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Oct. 18, 2022 - Stay Free - Russel Brand
01:06:12
Stay Free with Russell Brand #015 - So Who DID Sabotage Nord Stream? Plus Vandana Shiva
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I'm going to go ahead and get the camera.
I'm going to get the camera.
In this video, you're going to see the C-Circuit.
Hello and welcome to Stay Free with Russell Brand.
It's a very special episode, as you know by now, on Tuesdays.
What we do is we bring you a legit piece of exclusive content, a deep conversation.
Today it's with Vandana Shiva.
You are going to love this conversation.
Members of the Stay Free AF community joined us for that conversation live and it was absolutely fantastic.
We Bring some of your questions to Vandana, and I'm going to be telling you over the coming week about a unique and fantastic competition that we are going to be running that gives you a chance to attend Vandana Shiva's university and take a course there.
Can you imagine that?
We're going to be talking to Vandana about her new book, Terra Viva, and Subhi joins me here, passing on your questions to Vandana Shiva.
Of course, we'll be doing Here's the News.
No, Here's the Effing News.
I can't bring myself to swear because I've just now finished the conversation with Vandana and it's like a kind of cleanse.
Whenever I speak to Van... What did you do down there?
Sorry, I was coughing.
I was trying to drink some water.
You went just down there to have a little bit of a cough, did you?
I mean, you just disappeared out of my life and I just heard the most bizarre noises emerging.
Sorry.
I tried to do it without, like, touching your eyeline.
You were doing some weird stuff, you.
That's what I'm starting to say.
Whenever we have you in these rooms, you say weird things, you disappear behind that pulpit.
I've heard gulping.
It was absolutely terrifying what just went on there.
You're an extraordinary person.
Of course, so, hey, listen, we need you to hit that rumble button right now whenever you watch our content do that.
And if you want to make a donation to us, any money you donate to us goes to great causes.
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People will get helped.
We're involved in all sorts of fantastic campaigns and ideas.
To change the world.
Increasingly I'm learning that the only way we're going to change the world is by setting up systems outside of the current dominion.
Whether that's through elevating our own consciousness through meditation, or through participating with new leaders in new ideas.
And Vandana is one such leader.
So if you don't have this book yet, get this book now.
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We'll give this book to whoever in the competition can answer the question... Hold on a second, let me find something for you.
Ah, yes.
What does Vandana Shiva say that GMO, which stands for Genetically Modified Organism, what does Vandana say it should really stand for?
The first person to answer that question, we will send you this book.
Unfortunately, it won't be signed by Vandana because we've already got it here.
One way you can change your life is through regular meditation.
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Hello and welcome to Stay Awake with Russell Brand.
This is my weekly guided meditation.
Well, it's time now to have a deeper look at the news for today.
A explicit look at the stories that affect us all, whether it's the military-industrial complex, big media, big government, big food, centralised corporate globalism, big tech, the military-industrial complex.
We give you the news that the news will not give you, and we give you techniques and tools to awaken yourself.
Here's the news.
No, here's the effing news.
Thank you for choosing Fox News.
Here's the news.
No, here's the fucking news.
Who blew up the Nord Stream 2 pipeline?
Was it America?
Was it Russia?
Sweden have done an investigation, but it's too top secret for us ever to know about it.
Luckily, the mainstream media can be relied upon to tell us the absolute truth in an unbiased way.
Let's have a deeper look at what's happening with the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and Sweden's investigation that was so secret they can't even tell us about it.
All we'd love to tell you about is too secret.
This Volvo we've made so safe you can't even get in it.
Right, let's see what's going on with this bloody pipeline.
This is from FAIR who are a media watchdog who look at the way the information is conveyed so that we can assess whether or not we're being given biased or honest information.
The Nord Stream explosions triggered a lopsided whodunit in US media, with commentators almost universally fingering Russia as the culprit, despite the lack of a plausible motive.
Russia get blamed for bloody everything these days, eh?
They're collaborating with Trump, they're dabbling in elections.
Official US opposition to the pipeline has been well established over the years, giving Washington ample motive to destroy the pipelines, but most newsrooms uniformly suppress this history and attack those who raised it.
Okay, so we know that in the past America have said that it's part of their long-term economic and geopolitical strategy to ensure that Europe gets its energy needs met through North America.
If this was a murder mystery, you'd have to get M. Night Shyamalan, or however he's called, involved to make it a bit more mysterious, because at the moment, it's really obvious.
It'll be like... At the beginning of Usual Suspects, Kevin Spacey going, look, I'm Kaiser Soze, do what I fucking tell ya, I'm putting this limp on.
Tonight, European leaders are accusing Russia of sabotaging two underwater gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea.
Authorities are investigating the leaks in the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, a vital source of natural gas for Europe.
Wouldn't you like the news just to say, look, it's a bit weird, like, if it ain't America, this is what the news
should look like.
For ages, we've been saying stuff like, it would be to our advantage if those pipelines were exploded,
but in some weird, almost unbelievable coincidence, Russia have done it for reasons that are not clear.
For the latest on the war in Ukraine and more apparent sabotage from Russia on the critical Nord Stream pipeline.
The US calling this a deliberate act of sabotage while NATO threatens to retaliate.
Russia have done this on purpose to themselves making a gaseous fried egg like bubbly explosion on the surface of the Baltic Sea for no real reason and it is super convenient for us.
I like them, sunny side up.
Our next guest wrote the book on Putin's playbook and says all signs point to Russia.
Any guest that says, I think America might have done it, won't be allowed on the show.
Quite a statement as well.
So there's no balance, there's no transparency, there's no honesty, there's no willingness to examine both sides of any argument.
I think that the culture war is exacerbated by the lack of willingness for people from different cultural positions to have discussions, let alone with something complex like a After the explosions, much of the press dutifully parroted the Western official line.
The Washington Post quickly produced an account, citing nothing but EU officials who claimed that while they had no evidence of Russian involvement, only Russia had the motivation, the submersible equipment and the capability.
Who around here has submersible equipment?
I don't know.
Does that mean submarines?
Pretty much every developed military nation?
Yeah, but who would mostly do it?
It's the Russians, isn't it?
Much of the media cast their suspicion towards Russia, including Bloomberg, Vox, Associated Press, and much of cable news.
With few exceptions, speculation on US involvement has seemingly been deemed an intellectual no-fly zone.
Why would you not at least cover the possibility that seems most likely?
I suppose these stories in the end become an opportunity to witness in real time the way that media and state imperatives co-align and operate together.
You're simply not allowed to countenance the possibility of complexity.
The idea that only Russia had the means and motivation is clearly false on both counts.
Washington has made it clear for years it doesn't want the pipeline and has taken active measures to stop it coming online.
As for the means, it's painfully absurd to suggest the US doesn't have the capability to lay explosives in 200 feet of water.
You get Joe Biden on the news saying that if you don't do exactly as we say there's going to be a nuclear war, then they're saying they can't blow up something just because it's in a fish tank.
Any serious coverage of the Nord Stream attack should acknowledge that opposition to the pipeline has been the centerpiece of the US grand strategy in Europe.
They've never liked that pipeline.
They've never liked it.
At least they'd be going, we're glad that fucking pipeline's blown up.
That's the minimum.
Oh my God, that pipeline, that's fantastic.
Oh, I'm devastated for it.
Let's get a new pipeline in there as quickly as possible.
That's one of my most favorite parts.
I mean, I thought I liked Nord Stream Pipeline 1, but 2 was so much better.
Oh God.
The long-term goal has been to keep Russia isolated and disjointed from Europe, and to keep the countries of Europe tied to US markets.
Ever since German and Russian energy companies signed a deal to begin development on Nord Stream 2, the entire machinery of Washington has been working overtime to scuttle it.
We've gotta scuttle this!
We've gotta scuttle it!
What was that noise?
Oh, wow!
By coincidence, it's just blown up!
Well, guess we don't need to scuttle it no more!
A 2019 Pentagon-funded study from the RAND Corporation on how best to exploit Russia's economic, political and military vulnerabilities and anxieties.
Bit of all this is their anxieties as well.
Why don't we just tell them they're not good enough, that their mum never loved them and that the reason their dad left was their fault?
Oh, this is very good.
Very good.
Included a recommendation to reduce Russian natural gas exports and hinder pipeline expansions.
That means you can literally point to a report from the RAND Corporation going, well, what about this bit here where it says hinder pipeline expansions?
Oh, no, no, we were like that was just that's a poem.
That's a poem that I wrote there.
The pipeline is a metaphor for The study noted that a first step would involve stopping Nord Stream 2.
That's their first step!
That's their priority.
Well, first and foremost in our study of how to exploit military vulnerabilities and anxieties is stop, gas, and hinder pipeline expansions, and point one, Nord Stream 2.
Look, how do you explain this?
As I say, this is a poem, this is abstract, all these things are metaphors.
But Putin, oh, that guy, this is right out of his playbook, you know, the way that he blows up his own pipelines and sabotages his own economic interest.
Crazy!
You know, Putin, that natural gas from the United States and Australia could provide a substitute.
So they had a motive and they've sort of admitted they were going to do it.
And I've got a study that they paid for that says that it's their number one priority.
Let's look at the rest of this like it's a sort of court case that we're trying to work out.
Was it Russia or was it the United States?
We should just base it on evidence.
And FAIR, they're like an organisation that are about media bias.
You can't trust the mainstream media.
You know that already.
That's why you're watching us.
Even in spite of my obvious flaws and fallibilities, I think what you trust is I'm trying my best and I care about you, human to human.
In spite of the fact that I'll obviously make mistakes along the way, I'm not going to deliberately Lie to you because of my own economic interests because I've always hated that pipeline.
Imagine if you found out I'd blown out that pipeline.
Fucking hell, that guy, he took us on a journey but I haven't done it because I actually don't have the submersive.
I haven't got a submarine out the back.
We're at full pace just trying to deliver this video.
This is the best we can do.
The Iran study also prophetically recommended providing more US military equipment and advice to Ukraine.
Haha, advice!
Do you know what you should do?
Have a war with Russia.
And also, let's fuck up that pipeline.
What did you say about pipeline?
Nothing.
Pipeline?
I don't think anybody said pipeline.
In order to lead Russia to increase its direct involvement in the conflict and the price it pays for it.
Even though it acknowledged that Russia might respond by mounting a new offensive and seizing more Ukrainian territory.
In a way, it was an extraordinarily prophetic document, that RAND study.
It's like telling you, they're going to blow up that pipeline, we're going to arm Ukraine, that's going to lead to military action.
So if concurrent with that, You can see that there were events in 2014, NATO impingement, like, whatever this is, and obviously I don't feel qualified to start attributing blame in a global conflict.
Who the hell is qualified to do that?
But it's pretty clear that it's not just, oh, we're all out of mind in our own business, just trying to live life to the full and everything, like in a vitamins advert.
And in Russia, for no reason, just started bombing Ukraine, and then blew up their own pipeline.
They're absolutely crackers!
Remember, this study has probably come from a bunch of lunatics with no influence in government.
Oh, the Pentagon.
That was studied by the Pentagon.
Yeah, but the Pentagon?
They're not involved in military activity, or funding foreign wars, or the strategies around American foreign policy, or a nexus for the relationship between military-industrial complex and the American military, are they?
Oh, no, that is what they are.
The Obama administration opposed the pipeline.
As part of the major sanctions package against Russia in 2017, the Trump administration began sanctioning any company doing work on the pipeline.
The move generated outrage in Germany, where many saw it as an attempt to meddle with European markets.
In 2019, the U.S.
implemented more sanctions on the project.
We're starting to build a case that's at least as strong as, oh, Putin.
He's crack at him.
He's the sort to slam his cock in a car's door just to cause an argument.
Fair enough.
There are crazy people in the world, and I'm sure some of those crazy people rise to positions of power.
But this is a pretty good rational, logical, cohesive argument for the US sabotage that pipeline, isn't it?
Not that I'm saying they did.
Yeah, but then Joe Biden came in.
That's a new broom.
You see Joe Biden.
He's a new broom.
He's sweeping with vitality, whether he's sniffing someone on the head or bringing in a new foreign policy.
Joe Biden won't let this crap carry on.
Let's see what he did.
When he came into office, Joe Biden made opposition to the pipeline one of his administration's top priorities.
One, we're against that pipeline.
And two, we'll say some stuff about cannabis and then not actually do it.
Come on, man.
Say some stuff about Saudi Arabia, not actually do it.
Come on, man.
Say some stuff about Big Pharma, not actually do it.
Come on, man.
But let's bloody well make sure we do something about that pipeline.
That pipeline's blown up.
We didn't do it.
During his confirmation hearings in 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Congress he was determined to do whatever I can to prevent Nord Stream 2 from being completed.
Like if someone had said that about like a wedding and then you'd found like the bridegroom with his head stoved in with a candlestick you'd go...
What about Antony Blinken who said he was determined to do whatever he can to prevent, like you go, oh well I mean god you've took that out of context.
Well here's the context to prevent the Nord Stream 2 from being completed.
Could we get some more context?
Less context?
There has to be an amount of context that's going to hide the fact that we We did this!
Months later, the State Department reiterated that any entity involved in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline risks U.S.
sanctions and should immediately abandon work on the pipeline.
As Russia was gathering troops at Ukraine's border at the beginning of the year, U.S.
administration officials issued threats against the pipeline's operation in the event of a Russian invasion.
In January, under the Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, one of the main players during the 2014 maiden coup in Ukraine, issued a stern warning against the pipeline.
If Russia invades one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.
How do you walk that back?
Well, hey, that pipeline's actually been blown up.
Do you know anything about this, Victoria?
No?
Well, what about when you said, if Russia invades one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will, period, two, period, not, period, move, period, forward, period.
That was a joke.
I was saying that sarcastically.
What you've not added there is inverted commas, an aubergine, a smiley face, and a monkey going like that.
That's what I meant to say.
In sharp contrast to the US's antagonism, Russia has taken the opposite approach to the pipeline it spent billions of dollars to complete.
As recently as three weeks ago, Putin expressed willingness to supply more gas if the EU would lift the sanctions against the newer pipeline.
He said, if things are so bad, just go ahead and lift sanctions against Nord Stream 2 with its 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year.
All they have to do is press the button and they will get it going.
Diplomatic sources told The Cradle that Russia and Germany were in talks about both NS1 and NS2 on the day of the explosion.
So like, one argument is that Russia did it while they were...
Economically dependent upon it, trying to protect it and guaranteeing its success.
The other one is that America did it after decades of threats that they were gonna do it.
This is why people don't trust the mainstream media because that isn't even being included in the conversation.
That's insane to me that you wouldn't make that clear.
All you can possibly argue at this point is, look, you lot, you don't know what you're talking about.
If Russia were in charge of the world, your life would be so much worse and you'd all have to wear, like, grey boiler suits, although I'd just sew stuff on it, I've been quite into it, and you wouldn't be happy.
So at this point, the only argument you can make is, even though America is tyrannical and despotic and uses consumer capitalism to keep people spellbound in a state of continual hypnosis, appeased only by our ability to access screens and sugar, it's better than what you'd get under Russia and China.
The one country, though, that does stick their oar in in weird places like Southeast Asia, North Korea, all over the gaff, is the one that's been saying stuff like, we'll blow up that pipeline just you try making a pipeline.
Pipeline?
I'll fucking give you pipeline.
I'll show you pipeline, you motherfucker.
I'll pipeline you till it hurts.
Like, That's the one that we should be investigating, isn't it?
The day after the attack, German government sources leaked to the German daily Der Spiegel that weeks earlier the CIA warned Germany of a potential attack on the pipeline.
However, sources told CNN that the warnings were vague and it was not clear from the warnings who might be responsible for any attacks on the pipelines.
Hello, my name is Vladimir Russia.
There's gonna be some attacks all over those pipelines, buddy.
I mean comrade.
So you Germans better get out of town.
I mean out of Brezhnev.
Now listen, it's a grrrr communism!
Sorry, this is a very vague and confusing threat.
Hang up, Joe!
Hang up!
A high-level source in German intelligence told The Cradle that they were furious because they were not in the loop.
After the attack, Blinken called the bombing a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy, and said that this offers tremendous strategic opportunity for years to come.
Bloody hell!
On the other hand, Russia has already announced plans to begin repairing the pipeline.
So, I mean, look, either Russia are so strategically engaged in this that it's like a total mindfuck beyond what I'm capable of handling, or America have simply made good on a series of threats, promises, and long-term plans that have been published and promoted by them.
Which is it?
The reality is that Russia has done its utmost to discourage NATO from further involvement in the war.
A Russian attack on the pipeline would all but guarantee greater NATO involvement in Ukraine.
Antagonising Germany to teach the rest of Europe a lesson.
Yeah, that's their financial partner in this.
Which would only work if Russia was understood to be behind the sabotage would be the opposite of Russia's interests.
This argument amounts a little more than Putin is evil and hates Europe.
And that is why, I suppose, they try to keep you in a saccharine, sentimental, and mawkish state.
Ah, poor Ukrainian people.
Yeah, of course, poor Ukrainian people.
Ah, Putin is evil.
Yeah, maybe Putin is evil.
But should we also look at this long litany of evidence that America have wanted to destroy that pipeline for a long time?
Don't include that!
That's disrespectful to the Ukrainians, and you're not acknowledging how evil Putin is.
Now, look over there at how evil Putin is, and how sad that war is, while I just do something 200 foot under the sea that only Russia could do, because they're the only ones with submarines and Navy SEALs.
I mean, whatever their Navy SEALs are.
And I'm going to be over here, not doing anything, under... Damn you, pipeline!
Right!
Now what the fuck's Putin been doing now?
Ah, you gun destroyed your own pipeline, you crazy son of a bitch!
So there you have it.
Who are you going to trust?
The mainstream media, the American government, and the military-industrial complex, or your own lying eyes and ears?
I think we should have a long look at both sides of the argument, then come to our own conclusion that it was Russia, because Putin is evil.
But that's just what I think.
Let me know what you think in the chat and the comments.
See you in a second.
Time now for our conversation with Vandana Shiva.
You are going to love this conversation.
Those of you that are members of the Stay Free AF community, you probably joined us.
Did you join us?
Let us know in the chat right now.
Let us know in the comments.
You will already know that it was a fantastic conversation.
We are going to do conversations like this every single week.
To get the conversation in full, remember, follow us on Stay Free AF.
Hello, Vandana Shiva.
Hello, Russell.
At this time where the world is consumed by a cost-of-living crisis, what role does the control of agriculture and big food play?
Do you feel that there is a concerted effort to exert control over the basic components of human life?
Well, you know, trained as a physicist, I wouldn't have dedicated the last four decades of my life trying to figure out The food and agriculture system that first is very violent.
It is based on instruments of war.
Otherwise, farmers of Punjab wouldn't have been dispossessed and got into debt.
Innocent women, children, men wouldn't have died in the city of Bhopal in 1984.
That's the year I started to study the agriculture system.
And I have not stopped since that time.
Big corporations had no role in growing food.
Growing food was an act of care, an act of love.
The corporations got into agriculture first after the wars.
Same corporations that made chemicals for Hitler's concentration camps, poison gases for the war.
Corporations that started to trade in food as a commodity rather than food as nourishment and food as life.
And then, of course, a bunch of them created junk food and ultra processed food that's responsible for 75% of the chronic diseases in our times.
Globalization, you know, the rules of WTO literally were rules of handing control over agriculture to them.
This has brought us the multiple crisis, including the fact that after the financial crisis, the Wall Street collapse of 2008, the financial system has got into food.
And if you look at the current cost of living crisis, whether it's energy or it's food, both basic needs should be public goods, should be regulated as public goods.
Most of the hype in the prices is related to speculation and financialization.
So food and agriculture have become another commodity, an outward node of the financial system as understood through trading, city trading.
I suppose it's another abstraction of life and another opportunity for control.
What is the role of Bill Gates and other big tech moguls and titans in this increasing Technologization.
That is indeed the correct phrase of food and agriculture.
So, you know, years ago, Gates visited India and visited our president.
And, you know, the Indian presidential palace is a leftover of the British rule.
And really brilliant banquets are put out for international guests.
And here was all this wonderful Indian food.
And Bill Gates ordered a hamburger.
Now, you know, that's the level of his food literacy.
How is he getting into the food system?
You know, two years ago, actually, no, a few years ago, he started to, A, try and control the seed.
And I know in England there is huge uproar around deregulation of GMOs, particularly the new GMOs which are called gene-edited.
But life is complex, self-organized.
It's not a word program which you can cut and paste with no consequence.
Every change in the editing, one gene editing, 1,500 other genes get destabilized.
And now the results are there because there's enough experimentation.
And the first company that brought a gene-edited food, Calix, was going to be an absolute big return on investment.
Well, it just collapsed about three days ago because you can't fake Growing food.
You can't fake self-organization of the seed.
So Gates started to try and control the seed through gene editing.
Monsanto had tried to control it through genetic engineering, you know, putting toxic genes into the plants and then taking a patent.
Gates is taking patents through editing.
And you can't edit.
It's a wrong term.
It's just the wrong term.
He actually has a company called Editas, which rakes in all the patents.
I mean, we know what happened with the vaccines.
The very people who were supposed to be regulating were taking the patents for the vaccines, rather than be detached, work in the public interest, work as independent regulators.
The second way in which Bill Gates is getting into agriculture is by what he calls digital agriculture.
You can't do digital agriculture.
Agriculture is about living seed.
It's about living thought.
It's about trillions of organisms, trillions of organisms outside and trillions in our gut.
What is he meaning by digital agriculture?
Basically a surveillance agriculture.
If the farmers first were forced to get addicted to chemicals and chemical fertilizers are what some of the most destructive elements in the world.
They're killing the oceans with dead zones.
They're leading to emissions of nitrous oxide.
which is 300 times more damaging to the climate.
And the soils are being killed because soil organisms need organic matter.
They don't want a chemical that was made first for explosives and ammunitions and is now being used for the soil.
Gates is taking the next step after the Monsanto control.
The Monsanto control was adapt engineer seeds to take more chemicals.
So the explosion of glyphosate and use of Roundup is because of the Roundup ready crops.
Gates is now wanting a new dependence.
The farmers have to have their minds.
Farmers have knowledge.
Key is trying to treat them as empty heads, just like they define the soil as an empty container.
And He has signed agreements all over with the Mexican IT, you know, the person who controls the smartphones of Mexico that farmers will have to take instructions.
From the billionaires and the poison cartel of the world.
So they depend on chemicals, they depend on seeds, now they have to depend on their knowledge.
And this total control can only happen.
It can't happen on a farm like Navdanya's where we are just concluding a beautiful course with people from around the world called Return to Earth.
For us, doing good farming is returning to the earth as earth beings.
Taking care of the earth, growing diversity.
Our farm is so diverse, there is no way a drone.
could monitor it, it'll get thoroughly confused.
But to do the kind of agriculture Gates wants, he wants an agriculture that will have very large scale monocultures, will be chemical, except that you will now, you know, have precision agriculture to tell the farmer, you know, put five kilograms of nitrogen here and put 5.2 kilograms of nitrogen here, and would try and engineer the entire industrial agriculture operation.
But even more seriously, Gates wants to control our food, you know.
He is the biggest financier of fake food, lab food.
So, Bayer and Monsanto are already planning a large-scale agriculture, where agriculture doesn't produce food that we eat, but raw materials of carbohydrates and proteins for fake food to be manufactured in the lab.
So, it's the ultimate fake.
It's fake science, it's fake food, it's fake knowledge.
And, you know, stay free.
Your program Russell, you know, staying free today is about seed freedom and food freedom.
This is the movement I've been building for 40 years.
Each of us, each of us has a right to food freedom.
And food freedom means to know what you're eating, how it was grown, and to eat what's healthy for you, rather than eat what will kill you with disease and will kill the planet with chemicals, fossil fuels, because industrial agriculture is a fossil fuel agriculture.
It feels like extremist materialism to the point of ecocide, where the idea of spirit or mystery or symbiosis or Gaia has been extracted by this advanced rationalism, this obsession and fetishization of measurement and control.
To the point where our planet becomes unviable.
It's almost a trope, Vandana, in the sci-fi world, that the mechanical mind of an AI entity will one day, in a dystopian twist, decide that there's no point in humanity, that life itself is unviable.
But it appears that we're doing this already by adopting a kind of AI rationalist mentality that excludes the immeasurable value of that which is difficult to know.
Other than what you've just said, and I reckon it is contained in what you said, other than returning to practices of agriculture and indeed life that are at odds with and oppose this advancing ideology, How do we re-engage with nature in a way that can oppose something that's so vast, so powerful and hegemonic, something as potent as Bill Gates and all of his wealth and power and infrastructure, all veiled under philanthropy?
What kind of movements can we practice and support?
Well, you know, what I've always done is first understand what are the instruments of control.
When I understood the instruments of control were the chemicals and poisons in agriculture, I said, let's grow food without chemicals.
And that's totally possible in ecological agriculture, agroecology, organic farming, biodynamics, give it whatever name you want to.
Then I found seeds were to be patented, and genetically engineered seed forced on us.
So freedom, staying free was saving the seed.
Now we have this horrible convergence of failed biotechnology, the genetic engineering biotechnology edifice, totalitarian information technology, and the financialization of the world, Through a new technologizing of money, turning it more and more fictitious.
And, you know, the Gates and the Rockefellers and the New York Stock Exchange are already talking about owning every bit of nature through natural asset companies.
And making money on the financial markets, you know?
A river flows, it's got that much water.
You can't fictitiously multiply water.
But if you turn it into a financial asset, you can multiply fictitiously while appropriating the natural resources.
So, they're talking of four thousand trillion dollars of Of gambling on nature and making money out of it.
So if this is the instrument, I mean this fourth industrial revolution that Mr. Klaus Schwab keeps talking about, is this convergence of power.
And its illusions include, just like our seeds were called primitive, we in the colonial period were called primitive and we could be colonized.
Humanity is being called primitive and you know, unevolved.
Being, and therefore needs to be enhanced by being totally enslaved, you know, through the algorithms and the computers, the machines.
And, you know, Gates has a patent called 060606, exactly when COVID was locking us all in.
He had already applied a Microsoft patent of us as users and the gadgets as the determinants of our value through the algorithms and the social credit system.
Would they decide whether we are worth having freedom or not?
That, to me, is an unlivable word.
I think there are two forms of resistance.
One is when farmers whose livelihoods are threatened by laws like the Dutch laws.
The last time we met and we talked, that was what was the big issue, the Netherlands laws that would wipe out small farms, that would wipe out animals, or the Indian protests.
Everywhere, everywhere where laws are brought in to make it more difficult for farmers to farm, there are protests.
But I think an even bigger movement is the movement of reclaiming food sovereignty and growing your own food.
And this got accelerated during COVID because people, A, the supply chains were shut down, but more than that, people started to make the connections between food and health.
And they realized there's no food better than food you've grown with your own hands and your own heart.
And the explosion of organic gardens around the world You know, in our movement, about 6,000 gardens of hope were created by the women in this period of when we were locked down.
So, both are resistances.
One is a creative resistance.
The other is a resistance that says a clear no.
But every no that comes from a deep conscience is a powerful no.
You asked about coordination.
There are two kinds of coordination.
There's a coordination from the top.
Where a centralizing force puts autonomous things together.
That's the kind of totalitarian control the billionaires, the Gates, the Klaus Schwab's want to be.
The second is the autopoietic organization.
Think of the fact that there are a hundred trillion microbes in our gut and they're working in coordination.
And our body is working in coordination with them.
And in community, you know, you celebrate community.
What is community?
No one controlling from outside, but auto-poetic, self-organized, autonomous beings sharing.
Sharing the same concerns, the same love for life, the same love for freedom.
That is the bond that brings us together.
And Gandhi called it, he had a beautiful word for it, Swaraj.
He wrote a book Before he came back to India, he wrote it while he was still in South Africa.
He wrote it while traveling from England to South Africa, fighting the racist regime.
And the book is called Hind Swaraj.
And we do a course every year with Satish Kumar, who's at Schumacher College.
Satish and I have been offering this since the year 2000, when we started the Earth University at Navdanya.
And Swaraj, that's a beautiful, powerful word.
Swaraj means self-rule.
Swaraj does not mean atomization.
Swaraj does not mean isolation.
Swaraj does not mean insulation from each other.
Swaraj means each being Governing themselves with the highest consciousness and the highest values.
And beings with high value and high consciousness coming together in larger and larger holes.
He had a beautiful quotation for this.
He said, I do not see the world where the pyramid, where the top of the pyramid crushes the bottom that supports it.
That's the pyramid we are trying to create.
I see the world as ever expanding, never ascending, oceanic circles.
Where every circle gives love, care and strength to all circles within.
So I believe that life's self-organization is from the molecule to Gaia.
There is amazing coherence.
And you know, my dear friend May Wan Ho used to talk about quantum coherence.
That every molecule, every cell knows how to function.
And every cell together knows how to function.
Every organ knows how to function.
Every body knows how to function.
Every community knows how to function.
And all the way to Gaia, as a self-organized being.
That's why James Lovelock called her Gaia.
She managed her temperature.
She managed her...
Her earth systems, her planet systems and it's the disruption, yeah?
I see parallels between the disruption of the human body's metabolism with junk food and fast food and ultra-processed food and the destruction of Gaia's metabolism through junk energy, yeah?
Gaia has energy.
Regenerative living energies.
And then we turn to fossil fuels.
And in two hundred years, they're totally messed up.
Of course, they now are coming up with new jugglery.
Gates jugglery.
I have his book here to remind me all the time.
Yeah.
And he's got a net zero section where he's been saying net zero doesn't mean zero.
It doesn't mean we get rid of our emissions.
Just means we've got to fix it.
They want to fix it financially and they want to fix it through a new resource grab.
Yeah.
We call it carbon colonization.
They'll keep emitting carbon dioxide and they want our land.
As Carbon Secretary.
So I've said, you know, our Mother Earth is not your sink.
We're sorry.
You know, we are not here to be dumped on all over again.
We will live lives of love, taking care of Mother Earth, and we will together generate the kind of power that makes your system redundant.
As long as we know you are cooking up structures of further control and extinction, as you said, ecocide, you know, Their idea is destroy the earth and destroy all human freedom and our idea is regenerate the earth and and grow human freedom even deeper.
I need to speak to you every day because like I return to a kind of even though I oppose the ideas that I frame in the questions in another way Vandana I am sort of similarly seduced by Ideas of materialism and individualism and competition, and almost in a way it's like I want to challenge these centres of power with the same frequency of force that they espouse, that I feel like a sort of an individualistic, priapic urgency to oppose it.
When I hear you describe the organic systems that are in place from the sub-molecular to the cosmic, that in their own almost archetypal rhythms are already assuring a certainty in survival, that there are cooperative systems that don't need like overt masculine assertion in order to be resolved, I feel like, God, I'm sort of just part of this.
I'm just another person in the mix, sort of fighting for a kind of form of individualism.
Like, what you say, it sounds, you know, when it entered Western culture, so sort of Rousseauian and idealistic, that it's, unless it's directly coming from you, I sometimes feel like, no, this is, like, this is utopianism.
Like, I've been schooled in the West.
I've been schooled in individualism and the kind of self-centeredness that our system inheres and encourages.
Like, I've had my own journeys of feeling weak and unempowered and then my own journey of feeling personal success and personal prowess and personal potency, so that I've, sort of, it's somehow in my body and in my blood to kind of, to even, to unconsciously somehow agree with The systems of power that we are describing and that my questions are directing you to condemn.
So, how is it that... What kind of faith is it that you have, as well as the action that you're undertaking?
I didn't know, for example, about that Earth University and that Satish Kumar comes there and teaches.
And I thought, my God, I want to come to that place!
I'd like to go there and... Please come!
Do come and offer a course!
Come and offer a course!
I can do it!
Do a course.
I've got to sit there quietly for at least a year.
I shouldn't be allowed to speak for a couple of terms, at least.
Yeah, I mean, do you see what I mean?
of the individual, this kind of individual autonomy that you're describing for someone
from my culture requires a degree of personal surrender and I wonder if you encounter that
a lot with Western people even when they're being condemnatory of the centralised technological
forces we're describing, that somehow we are its children.
Well you know I am of course grateful that I'm born in India.
Of course, there's a huge consumerist India now.
There's a globalized India today.
There's a careless India today.
I mean, look at the mountains of waste that are being generated and the mountains of plastic that we have been immersed in.
So, I mean, I won't think and talk about an India that is not contaminated.
My own worldview comes first and foremost from my own studies and reflections on quantum theory.
So much of my thinking is about the interconnectedness of the world that the quantum world teaches us, that there is no separation.
Second, that there's only potential.
There's nothing like fixed things.
This idea of essential entities, fixed entities that can't change, that too is totally obsolete.
But my second stream comes from the fact that, you know, now it's, you know, I'm going to be 70 this November and And you know, and that's part of the reason my publishers wanted me to write my movement memoir, The Terra Viva.
And I hope we'll have time to talk about it.
But you know, it's 50 years since I've been doing ecological.
Yes, that's it, that's it!
This right here!
Best bit of publishing promotion since you held up Bill Gates' book.
That's me with my big bindi!
I recognise you.
So I think the second, you know, 50 years of ecological work, learning from nature, learning from communities, it allows you to shed some of these mechanistic ideas that are at the foundation of how we think of the economy, how we think of political power, how we think of society, you know.
This idea of atomized individuals who need hubs to control them, that's what's blocking community.
But our basic urge is relational.
Our basic urge is to be cooperative, not competitive.
And that's the way nature behaves.
I mean, when Gaia The idea of Gaia was created.
It was Lynn Margolis with James Lovelock.
And Lynn Margolis was the biologist to show the world that the idea that species compete with each other, that parts of a body compete with each other, are so false.
If we didn't have cooperation, we wouldn't be alive.
And that applies for the microbes, and it applies for the plants, and the forest, and it applies to the human community.
So I think, basically, it's partly A paradigm shift in terms of the way we think of science.
You know, Cartesian and Baconian science is so disconnected from the world.
It was very good for control.
It was very good for extraction.
It was very good for colonialism.
It was very, very good for trying to subjugate nature.
But as you said, you know, nature cannot be subjugated.
No matter what kind of powers we bring, there's always a path.
You know, I mean, I have seen You know, bridges blown away.
I've seen dams washed away.
I've seen, you know, everything we think we are building strong, you know, build back better, their slogan.
No, with nature, there's nothing you can't build back better if you don't work according to her ecological laws.
And that is knowledge.
You know, that is following the way the earth systems work.
Tell us about your book then.
You've just told me that this is what I am to do, and as you know, I do what you tell me.
I've already made that clear to you on a number of occasions.
You've written this because it's your birthday coming up.
Happy birthday for your birthday in November.
What is it that you in particular cover in Terra Viva, Van Darnham?
Well, I basically cover my life.
It's not my autobiography.
It's not my personal autobiography.
It is, as the title says, Terra Viva, my life in a biodiversity of movements.
And my first involvement, of course, with the Chipko movement, a beautiful movement where women came out to hug the trees and stop the logging, which was leading to deforestation, landslides, floods, disasters.
And then, of course, my work on the seed.
And how and why I started to save seeds, how I absolutely rejected the idea that seeds were a machine and invented Violent Sand.
Yeah, and they could have intellectual property rights on this machine.
Now, seed is the ultimate self-organized expression of life.
And the word for us in India is bija, that which arises on its own forever and ever and ever.
And for me, that's freedom.
If we can be like the seed, then we will stay free.
I talk about the movement globally we created of diverse women for diversity, because for me, the idea of monocultures, It's so perverse because the world is diverse culturally, it's diverse biologically, and when we got together as a movement of diverse women for diversity, and of course my years of fighting globalization and GATT and WTO and the creation of the International Forum on Globalization, which shut down WTO in Seattle, reminded us that when people get together, they have the power to stop the biggest institution.
The whole issue of water, privatization, Including Coca-Cola trying to steal the water and the women rose up and shut the Coca-Cola plant down in Plachimada.
And I have the privilege to support them and join them.
Or the Ganges River being privatized by Suez.
And now there are attempts to financialize water, biodiversity, nature as a whole.
So the issue of financialization will be the big issue in the years to come.
And of course, my dedication to reject the idea of patents on life, because a patent is given for an invention.
Life is not invented by humans.
We can modify, we can modify badly like GMOs, we can modify brilliantly like Indian peasants evolving 200,000 varieties of rice out of one grass.
And all my battles on fighting biopiracy, big corporations.
Monsanto claiming to have invented our ancient wheat that does not lead to gluten allergy.
A Texas company claiming to have invented the basmati rice, you know, the aromatic rice from my valley.
Or the big name, you know, 11 years.
I fought against the pageanting of neem, a tree that we have used for pest control.
My grandmother used it, my mother used it, and then a corporation in 1994 claims they have invented the use of neem for biopesticide.
And then the climate issue, and finally, you know, because we are inter-beings, you know, I think the big breakthrough we have to make in our time, if we have to stay free and stay alive, is to realize that we are inter-beings, yeah?
90% of us Our other microbes, 90% of us, we're only 10% human cells.
And especially with the COVID, you know, just like earlier, every insect had to be killed with insecticides and every plant had to be killed with Roundup, you know, there was so much writing on this war against the virus.
But we are the viral, you know, we, our skin, We are just walking my viromes.
So I think instead of this cultivation of fear of the diversity of which we are a part, my book Terra Viva is about the celebration of diversity and interbeing.
Bloody hell, thank you, that's pretty incredible.
A few things.
One is, when you get to the point of patenting life itself, I suppose that is the usurping of the divine in a very practical sense.
It's almost like the supplanting of God of our understanding as the apex and creator and genesis of all existence.
Once you arrive at that point in a kind of a clerical and bureaucratic and indeed patented form, then, truly then, Nietzsche's prognosis is carried out.
Russell, if I can interrupt there.
You know, the issue of genetic engineering was really a path to patenting.
Genetic engineering wasn't being done in order to feed the world or anything like that.
They said it at this meeting in 87, about which I've written in Terra Viva.
We have to do GMOs in order to own life.
And over the years I always say a GMO for them means God move over.
We will now be the creators.
We will be the rent collectors from life.
We've just, you know, we're looking at our paddy, which sadly, you know, we have 750 varieties of rice growing on our farm.
And the rains haven't stopped.
By now we should have been harvesting, but there is no sun to ripen.
And while I was looking at the rice, you know, and I'm thinking, here is this amazing seed that became a thousand seeds.
And here are the Monsantos and the Gates thinking, we will prevent the seed from renewing, we will terminate the fertility of seed and we will be gods.
So God move over is what GMOs actually mean.
You're so right.
Yes, and when Foucault talked about biopolitics, the control of life itself, I can see now how, through technology, life in a botanical sense is being patented and controlled, and in the form of human consciousness, through the management and control of attention, as well as, obviously, behaviour, You can see how every aspect of life is being controlled and curated, how spontaneity is being extinguished.
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Harriet Riley, underscore yoga, asks, at Community Festival you encouraged us to take part in
World Food Day on the 16th of October.
Any top tips on how to do this?
I would suggest to all of you, you know, Either start a garden or have a picnic with your community.
Create community around food.
Food is community.
Food is the embodiment of the community from the soil, the community of the insects and the pollinators, the community of the people who took care of the land.
But begin a food community and have a party.
Now bake your bread.
Hello, welcome to Stay Awake with Russell Brand, a guided meditation.
With me every week.
This week we're doing a meditation on how to deal with heartbreak, because Jack said, great meditation on transitions and change.
I was wondering, could you give me a meditation on falling in love again after heartbreak?
Jack, I'm not doing a meditation on falling in love again after heartbreak, but we will talk about letting go of heartbreak and what it indicates.
We're not going to go falling straight in love, because that's frankly part of the problem, darling.
This meditation today that we're doing for Jack on heartbreak is essentially about letting go and ultimately recognising that all we need is already within us.
How can something so archetypally and universally true ever sound like anything other than a cliché?
I don't know.
How do we navigate between the archetypal and the cliché?
I suppose through authenticity.
As I continue to talk, observe that pattern of breath.
In for five, out for seven.
We'll dive deep into the minds of people like Elon Musk, Vandana Shiva, Yanis Varoufakis, Wim Hof, Eckhart Tolle, and whoever you want us to.
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