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Nov. 2, 2022 - Stay Free - Russel Brand

01:36:01

Jeffrey Sachs On Nord Stream & Wuhan Lab. You Won't Believe THIS - #026 Stay Free with Russell Brand

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	I'm going to go ahead and get the camera.
	I'm going to get the camera.
	Cheers.
	So I'm looking for the CEO Looking for the CEO
	In this video, you're going to see the future.
	Let's let the future be my reference.
	I'm gonna be breaking news.
	There's got a life out there.
	Hey, all right.
	Thanks for watching Stay Free with Russ for Brand.
	On this show we do a variety of things.
	Sometimes we talk to guests, like Jordan Peterson or Eckhart Tolle, and generally we try to cover the news in a way that, whilst explains how, let's face it, Terrifying things are, doesn't strip you of the essential hope that's required to be a human being, that things could improve, that life could get better, that there is some joy, some glory to be had out there.
	Today we're talking to Jeffrey Sachs, who's one such figure in my mind, not Solely because he's willing to challenge establishment narratives, not just because he's an economist and professor at Columbia University who's willing to talk out against the kind of mainstream media narratives that we're fed around subjects as varied as the pandemic or the ongoing war, but also because of this face that he does when he's under pressure.
	That.
	That's what I like about him.
	Can we see that?
	Thanks.
	Yeah, that's one of the things that I like about him.
	That face!
	And in our interview today, which is going to be sort of coming up in about 10 minutes, I'm going to try and get him to do that face.
	If you have any questions for Geoffrey, particularly those of you on locals, send them now because that's one of the things we're going to do.
	If you're a member of our State Free AF community, we're going to frankly prioritise your questions because you support us in the work that we try to do.
	You know it's Addiction Week and We have this foundation here, the Stay Free Foundation, where people that are drug addicts and mentally ill can apply for individual or group grants.
	What I mean by that is, we might give a grant to people that are running a treatment centre, or we might give a grant to an individual drug addict.
	But there's a real proviso, there's a sting in the towel, and that sting is simply stop taking drugs.
	Let's see what's going on.
	Why are you smiling at me for?
	Well, it's just general smiling.
	Just to lift the spirits?
	I thought so.
	Sometimes when you see a smiling face, actually, I did actually feel good, but then I'm cynical about my own emotions.
	Well, that says more about you.
	No, it doesn't!
	It doesn't say more about me.
	It's because I was thinking, what's he smiling about?
	What's going on if we're in a televisual context?
	Are you alright?
	Very well, very well.
	We've got some news, Gareth.
	The first thing I wanted to talk to you about as producer of the show, as co-creator of the show, is Joe Biden.
	Is there anything this man can't do, is what I'm saying, because, like, there's being forgetful, and then there's telling lies, and then there's the outrageous claim that you're communicating with dead people, that typically when people say that, I don't know, do you know anyone that said that?
	Not personally, no.
	I once saw a medium when I was a younger man.
	Sounds like the kind of thing you'd do.
	Of course I would.
	I'd love anything like that.
	Like, when I was a drug addict, I would take any drugs.
	Now that I'm not a drug addict, or at least not taking drugs anymore, I will do any whack, crazy, spiritual thing To get myself, like, that's why, you know, and I'm not saying these things are all whack and crazy because I believe in a lot of these people.
	The tapping with Nick Orner, love that, he's not whack and crazy, it's been proven scientifically.
	The breathwork with Biette, Wim Hof's breathwork, Kundalini yoga, Transcendental Meditation.
	Frankly, I'm desperate.
	That's essentially the message that I'm conveying.
	And when I was younger, actually when I was just commencing my journey as a drug addict, Is that how you see it?
	Or just commencing?
	Okay, let's see.
	Let's get it all set out nicely.
	Start with the easier drugs.
	Right.
	The simple... Chocolate?
	Yeah, actually.
	Chocolate, masturbation, if you want to call it a type of drug.
	Certainly it can be addictive if you really lean into it.
	And then like the rest of the marijuana, the cannabis, then the amphetamines.
	Then you climb that drug ladder to you hit what I call the beggar man's gold.
	That's the hero in itself, the sweet lady, the brown mistress, the naughty snake.
	But like on that journey, one time I went to see a medium and I went there like in a sheepskin jacket with no top on and that, and essentially pressurised her into saying that Mark Bolan was my spirit guide.
	Right.
	Yeah, from T-Rex.
	Like, she, I had every, I really had the look of a man who wasn't going to leave until I was given... Oh, you also had the look of Mark Bolan.
	Essentially, I went in there, sort of in eye shadow, wearing a sheepskin jacket with no top on, and sort of jewels and stuff, and a look of desperation.
	Anyway, so... Was this a bit like when you pressured your mum into saying you were the new Jesus?
	I didn't pressure her into saying I was the new Jesus.
	I just said... I was only seven.
	I just said I was worried that I might be.
	And that we should probably prepare.
	We should probably... Batten down the hatches!
	Could be the new Lord.
	I'd never say that now.
	Love...
	Actual Jesus.
	There he is.
	And here he is as well.
	Got a new tattoo.
	There's new Jesus there.
	Wow.
	How's it feeling?
	How's he doing?
	So it's going into the scabby phase, I'm afraid.
	Oh, I see.
	Which is a bit of a... That'll be the bit where he's pushing that rock to one side.
	You're putting the Vaseline on?
	Well, I didn't use Vaseline because that's actually stopped breathing.
	It was a cream that Anna had.
	I don't know the name of it.
	What kind of cream is it?
	We don't even know the brand name.
	Could be anything.
	Because we could be endorsing this.
	Bauman's.
	You want a Christ tattoo on the forearm?
	Well, you need some Bauman's, me old pal, me old bube.
	God, we're controlled by the elites, aren't we?
	Look at us.
	Whether or not it's communing with the dead as, you know, me as a young man with Mark Bolan, God rest his eternal glittery soul, or Joe Biden, President of the United States, tottering around the stage, claiming to have had a face-to-face conversation with the inventor of insulin.
	Let's watch him.
	How many of you know somebody with diabetes and needs insulin?
	Well, guess what?
	When Debbie and I passed this law, it included everybody, not just seniors.
	And so what happened was he had the corner of his cheek licked.
	Not really, no.
	I'm not a fan of that.
	No, look, he was trying to get some out of the corner of his cheek with his tongue.
	I'm not a fan of that.
	No.
	Not when you're president and you're sort of doing an insulin talk.
	Also, as I understand it, the insulin is sometimes up to 600% I think it's risen in price 680% in terms of like the kind of profits that they've been making over time.
	Yeah, and I feel like it's not a strong suit for Joe, the sort of availability of insulin in the United States right now.
	Well, I think Americans pay still 10 times more than we pay elsewhere.
	And this is before we've got to the bit where he claims to speak to the dead.
	We said, okay, you know how much it costs to make that insulin drug for diabetes?
	Of course.
	It was invented by a man who did not patent it because he wanted it available for everyone.
	Big Pharma still lives by that code, really.
	You remember during the pandemic, that sort of profit-free, access to all, just want to help spirit.
	Albert Ball, the CEO of Pfizer, said it would be morally reprehensible to profit from this drug.
	But strangely, Pfizer uniquely profited during the pandemic.
	Their best ever year.
	I don't know if that's because of the pandemic.
	I've I tried to read what it said about their prophets and it was just basically a black limitless expanse of nothingness, so it's difficult to understand.
	That's what he says.
	Yeah, he spoke to him.
	He didn't, and to be honest, I'm beginning to think that that lady in Southend-on-Sea when I was a lad only said that Mark Bolan was my spirit guide because she wanted me to leave.
	Are you sure there are no spirit guides coming through?
	Are you sure there are no spirit guides coming through?
	Do you want to know a bit about insulin?
	Alright, yeah, a bit.
	Insulin, a hormone produced in the body, was never invented at all, but was discovered, so that's the first lie, discovered by Frederick Banting, a physician and scientist who died at the age of 49 in 1941, and Biden was born in 1942.
	So even if he'd done it, you know, just before, it would have been an early conversation in his life.
	You know like how Dalai Lama's and that, there's sort of a moment where they sort of cross between spaces, and in fact this is the time of Halloween where the veneer between the realms is thinner than ordinary.
	All saints' days are coming, or it's here already, I don't know, I've not really been following stuff like that.
	Maybe young Joe Biden and the passing soul of who I'm going to call Freddie Insulin, like ships in the Meta Knight, crossed briefly.
	At that point, I don't know, it seems it's a difficult story to sell.
	You are starting to form the opinion that Biden is just enlightened, aren't you?
	Is that where you're getting to?
	What it is, is like, they say that as people sort of deteriorate and decay, the soul becomes more evident and prominent, and like, this cadaverous man is like, I think, now reaching the point where he's more dead than living, and is sort of gaining Tibetan Book of the Dead, Dead Sea Scroll-type knowledge.
	Like, esoteric knowledge.
	He's like a sort of a Jesuit master now, sort of conveying pure truths.
	Yeah.
	That's why he doesn't know which way to go, because he's not even sure what reality is in anymore.
	It's like an augmented reality he's in.
	It's like Pokemon Go.
	Sure.
	He's in a Pokemon Go world, and in his Pokemon Go world, it's like, well, the staircase is over there, along with Pikachu or one of the other lads.
	That's right, Pikachu.
	That's the vice president.
	Okay, little buddy, let's go.
	What's that on your laptop?
	I don't know much about Pikachu's character well as my kids.
	I forgot to buy some Pikachu stuff.
	Cute little guy.
	What angle is Pikachu?
	What is he even?
	A rabbit?
	A guinea pig?
	A rat?
	What's his game?
	It's an electric mouse.
	How do you know that?
	Oh, that's the generation gap.
	Okay.
	What generation are you?
	Oh, that's that one.
	29.
	That's X, is it?
	That's not X. That's Millennials.
	Right.
	Stars directing their faith, in the words of Dear Robbie.
	OK, so, also though, while we're talking about decrepit leadership, according to potential propaganda or actual reality, Putin does have Parkinson's and pancreatic cancer.
	Says a Kremlin spy.
	Can we trust spies?
	No.
	By their very nature, they're lying for a living, aren't they?
	They've got to go around the whole time acting like they're something... Not spies.
	Like they're not spies.
	What are you doing?
	I wasn't spying.
	I'll tell you that.
	Also, if Putin does have that, then I feel sorry for him.
	There's the evidence right there.
	Apparently it's evidence of an IV drip.
	But as we were talking about earlier, I guess an IV drip could be other things, couldn't it?
	A man might take an IV drip for many reasons, for virility, for... to have a prehensile member.
	Right.
	Just one that could move around like a pig's tail.
	Okay, yeah.
	Take a special drip and then it could... who knows?
	There could be many reasons.
	Is that one of the pop-ups you've been looking at?
	I don't look at pop-ups, thank you.
	If something pops up on me, firstly I think, well, what are you popping up for?
	You've no business here.
	And prehensile ones, that's no business of mine.
	So like, Putin, I suppose this is old school propaganda, like just, oh, he's weak.
	He's weak.
	He's in decline.
	Are we doing that with Biden?
	I'm actually not approaching him from a propagandist perspective.
	I'm actually concerned.
	And if someone charged me with looking after him, I'd do it.
	Yeah.
	But we're not trying to take down the U.S.
	though, are we?
	I mean, we're not in some kind of proxy war with the U.S.
	Not in the immediate future.
	Right.
	I think that it should carry on, but just run by the people that live there in a more direct way.
	Right.
	That's in my agenda.
	Yeah, that's your propaganda.
	There it is.
	Quite straightforward.
	Very good.
	Told you outright.
	Don't have to make up lies about it.
	But, like, is Putin really weak?
	Because just remember this, which was admittedly, let's face it, Russian propaganda.
	Nonetheless, it's quite good propaganda because you just know Putin's general demeanour in it.
	I think he looks pretty hard.
	Firstly, there's a rocket firing off into the sky.
	guys have a look gal. Daring. Cut to Putin chilled.
	Doesn't look very in decline, does he?
	He's fine.
	He's absolutely fine.
	I think he could handle pancreatic cancer.
	Unless that's one of the doubles, because apparently there's doubles.
	He's got all of these doubles.
	I mean, I suppose that's common practice.
	I feel like Churchill had them.
	Right.
	You ever thought about it?
	People have mistaken you for other people, haven't they?
	Yeah, sort of over the years, Gal, but, like, I've never been invited to double for one.
	Okay, right.
	I've got my own waxwork, of course.
	You have.
	But, like, some people, like Putin, I don't know, yeah, having doubles is common practice, I think, isn't it?
	Yeah.
	For a leader, Churchill had them.
	I don't know that Hitler would have had them.
	I suppose he did, though, did he?
	Might have done.
	Of course he did.
	He would have needed some doubles.
	Okay, so, like, according to Russian propaganda, Putin pretty mighty, commanding a nuclear army, according to other propaganda, vulnerable and weak.
	But I suppose to give it a slightly different perspective, if this is a time of decay in a more macro perspective, in a more cosmological perspective, it's interesting I think that the leaders that we're looking at Our leader's in decline.
	It's interesting that there are doubles, that it's sort of a literal simulacrum, if you can have such a thing, that it's a sort of a baffling array of entropying, atrophying rather, figures just falling apart before our eyes.
	I think it tells you something integral, that this is but the mask of power, this is but the veil.
	You know, like, we're on Rumble right now.
	You're watching this on Rumble, presumably.
	Rumble has pulled its services from France, refusing to cave to demands to censor Russian news sources.
	Now, I think YouTube did censor Russia Today, right?
	Yeah, that's right, and I think that's what this is over as well, is that they've been told to take down Russia Today on Rumble, and they've refused.
	And so, therefore, they've pulled their services from France.
	That's a proper wartime move, and I suppose when we're talking to Jeffrey Sachs later, one of the things I'll be interested in asking him is about whether or not it is a proxy war, and indeed what constitutes a proxy war.
	This funding, whether it's the explicit funding coming out of the Pentagon, what's been referred to as lethal aid, or the loans that are coming out of the World Bank and the IMF, that sort of is funding.
	The NATO support, the NATO encroachment that led to this, the meddling in Ukrainian... I mean, to what point Is Ukraine an independent nation in a war with Russia?
	By what terms, really?
	I suppose the difficulty is that in the last century, we've gone from wars that went from real plain, even down to the costume, goodies versus baddies type wars, Wars against terror, wars against drugs, wars against germs, proxy wars, wars where the goodies have got Nazis in their team.
	It's just become more and more difficult to get a cohesive angle.
	When Aaron Maté came on the show, and you can look at that interview in full on Rumble, I said, like, all right, Aaron.
	I tried to take him to task a bit, Gary.
	Oh, yeah?
	Well, yeah, because I was saying, like, look, mate, you're coming across as someone who has just criticised America no matter what.
	What if you'd have been alive in the Second World War?
	Would you still have been going, oh, America?
	Like, oh, you'd go, no, I wouldn't.
	I'd have joined up and fought against the Nazis.
	Right, he said that, did he?
	That's what he said.
	Right.
	And I mean, like, he said it.
	What about you?
	I didn't take him at his word.
	I didn't push back on that.
	What do you think you'd have done?
	I can't see you in the army.
	Well, it's a different time, innit?
	I'm not gonna have this haircut in the 1940s.
	No, you wouldn't be allowed it.
	Of course not.
	No one did.
	No one had this haircut in the 1940s.
	No one.
	Like, literally, you wouldn't be allowed it.
	I mean, my whole personality in the 1940s would have had to have just simply been put to one side.
	And I'd have had to have got on with being a 1940s person.
	Yeah.
	Do you think you reclaimed the personality after the war?
	Like you were going home to your wife or something?
	Maybe.
	Like me and her, she'd hopefully accept me for what I really was.
	But I can't listen.
	The fighting was awful.
	Let me slip into something a little more comfortable.
	Give me your kitten heels right now.
	Because I've been being a completely different person.
	All this got any gun chum crap.
	Firing guns.
	No man to handle that.
	You'd have been terrible at the football match at Christmas Day.
	Well, that was in the First World War, Gareth.
	And I think in Treasure, I haven't gotten a goal, I suppose.
	I think I would have found it difficult.
	In the First World War, you know, like all those conscientious objectors, they've been forgiven now.
	It's weird, isn't it?
	Because now, if you go against the narrative of the war right now, you're like, oh, it's not very patriotic.
	Everything has shifted.
	I don't understand what happened from, like, you know, when somebody was 29, or young Putin there, who's, I think, 19 now.
	You're dealing with, like, sort of like, when we were younger, it was like, the left is this, the left is for freedom of speech, for standing up, now it's, everything is sort of to anti-war, big anti-war marches against Iraq, now it's like, what, I'm not sure what we're supposed to do.
	I understand that the world is complex, I understand that the truth is complex, but what I'm beginning to believe is that because there are no actual principles in politics, they sort of ghost and shift around according to what is convenient in order to meet their objectives.
	Yeah.
	In order to suit an agenda.
	It's not as straightforward as, these are the goodies, these are the baddies, they seem to have gone.
	No, I mean, it's amazing that with all the information that we have now, more information than ever, you would think, or certainly have access to, that the arguments seem to be more reductive than ever, in terms of the shutting down, and obviously we'll talk to this, talk to Jeffrey Sachs about this, but the kind of reductivism that goes around conversations about nuanced subjects such as this war, for example, seems to increasingly be shut down.
	But perhaps it's because of the availability but perhaps the reductivism is the response because now you
	literally can watch a channel like this, you can watch if you wanted Young Turks or you could watch
	Tim Pool or you could watch Crowder or Shapiro or Redacted or Double Down News,
	like across the sort of you know the political spectrum of left to right, we call it libertarianism to sort of old
	school leftism, like there has to be a machine that dominates information
	and like we were talking earlier about Musk and Twitter, and like my belief is that Musk is an individualist, he is
	a libertarian and like as he said in his recent tweet and a free speech absolutist.
	But clearly he has like a private agenda that relates to essentially, I think, a technological revolution, space travel.
	And it's interesting, I was thinking as well about, like, because he was like, initially at least, the sort of Tesla person, like, and the affiliation between Tesla and ecological responsibility, which maybe doesn't hold up under scrutiny, let me know in the chat, let me know in the comments what you guys think.
	It's interesting that he is now seen as someone that's almost beyond the arguments of climate and ecology and he's sort of talking about I think like transhumanism through the neural link like you know sort of a kind of technological human hybrids and of course he famously said we already are sort of cyborgs um and also the idea of interplanetary human beings
	Because of this, his agenda, I was arguing, is somehow at odds with American hegemony.
	The idea that America, through globalist affiliations with organisations like the WHO, IMF, which I believe they have undue influence over, along with private financial interests that are pretty well documented, that ultimately align with American corporatism and the American agenda.
	Musk has found himself at odds with the agenda to create a unipolar world.
	That Russia, obviously, believe in a kind of pluralism of power because they want their own Russian imperialism.
	Similarly, China.
	I'm wondering what the true tectonic plates of power are actually being moved by.
	And that's one of the things I'm going to ask Jeffrey Sachs as well.
	Yeah, it's complex.
	I mean, you know, he's an interesting figure.
	There's another side of it that is argued by a lot of people that he's as much a part of the system as anyone else and that what's happening with Twitter at the moment is all for show in a way.
	A lot of those money that he's made has come through government contracts.
	Yeah.
	You know, he's kind of integrated into that system.
	A lot of the ways in which Tesla makes money is selling carbon credits to people who, you know, because of the business that he operates in.
	So it's like companies who like have big old carbon footprints now buy carbon credits to make sure that they're carbon neutral or whatever that is now in order for their businesses to carry on doing what they're doing.
	That doesn't seem fair.
	It doesn't seem fair.
	That's when you're not living in reality.
	No.
	We did, it was a lot of carbon but...
	Have you seen our carbon credits?
	I think Bill Gates buys a lot of carbon credits.
	So there's someone who goes around talking about emissions and who has bought a private jet company, takes private jets everywhere, offsets his carbon emissions.
	So it's not a fair system.
	And I think, you know, Tesla, as what I've heard, makes a lot of money through selling those carbon credits.
	I think to say he's, like, outside of the system and an independent is not true, but obviously there's other complexities to it.
	When we have him on, Gareth, will you carry that part of the conversation?
	Because I'm actually, as you know, if you're a regular viewer of our show, Stay Free with Russell Brand, cultivating a friendship with him.
	Most recently, when I text him, he was like, sorry, I've been so busy with Twitter, he said.
	I go, well, I'm on there a couple of times a day myself, so... Yeah, I don't know.
	And, like, also, I go, do you want me to come there?
	To Twitter.
	Right.
	Come and help, if you want.
	He didn't respond to that.
	No.
	Now, so, like, when, like, if we do get him on, it's like, you know, I do recognise this is still a billionaire, like, ultimately a billionaire.
	Sort of an oligarch with a great deal of power.
	And I'm really interested in putting those arguments forward.
	But, do you know, that's something for the future.
	Here's something for the present, baby.
	A man that's become a recognised radical.
	A man who's been confronting mainstream narratives all over this cultural space, using his adorable face, creating an iconic expression, the recoiling look of shock that only Jeffrey Sachs, economist and professor at Columbia University, can deliver.
	Jeffrey, is this you?
	Is it really you?
	We're so happy to see you there, and it's nice to see a variation.
	Although, in the original version of the face, the mouth actually remains closed and the head goes back.
	Who's this?
	Yes, that's it.
	That's the one.
	That's the one we know and love.
	Yeah, that's good.
	I mean, it's not for me to tell you how to do your signature face, of course.
	Geoffrey, I've got loads of things I want to ask you, I'll jump into it.
	Fantastic.
	We're discussing now global narratives.
	We're discussing now unipolarism.
	We've been looking at the idea that... Let's start where we were when you joined us.
	We were talking about how a figure like Elon Musk may be controversial even if he's ultimately pursuing self-interests
	because his purchase of Twitter prevents the control of the public sphere in a
	way that would be ultimately amenable to the establishment whose ultimate goal
	and when I say the establishment I mean American corporate interests and how
	they align with unelected globalist bodies like the IMF, WHO etc.
	A shared objective to create a unipolar world, a kind of new world order, a one-world government one way or another, even if it's implicit and tacit rather than overt and explicit.
	And obviously Russia have their own Weltanschauung.
	Obviously China have their own agenda. Thank you. I'm glad I got the Welton Shong nod
	there. Thanks from a Columbia professor. So what do you do you think that's true
	of Elon Musk? Is he a disruptor in some way even if he is not ultimately unique
	among billionaires?
	Look, our big problem is the level of discussion we have in general is pretty
	miserable.
	I don't know if Twitter can really solve that because, you know, dealing with these problems in tweets is part of our problem, actually.
	I have to say it's probably not the solution.
	We're just not doing a very good job of understanding the complete mess that we're in.
	The U.S.
	lies for a living, as we know, but the mainstream media do nothing about it and just repeat the lies, amplify them, and it's getting pretty dangerous.
	That's the real problem.
	It's a very dangerous time right now because we seem not to be able to have an adult conversation about almost anything in the mainstream.
	I don't hear you.
	See?
	Oh, there we go.
	Okay.
	What has changed, Jeffrey?
	What in particular does your ascent into public consciousness demonstrate?
	Why is it impossible to have these conversations?
	Why is there a tightening?
	Why is there more censorship?
	It seems to be altering.
	Forget the shifting perspectives of the left and right and this new Liberal authoritarianism that seems to be emerging.
	Why is there now such a demented attempt to control the public space and the public narrative?
	And your personal experience surely speaks to that, being shut down publicly when sort of talking about the Nord Stream pipeline, when talking about Wuhan.
	Tell me what you think is driving this new extreme sensorialism.
	It's a little bit hard to know.
	In my youth, which was a very long time ago, newspapers like The Washington Post and New
	York Times actually enjoyed dissing on political figures.
	I grew up when we were getting rid of Richard Nixon because of all the lies.
	But now, these papers don't do anything but repeat the lies.
	And it's extremely strange for me.
	You know, I know a lot of the reporters.
	They tell me privately, yeah, what you're saying is right, but, you know, our editor's not so interested in it.
	It is really A big question.
	I don't think there's a simple answer.
	Of course, corporate ownership, yes, it's definitely part of it.
	But the complete collapse of professionalism in journalism in these mainstream media, not everywhere because there are some really brave people out there, but in what we call the mainstream, is pathetic and very dangerous because we're deep into a war that is escalating and we can't even have a decent Discussion about what the sources of this war are or how to end it and I had the experience I wrote for one Syndicate project syndicate for 20 years.
	I was their most published writer, but they wouldn't print the pieces that I wrote that were contrary to the official line about this war and it was pretty amazing to me after 20 years I couldn't even post a piece and that that's not good in my view
	No, I believe nowadays Woodward and Bernstein would be doing their work online.
	Even in recent memory, a figure like Chris Hedges has gone from being a Pulitzer Prize winner within New York Times to having his content taken off YouTube because he was like interviewing Zizek or Edward Snowden on Russia Today.
	So that's sort of like measurable increase in a sensorial mentality.
	And when it comes to this war in particular, Jeffrey, when you have figures like Noam Chomsky and Donald Trump advocating for diplomacy and ultimately peace, what does it tell you about the sort of central space and how radically it's being controlled?
	And what does this level of control suggest to you?
	Well, you know, what I've seen, because I've really lived it and I've been involved with dozens of governments across the world for 40 years now, basically the neocons took over U.S.
	foreign policy 30 years ago.
	And it hasn't really mattered whether it's Democrats or Republicans.
	It didn't really matter whether it was Bush Jr.
	or Obama or Biden.
	The weirdest thing is Trump, who's a nut, in my view, and a dangerous one, by the way.
	I want to be clear about that.
	He's the one that didn't make wars during his four years.
	The others all were engaged in wars.
	That's not a good sign.
	The mainstream of our political system in both parties is militarized.
	And our foreign policy is largely based on secrecy, also.
	And so we don't even see what our government's doing.
	Nothing is explained.
	Nothing is debated anymore.
	And that's been true for a long time.
	But it's been true across the administration.
	So it's not a partisan thing.
	You know, we had Bush, who I thought was the worst imaginable president during his term.
	Okay, then Obama came in and Obama made wars again the same way in Syria.
	A presidential order to the CIA to overthrow Assad.
	Not reported by the mainstream media at all.
	This NATO operation to overthrow Qaddafi—never explained.
	And it really goes on and on.
	And now we're in a war in Ukraine, and we are in it.
	This is absolutely a war between the United States and Russia.
	It's extraordinarily dangerous.
	We're told every day in the mainstream media an unprovoked war that started on February 24, 2022.
	Which is false.
	There's a history to this.
	There was a way to avoid this war.
	Biden didn't choose it.
	But none of it is properly debated at all.
	So that's really what we're facing.
	By your reckoning then, Geoffrey, this is an agenda that began sort of broadly in the 90s with the new American century, with like the Wolfowitz, Cheney, and the think tank that sort of indicated for America to achieve true hegemony, there would be sort of military action in the Middle East around resources, and you see that broadly whilst it expands numerous administrations and bipartisan ones at that, This is ultimately a continuation of that.
	And of course, it is shrouded in secrecy, and that's why Julian Assange is right now in Belmarsh and Snowden is, with some degree of irony, right now in Russia.
	Now, I wonder if you would talk to us a little more about the... If the accepted mainstream narrative is that this war began on, as I think you said, January the 14th...
	January 24th, absolutely.
	That day, that's it.
	No history before it.
	So you're not talking about the 2014 elections, not talking about NATO infringement, not talking about the sort of sponsorships and coups that have taken place.
	Could you give us a bit of insight into an alternative narrative and could you speak more particularly about the sort of peace deal that potentially could have taken place that Boris Johnson delayed, deferred in his sort of talks with Zelensky?
	And yeah, can you give us an alternative narrative please?
	Absolutely, because there is a real story behind all of this.
	I happened to be there, actually, 32 years ago, 33 years ago, because I was an economic advisor to the economic team of Gorbachev, actually.
	And in 1990, Gorbachev wanted to end the Cold War.
	He wanted to and the Soviet military alliance, the so-called Warsaw Pact
	alliance.
	Germany wanted to reunify, or Helmut Kohl wanted to reunify Germany,
	and they discussed this, and it was very clear.
	The U.S. and Germany said to Gorbachev, if you dissolve the Warsaw Pact and the Cold War,
	and Germany reunifies, NATO will not move one inch eastward.
	And that was the basic premise that we're actually going to get beyond the Cold War.
	And explicitly the language is, we're not going to take advantage of your actions.
	So we're not going to substitute our military power in the places where you pull back.
	Turned out to be a massive lie.
	In the mid-1990s, the U.S.
	started the NATO expansion.
	Very wise people at that time, and I think the wisest of the era was George Kennan, a great historian, scholar, and diplomat of the time, said this is the beginning of the new Cold War.
	The warnings went completely unheeded.
	We got to the early 2000s.
	By the way, Putin came into power pro-European.
	Absolutely wanting normal relations.
	George Bush expanded NATO to seven more countries, to the Black Sea, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Slovenia, to the three Baltic states.
	All the time Putin was saying, stop!
	You're right in our neighborhood, we have national security concerns.
	Then in 2008 at the Bucharest NATO Summit, Bush, over the objections of the Europeans—and European leaders talked to me privately at the time—but they don't talk publicly.
	And that's how Europe works.
	The U.S.
	says what it's going to do, and the European leaders may complain, they may squirm, but they don't explain to their own people what's at stake.
	But what Bush pushed in 2008 was that NATO would now expand to Ukraine and to Georgia.
	Now, if people take a map out and look at the country Georgia on the east end of the Black Sea, I don't think that's a North Atlantic country.
	I don't think that's a NATO country, actually.
	What you see at play there is this neocon idea of surrounding Russia in the Black Sea.
	Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Georgia.
	And what our strategists have said for decades is that would basically corner Russia, and Putin said it, don't do this in our neighborhood.
	And actually there was a NATO-Russia meeting the next day after Bush pushed through this enlargement commitment, and at that NATO-Russia meeting, Putin said to Bush, if you push NATO into Ukraine, we take back Crimea.
	I tell you that now.
	This was reported in Kommersant and the Russian press afterwards.
	Fast forward, Russell, a few years.
	First, there was a pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, who He very wisely said, I don't want Ukraine to be in the middle of a war between these two nuclear superpowers.
	We stay neutral.
	We don't want NATO here because I want us not to be in the midst of a war.
	He was president up until early 2014.
	When he pulled back from signing a partnership agreement with the EU under Russian pressure,
	saying, don't sign, we have stakes here, too, he said, Yanukovych said, we need to delay
	these negotiations with Europe, protests broke out, no doubt partly spontaneous.
	But then the United States went to work, as it does, and turned those spontaneous protests
	into an open insurrection.
	Our politicians even went and spoke to the Maidan, as it's called, the space where the
	protests took place, as if, you know, Chinese politicians, say, came to Trump's rally on
	January 6, 2021.
	It's pretty weird.
	The United States just got way in there and said, go for it.
	We're with you.
	We're with you.
	We know that the assistant secretary of state at the time, Victoria Nuland, was orchestrating
	what would be the change of government.
	She was caught on tape.
	Fuck Europe!
	Here's how we're going to do it.
	Here is what the new government's going to look like.
	It's interesting.
	She was the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs.
	Today, she is the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs.
	In other words, this is a long project.
	The same people are engaged.
	Yanukovych fled.
	There were Violence, by the way, absolutely violence, in part, on the insurrectionist side.
	There's no doubt about that, according to careful scholarship.
	The United States immediately recognized the new government, extra-constitutional government.
	There was regime change.
	Putin said, you just made a coup against our pro-Russian president.
	That was Russia's interpretation.
	Whatever it is, it was complicated, but the U.S.
	government doesn't explain anything.
	But I saw, by the way, just kind of by coincidence, because I've been engaged in Ukraine all the way back since 1994.
	I saw how U.S.
	NGOs, quote-unquote, were directly engaged in financing part of the Maidan episode.
	So I saw with my own eyes.
	We were way in there.
	Okay, from Russia's point of view, that's it.
	Now there's a pro-U.S.
	government.
	The pro-Russian president was overthrown in their interpretation.
	They followed up.
	As they said, Putin seized Crimea.
	The new government said, we're going for NATO.
	The U.S.
	started pouring in billions of dollars of armaments.
	Between 2014 and 2021.
	This war has actually been going on for eight years.
	It didn't start even as a hot war in February of this year.
	It started in 2014.
	And the war has been going on.
	The arming has been going on.
	The idea of turning Ukraine into a NATO country has been going on.
	Then comes Biden in.
	Now, again, Trump for me was really psychologically unstable.
	I never felt safe for a day.
	I thought, okay, fine.
	Now, something reasonable and rational.
	But he brought the neocons exactly into the core again.
	Pretty weird.
	I think he's lost his political base at home for this because the costs and consequences of this are huge.
	But the essence of it is that in 2021, Putin said to Biden as new president, stop NATO enlargement.
	This is our backyard.
	We will not tolerate NATO in Ukraine, a U.S.
	military alliance on our 1,000 plus kilometer border.
	No!
	And I happen to call the White House late in 2021 just saying, please avoid a war.
	We don't need NATO there.
	It's no good to have NATO there.
	It's no good for the United States to have NATO there.
	We don't have to be on every piece of this board, like the game of Risk I often compare it to.
	They want bases everywhere in the world, these neocons.
	We already have them in 85 countries.
	My God, it's more than enough.
	We should not have wanted to go.
	But Putin said, let's negotiate.
	I said, you know, the terms are pretty reasonable.
	Let's figure out how to do this.
	The White House said, no, it's non-negotiable.
	Putin invades on February 24th.
	By mid-March, Zelensky is saying, you know, we could have neutrality.
	We need guarantees.
	We need security guarantees.
	But we could have neutrality.
	Actually, in mid-March, the Ukrainians put forward a number of terms, handed it to the Russians.
	The Russian negotiators, I know, I had long discussion about this, sent it to Putin.
	Putin said, yeah, these are grounds on which we can negotiate.
	Turkey was the intermediary.
	Incredibly skilled diplomats.
	One day in the second half of March of this year, the Ukrainian spokesman, the Russian spokesman, and the Turkish spokesman said, we're very close to a deal.
	They all said it.
	It wasn't propaganda from one side or another.
	They all agreed.
	Then, Ukraine walked away from the negotiating table.
	Pretty damn weird, actually.
	I thought it was a devastating mistake.
	It's never been explained.
	It's never been acknowledged.
	There are lots of stories that make a lot of sense about how Boris Johnson flew there, never accept neutrality, fight on, we arm you.
	There are stories about the United States at that time telling them you don't have to accept any of this because those were the days when Biden came to the NATO meeting and said this is going to be a long war and then spoke in Warsaw and said that man cannot stay in power and his defense secretary Lloyd Austin said just after that that our aim is to weaken Russia so it can never do this again.
	In other words, something really went haywire at the moment when negotiations could have been concluded.
	And now we've been in this for months.
	It has escalated.
	At least tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have died in the midst of this.
	Russia has recently taken out half of the energy system of Ukraine.
	They rebuilt it, but new missiles come raining down.
	Biden has talked about that, oh my god, we're on a risk of Armageddon.
	He's trying to think, he said even out loud.
	What is Putin's off-ramp?
	Well, Mr. President, I can tell you what the off-ramp is because it's been explained for 32 years.
	Please.
	Do not expand NATO to Ukraine and Georgia, just like we would not like China and Mexico having a military alliance right now.
	And when Cuba tried that in the Western Hemisphere back in the early 1960s, the United States invaded with a snap of a finger.
	Please exercise some prudence.
	So President Biden's wondering, hmm, what's the off-ramp?
	Well, it's not so complicated.
	But it is for the neocons because they've had this agenda for decades now.
	They see it's fine.
	We're almost there.
	We're almost there.
	We almost have Ukraine on our side.
	That's the big prize.
	That's the weakening of Russia.
	That's their view as we take one step of escalation on each side.
	And it's just absolutely mind-boggling.
	But to come back to where we started, Russell, it's not explained in the mainstream media at all.
	I mean, I'm beginning to see, Geoffrey, why people interrupt you so aggressively at this point.
	Ha ha!
	There was the face!
	Geoffrey, there was obviously several things I'd like to follow up on.
	the sort of hubris of American imperialism and the sort of various
	marionette agencies and organizations that operate as their proxies, whether
	it's these NGOs that you listed or NATO itself, starts to paint a picture where
	if indeed this is a continuation of narratives that existed since 2014 and
	even earlier than that with the New American Century project, that it
	suggests to me that even the official American government is a type of proxy,
	that there is an agenda that can be pursued regardless of apparent
	fluctuation and vicissitude in American political life, American domestic
	political life.
	It seems that one agenda is continually being addressed and followed without that narrative ever being divulged or discussed or ever actually being within reach of due democratic process.
	So, I wonder then, Geoffrey, what...
	If it's, you know, to colonise or dominate or control Ukraine through the sort of involvement of NATO and I've heard things about NATO and their sponsorship and involvement with military-industrial complex and them sponsoring and organising arms deals.
	I've heard stuff about NATO that's pretty damn dubious.
	I wonder, how could a policy that is so reckless be pursued To the very, to the dawn of Armageddon.
	Like, you know, now this is not a country like Iraq or, you know, other countries that were destabilised in what we call the Middle East.
	This is a, this is a sort of a former superpower that has nuclear capacity.
	So how is it that there is no contingency for the ability for Russia to respond?
	Why is that?
	Is that something, obviously that's something you must have pondered.
	Tell me what you think.
	Yeah, I mean, when President Biden let slip that maybe the world was going to be destroyed,
	he was chastised.
	Oh, the Wall Street Journal, why are you talking that way?
	Lindsey Graham and the Republican senator, you know, shame them.
	The President shouldn't talk that way.
	We're told we'll never be blackmailed by nuclear blackmail.
	Oh my God!
	How about understanding that Russia has 1,600 deployed nuclear weapons?
	We have 1,600 deployed nuclear weapons.
	We have 1,600 deployed nuclear weapons.
	How about just a little care?
	You know, it's not a matter of nuclear blackmail.
	It's a matter of us not getting the world blown to bits.
	And one of the things I've spent my whole life studying as an adult, because I lived through it since second grade, was the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was exactly 60 years ago this year.
	And we came—we came within one second of nuclear war, literally, because the nuclear-tipped torpedo was put in the bay, the firing bay of a disabled Soviet submarine, and the order to fire was countermanded at the last moment by a Communist Party official that happened to be on the submarine and could countermand the captain's order.
	That's how close we came.
	to the launch of a nuclear war.
	So when you have studied these things, looked at them, know the kind of the tick tock, minute by minute of how that crisis 60 years ago almost ended the world.
	And you know, today, how much irresponsibility there is.
	And Frankly, you know, there are field commanders, there are accidents, there are planes that collide, there are misunderstandings, misreadings of everything that can happen right now.
	Of course, we need to pull back from this path that we're on.
	But one of the parts of the campaign is to tell us nothing to worry about.
	No problem.
	Everything's fine.
	Zelensky says each day, we're going to push them out of every inch of Ukraine, including Crimea.
	Well, yeah, but not before nuclear war you're not going to.
	And we know that, but we don't say it.
	And we just don't tell the truth.
	And this is, This is imperial logic.
	Imperial logic is you don't have to explain anything.
	This isn't about democratic governance.
	This is about imperial logic.
	What happened in the U.S.
	is we used to have two sides of our foreign policy, by the way, because going all the way back to the end of World War II, there was a hardline side, which we would call the neocons, which was looking for U.S.
	basically control.
	And there was a side that said we should negotiate peaceful coexistence, what we would now call multilateralism.
	I would say, by and large, since 1992, it's been the neocons in charge.
	And that's what is stunning to me.
	But they don't feel any urge to explain any of these issues to us.
	I know it.
	I see it because I hear a lot.
	I see it from different government side.
	I see the perplexity.
	I also know in Europe there's a lot of consternation in European leaders, but they don't say anything.
	It's not only imperialistic, it's also imperious.
	There's an incredible arrogance here, and I feel like a sort of psychological disassociation.
	I wonder, Geoffrey, what role the pandemic played in creating these conditions.
	Obviously, you've described a narrative that takes us back considerably earlier than the ordinarily agreed commencement date of this war.
	I wonder how we can have a culture where ordinary people appear to have been groomed and coached into a state of dumb numbness and compliance where the kind of phatic and emblematic support of Ukraine through badges and flags and platitudes doesn't, cannot in fact, incorporate the Apocalyptic narrative that ought be at the forefront of all of our minds.
	I wonder if we've somehow been groomed into compliance in 30 years of saccharine consumerism and the sort of sudden shock of two years of lockdowns.
	Which in themselves seem to have been somewhat dubiously underwritten, whether it's about the inauguration of how this disease indeed began, the use of scientific narrative, the conveyance of information, the way that generally speaking the stories we were told supported centralised power And corporate objectives, whether that was medical policy, social policy.
	I wonder how you see the pandemic as being part of a broader story of the induction of compliance and ignorance and the creation of a sort of a global state where there is a separate strata of geopolitical conflict or, you know, objectives that are kept entirely separate from our ordinary understanding.
	You know, it actually, it really does go back a long way because I date it to 1947.
	That was when the National Security Act was passed in the United States.
	It created the CIA and it made just a profoundly dangerous blunder for a republic.
	And that was that it made the CIA two things.
	One, an intelligence agency, understandable.
	And the other, a secret army, a covert operation for dirty operations that would never be divulged,
	basically at the president's discretion.
	Even Truman knew something's going to go very wrong with this.
	So when the hardliners are in power, they think they can act with impunity
	because they don't have to explain anything.
	We learned it from the Brits, by the way.
	You know, this is British Empire behavior for the...
	We just needed to get tea at a reasonable price, and we weren't willing to take over a few continents to get it.
	Well, that, and true, you know, you needed to open up the opium market in China, which was extremely important, so... But you're right, that was partly to get tea, so I think you've got the primary objective.
	We don't even do it for tea or coffee, by the way.
	We've been doing it since 1947.
	When it's secret, it's just with impunity.
	What happened in 1992 was that the Great Adversary disappeared.
	So now you have the neocons, but you have this, BAM!
	We're all alone!
	We are the most powerful colossus in the history of the world!
	We are the world's unipolar power!
	For, by the way, 4.2% of the world population.
	The hubris of it, the arrogance of it, the obnoxiousness of it is really stunning.
	But that was the idea in 1992.
	But you know what really...
	put us into overdrive is that starting in the 2010s, really around 2015, China's rise freaked out the unipolarists, freaked out the neocons, because something was not on the script.
	The script is We made it.
	We're the superpower.
	No one can rival us.
	And then, step by step, here comes China with 1.4 billion people.
	So the United States changed its policy.
	Oh, no, no, no, sorry, not Geoffrey.
	I mean, don't move the teleprompter.
	So now, harder face again.
	Carry on, sorry Geoffrey, that was for the teleprompter.
	I was going to say that in 2015 the US changed its foreign policy.
	It actually decided that China's continued economic progress was no longer in the interest of the United States.
	It's a kind of stunning idea that, hmm, We don't want you to make more progress.
	You're stepping on our toes.
	And so the U.S.
	began, also under Trump, unilateral actions.
	Even Obama was playing this, we're going to write the rules for Asia without China, which is a little bit obnoxious, by the way, and a little bit naive. It was
	called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and it was explicitly put forward by Obama on the grounds
	that the United States needs to write the rules, not China. But, you know, the U.S. is an Asian power.
	China, I'm not so sure. But in any event, this is what has really also increased this sense of
	anxiety, because we're told now all the time it's not just Russia that's the enemy it is China
	And China's the big enemy, Russia's the regional enemy, China's the world threat.
	And so we're in a two-front fear We're in a proxy war in Ukraine, and at the same time we're stoking incredibly dangerous tensions with China.
	And we explicitly are saying, our government officials are saying, we must take actions, for instance, stop the export of high technology goods to stop China's continued progress.
	When you hear it from the other side, that's a little bit provocative.
	And then we have the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, flying to Taiwan.
	The Chinese have said, please don't do this.
	Please don't stir the water.
	Please keep things down.
	Like Putin was saying, please don't go to Ukraine with NATO.
	No, we have the right to do it.
	We will defend Taiwan.
	Absolutely endangering Taiwan like nothing else by putting Taiwan exactly into this superpower confrontation the same way.
	So where does the pandemic fit in?
	Look, it's another piece of dislocation.
	It's another hot button for me because I'm also in that debate about where this virus came from, and I lean towards that it came out of some super-duper U.S.
	scientific technology.
	In partnership with China, most likely, so that this is not even a natural virus.
	But it raises another point, by the way.
	I headed a commission on the pandemic for two years for the Lancet Journal.
	It was a thoroughly fascinating, riveting assignment.
	I came to understand how much the U.S.
	government has lied about the origins of the pandemic it's wanted to paint this narrative just like the other narratives we talked about it wants to paint the narrative that it absolutely was natural it could not possibly have been anything else and it chose that false narrative right from the start of the pandemic way before they could have known
	And at a time when the insiders were saying, that looks a lot like it came out of a lab, but they created the narrative.
	And that is that narrative creation is what is the business of the US government.
	It creates a narrative about China as the enemy.
	It creates a narrative about Ukraine as an unprovoked war by an unhinged new Hitler Russian president.
	It creates a narrative about the virus.
	You know, once in a while some of this might actually be Correct or not, I'm not even going there, but what it is is the narrative is the essence of how politics is to be conducted right now.
	And then the main method of reporting by the New York Times or the Washington Post or the Financial Times even, which I think is a much better newspaper, is senior unnamed U.S.
	officials say the following.
	And it's just repeated straight out, and it says they've requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information.
	Well, hell, it's so sensitive that maybe we should know about it also.
	And if I could just jump in with one more example of this, you know, pretty interesting who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline.
	One president I know said, if Russia invades, that's the end of the pipeline.
	And then, when asked, well, what do you mean, Mr. President?
	He says, we have our ways.
	And then, after the pipeline's blown up, the Secretary of State says, this is a tremendous opportunity to wean Europe from Russia.
	Well, what's the narrative?
	The narrative is, well, Russia did it.
	And the newspapers say, well, duh, yeah, the U.S.
	officials say Russia did it.
	Russia blew up its own pipeline, its own billions of dollars of infrastructure, the pipeline that carries Russian energy to European markets, which was a lot of the point of this, whereas the other side said they were going to do it.
	So this is, this narrative business It's really pretty clear, obviously, when I said that thing on U.S.
	television a couple of weeks ago.
	That was that face, because they stopped me.
	I was supposed to be on for, usually, typically a half an hour on that show, and after three minutes they said, well, that's enough, Mr. Sachs.
	And then the moderator went on a kind of five-minute rant.
	Which I got to hear because they cut me off of the show, but they left me on Zoom, so I got to hear the rest of it.
	So watch what you say afterwards if you're—unless you cut me off.
	But they went on a five-minute rant about me.
	This guy doesn't know anything.
	Why do we have an economist talking about this and so forth?
	And the answer is, I've been involved in diplomacy in more than a hundred countries for decades, and so I watch these things and I have something to say about them.
	It's extraordinary that even words like doves and hawks, common idioms that used to define the potential for polarity in these conversations have kind of drifted from the common lexicon.
	There is nobody taking up that side of the argument, I suppose there is, there's Tucker Carlson, there's Noam Chomsky, there's Donald Trump, but it's in some cases I imagine it's just sort of anti-establishment motivated by the kind of dualistic nature of American politics rather than a genuine appetite For real peace.
	What was it very interesting to hear there Jeffrey was like that with case after case we are seeing whether it's the war, NATO expansionism, meddling in foreign democracies, a sort of a kind of psychotic, vampiric recklessness Followed by maddening lies.
	It feels like the sort of contemporary law that is delivered through sci-fi of, oh, the machines will one day become intelligent and they realize they don't need us.
	It's sort of being acted out by machine-like minds.
	Minds that are so disassociated from common humanity that they're acting Just in accordance with a sort of a binary rationality that excludes common humanity and the obvious fact that if you continue to provoke Russia, if you continue to provoke China, you're ultimately going to end up in conflict situations.
	Now, I can't believe that they have failed to calculate The possible, even likely outcomes.
	So I begin to think that they have a contingency that includes the annihilation of many, many people.
	Like, if you think in a post-industrial world, the sort of former proletariat and working class becomes disposable and therefore available to sort of addiction, prison populations, just fodder for the machine.
	I wonder sometimes, and I hope it doesn't sound fanciful, but there are only really two alternatives.
	One, they haven't thought about the possibility that Russia could respond with apocalyptic weaponry.
	Or they have thought about it, and they don't care.
	What alternative is left other than that?
	So, what do you think about that?
	Completely obnoxious, I agree.
	You know, I'm gonna completely reassure you.
	I don't think they've thought about it.
	Right, right, I mean, we'll talk as soon as you're gone.
	Who does he think he is, a Columbia professor, coming on our internet show where we make
	up stuff on the spot, telling us about years of experience and committees he's sat on?
	Completely obnoxious, I agree.
	You know, I'm going to completely reassure you, I don't think they've thought about it.
	Honest to God, I don't think it is actually, I don't think, I may be wrong, but I don't
	think it is so deeply nefarious and evil.
	I think it is so thoughtless and ignorant and arrogant, and it's a hubris that comes when you never have to explain anything.
	When every screw-up, you just go on.
	And because we have so many screw-ups in American foreign policy, but because not one of them was told honestly.
	They never have to explain.
	So I think the arrogance is, all right, so we screw up.
	So what?
	Look, who explained the complete disaster?
	of Afghanistan, which, by the way, wasn't just a disaster of pulling out, you know, in this chaotic way.
	The U.S.
	went into Afghanistan in 1979.
	That's almost not even known, except that Zbigniew Brzezinski let us in on this fact a few years ago in an interview that it was a secret, covert operation.
	To fund the Mujahideen, to incite or provoke the Soviet Union to invade.
	How clever.
	Forty years later, Afghanistan is a complete wasteland.
	But there's no accountability.
	On the way out, the United States grabbed the eight billion dollars, the measly eight billion dollars of their foreign exchange reserves to make sure that there would be no conceivable economy.
	left behind.
	Or who explained Syria?
	You know, every day I read Putin is absolutely, you know, unhinged.
	He went into Syria.
	Yes, Russia went into Syria in 2015.
	The United States went into Syria covertly in 2011.
	In 2012, The U.S.
	President, President Obama, signed an order for the CIA to overthrow Assad together with Saudi Arabia.
	So who explained it?
	It's not even discussed in American life.
	So I think what we're seeing is they don't think ahead.
	As soon as this policy started in February and March with the sanctions and this and that, I talked to my... I can't call them friends anymore.
	They don't want to be known as my friend inside the U.S.
	government, but people that I've known for a long time, I like them.
	They don't necessarily like me.
	But in any event, I said, this is not going to work.
	This policy, this sanctions policy is not going to work.
	The following is not going to work.
	And the basic logic that you have, that you're going to defeat Putin on the battlefield, that's also not going to work.
	In the end, This is core security interests for Russia, and they have 1,600 deployed nuclear weapons.
	So think about it, how this could unfold.
	But it's not going to unfold where Putin says, oh, sorry, we're going home.
	It was just a terrible, terrible mistake.
	And NATO, you're very welcome to come into our next door.
	It's not going to happen that way.
	So I don't think they think these things through, because the basic goal is incompatible with reality.
	The goal of a unipolar US world, where 4.2% of the world population runs the show, is incompatible with 21st century reality.
	So when you're fundamentally on this kind of inconsistent course, Naturally, it can't make sense.
	It fundamentally cannot make sense.
	And it doesn't.
	But if you don't have to explain it, it doesn't bother you so much.
	If we could break open just one or two of these stories, really understand Nord Stream, for example, which, again, I'm putting my chips on the U.S.
	and the U.K.
	They done it.
	And that's where I think this is.
	If we could understand where this virus came from.
	If we could understand why the negotiations broke down in March.
	What did Boris Johnson say to Zelensky?
	Did he say don't negotiate?
	What did the U.S.
	say to Zelensky?
	If we could just open up on one of these things.
	It would really help people to understand that we're fed stories that don't make sense.
	You know, let me give you another one, which is another pet peeve of mine right now.
	We're talking about global pandemics, nuclear Armageddon, a co-opted, hollowed out, zombie democracy, marching us all to mutual nihilism and death, and you're peeved!
	Yes, I'm a little peeved about the next one, alright?
	So, here's my pet peeve.
	Russia grabbed the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant early in the war.
	And the Ukrainians have been trying to take it back.
	So, this power plant has been shelled very dangerously most days.
	Now, the Russians are inside and they control the plant.
	The Ukrainians are outside.
	They're trying to recapture the plant.
	And the plant's being shelled every day.
	And what do we read in our newspaper?
	Well, each side accuses the other of shelling the plant.
	Well, duh.
	If one side is in the plant and the other side's trying to retake the plant, who's probably shelling the plant?
	So even this one, and I've spoken to senior international officials, I can say I've spoken to very senior people.
	On this issue, I have a supposition that Ukraine is actually shelling the plant, and that it's extremely dangerous, and that we should say to Ukrainians, even if they're our best friend, don't shell a nuclear power plant.
	It's not a good idea.
	That's not very supportive of Ukrainians, that.
	I haven't seen... Where's your... Have you not got a flag that should be up somewhere in your screen?
	Because they need some support.
	This is a time to support Ukraine blindly into the jaws of death.
	There you go!
	You know, it's exactly.
	How about supporting them by having this war end and stop having them be the fodder of a proxy war of neocons fighting the latest of their 30 years of disastrous wars.
	How about that way of supporting Ukraine?
	I think it would be really nice for the Ukrainian people not to have the missiles falling on their head because NATO wants to expand.
	So beautiful.
	Thank you, Geoffrey.
	Just one more question.
	In fact, two.
	One is, like, with the midterms approaching... Yeah, but really, but why?
	Really, but why?
	Think about it.
	Think about it for a moment, but why?
	With the midterms approaching, the control over... And with some members of the Democratic Party revolting, you know, there was that letter signed by people that was kind of repressed.
	Is this war being used as a political pawn, even on the domestic front?
	That's one thing I'd like you to answer.
	And also, when we talk to people that are more of a kind of, what I would say, orthodox liberal perspective, they say, like, no, Putin is a unique monster, he's deranged, he's going crazy, it's his agenda, he's a fan of this philosopher, he wants to reunify the Soviet Union, he'll not rest, as if he's the one with the imperial project.
	What do you do when you're confronted with that argument, which sort of amounts to that it's kind of unpatriotic, and that Russia, particularly in the hands of Putin, may have their own imperialist agenda, and also that domestic midterm thing?
	Look, on the midterm, it's just...
	It's the weirdest and saddest mistake of Biden, who inherited a country that in many ways is, you know, in unbelievable social crisis.
	Part of it building for decades, part of it the pandemic, part of it the Trump after Trump.
	But the U.S.
	is really in sad, Hard shake that and needs a lot of love and care to put back a society in order.
	Why in that context would Biden go on a foreign policy adventurism?
	to have two fronts of global disaster and tension that, in my view, are what actually
	indirectly is undermining his own party in the upcoming elections.
	Why?
	Because this war and the sanctions and the tensions with China, everything else, is feeding
	this stagflation that we're in right now, the high inflation and the economy dysfunctional
	and the supply chain's not working.
	In other words, Biden stirred things up on foreign policy.
	The American people were not asking for foreign policy adventures right now.
	They absolutely were not.
	They were asking for, can you help repair our society, which is ripped apart?
	And that's what Biden's promise could have been.
	So the whole idea that he got us in and he did because this war could have been avoided had he negotiated over the NATO issue and talked to Putin and done something in 2021.
	He got He made a choice.
	And again, it comes to, you know, who makes these choices and why is this such a persistent line of 30 years of US foreign policy?
	It is a bit of a mystery.
	Why would why would Biden do this?
	And are there, you know, permanent state forces that just press this?
	But in any event, the job of the president of the United States is not to do this.
	And so when the midterms come, Probably, you know, just according to the polls, I'm no prognosticator except that it looks like the Dems are going to lose one or both houses of Congress.
	I would say, yeah, all the voters say we don't like the inflation.
	Well, I can tell you as an economist, This foreign policy has stoked exactly the things that are driving the Democrats' prospects down.
	So it's just a mistake.
	It's not a political football.
	It's just a political mistake.
	And I learned 30 years ago, the main job of a U.S.
	president is to put the brakes on the war machine.
	It's really hard, because the war machine's always revving.
	And a sound president we've had very few knows how to put the brakes on.
	And very, very few have done that.
	Actually, Eisenhower and Kennedy, in their distinctive ways, both did that.
	They knew to stop wars from going on.
	Kennedy may have paid with his life for it, because his peace initiatives were profoundly unpopular with the CIA and with others, and God knows what happened.
	But he understood putting the brakes on.
	And but most of our presidents don't.
	And whether this was Biden's initiative or his naivete or this is our foreign policy, Mr. President, and you stick with it, whatever it is.
	This, ironically, was the biggest weakness of his domestic policy, which is why he was elected, to do something about a society that's really, really wounded right now.
	I mean, with our shootings, with the addictions, with the poverty, with the inequality, with the dislocations, with the divide, this was the time for some domestic healing.
	What you've described to us, Geoffrey, is how power might really operate without recourse to conspiratorial chitter-chatter.
	If an agenda can be pursued that spans various administrations but alters but barely and includes some identifiable protagonists and organisation, Organizations that are also transcendent of the acknowledged machinery of American democracy.
	It tells you that there is an agenda that is able to endure the apparent fluctuations of vicissitudes of American democratic life.
	So, in a sense, the conversation is this.
	What do we do to interrupt this machine that currently is uninterrupted by the will of ordinary people?
	It's rather heartfelt, I thought, when you described the actual domestic problems that the United States, and indeed the world, face right now, and how this agenda is being pursued regardless, that this is a time when people could be reaching out in peace.
	We shouldn't be talking about wars in Europe or wars anywhere in 2022.
	We learned enough in the last century.
	There has to be an entirely new mentality and sometimes I feel that what's required is the introduction of entirely different psychological, and might I venture the word, spiritual approaches to politics.
	No, look, I really think what we're doing right now, which is talking about it, helping people to understand what's going on, getting people to question again what they're being fed.
	And by the way, people don't have trust, so it's not impossible to get them to think through, but they need the information.
	They need to understand the story.
	It's really important.
	Because this machine is running with impunity right now.
	It does run on secrecy.
	Everything is, you know, is classified documents and that's how an imperial state operates.
	And the more that it's opened up, This is not what the public wants.
	This is not a war driven by public hate, you know, by the fervor for the war.
	This is a war driven from the top.
	NATO expansion wasn't a popular cause.
	It's a political elite.
	And even of that, just a pretty small part of the political elite.
	But it is, I'd say, the dominant political direction of the U.S. government at the top, but not coming
	from the American people.
	So that's actually the hope.
	It's actually the hope.
	If these stories break open just a little bit and people say, hmm, this is not what
	we were told, now, in this, every kind of crazy demagogue can come.
	That's what is unsettling about highly charged times, because they can go from bad to worse.
	But they can also go from bad to better.
	And I think that that's what we really need to be pressing for.
	That's the challenge when information is so tightly controlled.
	That's the challenge when it is difficult to convey these stories that have a degree of complexity, when people rush towards simple conclusions, damned platitudes, and what amounts to pugnacious, bellicose jingoism, just sort of repackaged in a sort of a new multicolored flag.
	It's fascinating.
	And the government absolutely Classifying everything so that we absolutely don't know what they're doing in our, quote, democracy.
	It's a lot of things getting redacted, Jeffrey.
	You got it.
	Now, will you please stop flirting with us and do that fucking face?
	The many faces of Jeffrey Sachs. It's Facts and Faces with Jeffrey Sachs.
	But the face we love most of all is the face of a man shocked by the inability of the mainstream media and their
	favoured and cherished narratives to accommodate truth and complexity.
	Jeffrey, thank you so much. When you're next looking for a friend in the White House and you are found wanting, know
	that you have friends here on our show.
	We'll go for it.
	Thank you, man.
	Thank you.
	So lovely to hear you.
	Thank you for your time and for your expertise and your dedication.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Bye-bye.
	See you, mate.
	Bye-bye.
	Wow.
	That was intense, wasn't it?
	Because we were in there for a while, guys.
	I'm quite hungry.
	I stared at your banana for a bit, covetously.
	It's interesting that whilst Jeffrey Sachs was talking about all that geopolitical madness, we were both focusing on a banana.
	I was looking around at all of us, and I was thinking, he's actually sort of, you know, like, it's weird, isn't it?
	Because even we are sort of talking about it, but with actual nuclear war, like, when you're sort of saying it, we are a bit detached, aren't we?
	Isn't it like that even if I thought someone was going to cut off one of my fingers or like sort of throw sort of like some paint at one of my children I'd like stop everything I was doing that would be the sole focus of my life for like I'm not doing anything else forget all of this it doesn't matter.
	Yeah the fact that it can still be a kind of concept to us the idea of Armageddon you know when it seems so real and possible at the moment.
	You know well like in that that trope in sci-fi where sort of like extraterrestrials turn up or whatever and they're like What the fucking hell are you all doing?
	Get your shit together.
	We almost need to do that.
	We need an extraterrestrial.
	We need a terrestrial.
	We need the Great Reset is what we need, isn't it?
	I know this guy.
	Little guy, plucky little fella over there in Germany.
	He's got a lot of spit in his gob when he talks.
	He's a bit jowly.
	He's a bit jowly, but he wants what's best.
	Now apparently what you've got is too much stuff.
	He's willing to run it all.
	It's Klaus Schwab, everyone.
	He says if only we'll put him in charge of absolutely everything.
	Or, you know, various other billionaires and stuff.
	Everything will be okay.
	Look, all I'm suggesting, Gal, is that we can do our best by...
	Putting out the stories of people like Jeffrey Sachs, combining it with the spiritual insights of people like Eckhart Tolle, the practical activism of Vandana Shiva, but what we're going to need is a very charismatic attention seeker to stand somewhere near the front, sort of making it about them in some way.
	Anyone come to?
	I haven't, I can't think of anyone.
	It's not... They'd have to be pretty good looking though and they'd need to know a lot about acting.
	Who is there?
	Chris Hemsworth?
	Hemsworth, is it?
	Hemsworth?
	No, he's not right, is he?
	He's busy, isn't he?
	He's very busy, he's got a lot of films at the moment as well.
	Too many, too many, because I could have been Thor.
	I could have been Thor.
	Oh, I don't know, he's got the big biceps though, hasn't he?
	I could do some push-ups, couldn't I?
	They're pretty big though.
	Give me half a bucket banana!
	That's my banana!
	Share me that or what?
	Because of the cost of living crisis, you won't even spare me half a banana.
	Because of the cost of living, is it?
	That's right, yeah.
	For fuck's sake.
	Alright, well, I suppose, look, let's try to wrap up this show.
	Let's just see what people are saying on locals.
	We really got a lot of faces out of him.
	I would like to see a bunch of freeze-framed saxes.
	What are people saying?
	Let the banana in, says Claudia Christie.
	Benedict Cumberbatch, don't you dare mention that name in here.
	Self-realisation on a massive scale is what Illuminated Soul says.
	You're right about that.
	We've got to do that, guys.
	Hey, thanks for joining us in the locals community.
	What I've recognised and learned... Am I right in saying that what you want from us there in the locals community is more direct access?
	Like, you know, joining us for lunches and stuff like that.
	You tell me what you want and we'll get it.
	Or do you simply want a man playing a trumpet?
	You tell us what you want and we'll deliver.
	Do you want us to create a council of experts?
	A real council of experts will do it and create a global revolution where you... I nominate you, Russell Brand.
	Thank you, Firegirl2020.
	Finally, someone got those hints I was dropping, for God's sake.
	Oh, that's what you were getting at, was it?
	That's what I was getting at.
	I was saying I could do it.
	Because of my acting.
	Remember?
	I thought you really did want Chris Hemsworth.
	Arthur.
	Remember him?
	Oh, hello, I'm Arthur.
	He didn't talk like that, did he?
	That's right.
	Hello, hello, I'm Gediminator Greek.
	Remember?
	Hello, I'm the man in Despicable Me.
	Hello, now we're talking.
	All good acting from me there.
	French horn, people are saying.
	Simply French horn, baby.
	Banana sandwiches, you're joking me, mate.
	When is Elon coming?
	Big Ben 92.
	I don't know.
	It's hard, I'm trying my best.
	Russell, I love you.
	I believe in you.
	I love Gareth Roy.
	I want more meditations to cope with grief.
	Sensitive heart, 25.
	Will do you agree for meditation?
	Sensitive heart, 25.
	Will do you agree for meditation?
	And a next possible chance.
	Puppies and French horn.
	You've just been explained that there's gonna be a nuclear war.
	unless we get our shit together and you want a French horn, some puppies and for Chris Hemsworth
	to lead a global revolution. Actually he's in my phone, he's someone I could call. Oh don't text
	another one. I've texted him, I'm texting Hemsworth. Right, is this, am I just leading to more heartbreak?
	Yes. It's just gonna lead to me going tomorrow Chris Hemsworth didn't text back isn't he? Right.
	Like when I was in Australia. He's still doing this. Yeah, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Hemsworth. I didn't even save it.
	I'm so cool, man.
	Um, like, uh, like, uh, it's just in there, but it's in, it's in there.
	Hold on.
	Chris Hemsworth.
	But I don't call him Chris Hemsworth.
	I'll have to look for an Australian number.
	When I was in Australia, there was this bit where I went round his house for the whole of the show.
	When I was around, like, there's a bit, like I was in Australia, there's a big killer spider out, and I go, I go, so what's this one, Chris Hemsworth?
	Like, by phone or whatever.
	He goes, oh, mate, that's a fucking serious one.
	You ought to be careful of that one, mate.
	And he said his name.
	It was good, like, you know, how Australian things have got sort of stupid names.
	No offence, Australians.
	He goes, oh, you want to watch that?
	That's a dodgewaza!
	You wanna watch that?
	It'll fucking lay its eggs in your ball bag, mate!
	Well, they're always up to something, Spies, aren't they?
	Trying to lay their eggs in a fucking ball bag, living in a trap door.
	Yeah.
	Aren't they?
	They are, yeah, yeah.
	Why don't they play by the rules?
	Rules.
	Fond memory of Chris Hemsworth, is it?
	I love him.
	I went round his house.
	I like him.
	He lent me that book, The Dog, the Horse, the Cat and the Carrot, or whatever it's called.
	Do you know The Dog, the Horse, the Cat and the Carrot?
	By Charlie Watts?
	Something like that.
	Do you know The Dog, the Horse, the Cat and the Carrot?
	Bet you know it, James.
	It's very sweet.
	The Dog, the Pig, the Dog and the Monkey?
	Something like that.
	The dog, the pig, the horse and the carrot.
	Everyone loved it for a while.
	The dog, the horse, the pig and the carrot and it's like sort of water painting drawings.
	I'm not sure there's a pig in that.
	It's like Winnie the Pooh feeling.
	The dog, the horse, the pig and the carrot.
	No, there's no pig.
	You know it, don't you?
	Not the curious case with the dog in there.
	It's got a nice watercolour drawing.
	Isn't it a fox?
	It's a fox, I'm sure.
	The dog, the horse, the pig and the carrot.
	The mole.
	The fox, the boy, the mole, the dog, the horse, the carrot.
	That was it.
	The dog, the boy, the horse, the carrot, the mole.
	There's a boy with a mole.
	He's got a dog and a carrot and a horse.
	How bad's that mole?
	It's prominent.
	That's the issue.
	It's not bad.
	It's not cancerous, but it's prominent and he's got to deal with it.
	But sometimes that can be a booty spub, baby.
	What's too high?
	What's the too high price?
	You're making this up.
	No, I'm not making it up.
	It's a dog, it's a pig, a horse and a carrot.
	I recognise this energy.
	This is the Russell's pent-up for an interview.
	I've been concentrating on Armageddon.
	It's my time.
	But what am I going to do with it?
	Now the show's over.
	I don't know.
	Now what do I do?
	Go and fucking have a meeting about, like, accountancy?
	No.
	No, I don't.
	I go out and I rampage.
	That's it.
	I rampage!
	Put it all into a text to Chris Hemsworth.
	Chris!
	What about the dog, the horse, the pig and the cow and the boy?
	Chris!
	People want you as a world leader.
	I should do it, Chris.
	I've more experience in that area.
	But I would like a little... I'd like to hang off... You do that and I'll hang off on your arms.
	That's the only thing I can possibly think of getting off on.
	All right.
	Listen, we've got so much stuff for you.
	On Thursday, we're talking about Canadian truckers and we're going to be in a new intimate environment.
	We're going to do it in there, aren't we, Gal?
	We are, yeah.
	It's going to be nice, it's going to be new, it's going to be intimate, it's going to be an environment.
	Friday we've got Books with Brad, when we're reviewing, in quite a lot of detail actually, 1984 by George Orwell.
	I've got some insights there.
	Got your favourite chapter, yeah?
	I probably, the ninth?
	Chapter nine.
	It's probably my favourite one.
	Chapter 8, boring!
	Chapter 10, pretty good.
	But chapter 9, now we're talking.
	It gets juicy, does it?
	I mean, I can't bloody well believe it!
	What Big Brother was doing to, like, the main guy?
	In chapter 9, I go, whoa, Big Brother!
	Lay off, fucking, do you want to lay off main guy a bit?
	Main guy, he's just trying to pursue his objective.
	But there's these obstacles!
	How's main guy gonna get what he wants?
	This is Jeffrey Sachs-style analysis, this is.
	That's right, that's right.
	Well, when I was at Columbia University, I actually was on a board doing stuff to do with the pandemic and that.
	They brought me in.
	It's fascinating.
	I formed a few opinions back then.
	I said, that's this... I said, this fucker's come from Mulholland.
	That was you, was it?
	Is that who he was talking about?
	I goes, Jeff!
	Jeff!
	Jeff, get ready for your shock face, because this fucker has come from Wuhan.
	Yeah, you invented the shock face, didn't you?
	Huh?
	You invented it.
	Well, I did it first.
	Sure, at Columbia.
	I mean, listen, I don't want to say that I invented it.
	I'm just saying, you know, a lot of us were hanging around.
	It was me, David Bowie.
	Just the whole punk thing happened around then.
	Smoking a doobie.
	Yeah, I smoked a doobie, and Jeffrey's gone.
	And he goes, I'll have that.
	And I'm like, hang on, Jeff.
	Wait up, mate, wait up.
	I go, this thing's...
	He's making a fortune out of it now.
	He's rinsing it and he's all over the world.
	He's all over the world, large and in charge.
	Oh, the Nord Stream Pipeline, America done it.
	Oh, the pandemic, it started in a lab.
	Does a bit of your heart break every time you see him do it?
	I'm pissed off.
	Yeah.
	I'm pissed off.
	It's like Bill Hicks and Dennis Leary.
	It's, you know, we've seen it.
	It's Peter Cook and David Frost.
	We've seen this play out time after time after time.
	Bloody time!
	Anyway, it's Elvis Presley and Shaken Stevens!
	Good of you to not bring it up though, I thought.
	Well, I didn't want to embarrass him.
	Professional.
	I didn't want to embarrass him, because I'm a pro like that.
	OK, I'd better go, I'm beginning to lactate.
	Anyway, if you want to join Stay Free AF, some of you already have joined Stay Free AF, and as you can see, I'm going to eat.
	Someone said, go and eat.
	I can see I'm having a mental breakdown.
	Best advice today.
	Go eat, go and eat.
	He's fucking, he's gone mad.
	He's on edge.
	Listen, if you want to watch a whole bunch of interviews, we've got...
	Hey, brother.
	I know it's hard!
	It is to live without drugs!
	And remember, it's Addiction Week, and I've been an addict over the years, and we're going to talk to you a bit more about addiction over the course of the week, are we?
	We are.
	Will we have time, though, with Armageddon coming?
	Does it seem worth worrying?
	Might as well take drugs.
	That's not the message.
	So, nuclear war?
	No.
	If there's a nuclear war, I'm telling you now, I'm going to get some psilocybin and some heroin, and I'm going to fucking smash it.
	Okay.
	Don't do drugs though, kids.
	Especially not my kids, because they're already in enough trouble.
	Don't do drugs, that was a joke.
	Do you know jokes?
	Remember jokes?
	Christ.
	Alright, our book goes on Friday.
	Is it Friday or Thursday, book day?
	They're asking me questions.
	Alright, I love you, listen, we better go.
	Friday, it's Friday.
	Stay free, love you, bye, bye.

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