00.000Now with this Omnicrisis escalating the potential for Iran to become involved in the conflict with yet more funding going to Ukraine, perpetuating the war with Russia, with escalating tensions with China, whose personality is better suited to bringing about peace?
00:15:18.000Do you think it's Trump or do you think it's this guy?
00:15:20.000Now to give Joe Biden his credit, he certainly shake hands well, but It may be a little bit too long.
00:15:27.000Tell me if you think he overdoes it with his handshake and tell me, like, I want you to say now at the point where you think he should have let go of the hand.
00:16:23.000Press the red button if you want to become an Awakened Wonder and support our work so that we can continue to develop and grow this movement.
00:16:29.000Here on Stay Free, we point out the problem.
00:16:32.000There, with the Awakened Wonder community and locals, we are moving towards solutions.
00:16:37.000Joe Biden on stage is still shaking hands.
00:16:39.000for treatments strengthening our nation's public health including the fight to end the opioid epidemic
00:16:45.000and this is where we've now entered an extraordinary time i believe where everything has become politicized
00:16:58.000We got some fantastic reporting for you on excess deaths, which I can't talk about while we're still on YouTube.
00:17:04.000Some revelatory stuff that if you were someone that was sceptical around the pandemic and the way that it was being handled, you are going to be verified.
00:17:12.000You are going to be given the data you require to seal this conversation once And for all.
00:17:19.000But I feel that COVID and vaccines were politicised from the beginning.
00:17:22.000Do you think that it was science that determined the behaviour during lockdown and the policy during lockdown?
00:17:30.000Press P if you think that it was politics.
00:17:33.000Have a look at this from our man Biden, claiming that it was science.
00:17:38.000No, starting on day one, in the middle of the pandemic, we vaccinated a nation The greatest operational effort ever undertaken by this country.
00:18:22.000But let's Just to show you a little bit of contrast before we move on to some of the Hillary Clinton stuff, let's just remind ourselves how Kamala Harris and Joe Biden talked about the vaccine prior to their administration commencing.
00:18:37.000If the Trump administration approves a vaccine before or after the election, should Americans take it and would you take it?
00:18:44.000If Donald Trump tells us that we should take it, I'm not taking it.
00:18:47.000The people of this country don't trust this federal government.
00:19:01.000The WHO are on the very precipice of being able to impose a global treaty that will mean your country, if it's a member of the WHO, will have to give 5% of its health budget to the WHO and that your country will have to obey their legislation when it comes to masks.
00:19:21.000lockdowns, vaccines in the event, and some would say the inevitable event, of another
00:19:25.000pandemic. Here is the WHO Director General complaining that the spread of misinformation
00:19:31.000undermines faith in our institutions. But what's really undermining the faith in institutions?
00:19:36.000Is it misinformation or is it corruption? Press M if it's misinformation, press C if
00:21:17.000Let me know in your country, wherever you are in North America, is there any resistance to this treaty?
00:21:23.000Anything being learned from the last few years.
00:21:25.000Now, before we have a look at Hillary Clinton at Columbia University dealing with a protester on the basis of Biden's $100 billion military funding bundle, which is exacerbating, I would argue, death and destruction on an unprecedented scale.
00:21:43.000Let me know what you want to see when we come off YouTube.
00:21:45.000The skyrocketing demand for panic rooms.
00:21:55.000Or would you like to see Dr. Drew discussing myocarditis?
00:21:59.000First, one for panic rooms, two for Dr. Drew.
00:22:02.000Let me know as well how you feel about this Hillary Clinton.
00:22:06.000and shouting match. We just started to watch this and let me know too if you want to see,
00:22:10.000I'm wondering whether we should go straight to Neil Oliver or whether or not we should show our
00:22:15.000keys and news but I'll ask you that in a little second. I just want to make sure you guys are
00:22:18.000in absolute control of what we're doing. I would say the Institute of Global Politics,
00:22:29.000even as a name, tells you a little too much about what's happening.
00:22:33.000What you want is regionalised, decentralised politics, federalism, maximum amount of democracy, not an elite establishment march, decentralising power and introducing authoritarianism wherever possible by introducing crisis wherever possible so people are in a total state of fear and dread and unable to think straight.
00:22:52.000I'm not sorry. You sit down and we're gonna let other people talk.
00:23:06.000A leading civil rights organizer who is
00:23:13.000President Joe Biden is calling for a hundred billion dollars of funding for Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine and we're supposed to just bundle these together and pretend like we're gonna rush to World War III and we're all just gonna let Hillary Rodham Clinton sit here.
00:24:27.000There is so much pee in the chat that the Democrats will tell you that it's raining down on Donald Trump from a Russian sex worker and try and create a hoax out of it!
00:25:46.000So Frank, I want to turn to you because...
00:25:49.000We are not just turning to Frank at a time like this.
00:25:51.000A lot of people in the rumble chat concerned for that young man.
00:25:55.000But like, yeah, I think, do, I would say, make a video right now saying, I'm in good mental health, I feel pretty optimistic about the future.
00:26:03.000Sadly, that young man was found in... You can finish that sentence, guys.
00:26:08.000You are from Uganda, and Uganda is 2023.
00:28:23.000Okay listen, you lot want to see the myocarditis clip?
00:28:27.000Of course you want to see the myocarditis clip!
00:28:29.000We're going to have to leave YouTube to do that and straight after that we're going to talk to our dear beloved friend Neil Oliver who's a fantastic pundit, truth teller, he's got some fantastic perspectives that you are going to want to hear.
00:28:43.000So if you're watching this on YouTube right now there's a link In fact, that young man, we should find that guy because he would love this video and I don't think he'll be shouting throughout here because I agree.
00:30:01.000And the problem is that we're waging war around the world.
00:30:05.000We're waging war against one another when if we were smart, Just for a second, we would recognize we have more in common with one another than we do with the establishment elites that pull the strings, guide, govern, and control us.
00:30:21.000Okay, let's have a look at Dr. Drew on myocarditis, which apparently is a side effect of a certain little very popular injection that had a good PR campaign not long ago.
00:30:32.000They saved lives in the Middle East, and in this country, safe rooms are now becoming popular.
00:31:18.000That means that we don't know what percentage are going to be disabled by this as they get older, are going to develop heart failure, are going to need cardiac transplants, some of them.
00:31:46.000And I think, put your legal head on for a second, that universities are going to be in big trouble for having mandated young people to get that vaccine.
00:32:28.000Let them know on X. Give them a still of the two of us together.
00:32:31.000And those of you that are watching us now in Rumble or in our locals community, please welcome from GB News, my new friend, And potential sort of doppelganger cousin in a pastoral wonderland, Neil Oliver.
00:32:59.000Yeah, well, what it is, Russell, is we're at a point of crisis.
00:33:02.000You've got a lovely little Scottish accent.
00:33:04.000Neil, mate, can you tell us Why do you think people are unable to appropriately respond to what seems to be a kind of omnicrisis, an all-immersive, total surrounding nightmare?
00:33:22.000I think, in essence, it's too big for a lot of people to contemplate.
00:33:27.000I think to embrace the scale of the problem involves people in being prepared to set aside the way they've perceived the world, the way they've understood the relationship with the state, the way they've understood the role of science and the obligations that the institutions have towards us, that symbiotic relationship that's supposed to be there.
00:33:51.000And because it's too much, many, many people who have a great deal of a sense of self invested in, you know, that they believe that they understand, they believe they've read enough, they believe they're, you know, in control of the facts and the data, and to contemplate that they might have had it wrong, that they might have been duped, fooled, tricked.
00:34:12.000And, you know, there's there are, well, there's historical, not exactly historical precedent, but when it came to when the when the ships of the of Europe were encountering the New World, and it's partly apocryphal, but the story goes that when, say, Columbus's ships appeared in the Americas or when Captain Cook's Endeavour arrived in Australia, There are various stories that circulate that the indigenous people didn't even look up at the arrival of these enormous ships.
00:34:42.000Now, it all comes really from a diary entry by Joseph Banks, probably Cook's botanist.
00:34:48.000But nonetheless, the idea that's pushed is that it was too much for them to take on.
00:34:53.000And so they simply pretended that the ships weren't there.
00:34:56.000Now, apocryphal or not, I think it's illustrative.
00:34:59.000of the idea that sometimes something is too big for people to be willing to comprehend it.
00:35:05.000And I think, perhaps counter to the way you might think, it's the cleverest people, the people who consider themselves the most educated and the most experienced and the wisest, that struggle to allow for the possibility that they might have to rethink their understanding of society, even of reality.
00:35:22.000Yes, it's an incredible invitation, and a terrifying one, to have a personal awakening induced of that scale, Neil.
00:35:32.000And I love your use of that, albeit potentially apocryphal tale, that what's appearing on the horizon of our life is so inconceivably large, so extraordinary, and represents such a disruption, that unless you're a sort of a cynical and sceptical person, and I know many of our awakened wonders, and many of our friends in the rumble chat are, You know, my default position towards authority, Neil, is I don't trust authority.
00:35:57.000That meant that for a while I was considered sort of a left-wing person because I don't trust authority and my natural alliances used to be on the left.
00:36:05.000It seems now that a lot of people think I'm a conspiracy theorist or a right-wing, but really my position hasn't changed.
00:36:12.000Now, I had a conversation with Jordan Peterson the other day, which will be available on Locals in a couple of days, actually, and you'll love it.
00:36:19.000And I talked about, you know, it's sort of obviously a That's a very well-worn idea.
00:36:23.000The idea that in a secular or post-religious order, the role of God or the organising principle is taken by the state.
00:36:33.000So to sort of disavow the state becomes a kind of heresy.
00:36:37.000Earlier we showed a clip where we talked about the politicisation of Covid, wearing masks, being a badge of honour, getting booster shots, Almost like some kind of pharmaceutical communion, like some ongoing doubling down on your allegiance to a particular ideology.
00:36:54.000Do you think that part of the reason people can't have a real reckoning around the pandemic era and what it has revealed, authoritarianism, a desire for surveillance, a tendency towards censorship, a plain Do you think it's because a kind of religious sense has been grafted onto the public political consciousness, Neil?
00:37:20.000I think experience of looking back at the last few hundred years seems to suggest that in doing away with God, in doing away with religiosity and ridiculing and setting aside faith in the West, has not been helpful.
00:37:41.000And I think it's demonstrable by the fact that Into the space left behind by religion is pulled some other zombie, parasitic replacement for faith in the transcendent.
00:37:57.000You know, I think it's undeniable that many people, perhaps most people, have a sense of the transcendent, however they might express it.
00:38:05.000You know, the thirst that from the soul doth rise, doth ask a drink divine, said the poet.
00:38:10.000And where true religion is taken away, something else takes its place.
00:38:13.000And I think we saw during the Covid debacle, I think we saw a religiosity around the way all of it was pushed.
00:38:21.000And so you had a dress code, you had people having to wear face masks because that was part of the appearance that enabled people to demonstrate that they were good people.
00:38:32.000I am wearing a mask because I am one of the good guys.
00:38:35.000When it came to the products that were pushed as vaccines, it was almost like taking communion.
00:38:42.000It was like an ersatz, Eucharist, where people didn't just take the vaccine, they wanted to be seen to take those products.
00:38:50.000And so they were posting pictures of themselves receiving the injection and showing their vaccination cards and all of the rest of it.
00:38:56.000There were good scientists and bad scientists, which is a replacement for the priests and the heretics, But there was undoubtedly a religiosity about it.
00:39:05.000And I think it demonstrated that in the absence of faith, in the absence of religion, something else, something less worthy and something ultimately less helpful gets pulled into the void.
00:39:17.000I think it seems to me at least significant that one component of it is an ongoing demonstration of allegiance.
00:39:25.000I've noted with interest this rising fear in our culture.
00:39:30.000Fear, anger, desire, primal emotions, a tendency to throw onto the other the kind of shadow qualities of every individual.
00:39:41.000It's extraordinary to see a kind of what seems to be a sort of a scent of evil.
00:39:47.000It appears too that the kind of comfortable idea that our culture, the sort of we of the West, are the good guys, seems to be under question.
00:39:59.000Neil, I understand that you and I share an opinion that potentially even history itself has been mistold, even recent events.
00:40:08.000This might seem a little highfalutin and even a little fudge, but because of the potential that at the end of the Second World War significant numbers of Nazi scientists took roles within NASA, for example, is it possible that Somehow there is a kind of a ghost of evil, transcendent of nation, moving from territory to territory.
00:40:30.000I mean, is this what globalism really is?
00:40:33.000Corporate elites, alliances that transcend either religion, corporate affiliation, national affiliation, and other examples of that through history, a kind of I don't want to get into the realm of conspiracy theory, certainly not on the basis of anything other than economic interests and interests of dominion.
00:40:54.000But do you feel that that's a possibility?
00:40:57.000That we are no longer on the side of righteousness, potentially because we're being marshaled by forces that are not easy to observe within conventional history?
00:41:07.000I have, over the last few years, begun to open myself up to the possibility that Well, as you say, since perhaps the end of the Second World War.
00:41:17.000I think if the West were the good guys, I've begun to question whether or not we still are.
00:41:25.000And I think possibly our goodness began to wane in the years following the end of the Second World War.
00:41:30.000I think to some extent it might have been because there was an open goal You know, America in particular, the West, had an opportunity to be predominant.
00:41:40.000And I think there was a temptation that came with that to exploit opportunities to make money.
00:41:45.000I think the rest of the 20th century and the prosecution of one war after another, I think when I look at it now, I contemplate the possibility that it was increasingly because it was the opportunity for profit that was driving a lot of that.
00:41:59.000We talk all the time about the military-industrial complex.
00:42:04.000I've even begun to wonder at the extent to which we're told the truth about exactly who won the war and how.
00:42:13.000You know, you talk about Operation Paperclip when the Americans uplifted a lot of Nazi scientists and transplanted them into the United States, and a lot of those people took up positions of influence in esteemed universities and other places of influence.
00:42:30.000I'm minded of that, you know, the line from The Usual Suspects, the thing about, you know, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was persuading the world he didn't exist.
00:42:37.000I do wonder at the extent to which some of the evil that was there in the 30s and the 40s just managed to disappear out of sight without actually being expunged or cleared away once and for all.
00:42:50.000I think to some extent it has been there ever since.
00:42:55.000But it's part of that coming to terms with the possibility that you might have to reengineer your understanding of the world around you is to contemplate that, you know, perhaps that notion that the West, the United States are and have always been the good guys.
00:43:13.000I think that's definitely under question now.
00:43:18.000I share the discomfort in having to go through that.
00:43:21.000And once again, I say, I think that's why so many people won't even begin to take one step On to that kind of staircase of disbelief and begin to contemplate the possibility that the way they've understood and perceived the world might need a radical rethink.
00:43:35.000Yeah, because that staircase of disbelief, I wonder if it's an ascendancy like Ezekiel or a descent like the dude with the harp, you know, who goes Orpheus.
00:43:48.000You know, because what I feel, Neil, is that in a way we have to start considering a completely different understanding of reality.
00:43:59.000Seems that individualism Rationalism, materialism, progressivism.
00:44:06.000And I don't actually just mean cultural progressivism in terms of different forms of identity.
00:44:11.000I mean the idea that there is a teleology for humanity.
00:44:16.000That we are wealthier than our grandparents and you've got this new gadgetry.
00:44:22.000It seems to me that something is being obscured from us.
00:44:31.000Some hidden mystery that might yet unify us?
00:44:35.000Is it as simple as the fact that we've become detached from our anthropological conditions as creatures that might live harmonized in localized tribes rather than gathered together corralled in herds of 30 million, 300 million, 60 million with a centralized Dictatorial authoritarian government dispatching medicines and fake news and keeping us dumb and sugared up and screen-fed and fat.
00:45:05.000You know, do you feel sometimes that there needs to be a philosophical shift that's difficult, obviously, to contemplate from within the limited position we now find ourselves?
00:45:16.000Because this ascent or descent that you're referring to He said, you know, how does the unenlightened mind become enlightened, Neil?
00:45:26.000I think to some extent, I think part of the problem is that as a species, I think we are forgetful.
00:45:35.000And I think we have a tendency to a kind of, you know, cultural Alzheimer's.
00:45:40.000I don't think our collective memory goes back very far, maybe just a few generations.
00:45:47.000And beyond that, we're dependent upon the history books or the accounts of history.
00:45:51.000And, you know, the whole, all the caveats about history being written by the victors always applies there.
00:45:57.000And so I think we're a forgetful species.
00:46:00.000You know, Henri Bergson, the philosopher, said it's the function of the brain to enable us not to remember, but to forget.
00:46:06.000I think we are always in the process as individuals and collectively of forgetting what actually happened.
00:46:12.000And so I think we need periodically to be reminded or to remind each other of what really matters and when you look back through history you can see you can note the appearance time and time again of particularly bright lights who sought one way or another to say the same thing you know and i'm talking here about people like jesus christ or about the buddha uh or even about even about someone like mahatma gandhi who tended to stress the importance the inviolability of the individual
00:46:44.000And that ultimately everything comes back to us having faith in ourselves as individuals.
00:46:51.000And part of that is being prepared to take responsibility for what we each can do and the change that we can each affect.
00:47:06.000And you see society reminding itself of that over and over again.
00:47:10.000You know, in 1215, when Magna Carta was written in England, it wasn't actually coming up with anything new.
00:47:18.000On the contrary, it was restating ideas and truths that had come from a time immemorial.
00:47:24.000And it centered on the importance of the individual.
00:47:28.000And that's why it restated the idea that every man from the king down to the to the lowliest commoner was entitled to trial by jury, because a trial by a jury of your peers was regarded as being the way in which the guilt or innocence of an individual.
00:47:46.000That wasn't the only thing being tested.
00:47:51.000And it's why what was enshrined in trial by jury in Magna Carta was that it ultimately came down to the individual.
00:47:58.000So that rather than majority verdicts in the original juries, if you had someone being tried and let's say 11 of the 12 said guilty, but one man, one person said not guilty, then the judgment of that jury was not guilty.
00:48:15.000So that it enshrined in the importance of trial by jury that ultimately it was the conscience of the individual that carried the weight.
00:48:25.000Now, that's a fundamentally important concept.
00:48:28.000You see it again in 1776 in the Declaration of Independence in the United States.
00:48:35.000It's careful, the founding fathers were careful once again to remind themselves and the society they were trying to build that it's not about the majority necessarily.
00:48:45.000Ultimately, it's about the individual conscience It's the thinking individual that makes all the difference.
00:48:53.000That's why there is a danger, actually, in allowing always for a majority verdict, or waiting for a democratic decision, as we've been tricked as a population into a consensus of false belief that the majority is always right.
00:49:10.000Because if the last three years have shown us anything at all, it's that on the contrary, it's often, possibly always, a minority, a determined, honest, passionate minority that is actually able to stand in the face of the majority and say, this is wrong.
00:49:29.000There is a better way, there's an alternative way and it's minorities and indeed ultimately the individuals down through history that have made the difference, that have changed the course of society and civilization and we need periodically to be reminded of that and to remind each other of that because we are a forgetful species.
00:49:50.000Neil, that's such a beautiful appraisal of the role of the individual and the potential of the individual that seems both arcane and progressive simultaneously, a kind of principle that we might organize around And I think you're right that the assumption that the majority by virtue of the cargo carried in the mass are correct is again and again demonstrated to be untrue in your example of the last three years.
00:50:25.000Sometimes I think, I love Jesus Christ, but I sometimes think it is the utility of Christianity that allowed its ascendancy, particularly, you know, in a post-Constantine sense, when it became the religion of the state, shall we say, of the Empire.
00:50:43.000And perhaps a comparable thing might be true Of democracy, that whilst in a sense when organizing a small community, what principles are available to you?
00:50:55.000Benign dictatorship, wise elders, elders that are in a position of service that lead through sacrifice and selflessness, that can of course take place.
00:51:06.000In a decentralized and localized model that would certainly be more in tune with how we live for tens of thousands of years and, wow, perhaps a hell of a lot longer if some commentators and, let's say, radical historians is to be believed.
00:51:22.000And when it comes to democracy, as with Christianity, I wonder if it somehow serves as an edifice behind which corruption can operate, i.e.
00:51:31.000what kind of democracy can you have in a centralised nation of 300 million people?
00:51:38.000As we've seen in the last few election cycles in America, you've just got 50% or just under of the population agitated and infuriated.
00:51:48.000It seems like the process of centralisation itself, which is of course entirely at odds and absolutely opposite to the power of the individual, is a big part of the problem.
00:51:59.000I wonder if you consider, Neil, that democracy is anything but democratic.
00:52:05.000It's a kind of I think, I say again, the powers that be have managed to generate a consensus of false belief.
00:52:20.000We think we understand what democracy is, but it's been reduced to us believing that it's a vote, a single vote, every four or five years.
00:52:32.000And that is actually, it's almost the antithesis of democracy.
00:52:36.000And I say again, it comes back to acknowledging and respecting the power of the individual, the one in the face of the many.
00:52:48.000You know, this idea that the majority has to be believed and that the majority has to get its way every time can can also be quite pernicious.
00:53:00.000And that's why I think it is worth repeating that the idea for many people, the idea of trial by jury, it seems quite Esoteric or a side issue in a way because of the way we've been taught to think of jury trial.
00:53:16.000The fact remains that 90 odd percent of jury trials now are by magistrates court.
00:53:25.000And even where they are, a majority verdict now is taken as being the decision of the jury.
00:53:32.000But in its original iteration, it was always deferring to the individual.
00:53:38.000So, as I say, one against 11 would still have been the vote that carried for that jury.
00:53:43.000And it's because it emphasises and stresses that ultimately it's individual conscience that makes all of the difference.
00:53:51.000I mean, when you talk about the way in which Christianity and it becoming an edifice behind which
00:53:58.000corruption might hide. I would say that sadly for hundreds of years I think Christ's Christianity
00:54:04.000has been negated and traduced in many ways.
00:54:10.000I think what is often offered up as Christianity now would not really be what Jesus Christ meant when he preached, say, the Sermon on the Mount.
00:54:23.000How much of that do we actually see around us right now?
00:54:27.000You know, when so much of what we're hearing coming out of when people are commenting on the Middle East is about the justification for vengeance, an escalation of the violence, you know, a prioritising of one group's children over another.
00:54:43.000You know, how much of that sits comfortably, you know, with the kind of language that's there enshrined in the Sermon on the Mount, you know, about, you know, blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy and blessed are the peacekeepers, you know, and blessed are those who stand up for righteousness for righteousness' sake.
00:55:00.000You know, you're not really seeing a lot of that enacted around us at the moment, and it's greatly to our loss.
00:55:07.000You know, I think a lot of people out there who are supposed faith leaders for the Christian faith, the best thing they could do would be to convert to Christianity, you know, and actually begin to think again about what Christianity actually means.
00:55:25.000But yes, I think the most important thing I would say is that people feel powerless and understandably so.
00:55:35.000But the way in which you can begin to turn that back or push back against that feeling of hopelessness is to respect and remember the power that each of us has as individuals and that it comes with a great deal of personal responsibility.
00:55:50.000And as well as a lot of people maybe not wanting to contemplate the enormity of the problem that we face, you're turning their backs on it rather than confront it.
00:55:58.000You know, I think a lot of people also prefer not to contemplate the responsibility of being, you know, grown up.
00:56:07.000Independent individuals who take responsibility for their actions.
00:56:12.000That's curious that you equate that to a kind of infantilisation, that an unwillingness to take that first step onto the
00:56:19.000staircase, an inability to see the galleon of corruption on the
00:56:25.000horizon might be because we have had our personal autonomy reduced
00:56:31.000to the degree where we are treated like, and to a degree even feel like,
00:58:04.000He had a hard physical life, Eric Hoffer, before he became a writer.
00:58:08.000He'd been around the block and he'd seen some stuff.
00:58:13.000He pointed out that, in truth, freedom is more than a lot of people actually want.
00:58:22.000In reality, what a lot of people want, even if the thought wouldn't necessarily crystallise as clearly, and they might not say it out loud even if it did, is that what they want is freedom from freedom.
00:58:35.000That many, many people are happier in reality being told what to do.
00:58:41.000You know, you talk about an infantilising and conversely there's a desire to look to a leader and to look to someone, something paternal or maternal, to take away that personal responsibility and just tell you what to do.
00:58:56.000A lot of people, a lot of people have an instinct to be led and they really just want freedom from freedom.
00:59:04.000You know, because freedom can be an onerous responsibility.
00:59:08.000And yes, you know, we tell each other that we live in a materialist society or a consumerist society.
00:59:18.000And we've also given each other, I would say, a completely false idea of what happiness is.
00:59:24.000You know, people have increasingly been led to believe that happiness is abundance.
00:59:30.000You know, some is good, more is better and too much is just right.
00:59:34.000That the more stuff you can acquire, the more food you can eat, the more white goods you can have, the more mobile phones, the more cars and all of the rest of it is the route to happiness.
00:59:45.000And that is the antithesis of happiness, really.
00:59:49.000You know, so many people out there want medicated, they want to be given a pill to take away their dissatisfaction and they tell themselves that they're depressed and that they need all sorts of medical help because they're not happy.
01:00:05.000And it's because we've been miseducated about what happiness actually is.
01:00:10.000You know, and that's a really serious consideration.
01:00:13.000You know, I would say that happiness should really be something that we notice because it stands out in comparison to the rest of the texture of daily life that comes with ups and downs and sadness and challenge and adversity and all of the rest of it.
01:00:27.000And the moments when the sun unexpectedly or not breaks through the clouds, that's happiness.
01:00:33.000And that's how you can appreciate being happy, but it's only one of the textures of being human and alive.
01:00:39.000And, you know, Francis Hutcheson, the chair of moral philosophy at Glasgow University during the Scottish Enlightenment in the 1750s and 60s, and he preached that That happiness was not just some random gift from God.
01:00:52.000It didn't fall from heaven like manna onto the fortunate.
01:00:55.000On the contrary, it was to be worked for.
01:00:58.000He said that by dedicating all of your strength and all of your effort to making those around you happier, That the collateral benefit that you would enjoy would be that you would experience happiness by making by working so hard to make other people happy.
01:01:13.000And, you know, one of these students was John Witherspoon, who was invited eventually to become the second president of what is Princeton University.
01:01:23.000And he was one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence.
01:01:27.000And there's room for the possibility that the line about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness It came from John Witherspoon's Education at the Hands of Francis Hutchison.
01:01:41.000And once you embrace that idea, that happiness is actually to be pursued actively with every fibre of your being, in the form of working for other people's improvement, and the improvement of other people's circumstances, that that's what makes you happy.
01:02:00.000Then that turns on its head the materialist, consumerist idea of what it is to be happy.
01:02:07.000You know, we've been given a very one-dimensional, shallow to the point of almost being invisible and irrelevant, an idea of happiness.
01:02:19.000You know, happiness is a product of something much richer that takes in the rest of human experience.
01:02:25.000Neil, I love your analysis that the pursuit of happiness rather than the destination of happiness might have been the key part of that valuable enshrined idiom and part of deep American history and culture.
01:02:41.000It's like being in a magnesium bath of wisdom.
01:02:45.000I can only imagine how lovely it would be to actually be in a magnesium bath of wisdom with you while you espouse this gentle lilting philosophy.
01:02:54.000Neil, it's so kind of you to have joined us today.
01:03:09.000And his new book, we'll post a link to this, Hauntings.
01:03:12.000A book of ghosts and where I find them across 25 eerie British locations is out now and I'm going to work my way through those 25 locations.
01:03:21.000Neil, thank you so much for joining us today.
01:03:22.000I hope we get another opportunity to speak again soon because it's, for me, extremely soothing.
01:03:32.000I'll see you in the magnesium bath, Russell.
01:03:34.000That is our next stop, the magnesium bath, the two of us, because normally it's ice plunges for me, but from now on it's magnesium baths with Neil.
01:03:45.000Hey, on tomorrow's show, We're going to be joined by presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy for a fantastic conversation in which he reveals sort of how he's deeply feeling about this race, how it's going, about the sort of propagandist forces infiltrating the Republican system, about how campaign finances in the form of super PACs
01:04:11.000If you want to be a member of our AwakendWonder community, you get access to early interviews like the one with Vivek and the one with Jordan Peterson that's going to take the top of your head, clean off and fill your mind with all sorts of extraordinary questions from archetypes to global symbols.
01:04:29.000It's well worth joining locals just to get that in advance as well as being part of the Beautiful conversation with the likes of Victoria Rose and Claude and Janice Six and Miles Driver, a whole beautiful gang.
01:04:41.000If you want to become an Awakened Wonder, if you're interested in moving from criticising the problem, attacking the establishment and its many evident and obvious flaws, to creating new communities, new systems, finding ways where people that are so opposed to one another that it might cause war can find things to agree on, find ways to love one another and unite, become an Awakened Wonder right now.
01:05:03.000like flying Amazons. Flying Amazons, they've taken the first step on the ascendancy staircase like
01:05:09.000Ezekiel. Angel Foot, what better description? Georgia May One, Anita B Deep, Selvagio,
01:05:15.000they're all members of our community now. As you know, the ongoing global conflicts continue to
01:05:23.000escalate and in particular the conflagration between Israel and Palestine is devastating,
01:05:29.000particularly for people that are personally involved, but for all humanity. How would you
01:05:34.000feel if you were to discover that on legacy media, you're You're being given apparently expert opinion by people who have a vested interest in increasing the sales of weapons increasingly MSNBC CNN and the like
01:05:50.000Bring out people with strong financial ties to Raytheon, Boeing and Lockheed Martin and ask them, should we continue to have wars?
01:05:58.000Should we continue to kill each other?
01:06:10.000The horrific and escalating conflict in the Middle East continues to claim more human lives.
01:06:17.000So who do the legacy media turn to to get an unbiased perspective on that?
01:06:21.000Those patriots who have undisclosed ties to the military-industrial complex who will profit from this war.
01:06:30.000We need truth now more than ever, or at least as close as we can get to unbiased reporting.
01:06:35.000Like right now for example, let me tell you plainly, I do not profit from Raytheon or Lockheed Martin's actions.
01:06:41.000So when I talk about this horrific escalating conflict, the loss of human lives across the spectrum, the tragedy for people, no matter what your religious or spiritual alliances are, you know that I'm not making any money selling missiles and I think that's That gives me a degree of clarity that none of the people you're about to see that the legacy media turn to are able to offer you.
01:07:31.000I want to bring in Leon Panetta, formerly the U.S.
01:07:33.000Secretary of Defense under President Obama.
01:07:36.000Ambassador Dennis Ross, former special envoy to the Middle East.
01:07:39.000Former CIA director John Brennan, you've worked in national security, you've worked in the field.
01:07:44.000You'll notice that none of those people disclose their ties to those military industrial complex companies that take 50% of your tax dollar defense budget.
01:07:52.000Let's get into this in a little more depth.
01:07:54.000The world witnessed a modern high point of the American presidency when President Joe Biden visited and spoke in Israel on October 18th.
01:08:02.000At least that was the take offered by Jeremy Bash.
01:08:05.000National Security Analyst for the Liberal Cable News Network, MSNBC.
01:08:09.000It was absolutely the finest hour by any president I've seen in a long, long time, Bash said Wednesday on the show Deadline White House.
01:08:18.000Next, he suggested that Hamas may have directly targeted the Al-Ali Arab Hospital in the Gaza Strip, where an explosion killed hundreds of Palestinians last week.
01:08:28.000I wouldn't put it past them, given what their record is and their use of human shields, he said.
01:08:32.000As of now, experts are still trying to determine responsibility for the bombing.
01:08:37.000You are aware that this is perhaps the most contentious conflict in the world, maybe in world history.
01:08:43.000And uniquely at this time, it's come into a kind of conversational global crisis, where
01:08:49.000people are unable to communicate openly without feeling the pressure to take sides.
01:08:54.000Even making this content now, I know that some of you will want absolute support for
01:08:58.000Israel, others will want absolute support for Palestine.
01:09:01.000It's very difficult for us to offer you a take that's about the American military-industrial
01:09:06.000complex profiting from this conflict, potentially escalating this conflict, not because it's
01:09:12.000best for humanitarian reasons, patriotic reasons, reasons of alliance, the future of the Middle
01:09:16.000East, support for Israel, the best thing to do for the people of Gaza.
01:09:20.000No, what's possibly motivating a significant portion of the trajectory and agenda around how to handle this conflict are undisclosed ties to military-industrial complex organizations.
01:09:33.000And if that's not part of the story, Why are each of these pundits when they're on legacy media not saying I should tell you first of all I work with Raytheon.
01:09:41.000I should tell you first of all I work with Lockheed Martin.
01:09:44.000This conflict is complicated enough where everyone on social media feels a pressure to say I stand with X or I am against Y and actually really the truth is we are all human beings and And if there's one thing we can extract from this, shouldn't it be anybody profiting from this situation?
01:10:03.000A single missile being launched with the motivation being anything other than, well, this is what's best for world peace.
01:10:09.000This is what's best for the people of either this side or that side.
01:10:15.000And across social media spaces you will find people powerfully advocating for either side.
01:10:20.000You will find incredible pressure, let me know if you feel it too, to find a fealty, a strong sense of alliance with this side or that side.
01:10:29.000What we feel obliged to do, because we are really interested in finding a way out of this devastating, terrible conflict that is claiming human lives, Children being lost, devastation, murder, mayhem, whoever you are, whatever your alliance is, we feel that one thing we could do is look at people that claim to be speaking rationally when in fact they are advocating for profiteering without even disclosing it.
01:10:51.000The legacy media should not be showcasing the voices of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin without telling you plainly that's what they're doing.
01:10:59.000I would say more important than their opinion on how this crisis should be handled is what their relationship is with the Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, considering that these organisations spend millions lobbying and earn billions bombing.
01:11:12.000At no point did MSNBC mention that Bash who served as chief of staff at the Central Intelligence
01:11:17.000Agency in the Department of Defence in the Obama administration, leads a consulting firm that
01:11:22.000has reportedly worked for defence contracting giant Raytheon, which supplies missiles for
01:11:43.000Where I do feel qualified to pontificate is should Jeremy Bash, former CIA head, current member of consulting firm that reportedly works with Raytheon, be pretending to be, well not even neutral, Offering advocacy without declaring profiteering, which I think, if you take away your personal alliances, has informed almost every conflict in the last hundred years, and perhaps is the primary motivation for all wars.
01:12:10.000There is enough historic complexity in that region without the intercession of profiteering, without a legacy media not declaring their true motivation, true alliances, and where they're getting their information from.
01:12:23.000The episode is part of a broader recurring pattern in corporate TV news.
01:12:27.000In recent weeks, MSNBC, NBC, CNN and Fox News have regularly invited on former defence officials turned industry consultants to explain the conflict between Israel and Palestine without ever mentioning to viewers that these analysts may represent clients with a financial stake in matters
01:13:08.000That you have people in Congress investing in weapons firms during this conflict.
01:13:13.000The legacy media have people that work for weapons firms talking to you during the conflict.
01:13:18.000Do you think that's helping us to get an unbiased assessment?
01:13:21.000As we try to tiptoe through this tragedy, whose lives are being lost continually, unnecessarily, certainly it doesn't appear to be leading to a solution, one might argue, don't you want to ensure that the information you're getting is the best possible information from the best possible people?
01:13:37.000How else are we ever going to achieve anything other than endless ongoing war?
01:13:43.000I wonder if anyone would benefit from an endless ongoing war.
01:13:47.000I wonder if our intensity and willingness to take sides would benefit any of these interests that sell arms all around the world, often to both sides, turn up on your TV set, Advocating for war without declaring those investments, have a congress full of people that are supposed to be representing you while investing in those weapons companies, having accepted lobbying money from those weapons companies, while they work within a party that accepts donations from those weapons companies.
01:14:16.000Seems to me like a 360 dome that's worth interrogating.
01:14:20.000In the days after Hamas's attack on Israel, MSNBC had for a moment quietly taken three of its Muslim broadcasters out of the anchors chair since Hamas's attack on Israel.
01:14:31.000According to the online news outlet Semaphore.
01:14:33.000By contrast, the network has repeatedly brought on Bash, whom Biden last year pointed to an intelligence advisory board to contextualize the ongoing war to viewers.
01:15:34.000The networks have also been calling on some of Bashi's colleagues at the Washington DC-based consultant firm Beacon Global Strategies, where he is a managing director and partner.
01:15:43.000On a personal note, I feel somewhat offended that the mainstream media feel entitled to conduct moral witch hunts when in their own reporting and investigating, this is how they actually behave.
01:15:54.000While Beacon does not disclose its clients, the firm has worked with Raytheon, as well as the Israeli surveillance firm, NSO Group, according to reports from the New York Times.
01:16:03.000We can't continue to bring you complex and hopefully enjoyable, let me know in the chat, content like this without our supporters.
01:16:11.000And what incredible supporters we have.
01:16:19.000And thankfully, with this little guy, we could all stay connected together, potentially forever, because cell phones go down for hundreds of reasons, don't they?
01:16:26.000Unreliable little things, nicking all our data.
01:16:28.000But satellite phones will always work, because you're carrying your own personal cell tower with you everywhere you go.
01:17:48.000On October the 12th, Fox News interviewed Beacon Managing Director and Partner Michael Allen, who served as a top National Security Council official under President George W. Bush.
01:17:58.000CNN also interviewed Beacon Senior Counselor Leon Panetta, who served as CIA Director and Secretary of Defense under President Barack Obama.
01:18:07.000While we are all good as tribalized creatures with a deep, long, long history, perhaps longer than we ever imagined or history reports, have lived with natural alliances with groups that we feel affiliation because our survival and their survival are completely entwined, It's clear from that little list that whether you're Republican or Democrat, pro-Bush or pro-Obama, left or right, there's a little group of intersecting, crossing over folks, making a lot of money and making a lot of noise, generally advocating for further conflict on either and both sides, porously moving between media, defense, government, corporatization, effortlessly and endlessly.
01:18:50.000Meanwhile, down here in the dirge, We all sort of wave flags and squabble with one another about particular advocacy.
01:18:57.000And as I have said many times, I understand that if you are personally affected by this, of course, I'm in no position to judge your alliances.
01:19:07.000But surely we can agree that having a system where people profiteer and sit in different chairs in different hats advocating usually for more war and more expenditure isn't the best way to solve these heartbreaking global problems.
01:19:21.000Neither Fox nor CNN noted it was interviewing executives at Beacon and chose only to identify them by their former government titles.
01:19:30.000If your partner brought someone around there and said, oh this is my sister's friend Derek and didn't mention that they had had a long-lasting love affair with Derek, I'd say you mentioned that it was your sister's friend.
01:19:40.000What you didn't tell me is that you had a long relationship with them.
01:19:44.000Is it because you maybe thought that that would bias my impression of that person if you'd given us that one bit of information?
01:19:49.000Yeah, I thought I would keep that back.
01:19:51.000Let's not make this about that I went out with Derek, my sister's friend Derek.
01:19:54.000Telling you that someone's a government official and not mentioning that they've got strong ties to Raytheon and Lockheed Martin seems like a pretty deliberate choice to me, doesn't it?
01:20:05.000Oh, because then we'd think that the information that was given us was biased towards spending more money on, like, Raytheon products and Lockheed Martin products?
01:20:20.000So what should we make sure we include in our analysis of the situation?
01:20:23.000The potential that the war's not actually for the reason that they're saying it is, is probably for another reason, potentially for another reason.
01:20:29.000And finally, what the hell are we going to do about Derek?
01:20:32.000NBC's Israel News coverage has also relied on executives at WestExec Advisors, a defense industry consulting firm that was founded by former Obama administration officials, including Antony Blinken, who now serves as Biden's Secretary of State.
01:20:50.000Again, if you are connected to the loss of life in Gaza or the loss of life in Israel, you are in a tragic situation that I do not feel qualified to comment upon.
01:21:00.000But having people moving between administrations, moving between agencies, advocating for bombing, same as the free speech argument in a way, isn't it?
01:21:07.000Sometimes people go, do you know what we should do?
01:21:09.000Censor people that are saying something that I disagree with.
01:21:11.000And once in a while you think, yeah I'd love people, do you know what I'd like to see censored?
01:21:22.000The whole problem that we have in the world right now is no one's got any values, no one's got any principles, not when it comes to the top strata of governing the world.
01:21:30.000They will mouth the words of principles and values, but meanwhile, undisclosed connections to Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.
01:21:36.000Without transparency, without clarity, without a legacy media with values and principles, and let's face it, we don't have one, we're never going to navigate our way through this treacherous swamp.
01:21:45.000WestExec has advised the aerospace manufacturer Boeing, which provides GPS guidance bomb kits to Israel.
01:21:51.000According to American Prospect, WestExec has also represented the Israeli artificial intelligence company Windward, which provides surveillance on ships in real time.
01:22:00.000On October 15th, NBC's Meet the Press invited Ambassador Dennis Ross, a former special assistant to Obama and senior advisor at WestExec, to discuss why Israel has shifted its approach to Hamas and has been preparing to launch a ground invasion in Gaza.
01:22:14.000The news outlet did not note Ross' affiliation with WestExec.
01:22:18.000Let's make this for a moment about the legacy media.
01:22:21.000When they spend money and time investigating a particular phenomena or presenting a particular issue, do you follow the trajectory of where it's leading?
01:22:29.000Could that trajectory be attack dissenting voices, close down independent media?
01:22:34.000Because here, they've got an opportunity to do some investigating.
01:22:38.000This is coming from independent media, the reporting that we're using here.
01:22:41.000On CNN, NBC, the BBC, the New York Times, essentially what we understand as a legacy media, they're not saying, wait a minute, it seems that some of these voices that we're platforming and showcasing have a vested interest in particular outcomes that could be, I don't want to be cynical now, connected to profit, or dominion, or a unipolar strategy that would advance globalist interests.
01:23:12.000You cannot get objectivity from people that are vested in it.
01:23:16.000The reason they would never say, listen, sorry, before you tell us whether or not we should bomb someone or blow something up, just do you sell things that bomb people and blow people up?
01:23:25.000The reason they can't ask that question is because their affiliation with that is total.
01:23:30.000It's total enmeshment, total immersion.
01:23:32.000On October the 16th, former CIA director John Brennan, a principal at WestExec, appeared on MSNBC alongside Bash, the Beacon consultant.
01:23:41.000The interview was conducted by MSNBC host and former Biden White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who previously worked as a senior advisor at WestEx and also handled crisis communications for the Israeli facial recognition company Any Vision.
01:23:55.000Jen Psaki, Remember the number of times you saw Jen Psaki come out and say, yeah, this is what we're doing, and no, we're not able to answer that question, and this is what we believe about the pandemic, and Pfizer are doing their best, and this is what we believe, and this is our best information.
01:24:08.000That person represents a set of interests.
01:24:10.000You've just heard those interests listed.
01:24:12.000Jen Psaki's on, I think, MSNBC now doing like Inside with Jen Psaki.
01:24:28.000Get that out of your mind so you can see straight that you're being told you're having an agenda amplified that is not beneficial to you, is not beneficial to anything or anyone except the system itself.
01:24:40.000MSNBC did not mention any of these potentially relevant details.
01:24:45.000Let's revisit the package we saw at the beginning of this report, now knowing what affiliations each of these individuals have, and know how they don't mention it, and know how the legacy media, who I understand love doing big investigations, don't ask any of those questions.
01:25:01.000Jeremy, I thought this might be the most... Jeremy?
01:25:04.000Not just Jeremy, not your mate Jeremy from next door.
01:25:07.000That's Jeremy Bash with links to Raytheon.
01:25:10.000Significant foreign trip by US president in any recent moment.
01:25:15.000What's your thought on the importance of President Biden's trip?
01:25:20.000It's absolutely incredible that the Commander-in-Chief would travel all the way to a war zone to an ally.
01:25:25.000Okay, I suppose what he's focusing on is the bravery of Joe Biden traveling to an area where there is conflict.
01:25:32.000But what he's not saying is that he has ties to a consultancy firm that itself may be connected with Raytheon.
01:25:39.000That's the number one thing I want to know about that guy right now.
01:25:43.000I don't really care about anything else about him, do you?
01:26:52.000Took a while, and it took a lot of money, didn't it?
01:26:54.000It's interesting, there was a massive long war with Afghanistan, an expensive disastrous war with Iraq, actions in Yemen and Syria ongoing, all an absolute disaster.
01:27:04.000Unless, I suppose, you looked at it from the perspective of, say, Boeing, or Raytheon, or Lockheed Martin, then that was a kind of golden age.
01:27:46.000Let me say once more that the suffering of Israeli people and however they may emotionally and physically respond to that is beyond my comprehension.
01:27:53.000But what's within my comprehension is that dude works for WestExec and he just tied this issue to ISIS, which I don't think was in order to condemn the action severely, but to facilitate potential ongoing activity that will be profitable.
01:28:08.000Former CIA Director John Brennan, you've worked in national security, you've worked in the field.
01:28:13.000John Brennan, you've done a lot of things.
01:28:15.000Let me give you an exhaustive list of things that John Brennan's done.
01:28:18.000Well, he's done this great thing, and that great thing.
01:28:56.000But we're worried about, oh my god, there's people on both sides suffering, this is terrible, this is terrible, how do we... You can see that perspective, you can see that perspective.
01:29:03.000Well, here's another perspective from WestExec.
01:29:06.000They should have spent more money on tech.
01:29:22.000Or do you think we could go, hey, declare your interests.
01:29:25.000Stop presenting this as neutral information.
01:29:27.000Because how are we in this incredible, complex time that seems unmanageable, so complex and tangled that you can't even talk about it without risk of hurting somebody?
01:29:38.000How is it going to be resolved by having people that profit directly from a perpetuation of the situation being the only voices that you hear?
01:29:45.000Because this is such a contentious subject to even discuss, let's use an example from recent memory.
01:29:50.000During the pandemic, do you remember how many times legacy media broadcasters Got Albert Baller, CEO of Pfizer, onto the TV and said, like, so how great is the vaccine?
01:30:03.000And we're so glad that this effective vaccine has been born.
01:30:05.000Hope that the one you trialed is the one we're getting, by the way.
01:30:07.000But can you just tell us once more how you're not making any profit from this, like you said at the beginning?
01:30:12.000Oh, actually, we're going to make record profits.
01:30:14.000OK, I'm just going to put that on my notes as a journalist, along with some of the other information, just in case it comes relevant later.
01:30:23.000Many of the retired military leaders employed by the networks as paid contributors have secondary affiliations that are rarely if ever mentioned, leaving viewers in the dark about whose interests they're promoting.
01:30:37.000None of the leading networks, ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and MSNBC, makes a regular practice of announcing its military analysts' financial ties to the Pentagon, connections that could colour their on-air comments.
01:30:50.000Not only colour it, absolutely define it.
01:30:52.000Former military officials played a key role in promoting the Bush administration's policies before and after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
01:31:01.000This is how these matters are handled.
01:31:03.000As documented by the New York Times in 2008, the Pentagon orchestrated the commentary of 75 former officers who served Many of the retired officers who appeared on TV worked for companies that counted on military contracts, creating a built-in conflict that news organizations didn't mention when introducing the analysts.
01:31:17.000is to amplify and propagate the interests of the establishment.
01:31:42.000The larger issue is whether viewers or readers are adequately informed about where pundits are coming from on matters of life and death, said Mandy Smithberger, director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight.
01:31:55.000We ain't got time to investigate matters of life and death.
01:31:58.000We're too busy promoting Pfizer and war.
01:32:01.000I mean, the perfect situation for the legacy media would be one side throwing vaccines and the other one throwing bombs.
01:32:07.000Particularly if the vaccine side start taking that stuff.
01:32:09.000When there is so much public concern about these wars, including among veterans, it becomes that much more important for people to know what the financial connections are, she said.
01:32:18.000News organisations should absolutely disclose this.
01:32:21.000It could change the conversation around war, if people were aware of who was profiting from it.
01:32:27.000I don't know, does it change your perspective?
01:32:28.000Regardless if you are affiliated with a particular side in this terrible, terrible conflict, does knowing that people have an agenda beyond their declared, oh, we're doing what's right for America, our allies, or whatever the hell it is they're saying, does it help you have a better position?
01:32:44.000It helps me, I'll tell you that, in some ways.
01:32:46.000In other ways, it makes me so terrified about the nature of reality.
01:32:49.000I want to go and live on an island in space.
01:32:51.000Appearing on Fox News the week of Joe Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan was retired four-star general Jack Keane.
01:32:58.000What neither Keane nor the host mentioned is that he is more than merely a patriotic interest in the continued occupation.
01:33:29.000That think tank is only thinking thoughts that leads to profit.
01:33:32.000What are you thinking now in the old tank?
01:33:34.000I'm thinking we should spend some more money on this tank and have them everywhere all over the world, all the time, like in Afghanistan, in unwinnable perpetuated wars.
01:34:01.000Keen was just one of a parade of ex-military and ex-public officials who appeared on cable news that week.
01:34:06.000Jim Narakis, an editor of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, or FAIR, a progressive media watchdog, said such conflicts of interest put a premium on potential atrocities over existing ones.
01:34:17.000The imaginary future bloodshed of the Taliban has so much more emotional weight in the coverage than the actual people who have been killed by the US in the last 20 years, he said.
01:34:26.000There's a symbiotic relationship between media outlets who need sources, the weapons industry that needs favourable news coverage, and the former military officials who need jobs, and it all works together.
01:34:37.000It all works together incredibly well.
01:34:39.000So well, in fact, that we, the people, have an obligation to look at this information with a degree of objectivity.
01:34:45.000Again, I'm not talking to those of you that are emotionally affected by this terrible conflict.
01:34:51.000To expect objectivity of you at a time like this would be absurd.
01:34:55.000For the rest of us, though, that are taking sides due to various social, cultural, online pressures, perhaps we could incorporate into our understanding and potential biases that there There are some serious biased voices out there being presented to you as news by legacy news media that elsewhere likes to present themselves as real investigators getting to the truth, getting to the bottom of all these mysteries like it's Scooby-Doo and the guys in the back of a van.
01:35:19.000When in fact what they are doing is amplifying the messaging of people that profit from conflict
01:35:25.000without due regard or the necessary respect for those of you and those of us that are
01:35:50.000And all the better if it generates crisis, conflict, argument, confusion, bafflement
01:35:55.000and despair among the population who are forced to find a way to pick sides, to post the correct
01:36:01.000post, who can't think straight even if they're not actually directly affected religiously,
01:36:05.000ideologically or nationally by the conflict, having to show alliance and allegiance.
01:36:10.000Meanwhile, the true power continues undeclared Unaffected, able to profit, not asked the relevant questions by a legacy media who claim authority when in my view they should have none.
01:36:24.000Why don't you let me know what you think in the chat.
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