Stay Free - Russel Brand - Xmas Special: We’re All F*cked! - #051 - Stay Free with Russell Brand

00:00:00.000 You You

00:01:14.000 Brought to you by I'm looking for

00:01:29.000 Oh, I took a cold steal. Oh, I took a cold steal.

00:01:32.000 In this video, you're going to see the two turtles.

00:01:45.000 Hey, hello, thanks for watching Stay Free with Russell Brand.

00:01:49.000 We talk about the news.

00:01:49.000 I'm in it.

00:01:50.000 We provide analysis.

00:01:51.000 We tell you stories that the news wouldn't tell you.

00:01:54.000 And then the stories that they do tell you, we give you a different perspective on them.

00:01:58.000 That's about it.

00:01:59.000 Other than that, we just try to focus on joy.

00:02:01.000 It's a better perspective, I think.

00:02:02.000 Better perspective.

00:02:03.000 You have a better perspective on reality.

00:02:05.000 For example, you know there's that conflict in Ukraine.

00:02:07.000 Who's really at war with Russia?

00:02:10.000 So we're sort of examining the idea of proxy war and in fact presenting you, I would say, a watertight case for there being a proxy war.

00:02:17.000 Open and shut.

00:02:18.000 Open it, then shut it again.

00:02:20.000 Shouldn't even bother to have opened it.

00:02:22.000 In our presentation, Here's the News, we're talking about microplastics that are going to make your nuts not work proper, and a new lab that's going to grow your baby for you, in scenes that look like they're out of the Matrix.

00:02:34.000 Baby factories. 0.96

00:02:35.000 They're not happening yet, but they're planning them.

00:02:37.000 I'm going to update you on the Stay Free Foundation, which is a foundation we've started to help junkies, alcoholics, and mentally ill people.

00:02:44.000 We're talking to Ken Klippenstein later.

00:02:47.000 He's one of those dudes breaking the Twitter files, and we're going to be talking about disinformation, misinformation, and in particular, this thing.

00:02:54.000 Do you know this bit?

00:02:55.000 This is one of the worst bits of all that Twitter files thing.

00:02:56.000 While they're distracting you with Elon Musk, is he a nice person?

00:02:59.000 Do you like him or not?

00:03:00.000 Well, no wonder they was bricking it about Twitter getting bought, innit?

00:03:03.000 Because look what's been revealed.

00:03:05.000 Twitter was like the playground of rabscallions.

00:03:08.000 They was lying, they were doing propaganda, and in addition to sort of like blacklisting things and kicking people off if they weren't into it, they also had this thing where they let the American government just type out what they wanted.

00:03:18.000 They would let it on.

00:03:19.000 It was called, what was it called?

00:03:20.000 White Bottoms.

00:03:21.000 I think that's it, yeah.

00:03:22.000 It's a White Bottom program. 0.83

00:03:23.000 We're going to get into it with a proper journalist, Ken Klippenstein, a bit later.

00:03:27.000 Professor Brad Evans is back on the show to do our book club, Books with Brad.

00:03:31.000 It's a Christmas Carol, which is by Charles Dickens.

00:03:33.000 It's fitting, isn't it?

00:03:34.000 Yeah, because it's Christmas and also it's a Dickensian hellscape.

00:03:37.000 Someone told me the other day that Charles Dickens reinstated Christmas and it was going out of favour and out of fashion.

00:03:42.000 It might have been Leon, the producer of the show.

00:03:44.000 I can't remember.

00:03:44.000 Anyway, hit rumble.

00:03:46.000 It helps us if you do that.

00:03:47.000 And now we're going to tell you... Should we get into the news right now?

00:03:50.000 I've told you what's coming up.

00:03:51.000 If you're watching this on YouTube, remember for the first 10 minutes we allude to what's going on.

00:03:55.000 We hint at it.

00:03:56.000 But after that 10 minutes when we're only available on Rumble, by George do I let some Trooves out.

00:04:01.000 I let them out, I blast them out.

00:04:03.000 Not like a... Every orifice.

00:04:05.000 I've put Trooves out, the Luxies out, the Bum, even out of the... 1.00

00:04:10.000 No, only after.

00:04:12.000 That's when warm jets of truth.

00:04:15.000 Sticky white truth.

00:04:17.000 What?

00:04:17.000 Oh.

00:04:18.000 I thought it was the yellow truth.

00:04:20.000 No, not piddly truth.

00:04:22.000 Not puddles of truth.

00:04:23.000 Truth all coming down your trousers, warm for a moment, shame for a lifetime.

00:04:27.000 Nice for a bit.

00:04:28.000 I like this bit.

00:04:28.000 Oh no, no, it's gone itchy.

00:04:30.000 Listen, we've got important things to tell you.

00:04:32.000 A holiday celebration in southern Ukraine.

00:04:32.000 Look at this.

00:04:35.000 Kids still need miracles.

00:04:36.000 One miracle would be if Boris Johnson hadn't gone to Ukraine and put Zelensky off doing a little peace deal with Putin, which the terms which Putin had said were acceptable.

00:04:45.000 Some of these kids asked Saint Nicholas, which is what they call Father Christmas, don't be confused, or Santa Claus, for iPhones.

00:04:52.000 Some asked for peace.

00:04:53.000 Which camp would you be?

00:04:55.000 Peace or...?

00:04:56.000 It's tricky, isn't it?

00:04:58.000 iPhones are good.

00:04:59.000 No doubt about it.

00:05:00.000 They're good.

00:05:00.000 They're a good device.

00:05:01.000 But peace... That's also good.

00:05:04.000 Once you've arrived at a state of peace, you don't need anything else.

00:05:06.000 Imagine you achieve peace.

00:05:07.000 Think of all the things you think you want.

00:05:08.000 You want the perfect partner, you want the perfect life, money, cars, whatever it is you're into.

00:05:12.000 But if you actually had peace already, then things don't matter anymore.

00:05:15.000 So if you can move your way to the limitless love that's within you, you'll be alright.

00:05:19.000 I'm not saying that these Ukrainian children in particular should be held responsible for that, because they're living in a terrifying war, aren't they?

00:05:24.000 God bless them.

00:05:25.000 Anyway, this one of these kids, Yevon Vorobyov, oh no, this is others, said Yevon Vorobyov, he's dressed as Father Christmas, asked for air defence.

00:05:34.000 Oh no, no, don't ask for a military system.

00:05:36.000 Some wanted clean water.

00:05:37.000 You'll get one anyway, because like I tell you what, Biden's doling out stuff left and right.

00:05:42.000 What else is going on over there?

00:05:44.000 We've said enough about those children's Christmas presents.

00:05:46.000 Oh, Zelensky is actually in America, remember?

00:05:48.000 I think he's on his way.

00:05:50.000 He's on his way there right now.

00:05:51.000 I wonder what he's going to be like over there.

00:05:51.000 Yeah.

00:05:53.000 Still in the hoodies, do you think?

00:05:54.000 I wonder what the flight's like.

00:05:56.000 First class business?

00:05:57.000 Movies?

00:05:58.000 Economy?

00:05:59.000 Military sort of jet?

00:06:00.000 Probably.

00:06:01.000 Military sort of jet?

00:06:02.000 Yeah, you've got to have good security on that, I would have thought.

00:06:05.000 Remember, we like Ukraine, love Ukraine, and just think that there's some skullduggery afoot.

00:06:10.000 During Zelensky's visit, Biden is to unveil a $2 billion military package that includes Patriot missiles.

00:06:16.000 Now that could irritate Russia.

00:06:18.000 As Vladimir Zelensky visits the U.S.

00:06:19.000 to address Congress and meet with Joe Biden, the U.S.

00:06:22.000 is expected to send misleadingly named precision bomb kits to Ukraine.

00:06:26.000 Is that not what they are?

00:06:27.000 Are they not that precise?

00:06:29.000 Yeah, they're not that precise, yeah, because you still have to drop them.

00:06:31.000 They are a bomb kit.

00:06:32.000 They are, but you have to drop them from planes, meaning, and it was quite tricky dropping things from planes in Russia.

00:06:37.000 Even dropping this pen from here, There's risk.

00:06:40.000 But like a bomb from a plane, all sorts can go wrong.

00:06:43.000 Moscow has deemed the planned shipment as a provocation warning of unpredictable consequences.

00:06:48.000 They do some interesting threats, I think, the Russians, don't they? 1.00

00:06:51.000 Unpredictable.

00:06:52.000 I don't know what I might do.

00:06:53.000 I'm crazy, baby.

00:06:55.000 I could do nothing.

00:06:56.000 I could pull down my trousers and pants.

00:06:58.000 I remember when Putin, all we used to think about was he takes a lot of pictures of himself with his top off.

00:07:02.000 On a horse.

00:07:03.000 On a horseback.

00:07:04.000 With a rifle.

00:07:05.000 I called him the only fans tyrant.

00:07:08.000 But now he's gone into much more, he's got terrible diseases and he's well into a war.

00:07:14.000 Washington does not want to be seen publicly giving the green light to Kiev attacking Russian soil.

00:07:18.000 Antony Blinken, Secretary of State in December, we have neither encouraged nor enabled the Ukrainians to strike inside of Russia.

00:07:23.000 But we've got a whole bunch of information that suggests that that's pretty far from the truth.

00:07:27.000 There's this $45 billion aid package coming in.

00:07:31.000 Can we see that list of the most egregious things they've done?

00:07:35.000 The interesting thing about this, Ross, is that America's now with this new 45 billion that it's sending to Ukraine, will have spent over a hundred billion on Ukraine aid, obviously including weapons.

00:07:46.000 And to put that into context, Russia's projected defense budget for 2023 is 84 billion.

00:07:50.000 So it's like America, the country who aren't supposedly in a war, certainly not in a proxy war, how dare you, have spent more than Russia.

00:07:58.000 Hold on, let me do some math.

00:07:59.000 Go on.

00:07:59.000 So America has spent more money on the war We're in a war, and they're not in it.

00:08:03.000 Then Russia, who have spent on the war, and Russia definitely are in the war. 0.70

00:08:07.000 No one in Russia is going, this isn't a war, we're just trying our hardest to make friends.

00:08:07.000 Yeah they are.

00:08:11.000 We're in a war, we want to win it, we want these territories back, we've got indigenous population there, NATO infringement, they've got their whole own narrative.

00:08:19.000 If you're in Russia, if you're a Russian dissident saying, I'm sick of Russia, that I'm part of, starting these wars, you've got your whole own tyranny that you oppose.

00:08:28.000 The only thing that I object to there is the deception, Gareth, that 100 billion has been spent by the US compared to 84 billion by Russia.

00:08:38.000 That's more!

00:08:39.000 And so, how are you not in a war?

00:08:42.000 Where's the list of war facts that we've got, where it's like the number of things they've done that make it like it is a war, really?

00:08:48.000 We can keep going.

00:08:49.000 Yeah, let's see them.

00:08:51.000 In an effort, wartime, oh yeah look, wartime procurement powers.

00:08:54.000 In an effort to expedite aid to Ukraine, lawmakers are relinquishing accountability measures to grant the Pentagon what have been characterized as wartime procurement measures.

00:09:02.000 That means they can do what they want.

00:09:03.000 These emergency authorities enable the Pentagon to deliver Ukraine more weapons faster.

00:09:09.000 That's extraordinary because they already don't pass audits, they already do pretty much what they want, they already give 50% of their budgets to the military-industrial complex, I hope I'm not oversimplifying this.

00:09:19.000 I'm just putting it into a language you can understand.

00:09:21.000 And I'm certainly not suggesting that Russia's actions, and Putin in particular, aren't baddies and that.

00:09:27.000 I'm just saying, look at this.

00:09:28.000 What have you learned lately?

00:09:29.000 Have you learned that there are often economic motivations for these type of actions?

00:09:34.000 Just think back last couple of years.

00:09:36.000 Let me know in the chat, let me know in the comments.

00:09:38.000 Do you think that the military-industrial complex are motivated primarily by Altruism, philanthropy, the higher things in life, the things that we should all be aspiring to as individuals, as members of communities and families, or do you think that the military-industrial complex is about selling weapons?

00:09:53.000 It's also setting a new precedent, isn't it?

00:09:55.000 The fact that you can invoke essentially emergency powers when you're not supposedly directly involved in a war just means that, I mean, what's the next use of the emergency powers?

00:10:05.000 It's a little bit like You could argue with Covid, or for example in Canada with the truckers, the way in which emergency powers were used to justify certain new powers.

00:10:15.000 This is where it intersects with culture, right?

00:10:16.000 Because if you could say it's an emergency that there's a war somewhere else, and actually in a way that'd be a nice thing.

00:10:21.000 Imagine if we actually did think that, oh my god there's a war somewhere, this is an emergency, let's stop it right away, right?

00:10:26.000 But like the evocation of those emergency powers is obviously for economic aid, to avoid checks and balances around weapon sales, that's what I think, or do you think?

00:10:34.000 Let me know in the chat.

00:10:35.000 Same as like, um, In Canada, they are legitimizing now their actions against them truckers by saying that they were violent because they were violent against the economy.

00:10:44.000 Language is being sort of used like a cookie dough and shaped to fit whatever purpose is required.

00:10:51.000 Brad Evans, when he comes in here, we'll ask him about that, won't we, Gareth?

00:10:53.000 That could be your Christmas question.

00:10:55.000 Threats to economic security was apparently one of the ways in which they're How dare you! 0.60

00:10:55.000 I'd love it, yeah. 0.60

00:10:59.000 How dare you threaten my economic security!

00:11:02.000 That's how much money we've got.

00:11:04.000 And because you've gone on strike to oppose actions, which is the only way working people can ever really oppose state power, our money's gone down a bit.

00:11:12.000 Yeah, that's defined as violence.

00:11:15.000 Right in my money sack!

00:11:16.000 Also, just a little fact for you.

00:11:17.000 I don't know if this is connected.

00:11:18.000 At least 20 federal lawmakers, all their spouses and dependent children, hold stock in Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, which manufacture the weapons going to Ukraine at the moment.

00:11:28.000 Would you like to see a law passed where Congress folk couldn't own stocks in the organisations that they regulate, like the Military-Industrial Complex?

00:11:37.000 Listen, we've got to come off YouTube now, all right?

00:11:39.000 So you've seen where we're going with this.

00:11:40.000 We're going to say, we're going to bloody well go out and start talking about establishment powers, centralised authority.

00:11:46.000 We're starting to start working it all out.

00:11:48.000 We've got proper journalists coming on here in a little bit, philosophers, everything.

00:11:51.000 They're all coming on.

00:11:52.000 So if you're watching this on YouTube now, That platform has been co-opted by mainstream media narratives.

00:11:58.000 Now get over onto Rumble!

00:12:01.000 I just think they're saying that Rumble is a conspiracy theory because they don't want you to know the truth.

00:12:04.000 We want you to know the truth.

00:12:06.000 You can't handle the truth, you can handle the truth. 0.54

00:12:09.000 Here, have dirty great lumps of the stuff over on Rumble.

00:12:12.000 We'll see you in a second.

00:12:13.000 And meanwhile, over here on Rumble, on our channel, Gareth, I'm really going to let rip now.

00:12:18.000 Go on, you go for it.

00:12:20.000 I noticed you moved the old... That's what I do.

00:12:22.000 I know that's when you get excited.

00:12:26.000 I take this breast and I shift it up a couple of gears. 1.00

00:12:29.000 Ken Klippenstein's coming on later, he's gonna... Tell us a thing or two.

00:12:33.000 Just two journalists...

00:12:34.000 Chowing down on the facts is what we'll be.

00:12:38.000 And before that we've got our presentation, here's the news, no here's the effing news.

00:12:41.000 But I think what we've pointed out is that actually America are sort of at war.

00:12:48.000 Procurement powers, that's basically an emergency, that's one thing they're doing.

00:12:51.000 What was the other thing we just said?

00:12:53.000 Spent more money than Russia.

00:12:54.000 That's not good luck.

00:12:56.000 Telling Ukraine to bomb them, giving them inside their territory. 0.99

00:12:59.000 Essentially a green light to use missiles.

00:13:02.000 They're saying, we're not saying do or we're not saying don't, but here are some missiles.

00:13:06.000 Here's some missiles.

00:13:07.000 Do what you want with him.

00:13:09.000 I'm going to look over there now.

00:13:11.000 Whatever you do with those missiles. 0.99

00:13:13.000 Absolutely ridiculous. 0.96

00:13:14.000 We've got Ken Klippenstein on the show with us. 0.82

00:13:17.000 Ken Klippenstein has come to prominence as he is one of the journalists that has broken this incredible, earth-shattering, Twitterphile story.

00:13:25.000 Not strictly true.

00:13:26.000 But he works with Lee Fang.

00:13:28.000 Lee Fang is one of the journalists who has.

00:13:30.000 He's mates with Lee Fang.

00:13:31.000 He is.

00:13:31.000 We've got someone on here because they're someone's mate.

00:13:34.000 Klippenstein, you're out!

00:13:36.000 No, he actually pre-empted this whole thing by saying that Facebook had a sneaky little portal that people were pushing stuff down.

00:13:42.000 Absolutely, yeah.

00:13:43.000 Think of it like Wonka's factory.

00:13:45.000 Yeah, he was the original.

00:13:46.000 He was the OG.

00:13:47.000 Ken Klippenstein.

00:13:47.000 Ken, hello.

00:13:48.000 We're calling you the OG.

00:13:50.000 Hello, Ken.

00:13:51.000 Hey, thanks for having me.

00:13:52.000 We're very happy to have you on, Ken.

00:13:54.000 Now, the latest spate of revelations off your mate, Lee Fang, suggests that not only have Twitter been deleting stuff off there that they didn't like, but they're also promoting things that they do like.

00:14:07.000 I wonder if you can tell us a little more about that, and perhaps also let us know how that aligns with your revelations about the Facebook, what I'm calling the naughty portal.

00:14:20.000 Yeah, I think that to put some context here, a lot of this goes back to 9-11, shortly after which the U.S.

00:14:26.000 government created the Department of Homeland Security.

00:14:29.000 People forget how young that agency is.

00:14:31.000 And this is the department that contains within it the largest number of law enforcement officials in the country.

00:14:37.000 So this was a huge development.

00:14:39.000 in the course of the U.S.

00:14:40.000 national security community.

00:14:42.000 And so after DHS was created, of course, their initial purview was to look at terrorism, do counterterrorism.

00:14:49.000 Now, you know, ISIS having been defeated, Al Qaeda having been largely defeated, they've moved on from that.

00:14:55.000 And I think that there's sort of a hammer in search of a nail and uh you know one thing that they've turned their attention to if you recall a lot of the content moderation stuff in terms of taking down posts um suspending accounts began with isis accounts so really the origins if you look at the dna of all this goes back to the war on terror

00:15:14.000 And so, you know, those groups having been defeated and their priorities having shifted, there's really a lot more of a focus domestically.

00:15:20.000 A lot of those practices have come home.

00:15:22.000 A lot of the extremism is being, you know, on the part of the intelligence community, which I spent a lot of my time talking to folks from that world.

00:15:30.000 They perceive the extremism threat now coming from within the United States.

00:15:36.000 And you know, the president gave a speech recently in which he was describing, you know, MAGA individuals as extremists.

00:15:42.000 They're not particularly secretive about this shift in their focus, but part of what that has brought about has been a You know, overwhelming focus on not just what they consider extremism, but thoughts that they consider extremist.

00:15:58.000 And so recently the Department of Homeland Security created what's called the MDM team.

00:16:03.000 It stands for misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation.

00:16:07.000 The language around this is evolving very rapidly.

00:16:10.000 And to explain what each of those are, misinformation is unintentional falsehoods, disinformation is intentional falsehoods, and malinformation, that's an interesting one.

00:16:18.000 The idea is that there's not anything expressly false, but the context is missing.

00:16:23.000 And so, you know, a concern that I have about that is that there's a lot of discretion in terms of how they determine, you know, is there sufficient context for what people are promoting.

00:16:33.000 But in any case, that was DHS's creation.

00:16:35.000 Now at the same time, FBI created something called the It was the Foreign Influence Task Force.

00:16:48.000 And so at the same time, in parallel to DHS, the FBI member of the intelligence community was also using this subcomponent of their agency to respond to what they think is the uptick in extremist Speech and a lot of this stuff began with the 2016 election, countering malign Russian influence, as they saw it.

00:17:07.000 But something people don't understand is that these things tend to evolve and grow and metastasize.

00:17:13.000 And by the time 2020 came around, the concern was COVID disinformation.

00:17:17.000 And now with Biden in office, it has moved to disinformation about the Afghanistan withdrawal, disinformation about racial justice movements.

00:17:24.000 And, you know, these things have a pretty political valence.

00:17:28.000 So I, you know, I think that there should be a debate around how this all is being pursued, and I'm grateful to the extent that the Twitter files have gotten people to continue to talk about these things and interrogate these notions of who's deciding what disinformation is, how are we defining this.

00:17:43.000 Terrifying that these agencies are ironically like Russian dolls begetting more and more agencies within themselves, more and more subsets of agencies with more and more particular powers.

00:17:56.000 And it's also curious the sort of creep of designation of this term terror.

00:18:04.000 Initially wars were fought against nations, then they're fought against radical individuals.

00:18:09.000 and then to the terror is brought home and then it's the war against germs and now it's the war of like this the

00:18:16.000 tone and timbre of communication in particular the third component of that misdismail seems incredibly open to misrepresentation

00:18:25.000 and one would say, misused rather, and one would say that you would want such tools to be wielded by, I can't even

00:18:33.000 conceive of an individual, I don't know, Christ?

00:18:36.000 But given that their own conduct is so dubious and inappropriate, how could they ever hope to enact those kind of powers amidst such hypocrisy?

00:18:45.000 Just a few of the stories like, you know, like Joe Biden's, the change in Biden's stance in Saudi Arabia, the ongoing revelations that Lee Fang made, and also the fact that these problems appear to be endemic and almost institutionalized, being functional rather than erroneous.

00:19:08.000 Mate, I can't imagine what sort of force can oppose such an entrenched and immersive corruption.

00:19:17.000 Do you feel a little bit like the Twitter files revelation is going to move things forward?

00:19:23.000 Or do you think that this is so staggering that it's kind of beyond opposition?

00:19:29.000 Well, to give you a sense, just on the human side, sources that I have in FBI, they were describing as recently as in 2020 to me, these are guys tasked with, you know, following foreign spies in foreign countries around tracking counterintelligence, it's called, trying to counter foreign governments' intelligence services, attempts to try to penetrate ours.

00:19:50.000 they described to me being reassigned from that kind of work to looking at Twitter accounts

00:19:55.000 that were posting what they described as sarcasm and ironic jokes and things and not really

00:20:01.000 appreciating that level of subtext, humor, and thinking that it's literal.

00:20:06.000 And they were really frustrated.

00:20:07.000 And by the way, a lot of these guys are not, by any stretch of the imagination, progressive

00:20:12.000 activists or anything.

00:20:13.000 They were just pissed off because they felt as though, you know, I signed up to follow

00:20:17.000 Russian spies or follow Chinese spies and try to help the country.

00:20:21.000 Why am I worrying about CommieKid69's obvious joke on Twitter that my boss doesn't understand is a joke?

00:20:29.000 And so this is something I heard from multiple people.

00:20:32.000 So there's been a huge resource shift away from what the intelligence community has traditionally done, whatever you think of that, towards this perceived domestic threat.

00:20:43.000 What's the implication of that?

00:20:44.000 If resources are being used to that degree, Ken, does that not suggest that it's something that's significant and important and that there's a kind of new emergent tyranny unfolding before our eyes?

00:20:56.000 Yeah, we're at the forefront of this, and I'm glad that the public discourse since my story and more significantly since the Twitter file story, because that's garnered a lot more interest.

00:21:08.000 Some of the attempts that people have made to try to downplay the trend that this type of reporting is trying to get at has said, oh, this is already known, it's already out there.

00:21:18.000 But knowledge is not a binary thing.

00:21:20.000 It's not like, well, technically it's in some obscure report somewhere that you can read about.

00:21:24.000 That's different from Ordinary, everyday people are having it articulated to them in a way that they can understand.

00:21:30.000 And that's really what's changed here.

00:21:31.000 Because to someone like me, who had been following this for years, yes, I could sense the... I could see the weather vane sort of turning and some of these trends happening.

00:21:41.000 But that doesn't mean that an ordinary person has the time to dig through all these obscure

00:21:45.000 reports, cultivate sources, and understand what it all means, because people just don't

00:21:50.000 have time for that.

00:21:51.000 So what's really changed, even if we grant that one could find out some of these things,

00:21:58.000 is that now it's a lot more accessible and it's critically in the public discourse in

00:22:03.000 a way that it just wasn't for years.

00:22:06.000 I suppose then, in addition to the reporting and the scope of the revelations that the

00:22:12.000 Twitter files represent, the very fact that a figure like Elon Musk, with his demonstrable

00:22:17.000 power, is willing to oppose these forces is very interesting.

00:22:23.000 Of course, for optimism, because it doesn't seem to be the type of topic that either political party is meaningfully going to, I suppose.

00:22:34.000 Do you start worrying that the right are the only people that are going to do anything about this?

00:22:39.000 Well, that's been one of the most frustrating parts of all of this has been the attempt to try to politicize what's going on because the agencies that I was sketching out for you before predated the Biden administration.

00:22:48.000 Now, that is not to defend the Biden administration in not stopping these things, but that's to say that a lot of what's taking place takes place at a bureaucratic level of unelected officials that staff these national security agencies and are not political appointees.

00:23:02.000 And furthermore, it may not even be something that people at the presidential level are particularly paying attention to.

00:23:07.000 Because, you know, when this was taking place, I mentioned the MDM team, which was created under the Trump administration.

00:23:13.000 Judging from Trump's public statements, he's not a fan of this kind of thing, but that doesn't necessarily mean that that's going to change the conduct of these national security agencies.

00:23:21.000 You know, I'm working on a story now about a key change to the FBI's handling of the terror watch list, returning to the theme that I was talking about before, you know, focusing more on domestic stuff.

00:23:34.000 You'll see this Come out shortly.

00:23:37.000 In researching that story, it became clear to me a lot of people in Congress and at different points of government that should know about this don't.

00:23:45.000 So this assumption that there's this monolith that's deciding all these things and Trump is responsible for this and Biden's responsible for that.

00:23:53.000 Maybe they should be because the buck stops at the president, but that doesn't mean that they know what's going on.

00:23:59.000 Or that they have control over what's going on.

00:24:01.000 I mean, there's a huge element in all this, which is that the national security state is able to do things ad hoc to an extent that I think is really frightening.

00:24:12.000 I think for a while as well, Ken, there's been a pervasive sense that these kind of

00:24:16.000 agencies have a power that's not usually within the remit of ordinary democratic procedures

00:24:24.000 that won't alter in accordance with the fluctuations in the White House in bipartisan or congressional

00:24:32.000 politics.

00:24:33.000 And isn't that a suggestion that in a way this power is rather deeply embedded?

00:24:40.000 And as it creeps and becomes more entrenched, as the ability to surveil, censor, control,

00:24:47.000 attention, and consciousness itself increases, the sort of kind of fears one hears hysterically

00:24:54.000 spoken of in the darker corners of the online world of conspiracy, globalism, unaccountable

00:25:01.000 centralized powers, corporatism that's beyond reproach, a military-industrial complex that

00:25:09.000 ultimately controls the trajectory of American foreign policy, all appear to be more legitimate.

00:25:15.000 Thank you.

00:25:16.000 Yeah, I think mission creep is the right way to put it, and that's what I try to articulate to people, because there's so much attempt to try to—I was talking to someone in the intelligence community, he was just laughing at the idea that this was a right or left thing, because he said, oh, that's great, that lets us off the hook.

00:25:30.000 Once you make it a Trump thing or a Biden thing, half the country can just write it off, and then you'll never get the critical massive support you need to reform these kind of things.

00:25:39.000 I'm not saying I don't have my own political views, of course I do, but I think it's more constructive and not to mention true to just look at this as a feature of this national security apparatus that exists and is going to exist regardless of who is in power.

00:25:57.000 If you look at their conduct around a lot of this, What's really striking about it is the lack of oversight that exists.

00:26:07.000 So if you talk about the intelligence community, to give you a sense of the oversight post-church committee that was put in place following the Watergate era and all those scandals that the CIA and the intelligence community was involved in, it's called the Gang of Eight.

00:26:21.000 They're briefed on a lot of these top-secret matters.

00:26:24.000 My understanding is they do get briefed on most of it, but the idea that eight people are going to oversee, again, All of these agencies with hundreds of thousands of personnel and huge numbers, you know, I was reading a book in which a very senior national security official told the interviewer, the only person that knows all of the special access programs, these are some of the most highly classified programs that the government engages in, the only person that knows all of them is God.

00:26:50.000 And that's not even a feature of the height.

00:26:53.000 It's not like they're hiding it from officials.

00:26:55.000 It's just that by design, the oversight is so small and so weak and has the responsibility over so much in terms of all these agencies and the personnel that they represent that there's no realistic way that they're going to be able to keep up with everything that's going on.

00:27:08.000 And that's a feature that I would really like to to draw people's attention to.

00:27:12.000 I mean, the intentional secrecy is one thing, and just the design of this huge system and the very small number of people policing it is such that they're going to be doing all sorts of things that the oversight officials aren't going to see.

00:27:27.000 To say nothing of all of the ethical compromises that exist as a consequence of these, it's called the gang of eight, the head of the Senate and the House, in the intelligence committees. They themselves are getting

00:27:41.000 money from a lot of national security contractors and things like that, just completely setting

00:27:45.000 that aside and assuming that there's no bias that exists there. It's still just, hey, guys, how

00:27:51.000 much are they going to be able to go through? These are the only guys that have the clearances

00:27:55.000 to see it. It's pretty almost marvelous what you describe, a kind of non-local, unaccountable

00:28:02.000 consciousness that's almost a precursor of the algorithms that we commonly understand

00:28:09.000 dictate online spaces, traffic and Trends, but in a, well, not a human form because it was just implied that it was almost in divine form.

00:28:20.000 Ken, when you're encountering this amount of information and a sort of almost a corruption that transcends even the possibility of legitimate scrutiny given that it is so discursive and atomized and difficult to track, how do you maintain what I consider to be quite a cheery and calm disposition?

00:28:43.000 I try not to take myself too seriously.

00:28:44.000 Something I always cringe at is when I see the Washington Post.

00:28:46.000 Democracy dies in darkness.

00:28:48.000 And it's like, guys, we're just regular people with a job that, you know, maybe puts us in touch with some horrible things, but it's like, we're just doing our best.

00:28:57.000 Like, I don't know.

00:28:59.000 I don't take myself seriously enough to get all worked up about it, I guess.

00:28:59.000 I don't know.

00:29:03.000 I get to take you so seriously, that's quite good.

00:29:05.000 I'm going to try that technique in my own investigative journalism, which I consider to be on a par with yours and Lee Fang's.

00:29:12.000 Ken, thank you so much.

00:29:13.000 My apologies for being confused about where you entered the narrative of these revelations around social media.

00:29:23.000 I'm afraid I'm something of a dilettante.

00:29:25.000 It's amazing to speak to you and thank you very much.

00:29:30.000 You can follow Ken on The Intercept and he's at Ken Klippenstein on Twitter if he hasn't been banned.

00:29:38.000 He might be because he seems to me like the sort of person who's a bit too jolly to just be going through life reporting.

00:29:44.000 You're supposed to be angry on Twitter.

00:29:47.000 You're supposed to get mad.

00:29:47.000 That's what it's for.

00:29:49.000 Get off! 0.99

00:29:50.000 One of them disillusioned CIA agents will sweep you off of there instead of doing a rear naked choke on a spy in an alley in Moscow.

00:29:59.000 It's a real come down.

00:30:02.000 Ken, thanks for coming on.

00:30:02.000 Thanks, man.

00:30:03.000 It's really lovely to speak with you.

00:30:05.000 Thank you for your time and expertise.

00:30:07.000 Thanks for having me.

00:30:07.000 See you, Ken.

00:30:08.000 Take care, mate.

00:30:09.000 Well, Gareth.

00:30:10.000 I hope you're satisfied.

00:30:12.000 Sorry about that.

00:30:13.000 I just wanted you to know before the interview.

00:30:16.000 What did you want me to say?

00:30:17.000 I think because I actually bear a lot of responsibility.

00:30:20.000 Total responsibility.

00:30:21.000 You're like them eight guys.

00:30:23.000 I am a lot like those eight guys.

00:30:24.000 Or even God.

00:30:26.000 Because I am actually just living life.

00:30:29.000 Sure.

00:30:30.000 Yeah.

00:30:31.000 It's because I'd said that his story was the precursor to the Twitter files.

00:30:35.000 Do you think I got a bit confused?

00:30:36.000 I just think you ignored the word precursor.

00:30:39.000 I always ignore that word.

00:30:40.000 I don't like it.

00:30:41.000 No, I didn't even feel confident using it.

00:30:43.000 Precursor?

00:30:44.000 That's a good word.

00:30:45.000 Right.

00:30:46.000 We've agreed on that then.

00:30:47.000 You should have said it a bit louder!

00:30:51.000 Okay, well, having moved from one groundbreaking, earth-shattering, revelatory conversation with Ken there, it's now time for a presentation on a particular news story that we choose, and then we do a bit of research on it.

00:31:05.000 Why are you looking at me like that, Paul?

00:31:06.000 No, no! 0.63

00:31:08.000 I thought you might be mentioning sperm or something. 0.76

00:31:10.000 I am gonna! 0.99

00:31:11.000 Microplastics be tumbling from the sky like what I call dirty, naughty little bits of sperm ruining snow. 0.99

00:31:20.000 They get in you, your nuts ain't gonna work right. 0.98

00:31:24.000 You didn't say you were a science major also!

00:31:26.000 Oh yeah!

00:31:27.000 Not only do I investigate in journal, I know all about littlest tiniest things and bloody great big things and their biochemical compounds.

00:31:34.000 I know all about it.

00:31:35.000 Yeah, these microplastics, mate, it's a worrying tale, but all the more concerning given that it leads us to a kind of Willy Wonka chocolate factories where they're making babies in little pods.

00:31:48.000 Really weird.

00:31:48.000 It's really weird.

00:31:49.000 It's going to crack you up.

00:31:49.000 You're going to love this.

00:31:50.000 It's going to make you nervous about the very air that you breathe.

00:31:52.000 Although we will find you some solutions for that.

00:31:54.000 Here's the news.

00:31:55.000 No, here's the effing news.

00:31:57.000 Thank you for choosing Fox News.

00:31:59.000 The news.

00:32:00.000 No, here's the effing news.

00:32:03.000 Microplastics falling down from the sky like Christmas snow, making us all nice and impotent and reducing our 0.78

00:32:03.000 testosterone and turning us into limp, neutered men. 0.78

00:32:13.000 The good news is, though, you'll soon be able to buy babies from factories.

00:32:16.000 Welcome to Planet Earth, everyone!

00:32:21.000 Microplastics are everywhere and they're ruining your ability to procreate. 0.57

00:32:25.000 Merry Christmas!

00:32:26.000 Researchers in Auckland have used advanced chemical analysis to calculate the amount of microplastic particles falling from the sky over the city equating it to 3 million plastic bottles each year.

00:32:36.000 While plastic waste is generally understood to be widespread across the land and seas, scientists have recently started to drill into the ways it can get swept up into the air to travel far and wide.

00:32:45.000 Stories just keep getting worse and worse, don't they?

00:32:47.000 Well, at least it doesn't lower your testosterone and turn you into a eunuch. 1.00

00:32:50.000 Oh, it does that as well.

00:32:51.000 A 2021 study shows that chemicals known as phthalates, a chemical element of microplastics, have been linked to health problems that have been detected in food from popular chains McDonald's, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Domino's, Taco Bell and Chipotle.

00:33:03.000 I wonder if these plastics are in any way connected to this?

00:33:07.000 Shanna Swan, Professor of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, documented how average sperm counts among Western men have more than halved in the past 40 years.

00:33:17.000 Do you ever feel that there's a broad globalist project to neuter and neutralise people and their reproductivity?

00:33:22.000 To make males into kind of eunuchs and create a world where people can't fight back and resist?

00:33:27.000 Let me know in the chat, let me know in the comments.

00:33:29.000 To turn everything into a commodity, to grow meat in laboratories, to get people to eat insects and surely they would never get people to buy babies from a factory.

00:33:37.000 Her research reveals that phthalates lower testosterone and so have the strongest influences on the male side, for example diminishing sperm count.

00:33:44.000 There's an onslaught on nature, almost our psychic nature and our biological nature, is being attacked by a system that sees us primarily as customers and doesn't want us to have any vitality, liberty, or ability to fight back.

00:33:56.000 If you follow the curve from 2017's sperm decline meta-analysis, it predicts that by 2045 we will have a median sperm count of zero.

00:34:03.000 That's the median, so some people might have one sperm. 0.98

00:34:05.000 It's speculative to extrapolate, but there is also no evidence that it's tapering off.

00:34:09.000 This means that most couples may have to use assisted reproduction.

00:34:12.000 Of course it could be argued that assisted reproduction creates yet another industry and turns another natural resource and process into something that can be profitable.

00:34:21.000 In 2017, scientists created a biobag that functioned as an artificial womb.

00:34:25.000 Ah, way back in the biobag we knew that you'd become a footballer.

00:34:28.000 And they used it to grow baby lamb.

00:34:30.000 Now a concept has been unveiled showing how the same could be done for humans.

00:34:34.000 But surely no one would ever do that.

00:34:36.000 Recent footage from Ectolife shows what childbirth might look like tomorrow.

00:34:40.000 This is a startling glimpse into what is 100% feasible and already Elon Musk has affirmed that Ectolife is viable and likely needed.

00:34:48.000 The best case scenario then is that the pollution they created and ultimately led to infertility will be utilized to create a new industry selling us babies instead of us having them at home.

00:34:59.000 The worst case scenario of course is an army of sentient cyborgs that will imprison us all in our homes.

00:35:06.000 You remember the Matrix?

00:35:07.000 Yeah, yeah, I remember thinking we shouldn't let that happen.

00:35:11.000 Oh, that we shouldn't?

00:35:12.000 Oh.

00:35:16.000 Introducing Ectolife, the world's first artificial womb facility, powered entirely by renewable energy. 0.99

00:35:24.000 If you want to know any further about your real life matrix baby factory, that energy better be renewable, because your fucking soul isn't. 0.95

00:35:31.000 Ectolife allows infertile couple to conceive a baby and become the true biological parents of their own offspring. 0.97

00:35:38.000 Perhaps it's why we live in times of delirium, where we're uncertain about how we're supposed to live and who we're supposed to be.

00:35:44.000 And to clarify, I believe that people should be able to express themselves however they want to and identify however they want to.

00:35:49.000 But the industrialization and technologization of the most natural processes that are afforded to us, I don't think is going to lead to a utopia.

00:35:58.000 When you look at this, do you think utopia's on its way?

00:36:04.000 I don't really feel that comfortable with a sushi bar where what's on the menu is little babies.

00:36:09.000 I'll have one brown one and two white ones, please.

00:36:12.000 Well done.

00:36:13.000 Each state-of-the-art lab can accommodate up to 400 growth pods or artificial wombs.

00:36:18.000 Choose whichever way you want to describe this hellscape.

00:36:21.000 Hmm, I think I'll go with growth pods.

00:36:24.000 Nice choice, sir.

00:36:25.000 Welcome to freedom.

00:36:26.000 Every pod is designed to replicate the exact conditions that exist inside the mother's uterus. 0.88

00:36:31.000 It's exactly like that.

00:36:33.000 You can't sort of digitally recreate the experience of someone else's beating heart and love.

00:36:38.000 And I know that some people actually believe that you can.

00:36:41.000 That this is all just a synthetic experience.

00:36:43.000 Absolutely devoid of spirit and that everything can be mechanised, materialised, rationalised, recreated through technology.

00:36:50.000 But what that will lead to, in my opinion, is the centralisation of more and more power and control and the loss of the most vital thing we have, our spirit.

00:36:57.000 Our ability to be human in all our fallibility and all our flaws.

00:37:00.000 We have lost our connection to nature and I feel that old ectolife there, perhaps with the best intentions in the world, might be doing the work of Satan.

00:37:08.000 A single building can incubate up to 30,000 lab-grown babies per year.

00:37:13.000 Listen, I love the concept, growing babies in a lab.

00:37:16.000 I love it.

00:37:16.000 What's not to love about all babies looking like little roast chickens, rotisserie chickens, all lined up in their little pods?

00:37:23.000 But is there enough babies in that lab? 0.98

00:37:25.000 Sir, there's up to 30,000.

00:37:26.000 Well, that's all I needed to know.

00:37:28.000 You have my money.

00:37:29.000 Ectolife allows your baby to develop in an infection-free environment.

00:37:33.000 Right, the heightened fear, pandemics, germs, disease.

00:37:36.000 You don't need to worry about that, ma'am.

00:37:38.000 We'll grow your baby in a germ-free and love-free environment.

00:37:42.000 Actually, the Matrix now.

00:37:43.000 I hope I'm not one of those babies like... 1.00

00:37:45.000 Fuck this! 1.00

00:37:46.000 I'm out of here! 1.00

00:37:47.000 Every growth pod features sensors that can monitor your baby's vital signs including heartbeat, temperature, blood pressure, breathing rate, and it's slow dawning realization that it's been entirely extracted from nature.

00:38:01.000 The artificial intelligence based system also monitors the physical features of your baby and reports any potential genetic abnormalities.

00:38:11.000 Hmm, them fingers is a bit stubby.

00:38:13.000 Straight to the lab, little buddy!

00:38:15.000 Ectolife growth pods feature internal speakers that play a wide range of words and music to your baby. 1.00

00:38:21.000 Fuck off. 1.00

00:38:22.000 What, are they gonna be super babies coming out speaking ancient Greek and being able to do calculus? 1.00

00:38:27.000 The bad news is you've all compromised your soul and allowed the world to become one kind of apple planet where everything's a commodity and we can have designer babies that we order.

00:38:36.000 The good news is, though, that your baby... Well, give it the clarinet. 1.00

00:38:39.000 This is gonna blow your fucking mind. 0.99

00:38:41.000 Ectolife improves your bonding experience with your baby thanks to a 360 degrees camera that's fitted inside your baby's growth pod. 0.99

00:38:49.000 The state offers you safety and the corporate world offers you convenience and there is no area into which they will not reach.

00:38:56.000 Surely we couldn't say that it would be more convenient to grow a baby in a lab that uses fertilizer as a kind of fuel than just naturally having your own babies.

00:39:06.000 Well I think we could say that because nobody's balls work anymore because of the raining down of microplastics.

00:39:11.000 Oh, no, well, we should say it then.

00:39:12.000 Through the app, you can choose the playlist that your baby listens to.

00:39:16.000 The app! 1.00

00:39:17.000 It's enough fucking trouble looking after the little bastards when they're born. 1.00

00:39:19.000 I don't want to be doing their playlists before. 1.00

00:39:22.000 You can also directly sing to your baby and make them familiar with your voice before birth.

00:39:28.000 I've given up my spirit and my soul for this!

00:39:34.000 Quiet, baby, or straight to the lab!

00:39:36.000 I'm afraid to say your baby was non-compliant.

00:39:38.000 We asked it to wear a mask, and I think it refused.

00:39:42.000 I couldn't understand it.

00:39:43.000 It was speaking in Mandarin, which is impressive, which is why it's all decided that we've had to flush it. 1.00

00:39:47.000 Our goal is to provide you with an intelligent offspring that truly reflects your smart choices.

00:39:54.000 Your smart choice is to extract yourself from reality.

00:39:57.000 What we're being offered now is progress and technology in place of spirit and acceptance.

00:40:01.000 That there's only so far that humanity can go and only so far that humanity should go.

00:40:06.000 That perhaps our focus will be harmony here on this planet.

00:40:09.000 Respect for one another.

00:40:10.000 A new relationship with nature where we don't regard it solely as a resource but something that we are symbiotically evolving with.

00:40:17.000 All of these evolutionary steps are impossible as long as we live under the auspices of corporatism and state kleptocracy.

00:40:25.000 As long as that's continuing, you're not going to be able to awaken to deep reality.

00:40:29.000 You're heading towards a future, if you're lucky, where you might be able to grow a baby down in the old Matrix Walmart.

00:40:35.000 In the worst case scenarios, you're going to be so poor that you will be either executed or starved.

00:40:40.000 With Ectolife, your baby will receive the best nutrients that can support their growth.

00:40:45.000 Each group of pods is connected to two central bioreactors.

00:40:49.000 Do you not worry that this could become corrupt?

00:40:52.000 Excellent, Smithers!

00:40:53.000 And now, to release the vampire gene!

00:40:55.000 The first bioreactor contains nutrients and oxygen.

00:40:59.000 Lovely, green, Hulk-spunk nutrients.

00:41:02.000 Which are supplied to your baby through an artificial umbilical cord.

00:41:05.000 What we've done is we've wrung out a shrek and we feed it straight into your baby's belly. 1.00

00:41:10.000 This bioreactor also contains a liquid solution that serves as the ambiotic fluid that surrounds babies in the mother's uterus.

00:41:18.000 And that bioreactor's got some nutrients in it that can synthesize long traditional connections to the Earth and your ancestors and your family and evolution itself and God and the human spirit and the complexity and suffering and pain that human beings have to learn to accommodate.

00:41:32.000 We actually didn't put that in there.

00:41:34.000 It made the green too brown.

00:41:35.000 Thanks to a system controlled by artificial intelligence, each baby receives custom nutrients tailored to their needs. 0.99

00:41:42.000 I was suspicious of AI when they said that they might let it drive a fucking cab. 0.98

00:41:46.000 They don't really, like, let it grow a big room full of babies. 0.99

00:41:50.000 Listen, I'm done about letting AI drive an Uber.

00:41:52.000 What if it goes wrong?

00:41:53.000 Crashes into someone's fence?

00:41:54.000 Now, that won't happen.

00:41:55.000 Oh, okay, then. 1.00

00:41:56.000 Well, why don't we let it grow 30,000 people for its little army of AI bastards? 1.00

00:42:00.000 Well, sir, it's already underway. 0.98

00:42:03.000 The second bioreactor is designed to eliminate any waste products produced by the babies.

00:42:08.000 As well as very naughty babies.

00:42:10.000 The artificial umbilical cord helps the babies to release their waste products into the second bioreactor. 0.99

00:42:15.000 Hopefully, those two things will never get mixed up, and we'll create an army of shit-eating babies that poop vitamin C. With ectolife, miscarriage and low sperm count are a thing of the past. 0.97

00:42:28.000 Well, they're a thing of the present because the same interests that will benefit from this created that problem. 1.00

00:42:33.000 Also, now you're a sterile, docile little drone who's happy to buy a baby from a factory that you visit once in a while and sing at like an idiot in an iPod commercial. 0.99

00:42:44.000 We've lost our souls. 0.98

00:42:46.000 Prior to placing the fertilized embryo of your baby inside the growth pod, in vitro fertilization is used to create and select the most viable and genetically superior embryo.

00:42:57.000 Genetically superior? 0.57

00:42:58.000 Have we been down this road before?

00:43:00.000 Something about genetic superiority rings a bell.

00:43:03.000 No, no, no.

00:43:04.000 I don't remember that being part of a dangerous ideology in the past at all.

00:43:07.000 Giving your baby a chance to develop without any biological hurdles.

00:43:11.000 And if you want your baby to stand out and have a brighter future, I do.

00:43:15.000 Tell me how to do it.

00:43:16.000 Will it cost me my soul?

00:43:18.000 Our elite package offers you the opportunity to genetically engineer the embryo before implanting it into the artificial womb. 0.59

00:43:25.000 Medically engineer it!

00:43:26.000 Finally, a master race without the messy PR.

00:43:29.000 Thanks to CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing tool, you can edit any trait of your baby through a wide range of over 300 genes.

00:43:37.000 Lonely?

00:43:37.000 No.

00:43:38.000 Too reflective?

00:43:38.000 Edit, edit.

00:43:39.000 Edit, edit.

00:43:40.000 Non-compliant?

00:43:41.000 Edit, edit.

00:43:43.000 I'll take Princess Leia.

00:43:44.000 I'll take Princess Leia.

00:43:45.000 The Elite Package allows you to customize your baby's eye color, hair color, skin tone,

00:43:51.000 physical strength, height, and level of intelligence.

00:43:54.000 I'll have a nice, strong, little Princess Leia. 0.60

00:43:58.000 It also allows you to fix any inherited genetic diseases that are part of your family history

00:44:03.000 so that your baby and their offspring will live a healthy, comfortable life,

00:44:07.000 free of genetic diseases.

00:44:10.000 And tradition and grace and any connection to reality.

00:44:14.000 Ectolife provides you a safe, pain-free alternative that helps you deliver your baby without stress.

00:44:20.000 They're actually planning for hell.

00:44:21.000 They're planning it.

00:44:22.000 They're getting it ready.

00:44:24.000 All of the stuff about social credit scores, the introductions of lockdown, making us all infertile, centrally controlling food, breaking down agriculture, the whole world over, creating bodies that are global and are not responsive to national democracies.

00:44:38.000 They're creating it now.

00:44:39.000 They're creating a technological dystopia before our very eyes.

00:44:42.000 And look how anodyne it looks, just an attractive couple standing there In inappropriate clothing, looking at a baby that they've selected from a menu. 1.00

00:44:51.000 They might as well fucking eat it. 1.00

00:44:53.000 After discharging the amniotic fluid from the artificial womb, you will be able to easily remove your baby from the growth pod. 1.00

00:44:59.000 Excuse me, it's stuck in the growth pod!

00:45:02.000 Everything is perfectly designed so you and your partner can enjoy the delivery process.

00:45:07.000 Now, I know people have very difficult births and, like, death in childbirth, blessedly, is not as common as it once was, but even though I know lots of people that have suffered as a result of their experience giving birth to children, it's very much part of your connection and bond to the child, whether it's a cesarean or what is called a natural childbirth process.

00:45:23.000 The idea that you can replace that with, like, a little Kinder Egg being opened by a mouse fart is rather reductive of one of the most astonishing and strong experiences that a human will ever know.

00:45:33.000 Okay, let's get ready for the birth! 0.89

00:45:37.000 Thanks.

00:45:38.000 Hey, do you have any brown ones?

00:45:39.000 Tired of waiting for a response from an adoption agency?

00:45:43.000 Unable to find a suitable surrogate mother? 1.00

00:45:46.000 Worried about pregnancy complications?

00:45:48.000 This is complicated.

00:45:50.000 Can I just get one?

00:45:52.000 Worry no more, because Ectolife got you covered.

00:45:55.000 Worry a little bit more, because we're trying to annihilate and commodify everything.

00:46:00.000 Why bother falling in love?

00:46:01.000 Why look out of a window?

00:46:03.000 Why fly a kite?

00:46:04.000 Grab a thing under your head, have a baby grown in a lab, and just wait for death, which will be a relief when it finally arrives.

00:46:10.000 So, the bad news is you're being made infertile by a constant torrent of microplastics nullifying your masculinity, your femininity, all your innate and inherent powers are being reduced now so that you're an obedient little servant of the state, but the good news is you can go to this horrifying, dystopian, sanitized hell mouth and purchase yourself a lovely little kinder baby. 0.99

00:46:32.000 We're all going to hell.

00:46:33.000 I suppose ultimately what we have to do is cling to our humanity, cling to our nature, not be judgmental of people that necessarily require assistance or take unusual pathways to parenthood, but not to commodify and industrialize every aspect of our nature.

00:46:48.000 Perhaps all this is no different from agriculture and the industrialization of food and treating nature just as a resource.

00:46:53.000 Perhaps this is what inevitably happens when a species loses its way.

00:46:57.000 But it seems to me that this could mark a turning point or mark a point of Who do we want to become as a species?

00:47:03.000 Do you want your consciousness controlled by tech?

00:47:06.000 Do you want your reproductive system annihilated then replaced by tech? 1.00

00:47:10.000 Do you want everything in your life to be a product?

00:47:12.000 Or do you think there's a way back for humankind?

00:47:15.000 Let me know what you think in the comments and chat.

00:47:15.000 But that's just what I think.

00:47:17.000 I'll see you in a minute. 0.96

00:47:25.000 Your sperm don't work, but you can get babies down the shop. 1.00

00:47:28.000 That's basically what that story was.

00:47:29.000 I hope you enjoyed it.

00:47:30.000 Let us know what you thought in the chat and the comments.

00:47:32.000 Hey, I wanted to update you before we move on to our fantastic, glorious guest, friend of the show, inaugural Under the Skin subject, Brad Evans.

00:47:41.000 I want to talk to you about the Stay Free Foundation, which is a foundation we started here so that we weren't just all the time saying, oh, look, Isn't centralized power corrupt?

00:47:51.000 Look at the alliances between big tech and the state.

00:47:54.000 Look at emergent globalist forces and the new technological dictatorships that are being introduced over the world.

00:47:59.000 The commodification of everything.

00:48:00.000 The desacralization of our planet.

00:48:02.000 Loss of connection with God.

00:48:04.000 To cheer you up a bit, we started a foundation to help junkies and alcoholics and stuff and it's been going six months now.

00:48:10.000 I drank a bit too much kombucha just then and so I'm having a sort of subtly burp on my way through this.

00:48:17.000 I'm addicted to it.

00:48:19.000 I've started a foundation.

00:48:19.000 That's the irony.

00:48:21.000 Why are you talking about the foundation?

00:48:22.000 I'm keeping the money because I've got myself addicted to kombucha.

00:48:25.000 Now I'm going to be taken to a lovely little place in Peru, actually, where I'm going to be slowly weaned off kombucha with cuddles and ayahuasca, which I will then get addicted to.

00:48:35.000 No, we've been helping people.

00:48:36.000 We donate to places... Well, it's your money, actually, so I don't know why I'm trying to make it about me.

00:48:40.000 The narcissism.

00:48:41.000 We've donated to people like BAC O'Connor.

00:48:42.000 That's a treatment centre in Burton-on-Trent.

00:48:44.000 Friendly House, that's a women's treatment centre in Los Angeles. 1.00

00:48:47.000 Treasures, they help women that are coming out of NIC and prison and going, like, getting back into life in East London.

00:48:53.000 And Trevi House, which is the only treatment centre that helps women that have got children.

00:48:56.000 We've made donations with the money that you've spent on our merchandise.

00:48:59.000 So if you buy some of our merchandise, or if you donate to us, that's what we do with the money.

00:49:03.000 We do all right.

00:49:04.000 We're OK.

00:49:05.000 So the additional revenue we're giving to this little crowd, if you want to make a donation, go to RussellBrown.com and you can donate to it.

00:49:12.000 Also, we do events like community live events.

00:49:14.000 For example, we did an event in the town I'm from, Greys, where we campaigned or we supported an existing campaign, Save Your Thameside, where a library and theatre where I performed as a kid was being shut down by what looks like a bit of a corrupt or at best, inept council.

00:49:30.000 Remember, you can support the Stay Free Foundation by acquiring merchandise or by attending our live events.

00:49:35.000 For example, Community next year, a three-day festival.

00:49:38.000 Brad will be there, Wim Hof will be there, Vandana Shiva will be there.

00:49:41.000 And I think I want to get some sort of survival-type people there, someone to teach us sort of like, what I want this festival to be is a place where we could all come together and like learn to start communes, really, so that one day, if it comes to it, we can start communes and everyone will know what to do.

00:49:55.000 Some protest groups, aren't we?

00:49:57.000 Yeah.

00:49:57.000 Yeah!

00:49:58.000 Well, not against me, though.

00:50:03.000 They might go, let's take this back to the source, start protesting you.

00:50:06.000 Now, it's, uh, without any more silliness, if indeed altruism and philanthropy can be, it sounds like communist propaganda.

00:50:14.000 It's not communist propaganda because I believe in God and I don't believe in centralizing force.

00:50:19.000 I believe in decentralization.

00:50:20.000 If anything, it's a narco-syndicalist propaganda. 0.63

00:50:22.000 Right, now it's time for us to delve into literature, philosophy, and ourselves.

00:50:29.000 It's time for Books with Brad.

00:50:32.000 Are these the shadows of the things that will be?

00:50:36.000 Or are they the shadows of things that may be, only?

00:50:41.000 Still the ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.

00:50:46.000 Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead. 0.67

00:50:52.000 Said Scrooge.

00:50:54.000 But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change.

00:50:58.000 Say it is thus with what you show me.

00:51:04.000 I feel like the titles themselves are a work of art.

00:51:07.000 That's by Brad's wife, Chantelle.

00:51:11.000 Professor Brad Evans is joining us now.

00:51:12.000 He's a political philosopher and writer from the University of Bath, here to talk about A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

00:51:19.000 Welcome, Brad.

00:51:20.000 Oh, it's a pleasure.

00:51:21.000 Lovely new setting as well.

00:51:22.000 Isn't it lovely in here?

00:51:23.000 Now, Brad, in some ways, Christmas Carol has reinvigorated, reinvented and determined the kind of pseudo-Victorian Christmas that has become iconic, hasn't it?

00:51:34.000 Has it done that?

00:51:34.000 Because it just sort of seemed like it was a question I'd start with.

00:51:37.000 Yeah, no, absolutely.

00:51:38.000 I think, you know, people sometimes forget the importance a single literary text can have in terms of shaping a kind of cultural context.

00:51:46.000 And, you know, if you think, you know, we know the idea of Christmas begins in the Middle Ages, around 25th of December, we start celebrating that date.

00:51:53.000 But by the kind of Victorian period, life was so tough for people that they didn't really celebrate Christmas at all.

00:51:59.000 It was almost like a two-day reprieve from the horrors of existence.

00:52:02.000 Merry Christmas!

00:52:03.000 A two-day reprieve from the horrors!

00:52:06.000 Ho, ho, ho! 1.00

00:52:07.000 But then we have almost like a ten-year period in the 1840s where Dickens publishes A Christmas Carol, which puts family and community and charity central to the narrative of Christmas.

00:52:19.000 Then in the same period, Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, brings over the Christmas tree from Germany.

00:52:24.000 So this happens.

00:52:25.000 The same year that Dickens publishes A Christmas Carol, the first Christmas cards are printed.

00:52:30.000 And two years later, we have the invention of the cracker.

00:52:32.000 So all these things we associate with Christmas today are very much revived as the symbols within this kind of tenure period at most.

00:52:41.000 But Dickens is the one who basically says, no, Christmas should be about family, Charity and forgiveness.

00:52:48.000 And I think it's a real powerful thing that stayed with us from a real small text, which is phenomenal if you think about it.

00:52:53.000 Yeah, it's pretty amazing.

00:52:55.000 I suppose the narrativization works because that messaging is congruent with the ideology of Christianity and the figure of Christ.

00:53:05.000 In particular, although of course the way that Dickens tells that story is in a, through a kind of a very beautiful and, well frankly, blasphemous fable because it's like the undead, it's sort of mysterious and extraordinary.

00:53:23.000 What do you think about that, the nature of his genius, it's connection to the messaging of original Christianity and also I'm still dazzled that a cultural artifact can be established so quickly and whether or not there was

00:53:34.000 some sort of propagandist undertone to legitimize Victorian imperialism or whatever but I'll part

00:53:39.000 that for a second because I do want to know what you think about like what exactly is he

00:53:44.000 successfully constructed there? Well I think it plays into something which you know I'm trying to think

00:53:51.000 about the earlier VTs you were playing today and this kind of now I kind of come on you're trying to

00:53:56.000 raise a bit of Christmas joy and then you know you suddenly realize we're heading to this

00:54:00.000 horrible dystopian future in which everything is knowable, everything is certain, everything

00:54:05.000 is set.

00:54:05.000 Now, I think you're right.

00:54:06.000 There is an element of Christianity in the text, but I think it's so much more than that.

00:54:10.000 You know, as you say, there's a kind of a blasphemous element to the book.

00:54:14.000 There's also a way in which, you know, He plays to the mysticism which we all want to believe in in life. 0.99

00:54:20.000 We all want to think there is something more to existence than being born in a fucking pod. 0.99

00:54:25.000 Right. 0.98

00:54:26.000 That we all want to know that actually there is something, what we might call the ineffable.

00:54:30.000 And the idea of ghosts, I think, is such a special idea.

00:54:33.000 You know, the idea that, you know, we all know that we are forever haunted by ghosts, by, you know... I find the whole thing of, like, you know, when I even look back on some of the VTs, and I hate doing it, but the VTs of myself on this show... Don't do them, Brad.

00:54:46.000 But you realise you yourself are a ghost in the past, right?

00:54:50.000 And we're always projecting images of ourselves, and we're always... Particularly at Christmas, people are no longer with us.

00:54:56.000 We're always having conversations with them.

00:54:58.000 You know, this idea that everything can be technologically explained is utter nonsense.

00:55:02.000 We like to believe in ghosts, because we like to believe that there is something greater to human existence, even in a very humanist way.

00:55:09.000 You don't have to be religious to believe it.

00:55:12.000 No, but in a sense we must become religious again, I feel in some way.

00:55:17.000 Like these visitations that Dickens renders are, as all literature must be, a form of mythologisation.

00:55:27.000 And I was thinking earlier today that as one learns to spot emblems and symbols in our own dreams, increasingly it appears that all of waking And waking life and a dream life is alive with a kind of symbolism that there are continually messages being offered that are particular to your narrative and therefore you could say just a solely subjective mythology and it's difficult to have a mythology without archetypes, without meaning, without purpose, without an essential set of values.

00:56:00.000 I feel that in spite of it not being perhaps a Christian book, you know, officially of course, it's so sort of loaded with myth and mysticism that it's difficult to avoid that it is religious, particularly when the end point is to throw off, you know, the chains of the past and your attachments, you know, ultimately.

00:56:22.000 And also, of course, it's a book about redemption.

00:56:25.000 Well, I think there's three themes which kind of, at the time of its publication, made the book actually quite revolutionary.

00:56:30.000 And I think the first thing is, if you look, you know, the ghosts actually convey messages, they communicate.

00:56:37.000 Now, the first thing the first ghost does is actually, he renders the powerful completely powerless.

00:56:42.000 They can no longer intervene in the world.

00:56:44.000 They can no longer change.

00:56:46.000 And there's that scene at the end of the first stave, where, you know, he goes to the window and he sees all those people walking around, wanting to atone for their sins, but can no longer do that.

00:56:55.000 And I think, so rendering the powerful powerless is a big move.

00:56:58.000 The second thing is with Scrooge.

00:57:00.000 Scrooge doesn't enter into the world wicked.

00:57:02.000 He becomes wicked.

00:57:03.000 I'm thinking of Stephen Knight's brilliant adaptation, actually, with Guy Pearce and Tom Hardy in that film.

00:57:08.000 And what they show in that adaptation is Scrooge, through his life, Becomes wicked.

00:57:14.000 You're not born evil, which was the old theological idea.

00:57:17.000 You know, it's a life experience which can make anybody a Scrooge, right?

00:57:21.000 If we suffer the loss of love, if we get abandoned as a child, and I think there's an intricate understanding why does a Scrooge become a Scrooge?

00:57:30.000 You're not just born that way.

00:57:31.000 Life circumstances could make anybody like that.

00:57:34.000 But I think the third point, which I think is phenomenal in the book, What you might say is Christian, but I actually think is very humanistic, is a radical forgiveness.

00:57:43.000 I think one of the most remarkable things I find constantly when I read this is the way in which, for instance, you know, Cratchit or the nephew don't give up on Scrooge.

00:57:52.000 It's easy to shed a tear for, you know, a dead child like Tiny Tim, but to try to reach out constantly to somebody who's utterly disagreeable, I think that's a real radical move in the book.

00:58:04.000 You know, it's to say, I'm going to invite this person over to Christmas.

00:58:07.000 I know he's going to be a misery. 0.95

00:58:09.000 I know he's going to say a racist joke. 0.96

00:58:11.000 I know I'm going to hate him, but I'm still going to try to reach out to him anyway.

00:58:15.000 And I think that is a beautiful part of it.

00:58:17.000 That is beautiful.

00:58:18.000 I like that, you know.

00:58:20.000 Of course, the version I like is the Muppets one.

00:58:22.000 Because the Muppets one is a good one.

00:58:24.000 Michael Caine rips it up in that movie.

00:58:27.000 But like that, the nephew is like, old uncle Scrooge, why do you bother with old uncle Scrooge?

00:58:34.000 He's determined to love Scrooge.

00:58:36.000 He's determined to love him.

00:58:37.000 I suppose like all myths are about aspects of one potential whole individual.

00:58:42.000 The idea of redemption, even beyond forgiveness, the thing that's embedded in redemption, which I would say is distinct from forgiveness, perhaps, is like, as you said earlier, mate, is the sense that the optimal and indigenous condition is benign rather than malign.

00:58:59.000 And redemption has, like, even scripturally stitched into it the idea of belonging.

00:59:06.000 So, sort of the aberration is the period of malevolence and selfishness and greed and miserliness before necessarily returning to God, returning to goodness, returning to I suppose that is a sort of a rather optimistic idea and one that we've somewhat extracted from our culture, the idea of redemption.

00:59:28.000 The genius writer and songwriter Nick Cave said that he was speaking of wokeness, although he made clear that he regarded anti-wokeness in a comparable light.

00:59:39.000 He said that wokeness has all of the elements of a religion without forgiveness and redemption. 0.98

00:59:45.000 Well, I think there's two really interesting points.

00:59:48.000 I think Nick Cave, first of all, is one of the most brilliant poets of our time because he deals with death and he deals head on with death.

00:59:55.000 He's not afraid to walk away from that.

00:59:57.000 Now, one of the things about our society is we don't like to talk about death.

01:00:00.000 Now, the interesting thing you talk about with Scrooge, the redemptive moment, You know, and the more I've read this book, the more I've kind of come to realize that, you know, we kind of think, well, he has this profound shift because of seeing the crutch of Tiny Tim.

01:00:14.000 I don't think that's the moment.

01:00:15.000 I think it's when he's confronting his own death.

01:00:17.000 That becomes the real moment of change.

01:00:19.000 Now, we know so many people in their lives will change their life once they have to confront their own death.

01:00:24.000 Right.

01:00:25.000 But I think there's a real deep philosophical question.

01:00:28.000 We've always been taught that the history of philosophy as a discipline from Plato onward has been, how do we learn how to die?

01:00:35.000 And what that basically means is, how do we learn to become something new constantly?

01:00:39.000 Mourn the death of somebody who's gone, even in ourselves.

01:00:42.000 What Scrooge does is he takes that a stage further.

01:00:44.000 He says, how can we assess our lives from the perspective, if we looked at it, that we were already dead?

01:00:50.000 Yeah.

01:00:50.000 How would we then live our life from the perspective that we were already dead?

01:00:55.000 I think that's a real radical philosophical move.

01:00:58.000 And I think it's a brilliant move.

01:00:59.000 The second one, you talk about redemption and Nick Cave and wokeness.

01:01:02.000 You know, one of the things which I find completely tragic, you know, A Christmas Carol is a book of so many tragedies.

01:01:09.000 But the real tragedy I find today is, a Scrooge could never exist today.

01:01:14.000 We would never trust a Scrooge to have that redemption.

01:01:17.000 He would be forever haunted by the ghost of Christmas past.

01:01:21.000 We would never allow him to be forgiven.

01:01:24.000 Twitter would never forgive Scrooge, right?

01:01:27.000 He would always carry that past with him.

01:01:29.000 So in that sense, there is no possibility for redemption, even people who are well meaningful in today's cancellation age.

01:01:36.000 And I think that's the real tragedy.

01:01:38.000 There couldn't be a Scrooge today.

01:01:40.000 This is the problem with certainty.

01:01:42.000 This is the problem of lacking all doubt.

01:01:44.000 This is the problem of polemicism and a polarized culture that for energy, for motion, you require two poles that somehow are repellent and charged and this ongoing sanitization denies us that.

01:02:00.000 Marcus Aurelius said that, as well as obviously it's a sort of a strong theme within Buddhism and perhaps within all religions, the idea of dying unto ourself like it's a franciscan idea also huh that to like your life is over you are dead now what are you gonna do like because otherwise you're just a slave to some cultural or biochemical idea just that the either the appetites whether they are you know inhered or whether they are

01:02:30.000 Inculcated.

01:02:31.000 They become your god.

01:02:33.000 They become your god.

01:02:34.000 And so I suppose the story of redemption is always heartening because this is the... I suppose what Dickens has done and I suppose what all storytellers of genius are able to do is say, this is the worst case!

01:02:45.000 Scenario of what a person might be. 0.99

01:02:47.000 Scrooge, which has become a byword for total mean bastard. 0.97

01:02:52.000 Well, if this guy can find his way back. 0.98

01:02:55.000 Tiny Tim, I'm a little irritated by Tiny Tim.

01:02:57.000 I think he pushes it too much, Tiny Tim.

01:02:59.000 I'm glad when that little dude gets shut down.

01:03:02.000 Tiny Tim, he's all right, isn't he?

01:03:03.000 But that's not that.

01:03:03.000 What does Wilde say of Dickens' writing, in particular, I think the death of Little Nell in Curiosity Shop, whatever.

01:03:11.000 He goes, you need a heart of stone not to laugh, I said for a while, because he's like, too much, like, oh Jesus Dickens, chill out mate!

01:03:20.000 He hammers you with the emotion, doesn't he?

01:03:22.000 He has such a gift for, I don't know, what do you want to call it, sort of characterising, I suppose, a particular emotion or state that it's almost, gag on it!

01:03:32.000 But there's always a sense of the optimistic that runs through it, which I think is important.

01:03:36.000 The nice thing I think he does with Scrooge as well towards the end, it's not somebody who suddenly says, I'm going to completely change my life, I now want to be immortal in a different way and I'm going to set up these amazing things and all this kind of stuff.

01:03:49.000 The first thing he wants to do is simply be loved by the people who are around him, his family.

01:03:53.000 It's friendly.

01:03:54.000 And it's how we get accepted by the people who are the closest to us, first of all, which is what is the basis of community, right?

01:04:01.000 It's the basis of, you know, if we can't start there, then where can we start?

01:04:05.000 You know, and I think that's an important point.

01:04:06.000 If you ain't got religion that you're applying in your actual life right now, you ain't got religion.

01:04:10.000 If it's like an abstract set of ideas, I reckon you should do this. 1.00

01:04:14.000 That's bullshit. 0.98

01:04:15.000 And this is like, what? 1.00

01:04:15.000 What are you doing right now? 1.00

01:04:16.000 Are you being kind to people?

01:04:18.000 I struggle with this.

01:04:18.000 I think we all struggle with this.

01:04:19.000 As a person in recovery, I like many of the themes in Christmas Carol are powerful.

01:04:24.000 The idea of redemption, the idea of second chances, the idea of revision, revising your life, finding a new way of living based on spirit.

01:04:31.000 These are all sort of powerful themes for recovery.

01:04:33.000 And I guess this ability to narrativize is one of the things that makes the type of recovery that I'm involved with at least.

01:04:38.000 So powerful that you can tell a different story.

01:04:40.000 We're going to have to continue this conversation over on Locals now because otherwise we'll be too late.

01:04:44.000 You can join us right now.

01:04:46.000 It's our membership community on Locals.

01:04:47.000 Just go over there.

01:04:48.000 We're going to carry on.

01:04:49.000 Tomorrow we've got Michael P... Oh my god! 1.00

01:04:51.000 Scrooge, you bastards! 1.00

01:04:52.000 What have you done now? 1.00

01:04:53.000 That's a mic cable falling out.

01:04:54.000 Is it my mic or am I still... Can you still hear me?

01:04:56.000 Michael P. Singh is on the show.

01:04:57.000 How the US and China colluded over the pandemic.

01:05:00.000 You're going to love that story.

01:05:01.000 On Friday, my friend, the comedian actor Duncan Trussell is on the show.

01:05:05.000 You're going to love this conversation.

01:05:07.000 It's very holy, playful, spiritual, joyous.

01:05:10.000 And we'll see you tomorrow on Rumble, not for more of the same, but for more of the different.

01:05:15.000 Stay free.

01:05:15.000 Join us on Locals right now.

01:05:16.000 We're going to continue this conversation.

Stay Free - Russel Brand - December 21, 2022

Xmas Special: We’re All F*cked! - #051 - Stay Free with Russell Brand

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