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Nov. 9, 2022 - Stay Free - Russel Brand
01:02:24
Midterms - Where's The Red Wave? - #031 - Stay Free with Russell Brand
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You're welcome.
I'm not sure what you're talking about.
Brought to you by Pfizer.
In this video, you're going to see a different kind of me.
going to see the future.
Hello and welcome to Stay Free with Russell Brand, where you could be forgiven for thinking
that the most important thing in the world are the results of the midterms.
Let me know in the comments, let me know in the chat whether you're pleased, excited, disoriented, disappointed, or whether you've reached a kind of transcendence, either
through misery or a kind of ongoing despair that grants you a perspective where you can
recognise that while this spectacle is extraordinary and at times exciting, is it as important
as, for example, a potentially impending nuclear war? We'll be talking about the dearth of
ideas in conventional politics and the requirement to continually stimulate...
Let me know in the chat, let me know in the comments.
Do you think Big Pharma will be meaningfully impacted?
pro-gun, anti-gun. Meanwhile the deep machine continues to throb and hum. The
interests of the powerful continue uninterrupted. Do you think the military
industrial complex will be meaningfully affected by today's results? Let me know
in the chat, let me know in the comments. Do you think Big Pharma will be
meaningfully impacted? Let me know in the chat, let me know in the comments. Do you
think big media will be meaningfully impacted?
Well, they will.
It's good for them.
They love it.
They love it!
They love the election.
Oh, they will be.
All right, we've answered that now.
You can still contribute.
They'll do better.
It's going to be good for them.
It's good for the mainstream media.
Let's take a moment to Pay attention and pay plaudits to those unsung heroes, the mainstream media.
Remember, if you're a member of our Stay Free AF community, you can join us continually for our chats and conversations.
Later in the show, we're going to be talking to Katie Halper, who I happen to... I nearly said... All right, Katie, how's it going?
You all right, mate?
Thanks.
I nearly inadvertently sort of repeated the information you gave us in the mic test, which I believe included your childhood address, which I've just sort of stopped myself doing because I imagine that's not the kind of thing you want recited on the internet.
Katie, Even though you're a person who's had a contentious relationship with the mainstream media and even online media, what do you take primarily from last night's results?
What is meaningful?
What is going to most impact the lives of ordinary Americans?
That's a great question.
I think that the biggest takeaway from last night is that obviously there was not this huge red wave that Republicans were hoping for.
I think, ironically, the biggest reason that they didn't do as well as they thought was because they kind of did what Democrats are so adept at doing, which is criticizing the opponent without offering any actual alternative plan or messaging.
So the Republicans were really hammering the Democrats on inflation.
on crime, on manufactured hysteria issues, I would say as well, but they didn't have any plan.
I mean, inflation is terrible, but what are you going to do about it? And they never had an answer to that.
Possibly also there's a sense that politics itself is becoming kind of a zoetrope of nostalgia.
Retrograde politicians emerging, figures of the past dragged out on stage, the current president a sort of cadaver.
Are we living in a kind of end times?
Potentially, literally yes, because the escalation in the conflict Between Ukraine and Russia, which some regard as a kind of proxy war.
While we're still on YouTube, I certainly don't have an opinion on that.
We're on YouTube streaming live.
If you're watching this on YouTube right now, jump over and see us on Rumble, where we have the ability to speak freely.
And we don't use that free speech to criticize and condemn and divide, but to unify and bring people together.
Because it's my explicit opinion That spectacles like the midterms will not meaningfully impact the lives of ordinary Americans and real systemic change is what we ought be demanding and in order to achieve that we must put aside our temporal cultural differences.
Katie, why do people care so much about the Fetterman result, for example, and why is Trump engorged with rage?
I don't know about Trump being engorged with rage.
That's probably something left for a psychoanalyst to talk about.
Yes, I'm going to contact one.
Yeah, please do.
Yeah, because I'm curious as well.
I think that Fetterman, it was this interesting race where the fact that Oz was close at all, I think was shocking to people because he is kind of a, well, we can't curse.
So I'll just say he's kind of a quack.
He didn't even really live in Pennsylvania.
I mean, he was totally a fake Very out of touch.
Very out of touch.
Fetterman, you know, it's funny because some of Oz's people tried to make him out to be some kind of imposter or inauthentic, but Oz was not even a Pennsylvanian.
I mean, he was a total husk of a candidate.
Empty husk of a candidate.
Yeah, not even Pennsylvanian.
Gareth, you're squirming in your chair, you're filling up with opinions, you need to unburden yourself, what are they?
I just think Trump's, it's amazing how influential Trump seems to still be in terms of American politics and yet, you know, Draws huge amounts of people to his rallies still and yet the candidates that he endorsed didn't do well including Dr. Oz and I'm just I'm just wondering how do we know how influential Donald Trump still is or do his endorsements just not mean as much as he himself?
Yeah, I think it's really hard to isolate those things.
People like to talk with a lot of confidence about it, like the Trump effect, but there's so many variables that it's hard to isolate it, which is not a very exciting response.
I know I'm coming on here with a very definitive take on that and be able to point to exactly the effect of the Trump endorsement.
But I do think that we'll have to see how other endorsements pan out.
There's certainly not enough on their own to make someone win an election.
I think that Ron DeSanctimonious, as he likes to call him, Has it been a bit of a, in a sense, has it been a bit of a damp squib of an election?
Let's remember that Joe Biden was saying that democracy itself was at stake, which means that democracy is essentially over, that Trump suggested that this was going to be sort of the fluffing of a coming priapic eruption that was going to be his 15th of November announcement, when really what we've got It's in a sense a kind of rather tepid and ordinary election and I feel that we should be demanding more of democracy.
If I could just draw your attention, Katie, to some of the pledges that have been broken.
I'm not blaming you for these because you aren't Joe Biden.
I know that.
I can tell now.
Some of the pledges that were made in the election campaign that have not been delivered on And I mention this only to remind myself and our community that we get excited by spectacle.
We get amped up over needless, empty, vapid information forgetting what the facts of the matter are.
For example, Biden said there's that famous cannabis law, which meant that zero people
were released from federal prisons.
He was going to establish an offshore tax penalty, no tax penalty, targeting foreign
operations included in the final bill, introduce a constitutional amendment to eliminate private
dollars from federal elections, no sign of constitutional amendment to ban funding of
elections, end for profit detention centers, little change under Biden, lower cost prescription
Biden takes steps to lower drug prices, but odds are long for achieving his promised 60% reduction.
Now, I'm not a pro-Republican person, I'm not a pro-Donald Trump person, I'm not even a pro-Ronda Sanctimonious person, although we watched his campaign video and I like him a bit more after that.
We're no longer on YouTube, guys, so we can relax a little bit now.
We did get told.
Okay.
Right, you can relax now, Katie.
Be your true self.
Let it all out.
Right, for God's sake, is QAnon a real thing?
What was Pizzagate?
Are aliens actually happening right now?
What the hell's on Hunter Biden's laptop?
Tell us the truth about everything!
No, I suppose what I'm saying is, when so many pledges are continually broken, how are we getting it up?
Just for the mid-term, I'm going to call them elections.
Just to jump in, literally, just to summarise what you're saying, I think even through PolitiFact, they noticed that going through all Biden's election promises after a year, and Trump's, they were both around 22 or 23% promises kept, which is like a fifth.
So, exactly as Russell says, when we're getting whooped up about these things, you might as well just announce, by the way, we'll only do, at the most, one in five of these.
You only need 22% of your enthusiasm right now.
I think that the most ambitious thing you can say about the Democrats, like if I'm being the most
pro Democrat that is possible, you can say that their harm reduction, maybe on some issues,
not on war, nonfarm policy, but it's not enough to be a harm reduction party.
And they're certainly not across the board harm reduction.
But really what they do constantly is they just crap on Republicans who deserve that.
I mean, they should be crapped on the Republicans.
But they don't really provide any systemic, as you said, Russell, systemic changes, radical changes, which is what is actually needed.
When you work, working in media as you've done, print, online, etc, do you feel that the media's role in maintaining a limited spectrum for potential change inhibits even the scope of our imagination?
People aren't saying, oh, let's decentralise power, let's punish the banks meaningfully, let's limit the military industrial complex's ability, let's ensure that we, you know, these ideas are never even discussed, so ultimately you have tyranny anyway.
Yeah, I mean, especially when you talk about the military industrial complex.
I mean, it was just embarrassing and disturbing to watch the media cheerlead for a no-fly zone.
I mean, you actually saw the Pentagon and Biden sound like reasonable anti-war voices compared to what the media was demanding.
I mean, there was this famous press conference where you had just one voice after another
expressing impatience with what the Biden administration was doing.
They wanted more.
They wanted things ratcheted up.
You know, they've always, ever since Trump, they've had this really incoherent demand,
which is that the president of the United States ratchet things up with Putin.
And with Trump, it was especially weird because the same media that was calling Trump
this erratic Cheeto Mussolini with dementia, whatever they'd say about him,
they wanted him to be more aggressive with someone who they claimed was
an unprecedented evil in Russia.
So it's never really made sense what their endgame is, except for, you know, being a cheerleader for war.
Back to Biden.
Yeah, that's what Tulsi Gabbard said, of course, famously, and she certainly reiterated that when she came on this show, and that interview's up in full now.
Biden said he would take... This is another pre-election pledge for Biden, of course, before the presidential election.
Biden said he would take steps to demonstrate the Democrats' commitment to reducing the role of nuclear weapons.
The Biden administration's first defence budget included initiatives to retain A low-yield warhead that was outfitted on a submarine-launched ballistic missile in 2019, and to initiate research into new sea-launched cruise missiles.
So more expenditure, and let's not forget the tiny fact that we've been brought to the very precipice of a nuclear conflict, with it being more likely, many argue, than any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
So why is it that we're getting jazzed up about Fetterman or DeSantis or Trump with egg on his face when actually we could be facing a global crisis.
How is it that we occupy such a narrow psychological space when there is a plain reality unfolding before us?
Right.
I mean, I think that you saw this disconnect in terms of how the media talks about this a lot when they were covering the elections last night.
Even you had Dana Bash on CNN shocked that the top five issues for voters did not include democracy, as if people sit around thinking about democracy.
But that's what the media thinks about.
They have this very kind of aesthetic based analysis and they're obsessed with norms.
And that was what they were offended by with Trump more than policies.
They didn't care about his war-like policies.
They just cared that he was kind of boorish and gross.
Could you pull up that Ryan Vance graph, please?
Because what I like about this is it demonstrates, evidently, at least according to polling, the voters' interest in sort of emotional and moral issues.
Have a look at this.
Have you got that there?
Fantastic.
So it says that when looking at people that voted for Ryan, 41% liked the idea that he is honest and has integrity.
When it comes to Vance, 56% said he shares my values.
What's curious about a poll like that is how general it is and how emotional You know, when you think that ultimately what we're being sold through congressional or contemporary western politics is the idea of rationalism, we're being given rational arguments, it's interesting to see how ultimately we're making decisions on an emotional basis, on a visceral level, fear
Desire.
Identification.
Seems like my sort of guy.
Reckon they share my values.
It's not this policy or that policy.
It's a sort of, it's quite general.
And I think that that's what's led to a, this is what's led to a relatively contemporary phenomena.
The politician as entertainer.
Charisma as everything.
Now you could argue that some of the great 20th century Dictators, I mean great in the pejorative sense, were reliant primarily on charisma, but ultimately this sort of reductivism that's in politics, the baffling bureaucratic language, has meant that a figure like Trump with his rhetorical ability, or you could argue a figure like Obama with his elan and charm, paper over a lack of real distinction between these two parties and a lack of real alternatives for ordinary American people.
Yeah, and the media does a terrible job at what they should be doing is really bringing out these policy differences and highlighting that.
But instead, they get obsessed with personalities, charisma, lack of charisma.
Again, with Trump, it really was they were just offended by his style.
Not to say that there wasn't a lot of things that were very terrible about Trump,
Yeah!
but they were never really the focus for the media. The focus for the media was how he spoke to other journalists.
But it's so fascinating that no one in the media who cared about his attacks on the Fourth Estate ever talked about
Julian Assange, for instance.
Yeah.
Just an example of the lack of substantive discussion.
These people, I mean, it's just shocking to me, by the way, that all these members of the press
who claim to care about a free press, who were so offended by Trump's attacks on the media, are silent on Assange.
I know that's something that you guys talk about a lot, luckily, but it's just a disgusting example of how these things are just trotted out.
No one actually cares about them.
No one cares about the First Amendment or a free press.
They just care about norms.
Yeah, also, coming to talking about the media, you know, there's a report out this week that since early 2021, corporations that have played a major role in pushing inflation to a four-decade high in the United States have swarmed Capitol Hill with lobbyists to prevent Congress from passing legislation aimed at curbing companies' ability to price gouge consumers at will.
This includes Big Pharma, the drug industry, and also oil as well.
So, two of the areas in which, like, you know, voters really do care about the fact that prices are going up massively in terms of With drugs, which they've continued to do despite the Democrats passing some small changes in that regard, and gas and food.
What's not being reported by the same media that are ever so interested in this midterms at the moment is behind the scenes what's really happening is the lobbyists that they are themselves a part of are actually the ones pulling the strings with government.
That's what's happening here.
It doesn't matter who you vote for.
Lobbying that big media is a part of actually ensures that The voters, whoever they vote for, are not getting the things that they need.
Yeah, that's a really important point.
The way that inflation is presented is as if it's this almost science that's inevitable, as if it just comes out of the blue and there's nothing we can do to control it when it is the result of price gouging.
And no one talks about that.
The inflation story is corporate greed, but it's presented as so often economic issues are presented this way as kind of being free of ideology and just the facts and it's just the reality out there.
People don't look at the way, as you're pointing out, these decisions are made and they have major impact on people's realities.
It's not like inflation is this thing out there that's in a vacuum.
It's the result of corporate greed and price gouging, as you mentioned.
So I suppose ultimately where this conversation has taken us, Katie, and is a destination that I often find myself heading towards, the idea that perhaps The terms left and right are becoming increasingly redundant and we almost have an obligation to become disciplined in our discernment, recognising that what the media do in conjunction with state officials and pundits is escalate the sense that what we are determining between are significantly different organisations when in fact
It all rests upon a plateau of unchanging machinery that's able to pursue financial and military agendas over decades rather than terms.
Katie, thank you so much for joining us for this conversation.
I know that you are a participant in the Useful Idiots podcast.
And also, where else can we follow your work?
Yeah, sure.
The Katie Helper Show is a weekly show I have on YouTube, Sunday evenings at youtube.com slash the Katie Helper Show, and you can also find the Useful Idiots, which I started with Matt Taibbi, and now he's on book leave, so I'm co-hosting with Aaron Maté, and that's usefulidiots.substack.com.
Why don't you ever invite us on those shows?
I have!
Well, Aaron was supposed to.
Don't tell me Aaron lied to me.
Aaron, when I said to him the very same thing, when you're going to have us on our shows, he simply looked out the window and claimed that his leg was hurting.
He blamed you, Katie.
He said, Katie was supposed to say that.
There's a lot of treachery going on.
We go like that.
Hmm.
We would love to have you.
I shall be there participating.
I shall find a way to infiltrate.
Katie, thanks so much for joining us on the show and giving us insights that we couldn't possibly glean ourselves because we are but humble English folk still regretting and resenting what we call the mistaken revolution that you guys conducted a little while ago.
We've got a king now again, by the way, if you're interested.
Thanks, going pretty well over here.
We're having a good time enjoying it.
Thanks, Katie.
Thanks for joining us.
Thank you.
There we go Gareth, that's the kind of contribution that keeps us right up to the moment.
I think so.
On the midterm elections and helps me to affirm my general cherished belief that democracy is a sham.
So there we go.
It's nice isn't it because we got on an expert who basically said stuff that we've kind of said a little bit.
It's nice that when an expert comes on and confirms essentially what you believe.
Like if you saw a doctor and your hunches were proven right.
My wife sometimes.
Right.
I don't like that because my haunches are usually pretty bad.
I'm dying, I'm dying.
This is it.
Oh no, what's that noise inside my mind?
Now you're going to be alright, Gareth.
You're in great shape.
In the interest of balance, Russ, do you want to know a few Trump policies that he broke?
No, I'll just tell you.
You'll like them because they're funny.
They're all bad.
It better be funny though.
Yeah, they are funny.
I only want to know a funny thing.
One of his things was to close parts of the internet where ISIS is.
Close down those parts.
Simply close it down if there's a part where there's ISIS.
Which I love that.
Like, Donald Trump, I don't believe, has any idea of what the internet really is.
Who does, in a sense?
It's a baffling thing.
Can you go down and chop little bits of it off?
Snip off the Isis-y bits?
All that smells of Isis.
What are they doing in that bit?
And when he says where Isis is, it's such a... It's not even R. Is it Isis a singular?
Is it a plural?
But how can you know where Isis is?
I just thought they got that black writing, you know, the beheading things, those chants.
I love it.
He also said he won't take vacations, but then took working vacations at his properties.
That old Mar-a-Lago?
Ah, Mar-a-Lago.
That's where the announcement is going to be coming from.
If you've seen our take on Ron DeSantis' sanctimonious, or Ron DeSanctimonious as Trump amusingly calls him, we did a great analysis of that video.
That should be up on Rumble about sort of... It's up!
It's up.
Don't watch it now though.
Don't watch it now because you're here with us right now.
Later on in the show, the philosopher and expert in violence, Brad Evans, is going to be on.
We were supposed to be talking about a new book in our book club, but we can't because we want to analyse the spectacle of contemporary American politics.
What I feel is our job on this show is this.
This is what I think it is.
It's to awaken individuals, myself included, and bring people together so that we can start getting beyond our senseless bickering.
To help us to recognise that so much of contemporary rhetoric is hollow and empty, take for example COP 27.
COP 27 sponsored by the world's biggest polluter.
COP 27, where edicts are suggested that will ultimately impoverish you and inconvenience, and bankrupt, farmers, while allowing corporate elites to carry on pursuing the same economic ends.
Ultimately what we're interested in doing is exposing media lies, establishing government hypocrisy, pointing out the power of the corporate world, and enabling ordinary people, ordinary communities, to come together as much as necessary, accepting our differences, in order to unite against a common enemy in pursuit of a common goal.
Is that too much to ask, Gareth?
Is it?
No, certainly not.
That's what I've been doing.
So, I suppose we do have a video where I brilliantly investigate and explore the nostalgic and retrospective flavour and hue of contemporary American politics, but I think that you and I can do a little better than that.
Oh yeah?
Can't we?
Sure thing.
I mean, I'm sitting back in my chair.
I know, I noticed you're all relaxed now.
I'm relaxed.
Yes.
I'm completely relaxed.
What I would like is some of my research to be brought up, my excellent research across a variety of things.
Oh, okay.
And also I'd like to see that, like, listen, this is what the mainstream media offer you as analysis.
Let's see, is this CNN telling you... Oh, this is Fox News, I think.
Oh, this is Fox News.
This is Fox News talking about what happened in, like, between Fetterman and... Dr. Oz.
And Dr. Oz.
Let's have a look.
...with voters.
When it comes to the state of Pennsylvania, why did Dr. Oz lose?
Well, it looks like, according to the exit polling, it's because Fetterman won!
Good.
Brilliant.
Let me write that down.
That's the reason to watch mainstream media.
If I get it, they can't both win at the same time, unless we're in a multiverse where everybody wins, or one of them schools, like, where they don't let the children lose because it's bad for their esteem.
I wish I'd gone to one of them.
Me too.
I could have done with that.
That's exactly the sort of school I should have been at.
It's one of those ones where, uh, you know... Yeah, no, in my school it was very obvious when you didn't win.
You were told.
You've not won, and that's why we're gonna throw shit at you.
Also, that's why none of the girls will ever like you.
See these girls?
They don't like you.
See these lads?
They're going to be beating you up.
See your future?
Could be bleak.
Bleak as all hell.
Were you ever told at school what you could go on to do?
Like you know those career days?
I was told that my only option was to join the army.
That was it?
That was the only option.
That would have been, I think, a mistake.
Unless you were going to be a dignified military man looking out of the window, a reflective gentleman who was actually tortured by the horrors of war.
Not a sort of go-getter Trump lieutenant looking for ISIS in the bits of the internet where they're plainly hiding out.
No, I'd have been useless in this current conflict.
Yeah, you'd have been no good.
Not that there is a conflict between America and Russia, obviously.
Certainly not.
It's just Ukraine trying their hardest.
No involvement.
Sure, there's some aid, some lethal aid, but there's no agenda and the war began whenever we were told it began.
A few months ago.
Matter of months ago.
It's been a short and unfortunate war.
Let's have a look what people are saying.
A lot of people talking about our Lord Christ.
That's Jesse Polaris.
That's what Jesus taught.
Yep, good.
Keep the Lord in.
You can only save yourself.
Yeah, I've, you know, I'm well up for a bit of Jesus in the mix.
I'll tell you that for sure.
Can you bring us up me facts and everything?
We're going to bring Brad Evans in here shortly.
Speaking of wars, do you want to know another thing that's come out this week?
What is it?
I think it might have been today actually.
So the US has fought more than a dozen secret wars over the last two decades according to a new report.
According to the new report there's been how many wars?
They've fought more than a dozen secret wars over the last two decades.
This is a report from Brennan Centre of Justice at New York University School of Law.
Through a combination of ground combat, airstrikes and operations, the US proxy forces, these conflicts have raged from Africa to the Middle East to Asia, often completely unknown to the American people.
And with minimal congressional oversight, so brilliant, brilliant.
So this is CIA, this is all the things we're talking about, this is Afghanistan, Cameroon, Iraq, Kenya, Libya, Mali, the list goes on.
And so I guess relating it to what we were literally just saying about Russia and this not being a, you know, a proxy war obviously between Russia and America.
These things go on all the time, we don't know anything about them, but these wars, secret wars, do go on.
Yeah, Secret Wars.
And in fact, on that, could you bring up the information from the video that we just did?
The Russia, you know, the video we just did.
There's a printout for that.
Can I have that?
I need that as a reference point.
Yeah, of course.
If you could bring that up to us.
Because of the pledges that Biden broke while campaigning for the presidency, and you can go back and look at the content we were making at that time, I was saying, really, look, even if you're an anti-Trump person, can you really get yourself that jazzed and excited?
Do you really think it's going to be any different?
I think, well, I feel that we are penalised by our inability to recall the past.
The information is moving so quickly.
We can't recall what happened during the pandemic, you know, let's declare an amnesty, let's declare amnesia, more like it.
We can't recall that, essentially, there is a continuum that's broadly uninterrupted.
We don't seem to be able to hold politicians to account because the system is designed in a sense to be untenable while, and the midterms is a good example of this, while presenting the sort of appearance of a meaningful spectacle.
And thank you.
I suppose what we have to do is just sort of track What is actually happening?
The old Jesse Polaris has gone from talking about Jesus Christ to saying ISIS were created by the CIA.
And in a sense, that might sound like an incendiary and not true thing to say, but we know for a fact that... It's certainly good that we're not on YouTube anymore.
Yeah, thank God.
We'd be in all sorts of trouble for that.
But certainly there has been CIA involvement in the, you know, the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.
Like, when you start looking at some of that stuff, man, it's a bloody, it's a dreadful business, the way they've carried on.
The infiltration, the provable, demonstrable infiltration of American secret services in big tech, their involvement in the various campaigns to arrest sort of enemies of the state and terrorists, it's a demonstrable mess.
But for a moment, let's focus on what Shall we focus on Armageddon for a second?
We heard that pre-election pledge was to de-escalate the potential for nuclear conflict.
Yeah, we will not fight a war with Russia and Ukraine, Biden said.
Direct conflict between NATO and Russia is World War III, something we must strive to prevent, he said.
And now, whether it's through extensive military aid, whether it's through the assistance in planning and execution, it seems like there is a very real proxy war going on.
And I suppose, look, even if we... should we give politicians a pass and just say they've always been like that, perhaps they always will be like that?
Why are we not able to hold the media to account?
Why are we not able?
To demand, or at least, gosh, expect reasonable reporting.
I saw a clip on CNN from last night where one of the pundits was saying, you should only come to us for the truth about these elections.
They were saying, ignore social media, that you should only come to us.
Yeah, that's true.
Like they're the bastions of truth over at CNN and mainstream media.
There is a sort of, well, much of the sort of condemnation of social media is based on a kind of legacy media snobbery.
All of the misinformation and disinformation, and you can't trust that lot, is sort of predicated on the idea that they are reliable.
I mean, Brian Stelter's famous rant, we've got proper people working here, we've got experts of every hue, what's the matter?
Well, hold on a second.
It's proven again and again that mainstream media revel in polemicism, revel in unaccountable polarity.
I want to give you a few facts about the military- This is just the research.
This is what underwrites everything that I do.
The US controls about 750 bases in at least 80 countries worldwide and spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined.
Now a lot of American national pride, it seems to me, is enmeshed in attitudes towards militarism.
But an explicit conversation about America's role in the world would be an interesting one.
And the fact that there is no viable political alternative, no one saying, do you want America
to be the policeman of the world?
Do you want a unipolar power, our country to be the central dominant global force, even
if that means taking us to the precipice of a nuclear war with Russia or the commencement
of a trade and a new Cold War with China?
What do you guys think?
The general assumption that people are idiots and can't be included in those kind of conversations is de rigueur, accepted, unquestioned.
And I suppose when you're living your normal life, the idea that you would be invited to ponder whether or not there ought be a nuclear war does seem somewhat abstract.
But if there is one, it won't seem abstract.
It will seem pretty bloody real.
Yeah, I think also, we've spoken about before, but when it comes to military spending, I think what often gets used in the kind of propaganda side of it is military people themselves.
That's what you'll always see.
You won't see the military-industrial complex and their weapons and the money that's getting spent on those.
You'll see members of service.
you'll see people in uniforms and people with their families and the people that
actually go out and defend us. But those people we know from our own work and
investigations that have been done are really suffering at the moment. People within
the military themselves can't afford all sorts of things.
They basically can't afford to live. Young Putin, pull up how many homeless
people in, what percentage of homeless people in the United States of America are
former... Well that's veterans but even people currently in the military aren't
being looked after I wear a, you know, it's Remembrance Day over in this country coming up.
That's, you know, when we commemorate service people over the world and in particular those that gave their lives in the First and Second World War.
And as a person that generally speaking is opposed to violence and a kind of fan of Gandhi and the idea of satyagraha, I can't say it properly, it's like a Hindi word I guess that means, you know, non-violence, the sort of philosophy of non-violence.
Generally speaking, I'm not down with war.
But the reason I wear that poppy... Can you bring us a poppy up as a matter of fact, please?
The reason that I wear that poppy is because I think, oh my god, think of the values of the people that actually fought in that war.
Think of what motivates people.
In a sense, what did old Jordan Peterson say?
Never assume malevolence where ineptitude We'll do.
Why would we operate on the assumption that the warmongery of the powerful is actually played out in the lives of the ordinary service people, most of whom are... Yeah, give us it.
Don't worry about the camera.
Just give us it.
Cheers.
Don't worry about it.
Honestly, it's not... That is far from the top of our list of priorities.
In fact, I'm already wearing one.
But you can never have too many.
You can never be too supportive.
Too respectful.
Like, is that the issue?
Or you're just too down?
Too respectful.
That's too much respect.
Yeah.
So Biden said, will you not seek a war between NATO and Russia?
The United States will not try to bring about Putin's ouster in Moscow, but went on to pledge virtually unlimited US support for Ukraine and did not answer the more difficult questions about US endgame in Ukraine and the limits to US involvement in the war or how much more devastation Ukraine could sustain.
This contrasted with the fact that 19,000 veterans experience sheltered homelessness and 13,000 veterans experience unsheltered homelessness.
That's some data from January 2022.
So while all the pro-military rhetoric is being espoused At the arse end of that is poverty, abandonment and homelessness for people that are cherished and prized as heroes when relevant and necessary, which I consider to be comparable to the pandemic.
During the pandemic, key workers, health workers, doctors, prized, even sanitation workers, necessary vital work while the rest of us are safely locked down.
When it's no longer convenient, unvaccinated, irresponsible, get rid of them, sack them.
34,000 key workers lost their jobs in New York alone, fighting to get their jobs back, and the New York state opposes it.
This level of hypocrisy, I don't mean to be carooming, tangential and ancillary, but I'm afraid it's the way that I think.
I can't help but spot this continuum of dreadful patterns.
Empty hollow rhetoric, invited to pursue meaning in narrow spaces, meanwhile there's this
sort of nihilistic abandonment of people
whenever it's convenient. Yeah, in a sense it's no wonder they have to
spend record amounts on these midterms. Right.
Because you have to.
You have to keep spending more and more to keep this kind of thing alive.
Oh man.
It's like a mental steroid.
It's like Viagra for patriotism.
You have to keep jazzed up and hard for this thing when deep down we would all be flaccid.
How can we ever get wet for democracy again?
When we know how little it really means, except with... unless we're continually stimulated... Oh, we're in his wheelhouse now!
This is it.
Wait a second, I'm up for it.
Continually stimulated by the pornography of the machine, man.
Hey, I'm getting philosophical.
It seems like it might be time to bring a legitimate, genuine philosopher and friend of the show, first ever guest of the podcast and great advisor and mentor that we have here, Brad Evans.
Gareth, I suppose you're going to shuffle... why don't you shuffle a bit?
Do you want me to go this way?
I don't think we need the cans anymore either because we're not talking to beloved Katie anymore.
Brad, come in.
You're going to have your own microphone that Anna is going to bring in and put in there.
Brad, have you been watching the show?
I have been, yes.
Do you like it?
You're gonna have to sit very close to Gareth like on a talk show, Brad, otherwise your philosophy will be just disappearing like vapour into thin air.
Now, the reason that we have you is not just because, as you know, I've many times called you the George Clooney of philosophy, not just because you are an expert in violence, that mic's directional, so sort of if you aim it at your mouth, as if it were a gun, the perfect metaphor.
I'm glad you said that.
Yeah, because I could have gone for another image system.
You just didn't talk about pornography.
I did, and it was quite vivid what I did, actually.
I compared propaganda to pornography, saying that we're continually stimulated into a priapic state, because when you're in that priapic state, and I speak from personal experience, you don't think straight.
It's like we're continually roused and jazzed up into what amounts to idiocy to prevent us from discerning the clear reality that these midterms, that while there has been record spending, there will not be significant, let alone proportional change.
It's not like, oh well, but as a result of that, look at all the things that are going to happen in your life.
Which begs the question, you know, the simple rational materialist question, they could have spent that money better on a thousand things that would have improved the lives of ordinary people.
They could address the existential threat that the whole world is facing.
Brad, why are we seduced by spectacle and so unable to address what's palpably real?
Well, this is how I feel, right?
I think you should come even closer.
Can you go a bit closer?
Don't be embarrassed.
Don't be shy about each other.
I think that let out was kind of how I felt kind of just going through the results of the election today.
And this is how the spectacle works, right?
It kind of creates this kind of almost like, you know, this untouchable kind of glare and you expect, oh, this is actually going to be a bit special.
And then the next moment, it's just a deflated whimper.
And you kind of go, oh, well, it wasn't the greatest election in history.
It didn't have so much significance.
Everything changes, so everything remains the same.
And then you become just kind of deflated by the whole process.
And I'm just doing this as a kind of distant observer, kind of looking at this US election.
You're Welsh!
You're not even English.
You're less involved in Empire than anyone.
But if you listen to the rhetoric, you're kind of saying, well, you know, according to this election, you know, the fate of the world is on the line, right?
And then next minute you kind of go, well, actually, you know, we'll move on to tomorrow and then the next day and things will stay the same.
But obviously we know things stay in the same.
That's the real shit bit about it, right?
Because, you know, speaking in a deep philosophical way, because I think that's where, you know, you're talking about, you know, A couple of points about, first of all, the continuation of war and violence.
And we know these continuations of war, you know, there's almost like this rhetoric around, OK, that, you know, the Republicans are the warmongers, the Democrats are not.
Well, history shows that's not the case because the Democrats are equally love war built, you know, Clinton's bombing of Yugoslavia under NATO.
You know, so there's this kind of history of a continuum of war which kind of filters through.
You know, I remember Gareth talked about this kind of, you know, we're in an age today where
war is no longer even being declared, right?
So we're in an age where we might call it beyond war.
That starts with Obama.
You know, Obama's acceleration of the drone programs results in this period where we're
in a state of beyond war, where so many wars are being waged, none of them are ever being
declared as war.
This sanitization of violence, this presentation of violence as irrational and necessary, this
sense that the Democrat Party have become, you know, by Tulsi Gabbard's own analysis,
a party of warmongers and, you know, she regards them as more egregious than the Republican
Party, which tends… 10, 20, 30 years ago, you know, the Cheney, Wolfowitz, great, you know, next American century kind of era, you would have regarded that as implausible.
What does this tell us about the deep psychology of the American imperial project and how necessary violence is?
And also, what about the unwillingness to Adjust to the fact, the plain fact, that when Russia is your opponent, as opposed to one of the Middle Eastern nations that you can normally shove around for a little while and do a regime change on the sly, how can they not recognise that this is a significant difference and why do they refuse to?
Well, it's interesting, right?
Today's the 9th of November.
It's the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, right?
So we have this moment in history of the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
We're now bookended by kind of saying, well, did anything really change, right?
Because we now have what looks like kind of like a new Cold War, but is it?
Because we don't really know who the key actors are in this war, really.
And I think there's something really at stake here when we're thinking about, you know, we talk about I'm absolutely with you.
I think you're spot on when you say the categories of the left and the right no longer mean anything.
In the context of domestic American politics, we could say, well, it still holds a certain validity maybe around abortion rights, which of course we know is a very fraught topic in itself.
In terms of international politics, I have no idea what those terms mean anymore.
The Democrats are the ones who are really pushing for the acceleration of a militarization of Ukraine.
Now, the condition in Ukraine, I'm just finding increasingly bizarre and dangerously bizarre.
You know, first of all, you know, who knew Ukraine was so important?
The only thing I thought Ukraine exported well was Shevchenko.
He's a footballer.
And all of a sudden we've been told that Ukraine, because of what's happening there, the world is collapsing in terms of crop prices, energy prices.
So if Ukraine was so important, why did we not believe that nations didn't have a geopolitical interest in there prior to this conflict?
Because it is so important.
And I think the second point about the war then, we know from history there's very few wars which end by the total obliteration of the enemy.
Very few wars in history.
Now we cannot possibly do that with Russia because they're in nuclear power.
So how do we then think about what does a political solution to this look like?
There seems to be no impetus from what we might traditionally associate with the left to engage in a political solution to a problem which could potentially bring the world to ruin.
And that's a real dangerous situation.
Brad, I remember once you said that with the fall of the Berlin Wall we lost a kind of dualistic perspective of global events and had a kind of unipolar reality for a while.
What does this new charge in geopolitics suggest?
Does it, for you, Is it a kind of precipitation of new tension?
Is it potentially... you know like there's a sort of narcissism in thinking we're going to live through Armageddon or at least experience Armageddon more like.
Or do you feel that these movements, like you say, the bookending of like, you know, the end of the Cold War, you know, because when we spoke to Jeffrey Sachs, he said that the pledges were made at that point that NATO wouldn't impede or infringe upon Russian borders, which have been, you know, sort of broken in Georgia and Ukraine.
And so sort of militarily and politically, you can see that what this encroachment looks like.
You can start to observe it.
What does it mean ideologically?
What does it mean philosophically, the sort of amping up of these tensions?
What does it mean, like, and I take your point about sort of abortion rights, and of course the significance of such a matter, if it personally affects you, can scarcely be overstated.
But when compared to an existential threat for, you know, for a species, I suppose that you would need to include, this conversation should be better promoted, and I mean literally this one, although why not?
I mean, this subject ought to be better understood.
The idea that you would need a vision for a marriage and wouldn't have one for a nation seems kind of bloody ridiculous to me.
Yeah, the point that you talk about in terms of, first of all, this clamouring for a kind of certainty and truth to knowledge.
Now, you know, the point about the Cold War, as you say, there was very clear divisions that kind of, you know, categorised the world in very, you know, of course, you know, there was complexities within that, but it was an age of certainty and that certainty was mutual assured destruction, which was, the acronym was MAD.
Now, we're in an age today where actually You know, everybody's clamouring for certainty.
Trump came to power promising to bring certainty to the American people.
Kind of lasted for a while, but then kind of faded.
And I think there's this constant clamouring for certainty, but in a way where, you know, the moment we just scratch beneath the surface, we realise that all those claims to certainty break down.
You look, for instance, what I find completely bizarre in the United Kingdom is the utter writing out of the mainstream press of the way in which pretty much every single leftist Latin American leader We're talking about Lula in Brazil, Fernandes in Argentina, Ortega in Nicaragua, López Obrador in Mexico, are all basically saying we need a political solution to the Ukraine conflict.
None of them are saying let's accelerate the violence of NATO.
They're all, but the leftist media in the UK is not discussing that at all, even though they're just cheerleading Lula as being successful against Bolsonaro in Brazil.
So I think the cartography of international politics is far more complex.
And I think the point is, you know, those old geopolitical rivalries, which used to be invested on the idea that the nation state was the dominant standard for power, that no longer exists.
So how can we then claim for truth in the nation state when power is no longer there?
And I think that's where we break up that kind of illusion.
Every claim to security now just falls apart.
That's beautiful.
With the abandonment of those kind of ideals, with the kind of loss of the security of the nation state as the kind of container of our ideals and our identity, and this...
evident push towards globalism and the kind of feeling of being untethered and lost that that creates for people.
It's kind of understandable that one of the consequences would be a re-emergent ethno-nationalism, a kind of collective nostalgia that might have a punitive and indeed xenophobic component.
It's a sort of understandable reaction.
In a sense, in a way, a sensible reaction, not one that I would personally endorse, But I like the way that you are identifying, Brad, that certain ideological tropes are extracted when endorsing certain aspects of, you know, let's call them left-wing politics for simplicity.
Someone pointed out to me, I don't know if he was one of the people you listed, that the Colombian president sort of said, like, what the fuck are we doing?
We've got to sort this stuff out!
All those Latin American voices are excluded until useful.
Absolutely, yeah.
And this point of the clamour for security, there's a good history to this.
We see in the late 1960s the arrival of globalisation and the sudden return back to religion because people want to suddenly say, no, actually, you know, I want to have some kind of grounding in a truth or rootedness in existence.
Now, in terms of ideology, we talk of ideology today, but I don't think we have a grasp of what that means anymore.
What is the ideology of big tech?
We know it has political power.
We know it kind of transforms human lives far greater on the planet than any political project can now currently do.
But what would we name that ideology?
It's amorphous.
Do you not feel, Brad, that it's kind of, in a sense, because everything feels like it is mechanical and data driven, there is an attempt to impose like a mask that eats into our face a Data-led and information model.
It's like we're becoming these machines.
We are becoming the analysis.
Every one of us can be charted and tracked like in a data optical way, like the way they can show the movement of a footballer on a pitch.
They mostly densely occupy this.
They can see us now as data through surveillance, through continuing surveillance.
And that is what we've become.
And what does that extract?
The spirit.
What does that extract?
Love.
What does that extract?
Ultimately, meaning.
Other than meaning in purely rational terms.
And you can see how that leads to a kind of annihilation.
You can see how that plays into the politics of violence in which you're an expert.
Because, ultimately, rational goals, in a sense, lead to, like, rationally can lead to a state of domination.
That it's a rational thing to do.
Yeah, well, this is what's driving global politics, is basically the mining of humans now as data.
And that is perhaps the ideology, and that's what's leading to new forms of, you know, human kind of extraction.
And we're trying, as you say, you know, the face becomes, but it's even more than data, because what we're now, for instance, with complex algorithms today, that they can now, you know, wearing, you would think like wearing a mask under the pandemic, The technology is already so advanced it can detect your inner self so the faciality no longer matters.
So we're in a state that is even beyond faciality because it's already deep into the body.
The data sets are already mapping us in much more complex ways.
And I think your point about then what it takes out of us is basically life, you know.
I know you and Gareth are really fond of the podcasts you do on football, and I think a good example of this would be football.
Football has been so fascinated by all this data, all this quantitative analysis.
Watch the film on Zidane, one of the most beautiful films ever made.
He barely touches the football all game.
Statistics would tell you nothing about how a brilliant, beautiful individual could change history in a second.
By doing something spontaneous, something which is human, right?
A little headbutt here.
Yeah, yeah.
But I think that, you know, because I think the deeper point around this is about, you know, what's at stake here is basically what it means to be human.
And all these wars are basically waging war on what it means to be human.
And I think that's really the crux of what's taking place today.
You're going to like this, Brad.
You're going to like this, Gareth.
Oh, yeah.
But many people argue, and one of them is Jung, that the hero's journey is ultimately the transition from an egocentric perspective, i.e.
the self, the ability to assert your will on the world, the ability to fulfil your needs, ultimately primal drives, or some variation on these primal drives.
That the hero's journey is the demonstration, the telling of the tale, of movement from egocentric, egocentric self-centred energy to a transcendent, capital S, self-oriented reality, i.e. a
kind of, I don't want to use the phrase cosmic consciousness because it sounds a little
bit silly, but kind of a sense of communal connection, a sense of oneness. And often this
kind of heroism, the idea that we can put something else first, that we're willing to sacrifice, is
brought about in odd times of crisis where people seemingly irrationally, seemingly
unpredictably, outside of the wheelhouse of their ordinary act,
Actions and behavior will do something beyond the bounds of the normal.
Sacrifice their life for a stranger.
Be willing to die for something that they believe in.
This mystery is, I think, difficult to chart.
I think it's by its nature somewhat submerged.
I think by its nature it's beneath, beyond, ulterior to the persona.
It's something That suggests the unitary.
Even heroism as an action suggests, like if I'm willing to give my life for my children or if I'm willing to give my life for my fellows or for my nation or for my beliefs, I have transcended self.
I have transcended the modality of my job here is to procreate.
My job here is to survive.
I'm beyond that.
And that is like the grace of Zinedine Zidane, brilliant French footballer of 20 years ago.
That's difficult, impossible to map.
It's by its nature ethereal until it's realised.
It's difficult to instantiate.
It's difficult.
It's completely unquantifiable.
Why does somebody do this?
Because that in itself seems irrational.
And as you say, there is no quantification metrics for the transcendent, right?
If you could quantify it, it wouldn't be transcendent because you could calculate it, you could map it, you could strategically get there.
And what makes the transcendent transcendent is it has to be an unknown journey.
You have to take a leap into kind of the void to become something.
And I think you're right.
Beneath the surface then, it has to retain something of the secret.
You have to reveal something you've never revealed before about yourself.
Something which no algorithm can kind of predict, because that's what makes us at heart human, as you say, in a very, you know, what philosophers would call, you know, the poetic way, which links to what, you know, other philosophers would call the ineffable.
Things we can't always quantify, put into words, even put into language, but we know is true.
Friendship, love, all these kind of key categories which bring us together, which are so essential to the human condition.
I'm going to throw myself into the religious life, that's it, that's it.
I'm going to start wearing a blanket.
That'll do it.
I thought you were going to say off a bridge to start with.
Not quite yet.
I guess when I hear that, when I contemplate that, it makes me realise that I need to sort of yield to something higher.
The reason I'm unfulfilled is that I'm clinging on to some sort of Old idea that it's difficult to find a spiritual path.
You know, when we talk about the media stimulating us into states of disorientation, I think about it in a kind of abstract way, when forgetting that I am a victim of that.
I'm a person that lived a sort of, gosh, forgive the phrase, a celebrity lifestyle, that I pursued the goals of my age.
In a sense, I was devout, like a devout devotee of materialism.
Addiction is sort of devotion to the material.
The idea that some external thing can provide salvation, can provide fulfilment.
And I still find it really hard right now to just let go.
To let go and become the thing that is waiting to be born.
So right, I'm going to live this now.
I'm going to live this.
I will also add that Rumble has no algorithm, so that's why it's vital that you press Rumble right now, that you subscribe and you turn on notifications when you're using this platform because otherwise you won't find us here.
It's not like on YouTube where they'll suggest stuff to you.
Did you know that?
Do you think it's ideological or do you think they just haven't got round to it yet?
They haven't got round to it, Gal.
It's quite hard to create an algorithm.
Algorithm is like a kind of a god.
It sort of floats around observing and forms patterns amidst the chaos and Rumble don't have one yet, but they're working on one.
So people are in there sort of like gambling on what addiction is an excuse.
Sort of an excuse, it's an explanation as well.
Don't be so mean in there, My Brain My Choice, you silly little sods, you daft sausages.
Go on, Gal, you alright over there?
What do you think when you're caught in the crossfire?
It's difficult.
Is it like when Jimmy Floyd Hasselbank sits between, like, Roy Keane and Gary Neville and there's, like, sort of an argument and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbank has to just sort of sit there with incredible thighs?
Yes.
There's a reference for our largely American... Yeah, we've moved on to the football chat.
Yeah, we have, haven't we?
We're more comfortable here.
Well, the World Cups are coming, baby.
The World Cups are coming.
I just want to take this opportunity to say hello to some of our new members in the Stay Free AF community.
Dire Straits, hello.
Fresh off the roll.
All right, you.
The band?
Well, I don't... They've spelt it differently.
It's actually spelt like Kieran Dyer.
We can't leave the subject of football alone now.
That would have been great.
Welcome, welcome Mark Mugfler.
Light of Dawn, B Shapiro, 590.
Cool.
Ben, welcome.
The Klaus Patel Queen.
And also I want to let you know that, Michael, this is... You know one of the things we're trying to do?
We're trying to fuse spirituality, and in particular spiritual optimism, with political radicalism.
And that's why I'm talking to Michael Singer, the writer of Untethered Soul, on November the 15th.
Watch it first and in full on Stay Free AF.
It's going to be on 7am PT, 10am ET.
and free GMT. I don't even know which one that is, whether it's an AM or a PM.
And also, these are changing, these PTs and ETs, every time I look at them, sometimes there's an additional letter in
there.
We've gone to GMT now, haven't we?
Before we were BST. Even time can't be relied on anymore, Brad, to be a watchful observer of what we're doing.
Okay, well we're about to wrap up on Rumble, but we will still be available on Locals.
That's our membership platform.
You can watch us over there.
You can become a member of our community, and you can ask us questions, if that's what you would like to do.
Will Pillsbury Seeker says, Fuse comedy and politics.
The more seriously they take themselves, the more they'll lie.
Yeah, yeah, you're right, man.
We've got to keep laughing.
We've got to have a little bit of a laugh.
We've got to be a little bit silly, haven't we?
Well, there is the argument that satire hasn't helped.
Go on, mate, what do you mean by that?
Well, as in, if you make light of this stuff and people laugh at it, then it just allows politicians to go about and do what they do.
That is an argument, I'm suggesting.
It's a good argument.
And what I would say is that satire is a particular aspect of the comedic, which is somewhat...
I would say part of the political sphere, when you think of the great satire boom in our country and geniuses like Peter Cook and brilliant broadcasters like Frost, in a sense became part of the establishment.
Maybe Cook was too mercurial ever to be truly part of it, but he kind of went mad.
Well, not go mad, I don't want to be dismissive of Peter Cook.
I love Peter Cook, but I think it's safe to say an alcoholic
and sort of lost his way and become disoriented and almost bored of everything about the age of 20.
And even someone like Chris Morris, who's like a brilliantly radical satirist
or Amanda Iannucci, they have a kind of an affection, I think, for politics.
They're like, I mean this dismissively because I have nothing but respect
for these brilliant, brilliant, incredible comedians, but they're kind of like nerds.
Whereas I feel like we look at it like, In a sort of slightly more punk way, if I dare say.
What do you think about that, Gal?
That there's a type of ridicule that's more like conventional clowning, like seeing it as like absurd, absurd, rather than sort of satire, I think, except like it ridicules it from within its framing, I reckon.
We're sort of clowning it, and that's why I think the sort of Aspects of the right have become empowered and like in sort of talking from the perspective of the medium we're working in now, they meme better.
Yeah.
Because they have this sort of punkish, angry radicalism.
Some of the people that we find ourselves agreeing with their anti-establishment rhetoric and not necessarily with some of their cultural views have got a kind of vivacity That's entirely been neglected by the left who have become ultimately or if you you know my opinion is that they've become authoritarian and in a sense the new conservatism is coming from the left they're the ones are saying just do what the government tells you they're the ones that are saying don't question this war you know what if you just look at that little clip that we watched the other day and we could check this out actually poots is like there's a moment where like someone's heckling Barack Obama saying what you will
What about your actions against Ukraine?
You've been winding up Russia.
And like the audience, boo!
Like, no, stop!
Stop heckling!
Stop heckling!
But that's a sort of a conservative response.
Now, you know, again, I'm not a pro, you know, as we continually reiterate, I know some of you guys are, we ain't pro-Republican here.
We sort of, I just think we've got to look for different answers.
And I think the midterms, again, will demonstrate that fact that we need to look for new answers.
And a kind of, um, I think a comedic perspective is vital.
Well, we're going to wrap this up over here, because someone just shouted wrap down the speaker.
Have you got points to make?
Don't make them, Brad, because we're going to save them for the other side.
Have you got points to make?
We'll save them for the other side.
We've got points to make, but we're going to make them on the other side.
Join us on Locals, where our community Stay Free AF continues.
You can ask us questions over there.
We'll be talking about... Man, I want to look at that Ron DeSantis video again.
And I just want to have a bit of a laugh, really.
I just want to stay out of trouble and have a bit of a laugh.
Oh, right.
On Thursday's show we're talking about the New Zealand farm produce.
I feel like I've analysed... I might as well start a farm in New Zealand.
I know so much about that subject.
And on Friday's show we're talking about corruption in the community and fighting it.
Yeah, going right back to my hometown.
And a billion dollar fraud in a tiny constituency that affects me personally.
We'll be talking about that.
You're a part of it, were you?
I've made a few quid out of it, yes.
Pretty good deal on me and the council, mate!
Okay, we'll see you on the other side and we'll see you over the course of the week.
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