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April 1, 2022 - David Icke
19:28
Right Now - Gareth Icke Talks To Journalist Patrick Henningsen About Ukraine, Syria, & Covid
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This week on Iconics News and Current Affairs show Right Now, I'm speaking to journalist, broadcaster and author Patrick Henningsen about current global events and the role of the alternative media in reporting them.
If you want to watch all of our guests on this week's show, they're all challenging the official version of world events, then start a free seven-day trial.
Just hit the subscribe button at the top of the page.
Our first guest tonight is journalist, broadcaster and author, Patrick Henningsen.
He's the founder and host of the alternative radio show, The Sunday Wire, and a regular presenter on the independent TV news and current affairs show, UK Column.
An outspoken critic of mainstream media, he analyzes the big stories of the day in ways that the legacy media won't dare.
We're delighted to welcome him to the studio.
Patrick, thank you so much for coming in.
This horrendous footage has come out from Ukraine.
It's been flooded all over social media.
I've seen it. It's really unpleasant.
The mainstream media has just ignored it.
How long do you think the mainstream media can kind of treat the public with such contempt, basically?
Well, the truth of the matter is this types of footage has been circulating since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, and it was just summarily ignored.
And buried, basically.
So this latest video that's come out of Ukrainian soldiers torturing Russian POWs, it's gone viral on Telegram and on other social media platforms like VK in Russians and places like that.
So it got traction in Europe.
And now it's gotten traction with the United States mainstream media as well.
So it got to the point where there's such critical mass that they couldn't ignore it anymore.
And even the Washington Post wrote an article mentioning it yesterday and also admitting that Ukraine was using civilians as human shields.
Since the beginning of the conflict.
So there is a little bit of a shift going on with the media coverage.
And the question is, is this a case of you just can't bury the truth forever?
Or is NATO, is the West backing off a little bit on their previous strident stance and perhaps prepared to make some kind of a deal in negotiations?
So it's hard to tell.
But they really should have been, the mainstream media have been so derelict.
On covering both sides of this conflict from the beginning, where really for the last eight years of the civil war there, how many people do you know knew there was a civil war?
Oh, absolutely. In Ukraine, not many people know.
Do you think this footage coming out is making a difference to public opinion?
Like, particularly in America, are people going, Oh, hang on a minute.
Maybe it's not how we're being told.
No, it definitely is.
It definitely is. And it shows you the power of just one incident or one image.
I mean, we get we get thrown all of these things at us all the time of these stories from war zones.
I mean, just in the Ukraine, they had to The soldiers at Snake Island who defied the Russians and ended up getting killed.
That turned out to be a fake story.
We had the Ghost of Kiev who shot down 20 Russian fighters.
That turned out to be a fake story.
But it's a story.
We're constantly being bombarded with stories.
The bombing of a theater in Mariupol or the maternity hospital that got hit.
All of these are stories that get thrown to the Western audience.
And to mold and shape the feelings, the emotions of the Western audience so that we will back certain policies which are presented to us by our government and our ministers.
So that door can swing both ways.
And they've done a lot in terms of throwing resources to suppress on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.
The censorship on Ukraine has been Pretty amazing.
Very similar to COVID censorship, vaccine censorship.
But if something manages to break through, like this particular video of this horrendous torture of POWs, and let's be clear, there's horrendous things going on on both sides.
No one likes to see this level of violence and warfare.
But if a story like that It gets traction in the West.
Then this idea that the Ukrainian military are a democracy, freedom-fighting saints, effectively.
And Zelensky is a democratic hero for the ages.
That narrative really starts to erode very quickly.
People start asking questions.
And what about the Nazi affiliations?
What about the various battalions, the radical nationalists?
And then when the questions start, then people start reevaluating.
Even the most biased mainstream media journalists and outlets in the West, they can't, in a global media space, they can't ignore these things forever.
Because the evidence is just overwhelming.
So who knows what sort of dossiers and reports could be presented to the United Nations from the Ukrainian side and not the Russian side.
So is it a case that we've been lied to?
We've been told Russia is targeting civilians.
Putin is a madman.
He's out for genocide.
And what if that's not actually true?
What if there's no evidence to support that?
But on the other side, we have a lot of evidence that supports some really horrific war crimes.
What then? And how long does that take to become the dialectic?
I think whenever I'm, how I feel personally, whenever I'm told that someone is fantastic, beyond reproach, you know, a wonderful human being, I'm instantly suspicious because I think, why do you want me to think that?
And with Zelensky, like, he is put out there as this Just this bastion of good.
And I think, you know, was it the Panama Papers, he's worth like 1.4 billion.
But then on the other hand, we're told he's just a comedian who loves his country and, you know, how good is his comedy then if he's worth 1.4 billion?
Well, doing comedy in the poorest country in Europe.
I mean, I don't know if you can be a billionaire doing comedy in Ukraine.
I mean, look at our Hollywood stars.
None of them are billionaires.
They're multimillionaires. And certainly they're going to catering to a global market.
So, yeah, I mean, if you inspect the background, the history of someone like President Zelensky, who was playing a president on a television show, became the president and won by a landslide.
What does that tell you, first of all, about the state of politics in that country?
It must be pretty dire that the public would vote for a comedian.
Yeah. And so the corruption must be so, so great.
And then you look at the fact that, you know, if he's running an anti-corruption or anti-oligarch campaign, you find out he's being backed by the biggest oligarch in Ukraine.
Yeah. His television show is bankrolled by that servant of the people.
And his campaign of the same name, his party with the same name, is bankrolled by the same oligarchs who live offshore in Switzerland.
And Zelensky keeps his money offshore in the villas in Tuscany, and who knows where it ends.
But it's certainly very different than Than what we're showing.
Yeah. It's interesting you touch on Hollywood there, because we've got a poll we're going to be showing later on what the public think, but this whole thing that happened at the Oscars with the slap and that, what do you think of that?
Do you think that was legitimate or is that just, you know, More kind of staged candy for the masses, basically.
It's really hard to tell.
These days, anything's possible.
We've seen so many of these gags, especially around the Oscars and things like that, to either promote products or promote an agenda.
But in this case, you know, watching Will Smith, who is arguably the most successful Hollywood actor, and financially he's done incredibly well, he's among the most wealthiest of all time, right?
And the stature, the reputation, everything.
To see him do that, that you'd think would be demeaning to his character, in defense of his wife, or Chris Rock made a joke about his wife, whatever.
But to do that on global television live, whether it's real or not, whether it's staged or not, To me, it doesn't matter.
Because that whole scene is just indicative of the sort of the decay of the Hollywood world, this kind of pseudo world that's elevated to such a high level, that's become more and more like late stage empire.
That scene was perfect.
To me, I was so happy to see it.
I know it's horrific.
And it sets a horrible precedent.
Imagine being a stand-up comedian now.
People coming off the front row.
But it says so much about Hollywood.
And the ratings were tanking with the Oscars.
And you know what? I don't think they're going to be any higher next year.
No. Even with a stunt like this.
So you're just seeing a gradual demise.
And I always said, from 2015 when Trump was running for president, I said back then that politics is the new Hollywood.
Because how do a celebrity, how do they garner their celebrity currency?
It's done by screen time.
It's done by media exposure.
Well, who has the most media exposure now?
It's not Hollywood celebrities.
It's people on social media.
It's people on YouTube. It's politicians on social media.
Donald Trump is a good example, but he's not the only one.
Nancy Pelosi, they're all lording it.
Boris Johnson, everyone's on social media.
So it's how much your image gets replicated, how many media impressions you get.
This is where the currency and the value is.
And you see celebrities on social media, some of them are total failures.
They don't have nearly the following That some people who are just pundits or alternative media people have.
So that shows you there's a major shift because the public doesn't have the appetite to put all of their attention on that small kind of Inbred kind of realm of celebrity and corporate power and whatnot.
So it's more diffused.
It's more spread out. So politics is the epicenter.
AOC in America.
Another prime example. Trump.
And there'll be more coming.
Why is this?
It's because politics has become more theatrical.
Because of digital media and they're taking advantage of it.
That also means it's becoming more shallow as well.
So the substance isn't there.
I'm not saying this is a good thing.
No, I'm just saying it's what's happening.
It's what's happening. What do you think the role is for the alternative media?
As much as I don't like that term because we've sort of become the media basically.
In terms of actually asking questions.
So you've been doing this a long time.
You're 21st Century Wire, you've got the Sunday Wire radio show, you're a regular contributor to a UK column that I know a lot of our viewers watch.
I've got a new show on TNT Radio, which is a new platform out of Australia.
So you're everywhere, basically doing all these things.
Have the last two years pointed more people into your direction and our direction to try and get information, do you think?
I would say definitely it has, and it's a different type of person than would normally be reading or watching people like yourself, like your father David, UK Column, myself.
It was different, the alternative community was more sort of Confined to certain types of people who are sort of more rebellious in how they seek out their information and they're more kind of independent thinkers.
Maybe people that are more on the fringe of the political conversation.
But COVID and the vaccines has brought everybody from the center over into the questioning camp.
And so for the UK column, it's been a huge explosion.
And anybody else who's been basically asking really hard questions and questioning the government.
Why? Because, you know, I've been covering overseas wars, covering the Syrian conflict.
We made a good name for our media outlet covering those types of conflicts because we're always working with independent journalists and some on the ground as well.
And myself have been on the ground during that war in Syria.
But it's one thing to cover geopolitics that's remote.
The conflict in Ukraine is somewhat closer because it's considered European.
But the Middle East, South America, the Far East.
But what do you do when the war comes home?
What do you do? You can rail against fascism and how they say Assad is a fascist, Putin's a fascist.
What happens when your own government goes full fascist?
What then? And what happens when that happens?
And the media completely is on the side and literally getting paid by the government to basically regurgitate the government party line.
What sort of a society, what sort of a media environment are you in right there?
Hundreds of millions of pounds as well.
Billions. Billions, really.
And so that's where we were at.
That's where we're still at.
So I think a lot of people woke up to that and they said, look, I'm going to tune in to you guys first.
I'll still read, watch the BBC. I'll still look at The Guardian.
But they're not my first choice anymore.
My first choice is alternative media outlets like Iconic or like UK Column or 21st.
But it's definitely nothing I ever expected.
I never expected to see our Western European or North American countries descend to this level of authoritarianism and totalitarianism because there's a slight difference between those two.
Totalitarianism is when On the back of authoritarianism, you have people doing the job for the authoritarian government.
Yeah, they did that all right. Self-policing, that's totalitarianism, and that's perhaps the most frightening part of what we all saw happen in the last two years.
It's interesting you said, bring the war to us.
They literally brought the war to the corner shop.
It's mad. And I was going to ask you, here in the UK on Monday, I believe they're rolling out these jabs for 5 to 11 year olds, which is so far over my head in terms of comprehending.
What are your thoughts on that?
And what do you think will happen as a result?
Are we going to see The NHS and the mainstream media normalising heart attacks and strokes for five-year-olds as if it always happened.
Yeah, I mean, I've seen a complete, out of nowhere, all of these ads.
I've seen them in the gym, at least in young people as well.
Like, it's normal.
We were told, no, it's very rare.
It never happens, that reaction.
All of a sudden, you see it on the ad campaign.
So, listen, it's horrific even to comprehend.
The implications of this, okay?
And I quite can't believe that I'm seeing it.
But pushing the jabs on that age group, I'm talking about five and below.
For the United States, there's a slightly different regulatory regime.
So with regards to the FDA, if a vaccine goes on the child schedule, we have a list of vaccines in America.
It's long. In some states, it's 60 before the age of four.
I'm not kidding. You can go look at the schedules.
Arizona is a good example.
So at the age of five, 62 or something.
So if this COVID vaccine gets on the child's schedule, then there's a loophole in the US regulatory system just by getting the vaccine on the childhood schedule, which means it's mandatory for kids to go to school in some states.
You can opt out with religious exemptions and things like that, but generally it's viewed as kind of mandatory.
If it goes on that schedule, then the pharmaceutical companies, they retain their legal liability shield, which means they have total indemnity.
They can't be sued for adverse reactions, and that counts.
If it goes on the child schedule, that means all of the adults are covered by that same regulatory loophole.
Now, the UK doesn't have that exact system with the MHRA. But if you think about this in terms of Western G7 countries, they all have to be on the same page with policy.
So if it's okay in America and Britain does that policy, then our leadership in Britain could turn and say, well, it's okay for America.
The FDA has approved it.
And you see the press do this a lot.
The FDA approved the Pfizer vaccine.
They never... Approved the Pfizer vaccine.
They made an approval for marketing of Comrade, which was this rebranded version of it.
But the original vaccine that they put out was still under emergency use authorization.
Again, that gives it the legal liability shield.
So the kids are being used as the hook.
To maintain the emergency use authorization and keep these pharmaceutical companies from ever being accountable for any injury, adverse reaction, or God forbid, any death.
So this is such a pernicious system of bureaucracy.
And they would throw children who are at zero risk, let's face it, statistically, zero risk of ever getting even a bad cough From COVID and to then throw them in with what is effectively still a vaccine that's not been tested, that's not gone through any real regulatory paces at all, that contains ingredients that have never been used on the public on a mass scale before.
This is madness. This is total madness.
But we're being thrown at another distraction.
In the winter, it's taken people's eye off the ball on this, but they're not going to give up.
So these are very powerful interests, be they government, transnational pharmaceutical.
Behind that, you have the chemical industry as well.
You have the healthcare industry itself, arguably, is very corrupt.
Healthcare providers and so forth.
They're not going to give up, but neither will we.
Yeah. They have to keep at it.
And you know, thank heavens, there's people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Children's Health Defense, Dr.
McCullough, and all these people in America, and tons and tons of doctors, and Simone Gold, and people like this.
So this has really waken up a lot of people in the medical profession.
And then the alternative media sources, they can censor all they want.
They're not going to be able to whack-a-mole the whole population.
So you know, They've made their move.
They've put all their cards on the table already and everybody's seen.
So the question is, is it going to be a royal flush or is it going to be a busted flush for the establishment?
So that's really up to how people are able to mobilize and get active and get engaged.
See, the parents are really engaged in the U.S. with the masks.
Now, if they take that level of energy and apply it to the vaccine issue, we could see a major turn.
I sincerely hope we do.
Thanks so much for talking to us mate.
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