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Nov. 18, 2022 - Stay Free - Russel Brand
01:05:34
Covid Emergency Powers - How They Stole Our Freedoms - #038 - Stay Free with Russell Brand
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In this video, you're going to see the future.
Hello there, you Awakening Wonders.
Thanks for joining me on Stay Free with Russell Brand.
And what a glorious day it's going to be for all of us.
Later on in the show, we're going to be speaking to Alan Wagner.
No, Adam Wagner.
It's not his name, Alan.
Adam Wagner.
You're obsessed.
You keep saying Alan.
Yeah, I know.
I do say that about him.
But that's not who he's called, is it, Gary?
No.
And you should know why.
You're the producer of the show.
Of course you are.
His book, Emergency State, talks about how we lost our freedoms in the pandemic and why it matters.
It's a proper book by Penguin, not a made up book.
It's not by a penguin.
Did I say by a penguin?
The thing you're suggesting, Alan, was a penguin.
Right, let me give you the facts and let me give you them straight.
There's this guy called Alan.
He's a penguin, apparently.
He's written a book about how we lost our freedoms.
And let me tell you, this is not a charity, this is not a channel for whack jobs and conspiracy theorists.
This is hard facts.
I'm giving to you straight.
Thanks to those of you that are joining us right now in the chat.
Some of you say that, look at that, who said that we should give them free underwear so that they can weave themselves while they watch the show?
Hopefully in hysteria, but possibly for a great many reasons, all of which we can reveal over the course of the show.
Remember to hit rumble while you're watching this, because in some way that I'll never truly understand, it helps us when you do that.
So, OK, so here's some things that have been going on lately.
The Republicans narrowly win back the House.
That's already happened.
But that doesn't matter much, ultimately, to you and your life.
And if you think it does, you've got a surprise coming.
It won't matter in the long run.
In the Qatar World Cup, a Danish TV reporter has been hustled off air.
We're going to have a look at that happen.
You might have seen that clip already.
What I enjoy is that the law enforcement agencies seem to be in golf buggies.
And at the G20, is it Ji that they're trying?
As a person that does a news channel, I should know who the president of China is and how to say his name.
Ji.
Ji, I think.
Ji, like slightly softer.
Ji.
Like Ji, Ji-ne.
Ji Jinping, yeah.
But where do we have Ji in the English language?
Bejewel.
The j sound is harder.
Stay with me.
It's good stuff.
Trudeau, well Xi, has accused Trudeau of leaking to the media about China-Canada relationships.
And I always thought that Trudeau looked up to and admired Chinese authoritarianism, although he likes it in a sort of a way.
Authoritarianism, sort of slick authoritarianism.
So it's a hell of a show.
But let's get started by looking at what some people are calling a morally reprehensible World Cup in Qatar, while others are saying, well, hold on, you know, when it comes to imperialism and human rights, what are you talking about?
What's the statute of limitations?
What about Russia in 2008?
They had a pretty appalling record around human rights.
And what about our country?
The UK!
You think we're so great?
And what about the US of States?
Many people said their World Cup bid was by far and away the best one.
That's what I've heard people say.
It should have gone there.
But, hello!
Genocide!
Slavery!
So who in the imperial world has got clean hands?
Is it possible To run a country without violence.
Now, we have Brad Evans on the show pretty regularly, and he tells us that all power is related to violence.
It's pretty much a Foucauldian idea, so I bet Jordan Peterson wouldn't like it.
He also comes on the show.
Also, we have people like Eckhart Tolle come on this show.
We want you to be spiritually awakened and educated when it comes to the true nature of power.
I saw a headline this week in the Telegraph saying the Qatar World Cup will be the most heavily surveilled tournament in history.
As if this was a shock that we're being surveilled now.
And do you know what?
They're so bad in Qatar that they're going to surveil you.
We do get surveilled a lot.
You're going to the dentist.
This is the most heavily surveilled trip to the dentist you'll have had in your lifetime.
What you're just explaining is that everything's gone terribly wrong.
No one's doing anything about it.
No one's got a succinct political vision that can bring people together except us.
We do.
It's about awakening, being wonderful, liberating yourself spiritually so that you can participate in community meaningfully.
Firstly awaken the one meter space around yourself and democratize that and from there we will create freedom.
Not in Qatar, though.
We're just doing a little bit of news in front of an illuminated soccer ball stark and get you shoved about a bit.
Well, that's probably as a result of the surveillance.
This has happened.
Right, they've seen him do that.
They've surveilled him and then they've got him.
Let's have a look at it unfold, Putin.
Young P1. I like that. I like that.
So you've noticed the golf buggy go by, and you think, that's interesting, because this is the first time I've looked at Qatar in my life.
Right.
I've never looked at it.
I've never gone, oh, what do I wear?
So I was watching this, I was thinking, oh, look, that guy, he's wearing like a thin shirt, and it's probably a bit clammy.
Yes.
You know that feeling, like I've been on a holiday?
Yeah.
It's nice, isn't it, when you like to go on holiday?
You might be watching this somewhere in the world where it's warm.
We're in England, it's awful here.
It's hard to know what to wear in the evenings on holiday.
Because you end up wearing stuff that you'd wear to go out in this country, but the temperatures are different.
What, are you going to wear like a tweed jacket with some sort of woolen tie?
It's difficult.
Are you trying to be the new Hugh Grant?
Yes, I am, yeah.
You could pull it off.
I reckon you could pull it off.
What I do on holiday... Go on.
I'm keen to know.
Jesus.
I'm so sorry.
Dressed as Jesus!
Right, which part of Jesus though?
Not on the cross, God rest you dear sweet Lord.
Jesus on everyday life, Jesus.
Okay.
Like robes, white shirts.
It's not full Jesus, it could be like an X Factor contestant that gets to the final when he's a bit sort of 90s, wearing strappy sandals.
Linen?
Linen.
Although can linen be too scratchy?
I think it can.
I mean, how are you gonna cope if you're our Lord and Saviour if linen's too scratchy with the old crown of thorns?
I didn't like the linen!
You could have just left me as I was!
I was pretty unhappy anyway before all this nailing to a cross business started.
Anyway, this guy, for a minute there, what's lovely is to see sort of a European sensibility collide with a type of authoritarianism that's used to having a bit more gusto.
This is the kind of country where it's, I'm guessing, and I don't want to stereotype here, it's sort of everyday fair to just wander up to someone and go, Oi!
Fucking come here!
You don't have to muck about with niceties.
It's what I fancy.
Let's have a look at them.
Rasmus Tandholt.
The Danish are called such great things.
That's brilliant, man.
Rasmus Tandholt.
You been to Denmark?
No.
I've been.
Yeah?
Done heroin there.
Drugs are bad.
I done heroin there.
I was addicted to it.
So I had to.
I had no choice by that stage, Gal.
No.
And like, there's a place called something like Christiana, and it's like a whole garden of a world where you're allowed to do drugs.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, it's nice there.
Let me know in the chat, let me know in the comments if you've been there.
There's a cathedral where the bloke that built the cathedral threw himself off the top.
But the Danes are... He built the cathedral, Gal.
Is this... This sounds like the worst tour guide I've ever heard.
Okay, Mr. Brand, welcome to Copenhagen.
Over there you can get heroin.
Right, thanks.
There's a guy jumping off a building.
Brilliant.
Can I just go to Legoland now, please?
This is fucking depressing, man.
No, no, Legoland's closed.
Is it Legoland in Denmark?
I don't know, mate.
Call yourself a producer of a news show who don't even know where Legoland is.
I've been... I'm banned from LEGOLAND UK.
I'm banned.
It's a temporary measure.
We'll be allowed back.
We're live on Danish television.
And as you can see, we're being stopped from filming.
And that's the situation here.
Mister, you invited the whole world to come here.
Why can't we film?
It's a public place.
This is the accreditation.
We can film anywhere we want.
There are only, of course... No, no, no.
We don't need permits.
Who's got the more power of the two people carrying out the arrest?
Is it the man in the more traditional Qatari dress, or is it the guy in the high-vis?
I'm saying traditional dress has got the authority there.
I'd say so.
And then there's the sort of colonial authority of the World Cup reporter, like, hey, we're here, we've got a business relationship with Qatar, you've invited the whole world here, this is a monetised event where football is nominally what it's about, but the World Cup man, it's so weird to have this win at World Cup.
I can't get my head around it.
You might be American, you might not care.
You might be worried because your American World Cup team has got a rainbow colour flag now.
Some people like it, some people don't like it.
They're good though.
The American football team?
Who have they got now?
I don't know, people are saying that they're good.
What is it?
Alexei Lala, Slandon Donovan?
These are the players of yesteryear.
I don't know who American footballers are now.
Like, all I know, Jesse Marsh leads.
Is he still there?
Has they sacked him now?
No, he's still there.
Is it a matter of time?
Probably.
Well, they beat Liverpool, anyway.
This is the collision of cultures that we're witnessing right now, because an alliance has been made between capitalism and culture, ultimately the one world religion of finance and capitalism.
Yeah, and I mean sort of the type of capitalism, the corporatism that we live under now, crony capitalism, has conquered the entire globe.
But there are going to be, there's going to be some weird collisions and clashes here.
You're going to see weird stuff go down.
Seems like in Russia, I don't remember there being enough problems about like, oh, they're nicking a bunch of gay people or whatever.
Yeah.
The problem is usually hooliganism.
Good old fashioned hooligans!
I don't imagine that's going to take place in Qatar for some reason.
You go to Qatar and you're a Huddersfield fan or you're from Swindon, some low league team where they can still do the hooliganism.
Hooliganism was once known as the English disease.
It used to be just going to football matches and having fights and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, you pull that off in guitar.
You'll be surrounded by golf buggies in no time.
Oh my God, you're just trying to make a bit of innocuous Danish TV.
Tournament begins in a couple of days.
It's very humid here.
I'm wearing a shirt.
Actually, I've got it for my engagement party with my wife.
Still a good member of the wardrobe community.
If you come in and go, come on you liars!
Start pulling that stuff.
You will find yourself in a humid cell.
Quicksmart would be my guess.
I like the way he calls him mister as well at the start.
He goes, mister, you invite the whole world.
Because that's, like them Scandinavian people, if you've ever met them, they're the world's, they're the politest people in the world.
They're so sort of polite.
I remember once someone saying, I once had a Danish girlfriend.
She was lovely.
And my friend who is French goes, for them, sex is like a recreational activity, like table tennis.
Right.
Why are you mixing with all these foreign people?
I liked it in them days.
I was living in London.
Friends, diners.
I was cool.
I was cosmopolitan.
I'm so out of my mind on smack.
I'm living it large.
Hey, Daniele, he's from Italy and France.
Oh, a bit of smack.
Daniele is the person who goes, um, Russ, wait, like he caught me.
He came home and I was, I think I was with some people that were paid to be there for nocturnal purposes.
And I was doing some drugs and he came in and he sort of saw it.
It was his house I was living in.
I just rented a room.
And he went, Russ, why don't you just watch The Simpsons?
He knew that I liked The Simpsons.
Like, the things I liked was having sex, doing drugs, and The Simpsons.
He was trying to direct me.
Yeah, just make it one of those things.
Go towards The Simpsons!
Yeah.
Less mess.
Less messy.
I'm just sat there.
Yeah, I should have listened to him.
All right, let's just watch this Danish matter unfold out there in Qatar.
No, no, but listen, but listen, but listen.
You can break the camera.
You want to break the camera?
Okay, you break the camera.
Okay.
So you're threatening us by smashing the camera.
Love it.
I love it.
You're threatening us.
They're so reasonable, Danish people.
You're going to smash the camera.
Okay, no problem.
Cool.
Baby, why don't you come around?
Me, my wife, you, we kiss, we cuddle.
We're Danish folk.
What's the problem here?
They're so upbeat.
It hasn't even started yet, the World Cup.
There's no World Cup happening yet.
We know that it was built, sort of, I think on kind of Dubious slave labour.
People were dying when building those stadiums.
But again, is this is sort of the kind of unique prejudice that anglophonic Western people preserve?
Because, you know, even when it comes to ecological matters, we should be, shouldn't we be reducing climate change?
Not doing it in India.
They're not doing it in China.
And people say, well, they've not had their industrial age in the same way.
I suppose power operates on the assumption of there being one telos.
This is what's normal.
This is what you're supposed to do.
And if you have your own past of corruption, how can you judge people's present corruption?
It also doesn't stop countries like the UK and the US doing trade with these as well.
We're always banging on about how Saudi Arabia are this, that and the other, but we'll keep doing trade with them.
We'll keep selling them weapons.
These Saudi Arabians, they're absolute savages over there.
They're absolute savages.
How do you know?
Well, it's just over there.
Record amounts of missiles are selling them.
And one of the things I noticed while we were signing the contract, for billions actually, on the missiles, I thought, hmm, you're a bit impolite to women.
You're a bit homophobic.
Also, careful with those fucking missiles, will you guys?
We've just armed you with.
So yeah, that's right.
I suppose there is no morality.
There is just economic nihilism.
Although nihilism is, I suppose, somewhat purposeful, but moral nihilism elsewhere.
So you can't really complain.
It's interesting when we're talking about this story with Trudeau and China as well, isn't it?
Trudeau's name would be a good football chart.
Trudeau!
Trudeau!
If you liked him.
If you were pro-Trudeau, Trudeau!
Trudeau!
But if you don't like him...
Budo.
Judo.
I don't know what you would call it.
No.
Budo, I'll use judo, then voodoo on you, Trudeau.
Then you'll know that I know Trudeau.
How, we'll show you how.
Oh, no!
I made myself go funny there.
That was a glitch in the mental matrix.
This story is about Trudeau and G, doing... Is that the G20?
They're at the, it's the G, is it G20 or G20?
It's at the G20 and it's G. And like, I think G confronts him.
But when you told me about this, I'm not seeing it yet.
Like it sounded like something that's very sort of candid.
Like a moment of reality.
It really was.
Which you're amazed because you think this sort of stuff normally happens behind the scenes.
You don't normally get moments of reality in it.
You don't get moments of reality.
Let me have a look at the recent messages from our lovely community.
Let's have a look then at G and Trudeau!
Trudeau!
Trudeau looks like he's preparing to be in that film that Matthew McConaughey got Oscar for, doesn't he?
He's thinned himself down.
Yeah.
He's thinned himself down skinny as a rake.
He has, and he's very pale at the moment.
And then he's wearing that pale suit, too pale.
It's not working for him, is it?
What are you doing Trudeau?
You've shorned your hair, you've gone too thin, you look like you're preparing for Dallas Buyers Club.
What the hell are you trying to prove, Trudeau?
I'll tell you what, mate.
I don't know much about Zhi.
But I tell you, I would not want to be told off.
No, he's in control, isn't he?
Yeah, I've heard you.
I would not want to be cussed by Zhi.
No, he's in control of that situation.
Total and utter command.
That is a powerful individual issuing Yeah, he's got that.
So what kind of authority is that?
Is that headmaster authority?
Is that sort of communist state power, totalitarian rule with a corporatist state, powerful manufacturing industry, very well-drilled army, nuclear capacity, forming new alliances across the globe, aware of a creaking U.S.
economy, is dictatorial authority, says Eli Z.P.
in the chat. No known power says TX scubba. Do you let me know in the chat what kind of
power is there? If Klaus Schwab is right and we should be looking for a unipolar world
with American corporatism at its center. What you gonna do about him? What you gonna do
when he come for you Trudeau? Do you know Trudeau? What you gonna do? Gonna do some
Judo? Gonna do some Voodoo Trudeau? What you gonna do? I don't know Trudeau.
So long.
Do you wanna watch the end of it? Cause I've been told he walks off in a funny manner.
Perhaps later we're gonna be talking to Adam Wagner. I'm saying Wagner. You're going for
it are you? Wagner. Yeah we're gonna be talking to Adam Wagner in a little bit about emergency
state power and perhaps Qatar with their evident and obvious imposition of authority via the
golf buggy and Xi with his superpower there chastising Trudeau like the WEF Davos puppet.
Some say, some say he is.
How are our own systems of government similarly and comparably tyrannical and was there human rights abuses during the time of the pandemic?
That's one of the things that we're going to be asking Adam Wagner when we talk to him in a minute.
For now though, let's see, let's watch, let's watch real power roll out in the hands of...
If there is sincerity on your part, free and open and frank dialogue, and we will continue
to work constructively together, but there will be things we will disagree on.
Let's create the conditions first.
That was a heavy cast.
What you saw there is real power and pseudo power interacting.
There's no doubt where the authority lies there.
Trudeau tries to parrot a few lines, but ultimately you can see that Trudeau is channeling power that comes from elsewhere.
Xi, I don't know.
Imagine if we were Chinese folk right now and maybe you're watching this from China.
I bloody well doubt it though.
I don't imagine they have this platform over there.
You're like, oh, I don't think they're the real government.
I think they're shady, like, secret cabals and cartels that run the government.
Gee, he's just the front man.
He's just the puppet.
No, he's out there in the open.
I'm a dictator.
But I feel like that Xi, when you look at him, like, I'm not suggesting that he has a violent background.
I don't know if his background is military, economic, or purely political.
I don't know.
I've not done the research.
But what he has is evident and apparent authority.
And what we have in the West is impersonative, like, authority now.
It's performative.
Like Trudeau, Rishi Sunak.
These are kind of people that have come from financial systems, hedge funds, sort of things.
It doesn't seem like real power.
Yeah, also not to literally compare Canada to China, but the thing that he says here is we believe in free and open and frank dialogue in Canada.
Now, I mean, that certainly wasn't the case during the Trucker protest, was it?
We're just going to have a free, frank, open dialogue.
It seems that you're against these mandates as the trucker community, and you've come to exercise your civil rights through these protests.
Now, what we're going to do is we're going to call you Nazis, we're going to ban your protests, we're going to freeze your bank accounts.
But we're a million miles away from China.
Gee, you'll be on the phone!
You're doing great work!
Actually, I misjudged you!
You're brilliant!
Come on holiday over here!
Yeah, that should have been the thing he said.
Hey, we love what you did in the trucker protest, by the way, because I was thinking, I wasn't a fan of the blackface, I thought the haircut was Haircut was a little bit dubious, but the trucker protest?
Dog, you've got something going on over there.
You've just got to see him walk off at the end, because apparently he's got a slightly odd walk.
Trudeau is so impaired by this encounter that it's affected his ability to perambulate natural style.
He's been so heavily dissed that he's given him a limp.
He's been so chastised.
Like that, she's got powers.
He can leave you with a limp with a diss.
Yeah, he just used the force on him.
Yeah.
These are not the leeks you're looking for.
These are not the pelvic movements you require to get you past them flags.
Oh, she, you've done it again.
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We've got Adam Wagner on the phone now, and he'll tell us for sure in a minute, who wrote a book called Emergency State, how we lost our freedoms in the pandemic and why it matters.
Thanks for joining us, Adam.
How are you today, mate?
I'm good, I'm good.
How are you?
I feel pretty upbeat.
Wait a second, let me put my carriage on, let me put my carriage on so I can hear you.
Otherwise I'll have to lip read or guess what you're saying and that doesn't seem like the right way to conduct business in 2023.
Or two?
Two.
Two.
Yeah, two.
Adam, thanks for writing this book, mate.
Now, I imagine you had to walk a bit of a line so that you didn't sound like a hysterical conspiracy theorist but addressed instead regulatory measures that were Unusual and wouldn't have been regularly afforded to a government without due democratic process.
Tell me what was unique about this pandemic when it comes to the imposition of state power?
Yes, so the books about the two years when in the UK, which I focus on, I talk a bit about elsewhere, the whole state just basically turned itself around.
So rather than doing the things it normally does, it was doing things like keeping us locked in our houses.
stopping us socializing, stopping us hugging, stopping us buying certain things, stopping us working, all of the basic things we usually do.
And what I've tried to do is just describe that.
I'm a lawyer, so I'm looking at it a lot through laws and rights.
Describe that process.
How did the state suddenly become this sort of all-powerful, oppressive entity, even if it was for a reasonable cause, as many people will think?
Of course we fool ourselves that we live in liberal democracies and I suppose what you're saying is that under these, what were regarded at the time certainly as unique circumstances, we afforded this license to the government primarily because the narrative at the time was it was scientifically underwritten.
Now I know you're not an epidemiologist and I'm not inviting you to be one.
So it seems that all of those measures, whether it was about the hugging or the lockdowns or near mandates, certainly in some professions and areas of professional life when it came to particular medications, were all undertaken for safety, which in itself, I suppose, is an acknowledgement of the sanctity and value of human life.
Now, as a lawyer, I suppose, what you would have to be doing is addressing the case.
Were these actions legitimate and justified?
Is that what you're talking about in your book?
Yeah, exactly.
So there was a justification.
It's this classic sort of freedom versus safety balance, which we saw a lot during the war on terror as well.
But this was really something extraordinary that I don't think we've seen ever in the history of the modern state, at least.
That the state all of a sudden was saying, and not just illiberal states, but states that would consider themselves to be liberal, was saying you can't do the usual things that you're allowed to do and that you've always seen as sort of sacred things that you're allowed to do, even like worshipping, like going out and protesting, like working in an occupation.
The thing I find really interesting is the psychology of it.
It's not just that the state did these things, it's that people wanted the state to do these things.
I know there were some people who didn't, but on the most part, in an emergency, people lie down.
In a way, it can save lives.
Wars are another time that happens, but in another way, it's pretty concerning and pretty scary.
Yes, what you just listed, I think, Adam, were the infringement of secular religious and financial and economic rights.
All of them rights were curtailed.
Furthermore, people that opposed them, as is usually the case in less overt and obvious circumstances, were defined as, at best, ne'er-do-wells, And at worst, enemies of the state.
Lots of language that in retrospect looks difficult to justify around it being a sort of a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
And we're not here to focus on the sort of medical aspects of this condition.
We can do that elsewhere.
But the very fact that the state was able to impose that power is certainly surprising.
I remember initially, of course, that when we saw the measures that were taken in China where the pandemic ...began, people said, oh, they won't be able to do that in the British!
We British by Jove!
Would you try telling us what to do?
We'll be out on the streets!
Now, some British people were out on the streets, and those British people were demonised, vilified, ridiculed, and in retrospect, does it seem that it was an exercise in control that wasn't entirely medicated by medical necessity?
I mean, in some cases, yes, in some cases, no.
I think what you say about China is really interesting, because obviously the first lockdown was in China and Wuhan.
And from what I can tell from my research, that was only the third time a country had ever locked down its population in the way that we come to understand lockdowns to be.
I only found two other examples in Mexico and Sierra Leone in the past 10 years.
And before that, it had never been done before.
And when we saw China, we said, exactly, that's an authoritarian state.
We're not going to do that here.
And then when it came to Italy and France, we said, well, that's continental style policing.
We're not going to do that here.
And then two weeks later, we were doing pretty much the same thing here as certainly what was going on in Europe.
I think you mentioned protests, people going out on the streets and being vilified.
I do think there was a real problem of basically banning protests.
It didn't happen in every country, but it certainly happened in the UK.
I acted for the women who organised the Reclaim These Streets protest for Sara Everard's death, where the police eventually sort of manhandled women off the bandstand in Clapham Common.
But also, you know, the protest was pretty much banned the whole time.
And that's, if you think about this as a time when the state is imposing the most draconian, the most extreme restrictions Probably in history, certainly since the Second World War, to also prevent people protesting at the same time and also prevent Parliament really looking at what was going on.
I can talk about that as well.
I think you're taking away all of the usual safety valves for a democracy and I don't think that's really worrying.
The revelations that you describe are so radical that it seems to me less likely that what we saw was an an irregular and exponential deviation from the norm, but rather the revelation of processes of power that were already in place and were simply revealed by this process, i.e.
compliant media, ultimately compliant population, unquestioning democratic process, willingness to respond to edicts from centralized global bodies, All these preconditions must have been in place for things to unfold in the manner that you describe.
Even when looking at the diagnosis offered to other nations, you know, somewhat xenophobically, we attribute the Chinese lockdown to their conditions and the continental ones to those.
You don't even hear that word continental that much anymore, do you?
But ultimately, the same principles were at play here.
So it suggests to me that there were a set of underlying factors that had long been present, sets of interests, overlapping interests, that obviously afforded these conditions.
So firstly, I'd like you to talk to me about that, and then we'll move on to the likelihood of such things happening again.
In fact, the implausibility of it not happening again, actually.
So I think, on the one hand, there was many similarities between what happened worldwide, but on the other, each country, it was a bit like injecting radioactive dye through the systems of each country.
You know, what happens during an emergency?
What does it tell you about the system?
And I think China, the lockdown in China was very different to the lockdown here, much more extreme.
You know, China was and still is carting people off, you know, compelling people who have COVID or symptoms of COVID to go to detention centres.
They have much more extreme enforcement of lockdown.
And as you know, they have the social credit system, they have state surveillance on a much higher level than in many other states, including here.
So that what happened there was quite different to what happened here.
But I agree that what happened here didn't just come out of the blue.
It was a function of stuff that was already there.
So the executive here, the government, is really powerful.
And if it wants to disregard Parliament in certain instances, and particularly in emergencies, It can.
So Covid decision making was taking place basically, it was four guys.
It was Michael Gove, the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and Matt Hancock who's now in the jungle.
But you know that was just four guys and they could pass laws using emergency laws by Matt Hancock signing the bottom of a piece of paper, didn't have to go to Parliament for another four weeks after it came into force and by that time it was kind of irrelevant.
So there were over 100 lockdown laws.
I counted 109.
Wow.
Only eight of them were approved by Parliament in advance.
So over 100 were just passed on the nod.
So Matt Hancock signed the piece of paper saying you can't go to the pub, or you can't sing, or you can't buy Easter eggs, that sort of thing, or you can't buy a substantial meal in a pub, those sorts of things.
He'd signed the piece of paper and all of a sudden, like magic, it would become the law of the land.
So I think that's something that was pretty UK specific but and really pretty worrying as well.
Sweeping legislative changes were made overnight to an unprecedented degree by assuring people that this was a unique state of emergency and obviously we're not querying whether or not it was a unique state of emergency but people will be able to look at the medical data for themselves and make their own decisions based on what has subsequently been revealed.
I suppose, Adam, what this makes me think, and people here, by the way, Firegirl2020 loves your analogy about the radioactive dye.
And I saw you take a little smile of delight as you used that analogy.
I saw you lit up like a radioactive man yourself on using it.
So I suppose what interests me here now, and as I alluded to before, is that once we have established a model of emergency crisis response and legislate, is it likely that it's to be repeated?
And in a way, is it particularly different from the sort of commonly understood practices, for example, of the United States through the CIA in countries like Nicaragua and elsewhere, where various crises, political or otherwise, have been utilised to create coups or certainly to advance American interests?
So my questions there are, is it distinct from the normal shock doctrine Naomi Klein type analysis?
And how likely is it this stuff will happen again?
So I think, as one of the things I look at in the books, I think emergencies have always created fertile grounds for the use of emergency power and the grabbing of power by governments or by individuals.
You saw it in Nazi Germany, that's the way Hitler created an emergency to take the last bits of democracy away.
You've seen it in lots of different places.
And that's not unusual because I think it's basic human psychology.
We look for the sort of big leader to lead us out of an emergency, whether it's like a war or a pandemic or whatever.
But I think that what happened in the pandemic was pretty unique.
You know, Covid was a massive Massively dangerous virus and people, I'm not an epidemiologist, but over 200,000 people died in the UK alone from COVID.
It was definitely something before the vaccines and before people had it.
It was something very scary.
So not a surprise that this kind of thing happened.
But what I think was surprising and worrying is it happened not just for a few weeks or months, but it happened for over two years while basically the executive and Matt Hancock and the health secretary took control and didn't give it back.
It also seems that many of the transitions between the severity of regulation took place not in response to changes in medical data, but to some invisible undulations less easy to discern, i.e.
Covid cases continue after their regulations altered.
Now I'm going to have to pick you up on the Reichstag fire.
There's absolutely no evidence that the Nazis were responsible for that.
Adolf Hitler was doing a very difficult job and a very trying job.
I don't know why I took it upon myself to try to argue the case of the Reichstag fire.
It's because I watch too many documentaries on that kind of thing.
I think that Hitler and the Nazis were a bad influence on Europe and genocides are broadly accepted as bad things.
So mate, ultimately I suppose your area of interest as a lawyer is the analysis of the way that crises are used to generate not just compliance in the moment but possibly long-standing legislature.
We were watching a talk from the B20 which is like the sort of A sort of business-oriented little sister of the G20 where, I can't actually remember who it was, but people were talking about the necessity again for vaccine passports and we're seeing this obvious intersection between surveillance and legislation and it appears that what's being, well let me ask you this as a question given that we're in an interview, does it appear that we're trying to create the conditions and circumstances where Chinese style social credit scoring can be introduced without the sort of aesthetic of
A sort of a centralised, corporatised, communist state?
I mean, possibly.
It's going to be a lot harder in a country like the United States or the UK, but certainly not impossible.
And I think that what we see here is something slightly different, that rather than the state being at the centre of the surveillance sort of infrastructure, it's private companies.
And in a way that is Just as worrying, but in a different way, you know.
So the state shouldn't have access to your movements and the social realities of your everyday life.
And it probably shouldn't be controlling those things.
It's set where it can cause harm.
But for private companies to have access to that information, I think is something we've sort of sleepwalked into a bit.
You know, these big social media companies and they're basically unregulated.
They basically do what they want and they can do what they want with that data.
And I think that is It's not the same as the states like China basically restricting your access to everyday social goods by the way you behave.
It's not as serious as that, but it's still something we've got to be really wary of and careful about.
Adam Wagner.
Wagner?
Wagner.
Yeah, Wagner.
Wagner.
We're not hanging on to that V sound in 2022.
We're going to let that go.
Yeah, my concern, Adam, is that having introduced these laws, they won't be subsequently rescinded and that there will be an appetite to recreate the conditions for further legislation of this nature.
What does it tell us about the limitations of the types of democracies that we live in that this was allowed to happen?
And what kind of legislative and political changes are required to prevent something like this happening again?
And may I say, is there even an argument for a real reckoning now that we do have more clear data on the impact of the pandemic, both its severity but also the potential limitations, you know, using comparative study between nations that took different measures, the efficacy of those measures.
Is it possible to legislate to prevent something like this ever happening again?
Is there an appetite to prevent some of this happening again?
Or does the fact that people so sort of willingly participated like this sweet docile compliant little Dopes suggest that that legislation wouldn't be desired anyway.
I think that people want to forget what happened.
And when people have read the book, they've sort of said, God, I actually can't believe that all that happened.
They've sort of, it's disappeared from memory.
And I think that's in itself really concerning, because we do need to do a sort of a rain check of what went on during the pandemic.
Not just, you know, it's sort of, it's like when you've got a disease and you use a cure, to cure it, which does damage in itself.
And you've got to think about, well, yes, overall, we may have prevented lots of deaths.
I think it probably did prevent lots of deaths.
We may have allowed time for the health services to survive and for a vaccine to be created.
And that's all in the good.
But there are some things which it highlighted, that radioactive dye, you know, that we can... All right, Adam!
Radioactive man.
There are those things that we've highlighted that we need to think about.
So I think just looking at the UK, we don't have a written constitution.
We don't know exactly how the system of government works.
Some of it's inherited, some of it's just known by the people in power, or maybe it's in some rule book somewhere, but it's not necessarily publicly accessible.
And I think that makes it really difficult when you've got a crisis to know Who actually, who's in control on a basic level?
We don't have, we have a human rights act, we have human rights protected, but they're not in any written constitution.
The courts were really absent in the UK, unlike in other countries during COVID.
They didn't strike down any of the restrictions, even these sort of extreme restrictions on social lives, on worship, on play, on everything.
Unlike in lots of other countries where lots of law, in France over 50 COVID laws were struck down.
So I think we're just, in the UK, we're sort of pretty unprotected from a pernicious government that will come in during an emergency and take control.
I don't think the government was particularly trying to do the wrong thing.
It was trying to do the best it could.
It made mistakes but I don't think it was doing it for bad purposes.
But I think another government could and I think that's something we to think about not just in the UK but elsewhere.
So you're happy to assume that it is broadly ineptitude rather than malfeasance,
and why not make the assumption of ineptitude if it would seem sufficient?
But, and understandably as a lawyer, you see the solution as being legislative
to have a clearly demarked set of principles that we live by, a set of lines that we do not cross,
but it seems like the function of those emergency laws was to bypass that, curtail protest,
increase the ability to surveil.
And I suppose globally, Adam, the reason that, you know, the reason that the territory for conspiracy theory
became more fertile, and the reason that we, I suppose, have to be disciplined in our discourse,
is when you draw attention to the fact that there are some pretty powerful interests
that significantly benefited from these conditions, and the way that information was presented to us
further empowered them to continue along that trajectory.
I'm speaking about the profits of big tech, the profits of big pharma, and I'm also talking about our unwillingness to look at the kind of deaths as a result of mental health, missed cancer treatments, diabetes, heart conditions.
It was almost as if the narrative was presented in a particular way.
I think all of us are willing, like, you know, The amnesia, perhaps, is not unilateral.
Like, I remember that there was a bit where I was bloody scared.
Like, the beginning bit.
Like, I remember I was traveling back from Australia to the UK.
I've got young kids and when they were touching surfaces, I was like, oh my god, what's gonna happen to us?
We got back home and there was a couple, you know.
But it's... I feel like that it...
And again, there's no need to assume anything other than ineptitude, but it does feel that the way that the stories were reported, the way that the legislation was conducted, without even bringing in the personal and particular behaviour of people in positions of power and government, who might imagine that were they legitimately imposing these regulations because they thought it was necessary for safety, wouldn't have breached them quite so easily.
That just seems to be something that a rational human Wouldn't do.
If we put aside all of that just for a brief moment.
I suppose I'm saying, mate, that your legislative suggestions seem important but would ultimately end up probably being bypassed by some sort of emergency measure that they keep in their back pockets like a flick knife.
Because it appears to me that in spite of, I would generally agree with your assessment that these people are inept rather than necessarily Wicked, but it feels to me that there is some sort of force, and I don't consider it to be human, and sorry for making that sound supernatural, consider it like a convergence of interests that appear to have somewhat dictated the way that this stuff unfolded, whether or not it's Pfizer's ability to kick things down the road 75 years before revealing them, and even the amnesia stroke amnesty generally suggested.
So is your book an attempt to ensure that we do not forget and that things like this don't happen again?
Yeah, and I mean, I'm not sure.
I do look at Partygate quite a lot, you know, the fact that Boris Johnson and his staff were partying throughout the lockdowns.
I don't agree that it was because they didn't take the rules seriously, because they didn't really believe in them.
Although, I mean, look, Boris Johnson, that may be the case for him.
I think there was something more like they thought they were in a palace.
They were the staff of a sort of powerful ruler.
It was that feeling of we're in control of everything.
And I think there's a bit of a God complex in the way that they were behaving.
But I don't know.
Whether there's some bigger force that was creating the environment where things happened the way they did, I don't think so.
I think that this is much more, if you look at the history of pandemics and the history of viruses, this is pretty much how they've always been, well certainly the last 500 years, there's always been curfews, there's always been pandemic laws, there's always been school closures and And gathering bands and pub bands and all of that, to varying degrees in different places.
I think that's the standard playbook.
It's nothing that's been created by pharmaceutical companies in the modern world or anything like that.
If you look back in the Old Testament, there is quarantine rules.
So I think it's more about how you, the extent to which you can control a virus that passes very easily from person to person.
We haven't figured out the answer to that except for, you know, a lot of people in the houses as much as you can and prevent them socialising until you've got some sort of cure or enough people have had it to protect them.
But, you know, I'm not an epidemiologist any more than you are, so who knows?
What I've worked out is your catchphrases are, consider it to be a dye, a radioactive dye and I'm not an epidemiologist and thankfully you're not a radiologist either otherwise you'd be injecting yourself with dye morning noon and night is my verdict on the situation.
So the things I'd like to say is that yeah while historically the most obvious thing or you know contemporarily the most obvious thing to do if you're trying to stop a disease spreading will be to control the movement of a population that seems pretty yeah that's sort of clear no one would dispute that but I suppose when you put it together with secondary emergent details such as the control of the narrative of the conditions under which the virus emerged, the Wuhan lab leak theory versus the wet market theory, the nature of the media reporting on the event, I'm not advocating for like, oh there's a global conspiracy that needs people to dress up in costumes, chant or drink bodily fluids.
I'm saying that it appears that there are a bunch of economic and financial interests that are so potent and magnetic that a kind of inertia carries us through these situations in ways that are detrimental to the human population, and according to your book, Adam, an abuse of human rights, or potentially at least that's a question that we're asking.
I make this show with the producer, Gareth Roy, who I can see is sat there like a diligent prefect with all sorts of too long questions.
burning their way through his mind like a dose of a virus that you don't need to control a population to curtail.
Gareth, why don't you ask Adam what you're longing to ask him?
Hi Adam.
Now I was very interested in what you guys have talked about so far.
When Russell kind of mentioned the media as he did before and Considering this idea of the kind of polarisation that was created during this time, I mean, for me personally, it felt like something I'd never experienced in the kind of extremes that we experienced it.
And I wondered for you and the research that you've done for this, what part that you felt like potentially the media and even governments played in this?
Because obviously there's a lot of attention paid to the more cynical attitudes towards these government responses.
in terms of the lockdowns that you talk about, the inability to protest.
These kind of increased emergency powers that governments seem to be able to use at will.
And I kind of wonder what you think about the labelling of people who were cynical about these measures as, you know, conspiracy theorists, when they have, when the things that they were able to compare this to, for example, 9-11 and what we found out through Edward Snowden afterwards, the level of surveillance that occurred as a result of that in their response to the emergency of 9-11 and therefore why we shouldn't be cynical about the methods that were undertaken by... I told you it'd be long, didn't I?
Didn't I Adam?
I told you it'd be long.
Good question though.
Good long question.
I think we've got to maintain a sort of healthy scepticism towards the state.
That's my approach.
I don't know if I go so far as cynicism, but you're absolutely right.
After the war on terror, there was, you know, 10 years at the least of trying to dismantle what were meant to be temporary anti-terrorism laws and which as you said, led to a huge increase in the surveillance state.
Maybe that increase would have happened anyway because of the increase of technology, but I think there are lots of reasons to be sceptical of the state.
I think the way I put it is this, that there are certain parts of the state, and particularly the secret services, maybe the police, Where they, if there is an opportunity to increase powers and to make what, from their perspective, to make their job easier, for example by increasing surveillance, they'll take it.
And there's always going to be, in a democracy as well, there's always going to be sort of prevailing winds like against each other towards certain parts of the state wanting to impose more on freedoms and certain parts of the state wanting to free people more.
And I think it's the job of And the press, and the people, to hold everybody to account, to encourage transparency, to get out there and protest, to exercise a degree of healthy scepticism when we're being told, look, we're doing this for your own good.
Because in the past, the road to hell has always been paved By those kind of expressions.
So I think, I mean, that's what human rights laws are about.
They're about ensuring that there's a way of analyzing what's going on through a perspective of the freedoms of the individual and mechanisms to do that.
None of that is perfect.
None of that is stopping abuses.
But it's the best way I think we've got.
Just a follow-up to that, because obviously I know you've written about the fact that the initial lockdown was proclaimed without any legal authority whatsoever.
This came at a time when the opposition, as in Labour at the time, they wanted even tougher measures, in short.
So we were in a bit of a situation where There was, whether it was happening legally or not, there was simply no way that there was any opposition, meaningful opposition, other than the ability to protest.
And that's a point where emergency powers are kind of used in a way that, as you say, four men in a room can sign a bottom of a piece of paper to enact.
How are we moving forward?
How are we meant to kind of be hopeful or insure against these things happening again?
How can we know that this isn't just going to be enacted whenever those in power want it to?
I think there are not that many reasons to be hopeful except to say that we do have a vibrant society where people are not, unlike in Qatar, not put in prison in the most part for expressing anti-government views.
I think that during an emergency, it doesn't matter what the subject of the emergency, whether it's terrorism or war or famine or whatever, you will always have a sort of feeling that expressing contrary views to the prevailing wisdom becomes dangerous.
I think that's what changes.
It's seen as a danger to express opposition.
And people will always be attacked for that reason.
I think what we've got to do is make sure we keep open the lines of communication That we encourage freedom of speech, that we encourage people to go out and protest if they feel uneasy about something, that we don't damn them for doing that.
But also, that doesn't stop you being able to say, look, you're saying that COVID is made up, or I'm not saying you're saying that, to a hypothetical person, you're saying that this virus is quite obviously dangerous and it's right here amongst us, is made up or is grossly overstated, and that's contrary to pretty much all the scientific opinion.
It's still okay to say, look, that is wrong.
It's a contrary view in the same way it's right for that person to have the right to say the opposite.
So I think that's how we've got to encourage in a way.
We've got to encourage the tension and the frisson that happens when people's different views come up against each other and not worry too much about the idea that views can be dangerous.
And I think that's about freedom of speech.
Yeah, freedom of speech, baby!
That's what we believe in over here.
The ability to communicate, the ability to disagree, the necessity of that in a free and open democracy.
And anything that opposes that might have another aim in mind.
And if you can see another agenda, potentially a play, then it's at least worth considering it.
And when people are condemned, as they were, ubiquitously, aggressively, and throughout the media, you have to Query it, I suppose, and if you live in a culture where elsewhere, where you see government acting in ways and big business acting in ways that don't seem to be similarly motivated by the well-being of people.
I mean, what made such sense to me about this sudden sanctity of human life is everywhere when I look at the actions of government and big business, I go, there they are again, observing the sanctity of human life.
With this vile bilge that they pump out daily.
With these terrible laws.
With this hateful rhetoric.
Human life celebrated and sanctified at every turn.
So if people are cynical about that, perhaps what they're doing is occasionally turning on TV sets, looking out of windows, looking at social media.
A landscape of utter malevolence.
But we certainly need people that are able to, in a calculated, clear, and educated way, as Adam has done, discern, identify, diagnose the problem.
That's why I have no trouble in recommending this book, Emergency State, by Adam Wagner, which, I reckon, every three or four pages, the old radioactive die analogy will be... Look at this.
This is from page 68.
I suppose it was a bit like a radioactive die, the way this legislation flowed through Britain.
Imagine, if you will, a barium meal being taken just before an x-ray.
That's what I reckon.
Yep, that's a literal quote from Adam's book.
Give it a... have a little look at that.
Adam, thank you so much for joining us, mate, and we appreciate your time, and we hope that we'll talk to you again.
Thanks for having me.
Thanks, Adam.
Thanks, Adam.
It's lovely to speak to you.
Thanks.
Gareth, I really think that you... Right.
You really dragged... What did I do?
I dragged out the question again.
No, I don't mind that.
Sometimes what it is, is like you do what I do, isn't it?
You're asking the question and you're sort of trying to work out exactly what you mean while you're asking the question, isn't it?
Um, I think I just try and fit in a few questions into one question, because a little bit of me thinks, I'm only going to get this one opportunity.
Yeah.
And I also think that with Zoom calls, people are going to talk for ages.
Yeah, exactly.
So get them in now.
Get in everything that you think.
Sue Thomason has no such concerns, where she says simply, the COVID death rates were inflated.
She just says that outright.
Love it.
Yeah.
Oh, look at this.
Art by Wendy Klein.
Caught with pandemic, interrupted cancer treatment, so it's all BS to me.
Look, the people in the chat, they ain't bothered.
Some people like my future hat.
Me and young Putin, while you and your mate Adam were chatting away like you were speed dating for nerds, Me and young Putin were breaking some big news, weren't we, Putin?
Oh yeah, certainly were.
Right, let's read this out.
Let's read this out without checking even for a moment that it's not fabricated with Gareth scanning it for legitimacy.
What does it say there, Poots?
Well, it looks like the New York Times was supposed to have a live... well, was hosting a live event With FTX's CEO, Sam Bankman, which has been in the news recently.
Obviously, it's a very complex story to get your head around, so everyone do your own independent research on that.
But I guess it shows that one of the partners that's sponsoring the event is a, well, is a WEF partner.
This could show the link between both, you know, the government of the United States with Janet.
What's her name?
Janet Yanes.
Look at the attendees, you can see this.
There's the lad Sam Bankman-Fried, he's CEO of FTX.
President Zelensky, seen him on the news lately, I believe it's Ukraine he's president of.
Mark Zuckerberg, heard of that guy.
Facebook likes, he's like Tom from MySpace used to be, but a more Facebook version.
And Secretary Janet L. Yellen.
Hmm, this dinner's been cancelled, you say?
Oh, I'd love to have gone to that.
Well, it's probably because of all the bother that he's in.
Look, I'm a bit busy.
Sam Bankman's in.
I mean, Zelensky's got a lot on as well, by the way.
He has, yeah.
Did you not know there's a war on?
Yeah, I did.
I think Edward Snowden actually tweeted about this.
What did he say?
I think it was Snowden saying that whilst Sam Bankman was kind of getting puff pieces
in the New York Times, Daniel Hale was in prison for telling the truth about the drone
program and yet he's just lost people billions of pounds in crypto and he's still getting
to do pieces in the New York Times.
It is an interesting system that we've got whereby I guess it comes down to these whistleblowers
who are kind of revealing truths that the media tend to disregard ultimately.
Julian Assange was mistreated by the media.
They kind of abandoned him.
He did alright.
Edward Snowden here says, on the Twitter network, Sam Bankman-Freed admits robbing 5 million people when he's getting puff pieces in the New York Times.
Daniel Hale is suffering in a dungeon for the crime of revealing 9 out of 10 people we kill with drones are Mere bystanders.
Justice really is blind.
We spoke with, who's that woman we speak to?
Annie McHale.
What's her name, James?
Annie Mashon is the former MI5 operative that we regularly talk about whistleblowers with.
Let's get her back on to talk about some of this stuff.
She can come and see us next week.
Annie Mashon, she's a genuine spy.
Yeah.
She says that.
Can we trust someone once they've admitted they're a spy?
Well, I mean, we met her, so she wasn't spying that well.
I saw her, she was lit up like a bloody Christmas tree on our set, weren't she?
Plain as day, clear as the nose on your face, Annie Mashon.
So, hmm, okay, well that's interesting.
Why don't we go to one of those dinners ourselves?
I'll wear my fuchsia hat and see what's going on there.
I do think we've forever burned bridges of like, I've watched something the other day, and it, what was it?
It was someone like, like I'm never again going to be allowed to go to things like that.
Do you remember when I used to be on the GQ awards or whatever?
Yeah.
And I said, oh boss, they was Nazis.
Oh yeah.
I mean, the thing is you never just sat quietly, did you?
No.
No, you've created a scene.
I could have just sat there quietly and took my award from the GQ, GQ paper magazine.
They're not giving you an award.
For being an oracle.
Yeah.
That means I've got a great insight.
And the way, how did I pay them back?
By saying that their sponsors, the Hugo Boss folks, uh, like, they... Now, would you mind telling me... It's very interesting.
...why I had some audio down my... It sounded like Girls, Girls, Girls by the... I think the Beach Boys played through my cans there.
What do you think, speaking of Adam a minute ago, what did you... You heard the Tim Robbins story this week, didn't you?
Yeah, and Tim Robbins, I'm actually... Oh, look, there's me doing that thing.
We'll have a look at me doing that GQ Awards thing.
Oh, that's what this is.
I'm actually... I'm actually friends with Tim Robbins.
I've met him a couple of times.
Now, I think what's interesting about Tim Robbins is he's what you might call old-school Hollywood liberal, isn't he?
Yeah.
And he recently came out... Was it on Jimmy Dore's show?
Did he go on Jimmy's show?
No, this was Matt Taibbi he was talking to.
Friend of the show, Matt Taibbi.
We're friends with Matt Taibbi.
We know everybody.
Yeah.
And what did he say, Gail?
So he said, he was talking about theatre and he was mourning the loss of theatrical attendance in the pandemic and afterwards and he said vaccine mandates and other draconian restrictions were partly to blame.
As a quote he said, if you start specifying reasons why people can't be in a theatre, I don't think it's theatre anymore.
The actor-director compared America's return to normal to England's shift Tim Robbins has been on a real journey.
He's reflecting, he's calling himself a hypocrite, he's been to draconian, he's going through a lot.
I say, like, Tim Robbins wants to come on the show.
pandemic, he demonized those who didn't follow government narratives and said he was part
of the problem. He said he went to a BLM protest and later reflected on the hypocrisy of such
approved mass protests.
Tim Robbins has been on a real journey. He's reflecting, he's calling himself a hypocrite,
he's been to draconian, he's going through a lot. I say, like, Tim Robbins wants to come
on the show, alright, I'll text him. I'll text him.
You're going to do it live?
I'll text him right now.
That's a lot of pressure.
I know.
What time is it where Tim Robbins lives?
Is this going to be one of those texts that you take ages to write and this show goes on for ages?
Then I'll regret it.
I'll ring him.
I'll ring him.
Bloody hell.
There you go.
Can't argue with that.
Hang on.
He hasn't agreed to... He hasn't consented to be on air.
Ask him.
Ask him to be on air because this is illegal.
Blimey.
This is... I feel nervous.
Why?
Are you nervous that there's a law being broken?
I'm nervous for Tim.
We've just been talking about surveillance.
All right, why don't I voice note him?
Yes, voice note him.
Voice note him.
I don't need to voice note them.
Right, do a voice note.
All right, Tim.
Yeah, come on the show, mate.
And we're talking about you right now on the show.
This is the show.
All right, Tim.
Tim, we're on the show.
This is good.
Tim Robbins, we're on the show right now and obviously we saw Jimmy Dore, who's one of our contemporaries in the space of alternative news, talking about your recent acknowledgement that your attitude towards lockdown measures in regard to theatre had altered.
I'm sort of doing the show right now, Tim.
Come on and talk about all of that stuff with us.
When do you want to do it?
And we will broadcast your answer, as long as you provide your consent for that, when you do it.
Anything else, Gal?
No, no, we think you're great.
We love you!
My favourite, probably The Player.
Ah, the brilliant film.
What else, though?
Oh, Shawshank!
Fucking hell!
Shawshank!
Everyone's favourite film!
Do you think he wants this?
Sorry, Tim.
Sorry, I'll stop this now.
Sorry!
Bye!
Do I leave that on there?
I'm a little... I'm not sure.
Oh, you mean you could delete it now?
Can you delete that?
I'm a little comforted by the way you speak to everyone in exactly the same way.
As you?
Yeah.
Alright, mate, come on the show!
How you doing, alright?
Oh, I like that film!
Nice one!
Well, you can't give someone a compliment.
You're leaving them a message.
Mention Shawshank.
It was too casual for me, that.
There's not enough reverence.
Let's leave the other one.
Really?
Am I on a run?
No, you're on a bad run.
I'm on a bad run.
This is a bad run.
Because in case there's consequences.
Consequences!
Consequences!
Alright, hold on, why don't we... We're not doing nothing for locals, this is the end of the show.
I think this is the end of the show, yeah.
Well, I hope you've enjoyed it.
I think we tied things together really well, because we talked about Qatar.
Yes.
Not Qatar like that, the back of your throat snot.
Not like Karl Schwab's Qatar.
I've gone for the Qatar!
Oh, this World Cup.
It's so strict.
He'd have some opinions.
Yeah, it's too much phlegm, isn't it?
Should have a unipolar winner of the World Cup.
Don't have a final.
Argentina can play themselves.
Yeah, I like it for Klaus Schwab.
One of them dentist things.
When you're a dentist, that corner of your mouth thing.
All of the time.
What I do, I'm gonna go to one of those dinners at the New York Times.
I'm gonna go, sit me next to Klaus Schwab, will ya?
And they go, of course, Mr. Brand.
We've really enjoyed your show.
Oh, dear.
That's gonna happen, isn't it?
Yeah, that's what they basically say.
Can you dress up a bit, or what?
I'll be wearing this.
Klaus will be there, trying to sort of eat soup.
And basically, when he eats soup, it's like when you put a tea bag in a washing-up bowl.
The soup just disperses in all the cheeks loose, like a hamster with its cheeks full of spit.
Yeah.
And I go, Klaus, you enjoying that soup, mate?
Oh, you Nepala soup, oh, get these croutons out, we have no croutons, and we'll be happy.
And then I take my dentist thing, and I go, Klaus, who's that over there? Is that Trudeau?
Yeah.
Oh!
Look at his new haircut!
Oh, he looks loud!
Oh, do you think he's lost too much weight?
Then, vroom, in that tent is Sluice Dick.
Oh, what's happening?
Oh, what's happening?
What about my free will?
Yeah, what about free will, Klaus?
You didn't like me making a centralised decision to suck all the spit out of your mouth, did you, dog?
I'm sucking it all out.
His mouth's all, I think, too dry!
It's too dry!
He's fighting it, but he knows it's good for him.
Actually, this is all better now!
Oh, now I can stroke my cat with freedom!
Oh!
So, that's what I'm gonna do.
That's basically the plan.
The main problem, I think, is the invite.
They're not gonna let me in, are they?
Not after they see what went on at the GQ Awards, me saying, um, you know, that Hugo Boss was a Nazi, which I'm afraid to say he was.
Alright, well, there we go.
That was the show.
We tied together a lot of themes.
Let me... where's my wrap-up things?
Come and see us in Grey's!
I'm doing this thing at the Thameside Theatre.
There's a link in the description.
There's a whole day of live events.
You'll get to be near me should you...
value session experience is available to you. Go to russellbrand.com to get your tickets or there's a link in the description.
And we're gonna have, we've got loads of stuff coming up.
Anyway, I love you. Bye.
Is that enough? I don't know, what's my catchphrase I like?
Join us on Monday, where we, like, here's the news where we're talking about Big Pharma, how a single tweet wiped billions
off of something's value, you know, that Eli Lilly.
Eli Lilly. I always feel like I'm about to sing a sort of a Dexys Midnight Runner song, you know, Eli Lilly.
Like, it's always like, oh, you're ramping up for it.
And join us on Monday for my new catchphrase.
You wanna hear it?
Go on.
Join us on Monday.
Not for more of the same, but for more of the different.
Stay free.
It's good, innit?
I made that up.
Well, no one's impressed.
Are you impressed?
Tell Tim Robbins about it.
He'll like it.
Tim, I've got a new catchphrase!
See ya.
Man, you're switching.
Switch on, switch off.
Man, you're switching.
Switch on, switch off.
Man, he's switching.
Switching.
Switching.
Man, he's switching.
Switching.
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