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Dec. 13, 2022 - Stay Free - Russel Brand
01:06:00
This Is Why The Democrats Being Sh*t Matters! - #045 - Stay Free with Russell Brand
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Time Text
I'm going to go ahead and get the camera.
In this video, you're going to see the future.
Hello there, you Awakening Wonders.
We are actually in that building.
You could be watching us on... Yeah, I know what the microphone does.
You might be watching us on YouTube right now, or you could be watching us on Rumble.
If you're watching us on Rumble, which is very much a self-styled home of free speech.
That's where you get our free speech, and you get Glenn Greenwald's free speech.
You get all the free speech money can buy.
It's here on Rumble.
We're here to talk about Democrat donors.
The second biggest donor to the Democratic Party, Sam Bankman-Friedman.
No, Sam Bankman-Fried, yeah.
Why does it say Sam Bankman-Fried in my... I don't know.
Someone's trying to mess with you.
Someone's trying to mess with me.
There's enough challenges, isn't there, and enough corruption in the world without it infiltrating the very systems here that we are dependent upon.
We'll be talking about Sam Bankman-Friedman in a minute.
Sam Bankman-Fried.
Because the reason I'm going to talk about him, I suppose, is probably... Is it to get his name right?
My aim, ultimately, is to... One of these... The dream is to get his name right.
He'll still be in prison and I'll still be mispronouncing his name.
If he goes.
That's my biggest fear.
Why would he go?
I suppose that the reason we're interested in him and this story in particular is because every so often it feels like we're bashing the Democrat Party for the sake of it.
But actually, what we're saying is, how can there...
Posturing and moral grandstanding be of any value when there's so much evident corruption in their funding.
This guy, Sam Bankman Freedman.
Sam Bank Freedman.
Just Freed.
Sam Banks.
Ironically.
Freed.
Just Freed.
Yet to be incarcerated.
He's, like, been on stage at the WF with Clinton and Blair and he's sort of their boy, isn't he?
And so I suppose there's many people sort of reveling in... Hailed as the first trillionaire, well... Trillion!
First future trillionaire in the new Warren Buffett, apparently.
How can you have a strong moral centre if you're hailing a trillionaire?
In Here's the News we're talking about Biden's broken promises, in particular the promises he broke to railroad workers and to all of us with his ongoing relationships with Saudi Arabia.
But one of those railroads is owned by Warren Buffett, another posturing apparent socialist.
This is why it astonishes me when people talk about the left because the left is a Supposed to be about the empowerment of ordinary people, and of course that became corrupted, as you know, in Maoism and Stalinism, and the left has become... Oh God, what is it now?
What is it?
Later, we're going to be talking to Silky Carlo from Big Brother Watch UK.
She's a surveillance expert, and she's going to be talking about the importation of Chinese-style surveillance into Western nations.
literal pieces of tech along with the ideologies that you are by now surely familiar with,
we suppose became aware during lockdown when we were incarcerated in the manner that Chinese
people previously had been and we thought, no, that won't happen, that won't happen to
us, won't happen to you. Remember to hit rumble because it helps us in ways that I can never
never explain to you. We see it as a G-spot, it's a cyber G-spot.
Now, wherever you are in the world now, well, actually only if you're in certain
parts of America or in the UK, the main news, the main story is a simple one.
It's snow.
Snow is happening.
And snow is always a cause for hysteria.
Remember, we're going to talk about a lot of stories over the course of the show.
We're going to be talking about global issues at depth and sharing with you information and data that we simply couldn't share while still on YouTube.
So if you're watching us on YouTube now, Flip over to the other side.
This is what you're being invited to care about.
And in a minute, we'll tell you perhaps what you should be caring about.
Let's have a look at snow.
But first, a monster winter storm system is dumping snow from coast to coast and bringing dangerous weather along with it.
California's Sierra Nevada.
Yeah, because they do try and like personify the weather.
Like it's this monster snow going around dumping snow from place to place.
Yeah, the language.
Dump, monster, dangerous.
I think that sounds like IPS rather than a weather condition.
Right, so look at the amount of attention they give into it.
Alright, so it's terrifying.
But also what's terrifying is the story that a NATO Secretary General, let's have a look at that, that a NATO Secretary General...
has said that a full-blown war between Russia and NATO is a real possibility,
a rare acknowledgement of the dangers of backing Ukraine. I feel that the war in Ukraine will get
out of control and spread into a major war between NATO and Russia. He said if things go wrong they
can go horribly wrong. This is as the Pentagon gives the go-ahead for Ukraine to begin launching
long-range attacks on targets inside Russia. We're going to be in a minute we're going to show you
something that's extraordinary.
It's a piece of legacy media news from 2014, where the British newspaper The Guardian were writing about NATO infringement upon former Soviet territory and how irresponsible it was.
Because this is written in 2014, it's written with such nuance and transparency.
It's such a balanced piece of journalism.
But when you see it compared to the kind of The hyperbole and jingoism that constitutes mainstream media news these days, you will be astonished at how quickly the world's changing.
We've commented many times that a figure like Glenn Greenwald, our chum over here on Rumble, went from being a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist to sort of a de facto fascist, at least in mainstream media spaces.
Or Matt Taibbi, another friend of the show, condemned as a sort of, I don't know, like a conspiracy theorist or a fringe wacko.
Chris Hedges.
Chris Hedges as well.
Similarly, all sort of like credible journalists have become condemned as the center shifts.
It's the center that's changing.
Now, as to indicate the way that these stories are prioritized in the mainstream media, we're using the great thermometer that is Google.
Look at this.
There are 118 million Google News searches.
That means 118 million stories on snow.
And only 334,000 stories on NATO and a potential NATO war with Russia, right?
But that means, look, there are more stories about old clock parts.
Ten times as many stories about old clock parts than a full-blown war between NATO and Russia.
I don't even know you can write about an old clock part.
No.
Do you think it's a story or a search?
Because I can't imagine, how many stories can you read?
Old clock parts found in a boy's attic, and it's like a robot from the 50s, but is it conscious or just intelligent AI?
There's one.
Do another.
I've got literally three million of these.
And also, look, there are 54,000 stories on whether squirrels are becoming more intelligent,
which I now realize is a storyline from Rick and Morty, the excellent adult swim cartoon
that's somehow penetrated my consciousness to the degree where it just unconsciously
becomes a reference in me head.
Now, the way that the mainstream continually legitimizes itself
is through the repetition of particular templates.
This may, on the surface of it, seem like a superficial and senseless story.
A member of BTS, that's that Korean pop band.
Yeah.
Jin has become a... He's entered into the military.
He's got a duty in, you know, a South Korean boot camp.
There he is, the lad.
And he shaved his head.
I don't know, like, what Jin is like normally, because I've not memorized K-pop.
You're not?
No, I don't memorise anyone from K-pop or BTS, but of course this is a repetition of a story that's, God, I'm terrified to say, like 70 years old.
It's when Elvis Presley went into the army.
Here's the image of dear Elvis going through the exact same process there.
There's Elvis being shaved, and of course when Elvis was shaved and went into the army, It was a kind of a castration.
Now, I don't know what BTS represent to their millions of fans, but I imagine it's some sort of sanitized rebellion.
And back in the 1950s, rock and roll seemed like a genuinely revolutionary force.
And I suppose that led John Lennon to famously say on learning of the death of Elvis Presley, you know, when he was told Elvis is dead, he went, hey, Elvis died when he went into the army.
But that was seen as the castration of a cultural pop, a pop cultural movement.
Hey, listen you lot.
Interesting metaphor for now though, isn't it?
Especially with, I guess, Ukraine and stuff going on at the moment.
The military, industrial complex, or the military in general, still in control when it comes down to it, isn't it?
You can have all your culture and your music and your K-pop, but when it comes down to it, it's about the military.
And we've just seen that there are, is it, what we've seen at the moment mate, that there's further funding, further
Pentagon funding being...
Yeah, it's a record $858 billion military budget given to the Pentagon, half of which goes to private companies, we
now know, over half of which goes to them.
We're going to be talking about that at length and in depth.
If you're watching us on YouTube, you should always let me do a proper sign off on YouTube.
I'd really like the opportunity to sort of go like to always do it properly so that I can go.
So if you are watching this on YouTube, we're going to leave you right now, but do switch over to Rumble right now, please, because we're going to cut the stream because it's about to get extremely salacious over here.
So I will always do that.
So please take my lead on that if you don't mind.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Are we off?
Yeah, well, they came up on there off YouTube.
Do you want to know more about that?
Not now.
OK.
I will want to.
I've got other stuff.
Yeah.
Listen, my research has yielded quite a lot of, I would say, fruitful results.
Elsewhere in the mainstream, Elsewhere in the mainstream, there are numerous awards being doled out to figures for a variety of reasons, some of which seem to be at odds with reality.
Old Fetterman there is being awarded for being stylish, but like, you know, whatever qualities he has, I'm not sure that style is one of them.
He has this sort of air of an inmate there.
They said he's bringing Carhartt to the capital, apparently.
If that's what's required.
Is that good?
Zelensky is Person of the Year, have a look at that.
And Kanye is Anti-Semite of the Year, which I suppose, in a way, I don't think you should encourage people, but if anti-semitism is a bad thing, and I believe it is, I'd say abolish the entire ceremony.
I can't imagine there's an actual trophy, can you?
I don't reckon this is a place to comedically riff because I'll start thinking about what the Soap Trophy is.
Good point.
It's going to get into some tricky territory.
While we're focusing on the pillars of the establishment and the way that they are decorated, here are some stories that we're not being told.
The first one is about ID cards.
Let's have a look at that, Gal.
Yeah, okay, so this is a story about the EU digital ID contractor who basically was all over the UK COVID pass in the first place.
So at a time when the COVID pass was introduced, it was obviously a tracing app and we were told that, you know, this is just for COVID, don't worry, we're not going to do anything with it, we're not going to keep your data or anything like that.
But Judith Levine wrote in The Intercept in January, every government introducing a vaccine certification vowed that no personal information will be held beyond its necessity.
But in 2020, British tech firm Onfido called its immunity passport in development the linchpin of a new normality in a post-COVID-19 society.
It's the same company?
No, that was on Fido, who are another British tech firm, but the same company, which is Net Company Infrasoft, were behind the UK's official Covid pass, are behind the EU digital ID.
So it's literally, there is a literal link between the two.
So that pledge and those promises that that information would not be used in any other way as being broken, We don't know if the information has gone anywhere else yet.
It's just the same company.
It's just the same companies being used.
I guess what we were told at the time is that this is a unique thing, like a lot of things that went on during COVID.
This is uniquely being undertaken or these laws are uniquely being passed because we're dealing with something that's a one in a lifetime.
Let me see how you lot feel in the chat.
I remember it being like this.
This COVID situation has come right out of left field.
We don't know what's caused it.
Well, strong suspicions to do with this wet market, not that nearby laboratory.
So to deal with this very unique and particular situation, we are going to introduce unique and particular measures that will not be repeated down the line.
Now, are you hearing now more and more stories that there will be climate lockdowns in the future or curfews introduced?
I wish we'd been a little more recalcitrant.
I wish we'd been a little more rebellious, because I think in our compliance, which was sold to us as, like, this is your war.
Do you remember that kind of narrative?
The Great, there was the First World War, that was a good one.
Second World War, another good war against bloody Nazis, bad Nazis that time, not some of the Nazis that are corralled into the Ukrainian fighting forces.
Now, this is your war.
Your war is sit down and shut up.
Our war is total compliance and surrender.
Now, what we're seeing is that it was an attempt to normalise conditions that would have previously been regarded as extreme.
If you think about it, we already live in extreme conditions.
The way that we work, the way that we live, the way that we pay taxes.
The way that we are extracted from nature, both inner and outer, is extraordinary.
In fact, obviously, if you analyze it a little longer, there's no such bloody thing as normal.
There are just sort of regularly occurring phenomena that we normalize.
And it seems now that many of the conditions and measures undertaken during the pandemic period facilitate ongoing regulation going forward.
And certainly they're advantageous to some pretty bloody powerful interests.
Silky Carlo we were chatting just before we came on out and she was saying the same thing that the pandemic was kind of used in a way to get across a lot of these laws a lot of these new things were kind of brought in under the guise of we're protecting you and yet these things are now stuff that we're having to battle against.
You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe in that because say if you approach these things in a somewhat naive or at least open-hearted way and say well they were trying their best but Nevertheless, these measures are advantageous to states who benefit from the ability to pass laws and regulate, prohibit protest, increase surveillance.
All of these things happened, not just in the United States or the UK, but in numerous countries.
I think at least 93 when we looked at Luke Kemp's research.
We can pull that up, I'm sure.
And obviously, some of the most powerful interests in the world significantly benefited, whether that's big pharma or big tech.
Now, that doesn't mean There's a conspiracy theory it just means a convergence of interests and perhaps we'll just what I suppose we're doing as we evolve our argument and evolve our position is look at what is plausible and what is provable because then when we find ourselves or it's you lot arguing with relatives over the forthcoming holiday period
Or one day a revolutionary force rising up globally to create new confederacies and we present our argument for why the establishment is corrupt and needs to be replaced by new systems of self-governance and self-controlled autonomous communities.
We'll say, look, we can demonstrate your corruption.
We don't need to get into the lizard people or the craziness or the madness.
It's irrelevant.
That stuff's...
It's fun sometimes, but it's not helping.
Good costumes.
I love the owl.
I'd love to think that there are people worshipping an owl and burning stuff, even making human sacrifices.
It would make it easier to oppose them.
But the fact is, at the moment, all we can demonstrate is financial corruption and a convergence of interests, ineptitude in government and a revolving door between Washington and Wall Street, big tech.
That stuff is pretty demonstrable and observable.
And on that note, there's a story here, Gareth, that we wanted to touch on about the arms industry owning Congress.
You just told us that there's a new bill for $858 billion of new military expenditure.
Is that right?
And we estimate that half of that will end up in the hands of Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.
That's right.
Yeah, so basically the kind of politicians that voted for this budget, that voted for this record spending of 858 billion, as we say, half of which is going to military-industrial complex, the politicians that voted for it got seven times more money from those military contractors than their opponents.
So it's a literal demonstration of These military contractors give money through donations, campaign donations, to politicians.
And then they vote in favour of it.
It's quite a good system.
It is.
If we were part of it, maybe we would stop complaining about it.
This is how I like to visualise it.
Imagine you could pop a penny piece in the anus of the system and it would spew dollar bills out of its mouth.
Why's it got to be the anus?
I couldn't think of another hole.
I didn't want to make it necessarily female.
It seemed misogynistic for it to be an anus.
And an ear's too close to the mouth.
Too close.
That could actually happen.
Like then people where you see someone with a prophylactic go, Like he goes up the snout hole and out the mouth hole.
Doesn't work as well, does it?
It's certainly not going to prevent pregnancy or STDs.
I think, in the wrong context, that's the calling card of the madman.
Absolutely right.
To have a condom.
Never do that.
Don't floss your consciousness, is what I would say.
No.
So look, just to kind of return to this, so just so you know how good of a deal this is, the 430 members who cast votes on the bill received $14.5 million from the military-industrial complex.
Out of that, the military-industrial complex are making $450 billion.
It's a hell of an investment.
It's good money well spent.
Exactly.
While we advance our argument that the mainstream media has become corrupted,
I want to bring you this article from 2014 by Seamus Milne in The Guardian,
which is a British newspaper, which is an establishment liberal newspaper,
which these days is reporting on the Ukrainian conflict, is full on flag in the bio type reporting,
like where if you question the circumstances that led to this conflict,
people will say stuff like, don't you care about Ukrainian people suffering, what are
you supporting Putin and saying that he didn't shit himself falling down them
stairs, what are you, the new Hitler, right?
Right? Well just in 2014 this article which was published in the Guardian presents such a nuanced case for the way
Well, just in 2014, this article, which was published in The Guardian,
presents such a nuanced case for the way that NATO's actions have exacerbated
that NATO's actions have exacerbated and indeed led to this conflict that it's difficult to imagine that it's still in
and indeed led to this conflict, that it's difficult to imagine
fact on the Guardian's website.
But you can have a look at it there. This is the kind of talk that would make you a conscientious objector, a naysayer,
a traitor.
Listen to this. It says like, the threat of war, so this is Seamus Neal in 2014, the threat of war in Ukraine is
growing as the unelected government in Kiev declares itself unable to control the rebellion in the country's east.
John Kerry brands Russia a rogue state.
The US and the European Union step up sanctions against the Kremlin accusing it of destabilising Ukraine.
The White House is reported to be set on a new Cold War policy with the aim of turning Russia into a pariah state.
It's amazing to think that eight years ago they were saying that when you look at where we are now.
That's precisely What has happened?
But if you say that, what is the result of American diplomacy and American foreign policy in exacerbating these conditions?
People think that you're a lunatic and an apologist.
Yeah, I think that's why we were talking about Letterman yesterday and the trailer that dropped for his show with Zelensky.
It wasn't to kind of say, You know, there's anything necessarily wrong with either Letterman or Zelensky but what it is to say symbolically what that represents is both Ukraine and the US there's nothing to see here.
It's just two heroes fighting an evil dictator.
Zelensky It might well be a heroic person, an individual, and the struggle of the Ukrainian people could be described as heroic.
They are suffering.
They're up against a much greater and more powerful foe.
We're not querying any of that.
It's the media reporting and the lack of reporting on the complexity, which just eight years ago was plainly spoken about.
Check out this bit from the same article.
You don't hear much about the Ukrainian government's veneration of wartime Nazi collaborators and pogromists, or the arson attacks on the homes and offices of elected communist leaders, or the integration of the extreme right sector into the National Guard, while the anti-Semitism and white supremacism of the government's ultra-nationalists is assiduously played down, and the false identification of Russian special forces are relayed as fact.
In a way, if you were able to have that conversation now, it would be a much broader and nuanced debate around the causes and conditions of this war, particularly when you bear in mind what we were just discussing about the enormity of these Pentagon budgets and how much of those budgets end up in the hands of the military-industrial complex.
Yeah, and then you get someone like Max Blumenthal from the Grey Zone.
And, I mean, he literally is called, you know, right wing now because he's releasing stories where they're talking about, you know, the Azov Battalion.
And there was one in a fair the other day about a New York Times piece about the Bratswove Battalion who gave them access to one of their operations.
And, you know, this is again another kind of operation with ties to neo-Nazis.
It was reported back in 2014 in The Guardian and now anyone talking about this as an issue is branded far-right.
This is where these two themes that we're discussing today, the corruption of the Democratic Party via its funding by figures like, what's his name?
Batman Freedman.
Sam Bankman Freed.
Sam Bankman Freed.
Or what's the other dude?
Buffett.
Warren Buffett.
Being funded by those kind of figures necessarily results in a kind of corruption.
The Democratic Party's posturing and cultural ephemera is disingenuous.
From my particular perspective, it's not that I'm against identity politics, or that I don't think racial equality is important, or that the struggle of various civil rights movements oughtn't be celebrated and rewarded with success and equality.
It's that using these arguments to mask massive financial corruption is unconscionable.
Similarly, when reporting on this war, I don't want to find myself as a person that's not supportive of the struggle of Ukrainians and neglects the potential heroism of a leader like Zelensky.
It's the irresponsibility of the media that won't tell you how we got into this situation and the huge benefit of this war to a huge number of very powerful interests.
I feel like a political vagrant.
I feel like no one is offering me a home.
I don't belong on the Republican right.
I agree with certain aspects of libertarianism, i.e.
individual freedom, but can't you see how that individual freedom would have to be mapped onto identity politics as well?
Isn't it the same argument?
If you want to be left alone to be who you are, can't you make that argument from both places?
And I don't think that republicanism or the politics of the right will deliver a better America or a better Britain or a better world for any of us.
And what's required is a new form of populism, a new politics that ties together these ideas and simultaneously transcends them.
And we can't get there without a nuanced conversation.
We can't get there by doubling down on tribalism and de facto condemnation of who we regard as our opponents.
Was that a good speech?
Really good.
That's one of my speeches.
I've done that now.
That speech has been done.
Before we go into our hero presentation, here's the news now.
No, here's the effing news, where we'll be talking about Biden's broken promises.
Again, from the perspective of necessarily critiquing a corrupt party.
Have a look at what Biden's been up to.
I feel like he's been led off stage by a little kid of some description.
to have a look at that.
It's just everything he does look like, why does he turn around that way?
Why does he do the full rotation like that?
It's like at the end of speeches, he just lets his mind go fully blank.
They should, right, I don't see myself as a PR whiz kid or a spin doctor, but this is a bit, I do actually a bit, but day one of working with Biden, right, if I was the person whose job that was, where I used to be the lass, the ginger lass, and now it's the black lass, If it was me now, I'd go, when his speeches end, turn the fucking cameras off straight away.
Don't film what happens in the ten seconds.
Because even if he gets through the speech without saying some mad thing about numbers or dozing off, you know where he's really in trouble is the last bit.
That's his weak spot.
They should just always have some curtains in front of him that close.
Sweep them shut!
With a musical crook.
That's right.
Yank him off to the side.
That's right.
Then it don't look like he's got no choice.
Always send the little lass there.
At least he's managed not to sniffer on the head.
Which used to be his problem, didn't it?
He used to see a child like that, sniff the hell out of its head.
I never see a child who didn't like their head sniff of...
Actually, you should display your degree of impatience there, isn't she?
It's like she's been for... Look, come, we're leaving now.
Don't dodder and falter and teeter.
We're going this way, Grandpa.
She's the most effective member of the Democrat Party at the moment.
I like her.
She's a breath of fresh air, this kid.
Put her in charge, I must say.
Although he's gripping her at the wrist, is what I would say.
Go for a lower clasp.
Yeah, she's marched in promptly off That's good.
She saved the day, that kid there, I would say.
All right.
Well, we'll be talking to Silky Carlo in a moment about surveillance and the attempts to impose Chinese style totalitarianism on British folk like you and potentially me.
I believe I'm British.
And to impose these measures elsewhere in a moment, so stay with us for that.
But first, in our item, here's the news.
No, here's the effing news.
We're going to be talking about Biden there, reneging on his promises, even his promises to himself, to this time walk off the stage properly.
We're going to be talking about his relationship with Saudi Arabia and how he's betrayed the working people of America.
Here's the news.
No, here's the effing news.
news. Have a look.
Thank God he's turning America around, reintroducing morals, values, protecting workers, and making sure Saudi Arabia are a pariah, quite rightly, because of the murder of that journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
That's why he's made members of the Saudi royal family an absolute pariah by pushing for them to get immunity from prosecution.
Hold on, mate.
That doesn't make sense.
They're all fucking liars!
Joe Biden, who liberals celebrated the ascendancy of because of pledges to, for example, protect railroad workers, because of pledges to, for example, not start a nuclear war, because of pledges to turn Saudi Arabia into a pariah, is reneging on those promises.
It wouldn't be anything to do with oil deals and weapons deals, would it?
No, that would be so cynical.
I mean, that would mean that Joe Biden is just another corporatized president running a corporatized country who doesn't care about ordinary people.
And that can't be real, can it?
Because that would mean that everything you read in the mainstream media, everything you see on mainstream TV was absolute lies.
And that can't be the case, can it?
But let's just remind ourselves of the pledge he made back in the giddy, happy old, silly old heydays of campaigning for presidency.
Remember, it was all good stuff in the news then.
No one talked about laptops then, because that was a conspiracy theory back then.
And this was conspiracy fact.
The CIA has concluded that the leader of Saudi Arabia directed the murder of US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
President Trump has not punished senior Saudi leaders.
Would you?
Yes.
And I said it at the time.
Khashoggi was in fact murdered and dismembered and I believe in the order of the Crown Prince and I would make it very clear we were not going to in fact sell more weapons to them.
We were going to in fact make them pay the price and make them in fact the pariah that they are.
Yeah!
Make my pariah!
I don't need any more oil deals or any weapons.
Let's see what's in the news now.
What?!
A US judge has dismissed the lawsuit against Saudi Arabia's Mohammed bin Salman that claimed he conspired to kill journalist Jamal Khashoggi, saying the crown prince was entitled to sovereign immunity despite credible allegations that he was involved in the murder.
Oh, that's really weird because that sounds like the opposite of a pariah, doesn't it?
Seems like you say you're gonna make someone a pariah when you need to be elected, you say that a laptop's a conspiracy theory when you need to be elected, then once you're elected, oh yeah, that laptop was real.
Hey you, we're gonna be needing some oil.
Need some weapons.
Judge John Bates, a U.S.
District Court judge with a long history of presiding over cases involving national security, acknowledged uneasiness in making the decision.
Listen, I'm just gonna make this decision that's hypocritical and against electoral pledges.
Imagine being that judge.
Hear ye!
Order!
Order now to get to the bottom of this case!
Was he culpable or was he not?
I've got a wig on!
I've got robes!
Um, he's been granted immunity by the Biden administration.
Well, everyone might as well just go home then.
But I've still got my wig!
Judge John Bates, a U.S.
District Court judge with a long history of presiding over cases involving national security, acknowledged uneasiness in making the decision, but said that his hands were in effect tied by the Biden administration's recent recommendation that Prince Mohammed be given immunity.
So they simply bypassed the legal system that's supposed to administer justice.
Easily done.
And necessary if you need to do oil and arms deals.
The crown prince has been sued in the U.S.
by the fiancée of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
He was murdered in Saudi's Istanbul consulate in 2018, and U.S.
intelligence believes MBS ordered the killing.
Meantime, for months... Hey!
Good ordering of a killing!
Allegedly.
Sir, you're fist-bumping with someone who we said we were going to make a pariah.
The Biden administration has been pushing Saudi Arabia to increase oil production amid high gas prices.
The dismissal of the civil claim against Prince Mohammed and two of his close associates means the Saudi heir can now travel to the U.S.
and other jurisdictions freely.
Although the case was not brought by U.S.
prosecutors with the power to arrest him, if it had been allowed to proceed, the case would have created a legal minefield for the Crown Prince, and if he had been found guilty, he could have put his financial interests in the U.S.
in jeopardy.
Aha!
Now we understand how power operates.
Prior to an election, pariah.
Because that's the right thing to say.
After an election, do what you like, mate, actually, because we've got financial interests that align quite nicely with our own interests.
Saudi dissidents and critics of Prince Mohammed have previously expressed grave concerns about any possibility of the Crown Prince being granted immunity, saying any such decision would seal the aura of impunity around the 37-year-old prince and could be seen as offering him a licence to target other journalists and dissidents around the world.
Well, a little bit, because if you allegedly have one journalist killed for reporting negatively against you, and then you're granted immunity, it does seem that maybe, down the line, if any other journalist did anything, you might kill them!
Oh!
You think just because I've been granted immunity, for what the murder of Jamal al-Khashoggi that we would murder other dissenters allegedly that murder of Jamal al-Khashoggi was part of a surprise for your birthday to ensure that it ran smoothly oh you're just like your father
But we've also granted immunity.
Two sources close to members of the Saudi Royal Family Administration confirmed to The Intercept that Saudi had asked the Biden administration grant MBS immunity.
At the same time, the US wanted the kingdom to turn up oil production.
The request for sovereign immunity was a ploy, Dawn, a non-profit funded by Jamal Khashoggi, wrote, laying out a simple argument.
Head of state immunity is typically reserved for a country's leader, Which, in the case of Saudi Arabia, is its king, MBS's father.
King Salman, senior to Crown Prince Mohammed, is head of state.
There can't be two heads of state.
They're only under an obligation to grant immunity to the head of state.
This dude ain't even the head of state.
They've really had to push the boat out and stretch the boundaries of what's typical in international diplomacy to grant this immunity.
Oh, there's nothing we could do.
Our heads were tied.
He's the head of state.
Rules is rules.
He's not the head of state.
You could have him prosecuted if you wanted to, and he would be subject to the judicial procedures that would provide justice normally.
Oh, I'm getting very tired.
Hunter!
We beat Big Pharma this year!
We didn't beat Big Pharma either.
I'm going back to sleep.
In August, the Biden administration approved a potential multi-billion dollar arms sale to Saudi Arabia worth an estimated three billion dollars.
So these oil deals and arms deals are a simple side note, an irrelevant distraction to their procession of justice and immunity and just good old-fashioned international diplomacy.
Other pledges that Biden has shamelessly broken include domestic pledges to ordinary workers, who he claimed he would support in their quest to have a mere seven sick days per year.
It's a national disgrace that millions of our fellow citizens don't have a single day of paid sick leave available to them.
What I'm always surprised by is that they know what is right because they say what is right in order to get you on board.
You should have sick pay.
You should make Saudi Arabia a pariah for the murder of that journalist.
You should support people's right to express themselves however they want to.
We should have a fairer society.
We should take care... Let's just say whatever's necessary to get whatever they want.
What do you want to hear right now?
I don't know, that I look nice and that you love me.
You do look nice and I do love you.
What's that filling on my bottom?
An arms deal?
I've supported paid sick leave for a long time.
I'm going to continue that fight till we succeed.
In getting into government?
Then I will drop that fight.
Last week Joe Biden urged Congress to pass a law to block the first national rail strike in 30 years and impose a deal that includes just one paid sick day.
The move is the latest and possibly starkest example of the chasm between Biden's pro-worker
rhetoric during his campaign and presidency and the numerous pro-corporate actions he
has taken in the White House.
As part of his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden pledged that he would ensure all workers
have at least seven paid sick days.
The more you look at this presidency, the more it is revealed that there is nothing
unique and special about it.
All of the excitement, all of the fanfare.
What does it involve?
Potential manipulation of the election through repressing stories that would be unfavourable to their campaign.
Pledges that have not been fulfilled.
Grandstanding as a friend of ordinary Americans and workers and controlling pharma prices.
No delivery on any of these things.
What kind of government are you electing if whenever they can't deliver on the promises they make they go, oh my hands are tired, there's nothing I can do.
Then the whole system is pointless then isn't it?
Ultimately what we're delivering you is a message.
There is a requirement for radical systemic change.
Neither of the parties that you could possibly vote for will deliver that change.
You need to participate in a different style of politics or you're just going to get this for the rest of your potentially quite short lives.
The US Senate voted to deny 125,000 rail workers a handful of paid sick days that would have cost the equivalent of just four days of recent profits made by Senators Railroad Industry donors.
What a coincidence.
The cost of paid sick days for this year, roughly $321 million, would be less than half the amount that a single railroad tycoon, Warren Buffett, funneled to his family foundations last week.
Yeah, but Warren Buffett, he's a good guy, he's a socialist guy, he's a liberal guy, he's helping out.
Those foundations, there's definitely no tax benefits to that.
It's more efficient than just helping them for giving them sick days.
Oh, I feel so ill.
Well, get to fucking work, safe in the knowledge that the Buffett Foundation has just received your money.
Oh, that's good news!
Night night!
While opposing a plan that would have required them to spend $320 million to give workers
seven paid sick days, the main railroad companies raked in more than $7 billion in profits and
paid out over $1.8 billion in dividends in a year where they and their lobbying groups
spent more than $13 million lobbying Congress.
Much of the corporate media's coverage of the looming rail strike has focused on how
the work stoppage would make a slowing economy worse and cause havoc over the holidays.
So we can see that the mainstream media is always looking out for the rights of ordinary Americans, not just propping up corporate interests, drawing a veil over the disingenuity and downright dishonesty of reneged-upon government pledges.
The mainstream media Your friend.
A real strike is one of the most disruptive and expensive things that can happen to an economy.
A real shutdown or strike would disrupt supply chains.
Can't do strikes.
It's not good to strike.
Why are they not telling the other side of the story?
People that are working hard, without support, asking for just a handful of sick days per year.
What side are you on?
Let me know in the comments.
Let me know in the chat.
A strike means food prices could skyrocket.
I mean, this is playing right into Putin's hands.
He's going to love this.
Putin will.
Many experts are saying it would be an economic catastrophe.
That could mean a big shortage and massive price hikes.
Even gas prices could increase.
Your dick is gonna turn mauve.
And it also could cost the economy a billion dollars within the first week.
That would cripple the economy.
One boy's tit fell off.
Are you and your members willing to stop the rails, in effect, and accept those costs to the US economy?
Now I know in your country you've got a complex history with socially responsible politics, but how else are workers going to have any influence in their own lives with a government and a media that, ironically, is railroading them right out of history?
Do you believe a strike is worth it if it cripples the US economy and costs up to $2 billion a day?
More than $2 billion per day.
Is it worth it?
See how the media does the job of the state and corporate interest.
There's no mention of 1.8 billion in dividends.
Why are they not reporting on that?
Why not say, well, I suppose, you know, some of the profits, for example, from these companies could go to those workers.
And on top of all of that, the holidays are right around the corner.
Also, you bastards, you're ruining Christmas.
You're fucking striking Grinches.
It's a little less than a month right before Christmas here.
Especially right before the holidays.
Why don't you just take baby Jesus and kick him in his dick?
President Biden warning if that happened it would devastate the economy if we had a strike like that.
It would devastate it.
It's almost as bad as Putin.
Look at how they frame information for you.
Not one mention of there are huge dividends, incredible profits are being made, those profits should find their way into the hands of the people that are working and toiling in order for the services to operate.
We've been conditioned and trained to such a degree that even the words start to be offensive to you.
You start to see reality in the way that they want you to see reality.
Yeah!
It's coming up to Christmas, man!
The strike's gonna hurt the goddamn economy!
Well, if we don't support one another, we're going to be annihilated.
And that's gonna hurt, not the economy, but your life.
So joining me now to talk about this and a lot more is Bank of America.
We need an objective perspective on this.
Okay, now how are we gonna get an unbiased view on profiteering railroad companies that have made billions and given out billions in dividends?
Also, we've gotta as well bear in mind the rights of these workers who currently only have one sick day a year.
Should we get the head of a bank in?
Yeah!
The head of a bank!
What about someone from the military-industrial complex?
Yeah, get one of those in as well, why not?
It's Brian Moynihan, chairman and CEO of one of the biggest banks in the world.
What's the biggest bank in the world?
He's not going to be sympathetic.
He doesn't know what it's like to work on a railroad, feel too unwell to go in a couple of times a year.
Well, when I'm at the bank, I'm just trying to drag myself in.
Come fair weather or shine, I'm there, fat-catting away every single day.
And maybe if you want a sick day, perhaps you should run one of the world's biggest banks.
With Democrats in full control of Congress for just a few more weeks, Biden could be using this moment to push lawmakers to pass the party's landmark union rights legislation or implement a national paid leave policy.
Instead, he called on Democrats and Republicans alike to side with highly profitable railroad companies and crush their workers.
When it comes to granting immunity to Saudi royalty, The rules can be bent.
When it comes to helping ordinary Americans, the very ordinary Americans that throughout the campaign, we're going to help you fair and just.
And Trump, he was a bastard, wasn't he?
He was an animal.
We're going to make Saudi Arabia a pariah.
We're going to make things better with nuclear tensions around the world.
And we are going to support the rights of workers.
We beat Big Pharma this year!
Look at reality and look at how it's sustained by a compliant media and a corporatized state.
And if we don't stand up to it, if we don't find new ways of confronting this corruption, it's going to get worse.
Worse and worse until we're all annihilated.
That's the news, baby!
But that's just what I think.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
Let me know what you think in the chat.
See you in a minute.
Thanks for refusing Fox News.
Good day.
No.
Here's the fucking news.
Who was that masked man?
And how does he bring the news to life in that manner?
Thomas Beard says, howdy.
Thank you, Thomas Beard.
Jossie's dog says, modernity is rubbish.
Ashela, I've never laughed so hard in my life.
Remember, we will follow your comments.
They inform us.
Glenn Greenwald is joining us tomorrow.
But right now we are joined by Silky Carlo from Big Brother Watch UK.
Thanks for coming in and being on our show.
What I want to talk to you about is the relationship between China and Chinese style surveillance and state power and the kind of increasing measures in those areas in countries like the UK and the US.
To start us off Silky, we're going to have a look at this clip, this famous clip of Justin Trudeau, who of the world leaders has, I think, the best or second best hair of all world leaders.
That's official.
Let's have a look at him talking about his admiration of Chinese power.
...of admiration I actually have for China.
Because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say, we need to go green as fast as we need to start, you know, investing in solar.
I mean, there is a flexibility...
There you go, there he is, sort of espousing his admiration of China.
How much are nations like Canada, the UK, the US, using measures and technologies that we associate with Chinese totalitarianism, Silky?
Well, first of all, we have to say that statement is disgraceful.
It's disgusting.
You know, China is a genocidal regime.
There are estimated a million Uyghurs in concentration camps right now who are being tortured and detained.
So, but, you know, I think we always see that there is an appeal to authoritarianism and power will always try to accumulate.
And so we need to be vigilant about that, whatever country we live in.
And we certainly need to be vigilant about it in the UK and the US where there is already enormous surveillance apparatus.
So, you know, if we look at some of the things that we rightly are very concerned about in China, mass surveillance, cameras on every corner, you can be arrested for protesting.
In fact, you can be, there was a, A campaigner who was threatened with arrest outside Parliament a couple of weeks ago for holding up a blank sheet of paper.
Now we see that kind of method being replicated in China.
Journalists being arrested.
You know, there are parallels between the kind of crackdowns that you see on democracy in China and in the West, but in a very, very different outcomes.
But we have to be vigilant.
Where in particular would you say in the UK we're emulating Chinese-style surveillance?
And would you say that, you know, most of us understand now that everywhere you go there's cameras on you, but is this technology and information being used in ways that are not explicit and clear?
Um, well, there's many different levels to look to look at this.
So London, for example, is the most surveilled city in the world after Beijing.
And proportionate to the population size, the UK has as many surveillance cameras as China.
So we are an incredibly surveilled country, but we also have a lot of electronic surveillance.
And here's where we know less about what they do, which is why the Snowden revelations were so important.
You know, we've got intelligence agencies that have spoken about seeking to master the Internet and have total information awareness.
Again, the kind of thing that we get upset other countries about You know, governments that want to control the Internet, censor people on the Internet, watch every single thing that they do and create records about them.
We have that.
That's all in the Snowden documents.
The question is, when do we start to feel it?
So, for example, in China, there is ethnic persecution.
And so people are in concentration camps.
In this day and age.
Here, when will we start to feel it?
When could there be somebody who gets into power that uses this extraordinary architecture for evil?
It's a real possibility.
Of course, we saw some of it during the pandemic, where these extraordinary surveillance powers and all of this technology started to be used in really unprecedented ways to limit people's freedoms, to keep us in our homes, to track us, and all sorts.
Were there ways then that we were tracked during the pandemic that were not explicit?
We were talking earlier about a story of one of the organisations that were advocating for Covid passports are researching the possibility of like national ID cards and that kind of thing.
It seems that there is a continuum Some of the measures that were applied during the pandemic to some of the measures that are being suggested more broadly beyond it because it was obviously sold as a very unique situation.
What kind of unprecedented measures, aside from lockdowns, do you think that there were present?
Well of course the line was moved, so now people are used to the idea of having to present medical papers to do normal things, having to comply, you know, and technology was used in almost all of these circumstances.
I actually think that we've done remarkably well, and in no small part because of Big Brother Watch's work in the UK actually, at pushing a lot of this back.
We really fought tooth and nail against all of these emergency regulations and and you know it's because so many people stood up and said including you and said no we're not having it that you know we actually including me or especially me especially me so that's what big that's the point of big brother watch is to oppose these measures that would otherwise be incrementally introduced almost in ways without you sort of noticing that's what you do at big brother you oppose them through activism
Yeah, we campaign to protect civil liberties and human rights and often through the lens of looking at the threats that new technologies pose to us.
And so, you know, for example, you know, specifically about tracking during the pandemic, we found we do investigations as well.
So we found that there were people's phones, in fact, millions of people's phones were tracked.
There's very little fanfare about it during the pandemic.
In one of these examples, it was actually people being tracked around vaccination centres to see if they changed their behaviours before and after being vaccinated.
I just think that, you know, so often authorities see People as cattle.
You know, it's very dehumanising and people aren't given dignity.
That's why privacy matters so much.
It's the buffer between you and power.
And it's the difference between, you know, how far a government can go towards trying to control a population when they monitor them.
Of course, that's the purpose of the monitoring.
I hadn't considered that, Silky.
The ability of a technological dictatorship to observe And corral data means that more and more the rough edges of humanity are lost and we begin to be regarded as kind of blocks of population that can be controlled and managed.
And the extreme conditions of the pandemic meant that that was able to be implemented, perhaps without the level of opposition that was due.
Now, the Western media are ready to support anti-lockdown protesters in China, but they were propagandist in their condemnation of anti-lockdown protesters during the pandemic in these countries, or the height of the pandemic, perhaps we should more rightly say.
You weren't allowed to... They tried to... So, under human rights law, you can't ban protest, but the Home Secretary at the time tried to tell people that they legally couldn't protest, and we fought really hard to get an explicit exemption for protest back in the emergency regulations.
But, yeah, I mean, people were... You know, I've seen 80-year-olds put into the back of police vans because they were protesting, expressing their dissent about what was happening at the time.
An 80-year-old is currently the most powerful person in the world.
He should be put in the back of a police van, Joe Biden, when his speeches end, just to ferry him to the edge of the stage.
That's when he's most vulnerable.
It's for his own safety that I would argue for that.
So, okay, so what we're seeing is that Whilst the aesthetic of Chinese totalitarianism might be distinct, and there are areas of course where Chinese authoritarianism is more extreme, there is a clear desire from establishment liberal democracies to emulate this type of power, and surveillance is already quite, quite immersive.
What about something quite innocuous, Silky?
Like when you go down a supermarket and you pay for stuff and there's like a little camera there, like I was buying something the other day.
I guess I'm just a regular guy.
And I saw my, when I was doing the scanning, which I find quite odd actually, and I never know which bit to put it in, and you've put it in the bagging area.
Get that out of the bagging area.
What is the bagging area?
Don't be disgusting or childish.
Sorry, sorry, there's something wrong with me.
Why are you on a camera during that?
There's no need for that to be a camera there.
What's going on with that?
Is that some facial recognition stuff?
What are they up to?
It's excessive.
I think increasingly modern life is managed through surveillance and we just expect cameras everywhere for everything.
But yes, so I do think that they're gearing up for facial recognition.
In fact, we've been running a massive campaign against the growth of facial recognition in this country.
For a few years now and so I think that some of the supermarkets a bit reticent about rolling it out but they will absolutely try and if nothing else just to cut jobs so that you don't have to have someone like check ID when you want to buy a bottle of wine so get facial recognition to determine how old you are but yeah actually some supermarkets the Southern co-op of all supermarkets is already using live facial recognition so when you go into those stores your face is being compared against the watch list of people that they don't want in their stores even if you're not a criminal.
Specific individuals or just types of people?
We don't like looming scruff bags you can get out or is it like you've been in the car before we see you there nicking some razor blades and batteries?
But everyone knows what it feels like to be, well a lot of people know what it feels like to be wrongly followed around a store by a security guard or that feeling you have when you go through airport security, you just feel a bit like you've done something wrong and you haven't.
I have done something wrong.
I used to smuggle drugs when I was taking drugs, only personal use of course, not for dealing.
And also I did used to shoplift a lot and then sometimes you know when you've got the Then they would eventually say, have you been stealing stuff?
But then this is a very good example, because imagine if you were put onto a watch list, you know, even if you had done something wrong, and then, you know, you're trying to move on with your life.
How do you stop being treated like a criminal forever?
You know, if you have these facial recognition watch lists that are just, you know, acting like privatised police, really.
And also, Silky, isn't there a point where these kind of measures will converge with these anti-protest laws that are being passed where if they suspect you of being a little bit recalcitrant they can stick a bracelet on your ankle and you won't be able to leave the house?
Isn't that something that's been recently proposed or am I exaggerating?
No, it sounds like it's fiction, and it should be, but it's not.
We're campaigning against sections of the Public Order Bill, which is yet another anti-protest law going through Parliament, where there are powers to fit campaigners with GPS ankle tags.
Again, it's just like treating people like cattle, although cattle shouldn't be treated like that either.
But you can be tracked everywhere and you can also have your internet activity controlled.
And so even if you're not a criminal, so you're someone who goes to protests, I go to protests, if you're deemed to be disruptive, yet not criminal, then you can be fitted with a GPS ankle tag and watched everywhere you go.
So that means your hospital appointments or church or whatever it is that you do, the state can know where you are and what you're up to.
I would be shocked if we heard that China were pursuing a policy like that.
But that's what Parliament is debating today.
When Matt Tabe was on our show yesterday, he further elucidated us to the degree of infiltration at Twitter by state agencies such as CIA and FBI and the amount of editorial control that they've been exerting over Twitter's policy and publications.
And we can only assume that comparable things are happening.
Elsewhere, and I suppose when you start to tie that together with the revelations of Edward Snowden, it starts to become likely that there are deep infiltration within all manner of aspects of technology and communication that we're being observed to a degree that we would not be comfortable with.
I wonder why there is such a trend towards the introduction of anti-protest legislation around the world, and also the militarisation of the police.
Sometimes Silky, I wonder if they might be preparing for a phase of uprising and protest, which in my view would be a legitimate and necessary response to increasing centralised authority.
Do you ever wonder about stuff like that?
Completely.
And I think, you know, it's coming.
This is a very unstable time.
And, you know, we've got the economic crisis, climate issues, all kinds of reasons, a generation of people that want change.
There are lots of reasons that people are going to be taking to the streets and wanting to protest and wanting to change things.
And these powers are going to make it very, very difficult.
But I wouldn't be doing this job if I didn't have faith in the public to stand up when it matters and overcome these kinds of barriers.
And I absolutely think that we will.
Plus you've had some victories already.
What kind of laws have you been able to repeal?
That's the first thing.
And then the second thing is this question I'm going to ask in a minute, Gareth, that's going to blow your mind, where
I say, do you think it's possible for there to be a new sort of
global decentralized movement where people come together to demand autonomy for individual communities so that they
could be run truly democratically in a reversal of this sort of globalist,
centralized authoritarianism that's turning people against one another and increasing the ability of states everywhere
to regulate people at the behest of corporatism under the guise of increasing safety?
But I want to say to you, answer both of those questions, please, as part of this program.
Yeah. So we've had a lot of victories and we've held back facial recognition that the police have been been using for
many years.
I mean, all of these are ongoing battles because the authoritarians will never stop.
You know, we brought two legal challenges against mandatory Covid passes and of course they were dropped.
And that led to the biggest parliamentary rebellion since the Iraq war.
The vote against COVID passes was a massive rebellion against the government in Parliament.
We have had so many successes.
We just beat digital strip searches.
There's loads.
People can find out more on our website about the stuff that we're doing.
Is that your website?
We're at bigbrotherwatch.org.uk and we're at Big Brother Watch on Twitter and the other social media platforms.
We always have to keep our eye on the ball of what's happening today and what the next fight is, because like I say, these are ongoing battles.
Vigilance is the price of liberty, as they say, and we have to be absolutely vigilant.
So we've got these anti-protest powers in Parliament today, online safety bill in Parliament today, where we're seeing extraordinary convergence of Gareth, I hope you're not going to spoil all this by thinking about digital strip searches.
Oh no, I got that on my mind immediately.
Yes, it's quite good, isn't it? What about that?
Very good, yeah.
You're in down with it?
Yeah, yeah.
Gareth, I hope you're not going to spoil all this by thinking about digital strip searches.
Oh no, I'd got that on my mind immediately.
What are they?
So, police got into the habit of, when people were reporting serious offences, in particular
rape and sexual offences, police were asking people almost immediately for their phones
take a copy of everything on their phones.
And then they would find reasons to distrust them or, of course, a lot of people just didn't want to hand over everything on their phone.
So, this was a massive, massive barrier for people, particularly women, to seek justice after going through horrendous... The victims?
Yes, exactly.
Victims were being treated like suspects.
I thought it was bad when it was the perpetrators.
Well, that's actually the victims.
There are more legal safeguards around when it can happen to a perpetrator than a suspect.
But actually, we've just won that fight and there has now been legal change.
Again, we'll have to be vigilant about how it plays out.
But it's another campaign that we've won.
And the reason that is so important, not only because rapists should be brought to justice, but because that precedent setting of authorities being entitled to your whole digital life... Think about the amount of data that's on our phones.
You can find out far more about someone by looking through their phone than you can through doing a house raid.
You've got photos, emails, work stuff, banking, texts, stuff that can go back 10 years all in one place.
So it was really, really important that we fought that and that we won.
These are brilliant victories.
And there's been a tendency over the last decade or so, perhaps with the rise of this kind of technology,
to equate privacy with guilt.
Like privacy, it was once understood to be a right because it was, I suppose,
it was implemented by default.
But now you can encroach on people's privacy in so many brilliant and perfidious ways
that people just, there's just a tendency, you said before, like authoritarianism
requires continued vigilance.
Like it's a magnetic force that will consume whatever it can.
So hard to hear that you've had so much success in your campaigns.
You can follow Silky at Silky Carlo on Twitter and we'll post a link in the description for Big Brother Watch UK.
Gareth, you seem like you've been, in a sense, nurturing an inquiry and I wouldn't like this to bring this interview to an end without giving you the opportunity to make it.
I was interested in the kind of politicization that's occurred over the last few years,
especially with the pandemic, in the way that, for example, with the COVID passports
and anyone who was opposed to that, that it was turned into a kind of political statement
that you were automatically, for example, right wing for caring about your privacy.
And you see it happening again with even the stuff that's going on with Elon Musk
at the moment, that if you're a supporter of these kind of revelations about the convergence
as you talk about of state and big tech, that you're somehow right wing
or, and then you get called, you know, all these kinds of terms and labels that they give you.
Why is this happening?
And how is this kind of playing into the hands of the people that want to introduce these things?
It's a really good question.
In my view, I think that it's delegitimizing.
I think that by instantly brandishing anyone who questions some of these very, very important policies for authoritarians, You can call them conservative, you can call them right wing, you can call them conspiracy theorists or whatever.
All the things that were lobbed at people that opposed mandatory COVID passes, although it was a real policy and law that was there, you know, that we ultimately fought and won.
You know, it's just delegitimising.
And it's very hard, you know, I personally actually found it very hard as well, campaigning very strongly against mandatory COVID passes because there is a lot, there was a lot of stigma, you know, but at the end of the day, it was a mandatory digital ID that forced people to show medical compliance.
And, you know, it was just mad.
I mean, I don't want to kind of rerun the arguments, but I'm very proud of everything that Big Brother Watch did during that period.
It wasn't right-wing at all.
And actually, you know, so we worked with, often in British politics, and I think it's the same in American politics, they say that the civil libertarians on both sides of politics meet around the back.
So, you know, we were campaigning with the left of the Labour Party and the right of the Conservative Party, both of whom were opposing COVID passes.
There needs to be a broader alliance between those groups to once and for all instantiate a new political movement that is transcendent of those labels, which is one of the things that I mentioned and I believe was in my manifesto.
I reckon, you know the way that different towns like twin with each other?
I think our show should twin with Big Brother Watch.
You know, like you go to town and it goes, we're twinned with somewhere.
In Bulgaria, for example.
We should twin with Big Brother Watch, I reckon.
Even overlooking the fact that you said that Gareth's question was good and didn't say that about any of my questions.
Now, that would be puerile to mention that, in fact, when you've been such a brilliant guest.
Thank you for coming on, Silky, and thank you for the excellent work that you do with Big Brother Watch and your excellent campaigning.
We'll draw as much attention as we can to these... Are we called, like, Small Sister Watch, then?
What are we?
That sounds a bit strange.
I was going to say dirty classroom. Tomorrow we've got Glenn Greenwald coming on the show
and God knows what we're going to put him through. He's coming on, he's our friend,
he's our affiliate on this glorious platform. On Thursday, Steve-O's coming on. I love Steve-O,
he's brilliant. I call him a kind of a rasping troubadour of exotic stunts. And Thursday,
Tim Robbins is coming on. You can join that conversation live at 8am ET, 5am PT because
we record it and you can ask questions if you want to if you're a member of our community.
Remember, you can watch everything first and in full on Stay Free AF.
That's our members community available to you on Locals, where we will be in a minute fielding some of your questions.
Silky, thank you so much for this fantastic conversation once again and for the brilliant work that you've done.
And I hope you'll join us again on the show, will you?
Thanks very much for coming on.
All right, you lot.
We're going to clear off now.
And if you're a member of Stay Free AF, which you can easily join by clicking on the link in the description, we'll see you in a minute.
Otherwise, see you tomorrow with Glenn Greenwald.
What are we going to talk about with Glenn Greenwald?
We can't just recycle it.
It's got to be a new, innovative conversation.
Well, you do some investigative journalism.
My investigations will no doubt throw up some stuff to get Glenn Greenwald thinking.
I'll challenge him.
I'll try and pull it as a prize.
But I don't know about all that.
Thanks very much.
Stay free.
See you tomorrow.
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