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Jan. 11, 2023 - Stay Free - Russel Brand

01:06:44

Are The Democrats Now The War Party? - #056 - Stay Free With Russell Brand

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	So, we'll see you in a minute.
	In this video, you're going to see the future.
	Hello there, you Awakening Wonders, whether you're joining us on our home, Rumble, or on YouTube where we are currently, you are welcome here with us, whoever you are, whatever you believe in.
	If you're interested in truth and awakening and coming together and truly challenging the systems of the powerful in order that we might build a better world, you are welcome here.
	This show is sponsored by Raytheon, a lovely little organisation.
	Mostly it's just missiles and that.
	Good bunch of lads.
	Well, they're very good missiles, aren't they?
	If you need a missile, I say Raytheon.
	They've got to be, because people keep ordering them, don't they?
	I tell you what, they're flying off the shelves!
	By the way, if you're thinking of investing in one of the weapons companies, there's Lockheed Martin.
	Norfolk Grumman.
	Norfolk Grumman sounds a bit old-fashioned, don't it?
	There's BAE Systems.
	I've never liked that, because I don't even like saying BAE.
	No.
	I don't like the diphthong, is what that is.
	I don't like moving through that many vowel sounds without a consonant in there.
	But I'd have to say, hands down, Raytheon, best missiles money can buy.
	It's your money anyway, because you're paying for it if you're an American taxpayer.
	Former directors are now Secretary of Defence now, aren't they, in the US?
	Can you see how the people from Raytheon are the best people?
	Over the course of the show, you're going to love this.
	If you're watching this on YouTube, you've got to click over to YouTube when the 10 minutes is up, because we're going to be showing you how WHO are presenting the anti-vax movement.
	It's more frightening and more of a threat than global terrorism.
	Correct.
	That's all of the terrorism on the globe, which might mean that there ain't no terrorism anymore, because, I don't know, don't need terrorism.
	But terrorism, you used to have to talk about it all the time, didn't you?
	It was a big thing.
	They've gone away.
	They just went away now.
	They're on holiday.
	They were very susceptible to COVID, those lads.
	That's the thing.
	And, you know, a lot of them wore masks, so you would have thought they'd be fine.
	We're also going to be talking about, like, we're going to be showing you some details from an adverse vaccine reaction study that we just simply are not allowed to show you on YouTube because, by coincidence, YouTube take their directives from the WHO.
	I mean, that's just a coincidence, though.
	I'm sure there's nothing going on there.
	Also, we're going to be looking at, well, let's have a look right now.
	Joe Biden and his top secret documents continue to baffle people.
	Michael Schellenberger is coming on the show later.
	He's one of the Twitterphiles dudes.
	That's how he likes to be called.
	That's who I call him.
	Michael Schellenberger is a Twitterphile dude.
	What are we going to talk to him about?
	WEF?
	Trump?
	All sorts of stuff like that.
	When are we getting the Fauci files?
	When are we getting the Fauci files?
	They're on the way.
	We'll be getting them.
	And on our presentation, here's the news.
	No, here's the effing news.
	We're talking about Kevin McCarthy, Ukraine, who are the party of war now.
	But should we start with... I like this.
	This is something I created using my imagination.
	Oh, yeah.
	It's news around Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada.
	I like his hair.
	I call it Trudeau.
	Is it true, though?
	Let's have a look at that.
	Oh, Canada!
	Because that's what I do.
	I see what you've done there.
	Yeah, because it's like, is it true though?
	Right, look at him saying this thing.
	The new Liberal government won't buy the overpriced F-35 stealth fighter jet.
	Good, very good.
	Don't buy them, too expensive!
	Raytheon are doing fighter jets, meanwhile, cut price, get you a special deal on them.
	He's a good guy, this Trudeau.
	Look at the hair, look at the youth.
	Stealth fighter that can't defend our Arctic.
	A stealth fighter that's not actually stealth.
	The new Liberal government.
	Mad stealth!
	He's really like, well, let's have a little look at, uh, let's have a look at where this dude ends up, though.
	The Liberal government has inked a deal to buy 88 F-35 fighter jets.
	Oh, OK.
	Was it true, though?
	It weren't true, though, was it, though?
	Oh, by the way, they don't work that well.
	This is those ones.
	You've probably seen those fire jets.
	They're these bad bits.
	Easy, easy.
	Oh, that's embarrassing that its little snout sniffed down on the ground like that.
	It fell on its own snout.
	Oh, he just crashed!
	Yep, that's no good, is it?
	Why would a government buy a plane like that, though, Russ?
	Why would a government spend public money?
	I wonder if there's some sort of margin and relationships with... I suppose the only reason you would is if you had a relationship with organisations within the military-industrial complex, like, for example, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop.
	And why would Trudeau say that before getting into power, but then be in power?
	Hold on, wait a minute, because I've got these psychic abilities.
	I don't understand it.
	I've got psychic abilities.
	Something's coming through.
	I don't understand.
	Maybe, before he was in power, he just said stuff that sounded good, then once he was in power, he realised that there were entrenched relationships that he had to be in the service of, almost like all politicians will, before they're elected, say one thing, then once in power, do something else.
	Except for Claire Daly, MEP, Irish woman, firebrand, who was on the show yesterday.
	Brilliant, wasn't she?
	She kicked off proper leery.
	Joe Biden, of course, we all remember the enthusiasm that preceded his elevation after some time in Congress to the presidency.
	And now, of course, these controversial secret documents have been found in his office.
	Biden says he don't know what documents were found in private office.
	What documents were found in your office?
	I don't know.
	Do you know which direction to walk when you get off stage?
	I don't know.
	Do you know whether or not to sniff a child's head?
	I don't know whether or not to do that.
	Do you know what's on hunters?
	Just to be clear, don't.
	Don't sniff a child on it.
	If it's your child, maybe.
	Or if the child said, I'm worried that some yeast-based spread, Marmite, Bovril, something like that, has gotten into my scalp.
	Would you tell me?
	Yeah.
	Oh yeah, there is a bit of marmite in it.
	Those are the only possible reasons for doing it.
	He says that he's taking it very seriously, but does Biden take classified information that seriously when he doesn't seem to know what a Secret Service operative looks like, or the difference between a Secret Service operative and a Salvation Army attendee?
	What I like about this, I don't know if you've seen this lovely clip yet, of Joe Biden mistaking a Salvation Army volunteer or worker for a Secret Service agent.
	It's lovely because Joe Biden, I reckon, really fancies his own small talk, you know, where he goes, Beck-a-my-way, Beck-a-my-tail, corn pup.
	He really thinks he's got good chat.
	Yeah.
	And he starts laying loose with some chat on this guy.
	And the thing I like, he's watching the guy's face as he realises that moment where he's talking to the President of the United States and the President of the United States thinks he's a Secret Service operative.
	Yeah.
	And you have to work out... He doesn't even look like one.
	He's got like a little badge on him and stuff.
	Have a look at this, you won't believe it.
	And here we have the post of Salvation Army.
	So look, the word Salvation Army is like everywhere.
	He's got Salvation Army on his lapel.
	There's so many cues that this is a Salvation Army person.
	Next dude coming up, it's Mr. Incredible.
	He's meeting next.
	Oh no.
	Oh shit.
	Oh no.
	Because that's what happened when my nan first went senile or Alzheimer's or whatever it was.
	She just said a crazy thing and I went...
	Oh, shit, no.
	But what was good was my nan did not have nuclear capacity.
	No one would sell... Secret documents?
	If she had, she kept her mouth shut about it.
	Oh, I don't know where them documents are, darling.
	Do you want an omelette?
	She's not suddenly trying to blow up a pipeline or get involved in some crazy global skullduggery.
	One of the things, of course, you know why you come to us.
	We're a media organisation to a degree.
	We're a movement.
	We're more than that.
	We believe in your heart.
	We believe in your spirit.
	But we want to tell you the truth so you can decide for yourself what Look at what your version of reality and the truth is, given that we live in a limitless space and having an objective truth might be a difficult thing to arrive at.
	Look at how the mainstream media report on Biden's secret documents versus Trump's secret documents.
	This is from CNN, Enemy of Freedom.
	Joe Biden, look at that.
	Joe Biden, he only had 10 little documents and some of them, they weren't even all top secret.
	He's cooperating with the system that he's the head of.
	And lawyers found them.
	Donald Trump, meanwhile, he had 325 documents, 60 of them were top secret.
	They're such little nerfs, aren't they?
	And by the way, I know that some of you lot love Donald Trump, and I presume some of you love Joe Biden, and I don't think that the answer to our problems is going to come from Either of these pillars of systemic power and you know let me know in the chat let me know in the comments what you think.
	Look how they talked about the vaccine when it was Trump's vaccine can't be trusted under Biden this vaccine is good stuff and if you're watching us on YouTube stay with us because we've got a groundbreaking study on adverse reactions that we Literally can't talk about on YouTube, we would be banned.
	We would be banned for talking about it because YouTube uses, did you know this?
	They use the WHO's edicts, WHO which I think accepts funding from Bill Gates, to determine what their policy is.
	So that's how power and influence operates.
	It's not a conspiracy theory, you can just watch it, you can observe it.
	Take place in real time.
	Not on YouTube though.
	You're going to have to come over onto Rumble and you can watch us doing it in real time.
	Now it's our item.
	The system is fine.
	Don't collapse into existential despair.
	Our friends are scientists, and by the way, I'm not an anti-science person, I think science, when it's not a subset of extreme corporatism, is a marvellous endeavour, the realm of many genii and mystics, the producer of the great technology that allows us to have the connection that we have right now.
	But when they're all- Were you good at science at school?
	Very good, one of the best!
	You give me a bunch and burn a gal, and that's when I- Come into your own.
	I come into my own, them little two thin lolly sticks, get them splints.
	Get them burning.
	Was that what you were meant to do?
	You're not meant to do that.
	Like that gas tap, turn that gas tap on and then light it so it goes
	and then scare yourself a bit too much.
	You're the enemy of science.
	In a way, I'm a sort of a Luddite.
	A bovine, retrograde, bloody Luddite.
	But like, you know, I don't think that science should be entirely governed by the pursuit of profit.
	And I suppose when the most powerful voices in particular aspects or scientific fields are for-profit companies, then that is going to bias it.
	I don't know.
	Let me know what you think in the chat and the comments.
	And they keep, like, who's that guy, Peter Danza, or whatever his name is?
	Peter Daszak.
	Peter Daszak.
	Yeah.
	Peter Daszak is one of the people that was, I believe, involved in the Wu-Tang Lab that may or may not have been.
	Which he called it the Wu-Tang Lab.
	It's actually happened.
	I've actually made the... I think Peter... Now, correct me if I'm wrong.
	Peter Daszak's in the Wu-Tang Clan.
	Is that right?
	Now, the Wu-Tang Clan are using gain-of-function research.
	Oh, dirty bastard!
	Oh, dirty bastard!
	Got a Petri dish of viruses in it.
	And he's fucking making him worse.
	You can't trust him.
	Daszak.
	Dazzak Fauci, they're the Wu-Tang gang!
	So, like the Wu-Hang gang, I call them.
	Look, it's back in the Bat Caves, old Dazzak, look!
	Haven't you learned anything?
	Not that we're saying that that did originate in a lab, although are you allowed to even speculate on that anymore?
	Are we still on YouTube?
	We're still on YouTube.
	Listen, in a minute we're going to show you the WHO's magnificent bit of propaganda.
	Can we put it on just for a second so the people on YouTube see it?
	Because they're going to love this.
	I know they're going to love this, Gareth.
	Put on the WHO bit of propaganda.
	This is WHO propaganda, so of course we can show this on YouTube because they determine YouTube's policy.
	Let's have a look at what WHO are saying about anti-vaxxers.
	Check it.
	We have to recognize that anti-vaccine activism, which I actually call anti-science aggression,
	has not... Already changed its name.
	Anti-science aggression, I've called it. That's what I'm calling it.
	...become a major killing force globally. Major killing force globally.
	Oh, listen, you're gonna love this.
	This is reductive, isn't it?
	It's a bit reductive because there's so many reasons that people might not want to take certain medications, I think.
	And in a free society, when I... Am I right in saying that the Pfizer executive, Janet Smalls, I'm guessing, baby.
	Yeah, Jane Smalls, I think.
	She said that they didn't test for transmission.
	So how are you a killing force globally if... You've got to be careful here, Ross.
	Listen, we've got so much to tell you.
	If you're watching us on YouTube, click the link in your description right now and join us on Rumble, where the truth will be channeled, where the revolution will be born, where collective awakenings will occur, all sponsored by Raytheon.
	They make a lovely missile, Gareth.
	Before you criticise them, have you ever tried making a missile?
	It's exhausting.
	It's knackering.
	They should have that money.
	Give them the money from the taxpayers!
	What are you going to do with it?
	Feed your children?
	Use the electricity?
	Not for long, you're not.
	They'll be banned on that before too long at all.
	All right, let's have a look now.
	So YouTube, goodbye, but join us.
	Join us!
	And let's have a look at a little bit more of this WHO propaganda.
	During the COVID pandemic in the United States, 200,000 Americans needlessly lost their lives because they refused a COVID vaccine.
	Is that true?
	Is the data there?
	So this is how this goes.
	Do you want to see more of this propaganda or do you want to see the adverse reactions?
	I think we keep watching.
	I suppose when they say needlessly refused a vaccine we again like going back to the idea of it being reductive we know at the time when we started to look at the evidence that was published in mainstream media of people's reasons at the time for not getting vaccines and it was obvious it was often Oh, sometimes people in minorities, you had less trust of government for good reasons.
	It was people who didn't trust that there wouldn't be adverse reactions and they had children to care for and they couldn't afford to take the time off.
	I'll tell you why you can trust any vaccine, right?
	I'll tell you why you can trust any vaccine because In the past, if ever there's been adverse reactions, even at a rate of something like one in 10,000, that vaccine is pulled off the market.
	You can check that.
	One in 10,000, they get that straight off the market.
	So surely if there's anything like one in 10,000 adverse reactions to this new experimental vaccine, then that'll be right off the old market, won't it?
	Let's have a look at, can we just have a quick look at that study?
	And in particular, the ratios there, this is a study by Robert, M Kaplan, who's one of my favourite professors, I'd have to say, and is closely followed by Sandra Greenland, who I also love.
	Let's have a look at their study.
	Look at this.
	It says, look, they found one serious adverse event for each eight of 800 vaccinees.
	That translates to about 1,250 serious events for each million vaccine recipients.
	OK, so that's their data there.
	Consider a one in 800 risk of serious accident One in 100,000.
	One in 100,000.
	They pulled that thing.
	And look at this one.
	The 1976 swine flu vaccine was withdrawn after it was associated with Guillain-Barre syndrome
	at a rate of approximately one in 100,000.
	One in 100,000, they pulled that thing.
	And look at this one.
	The rotavirus vaccine, Rotashield, was withdrawn following reports of interception
	in about one or two in 10,000.
	So it shows you that if you don't grant vaccine manufacturers legal indemnity,
	then get that thing off the shelves.
	For some reason they wanted legal immunity.
	Am I right in saying that?
	Did they get granted legal immunity?
	Did I make that up or is that an actual fact?
	No, they did.
	There was another element to that that was interesting that they were saying the DHHS reports the Yeah, we'll pull it back to the last slide, please.
	So DHHS, Department of Health and Human Services, that is reported the rate for other vaccines is only one or two per million.
	So there's a massive disparity in what these guys are saying that they've found.
	Yeah, versus a million versus 800.
	So broadly speaking, the good news is this.
	Generally speaking, if you're taking a vaccine, they have studied it for adverse events.
	The bad news is this particular vaccine according to this one study, it's me responsible I don't know
	actually I was joking when I said they were my favorite scientists I've never heard of them
	before but according to their study you know it's up to a one in 800. Let me know in the comments
	let me know in the chat if you think that these figures are somehow being biased by an incentive
	or an agenda or if there's sort of this conversation wants to be broadened out.
	You know I think that is one of their points as well Russ like lower down in the article one
	on those things that they say is regrettably our analysis was hindered by
	an addressable problem.
	The individual level data that could confirm or refute our analysis have not been made public.
	So what they're saying is, these are the findings that we, based on the data we had access to that we found, and that we're presenting them to, they differ from what we've been told.
	By the authorities but if you gave us access to the actual information we could do this properly but that's the problem that it's not.
	In my experience when people are denied access to files that's always good news.
	Whether it's JFK who as you know was killed by a lone gunman with no CIA involvement that's why still in 2023 the information has to be heavily redacted or Pfizer booting their information 75 years into the future, into a world of jetpacks and hovercrafts where we can finally know or get access to the information that these scientists would have liked to have used as part of the basis for their research.
	So bearing that in mind, at least with regard to these particularly intrepid scientists, it's potentially as much as 1 in 800 adverse events.
	Let's look at the rest of that WHO piece of propaganda.
	The level of bombast And for me there's a correlation between those two things because the reason that there's a requirement for so much promo, legal indemnity, borderline mandating, crushing protest movements, censoring, as the Twitter files have revealed, any opposition or dissent to these arguments, for me that suggests that there is an alternative way of viewing this information.
	Have a look at this.
	The COVID vaccine, even after vaccines became widely available, and now the anti-vaccine activism is expanding across the world, even into low- and middle-income countries.
	It's a killing force.
	Well, that's a very interesting point, isn't it, about low- and middle-income countries, because one of the issues that pro-vaccine people said at the time is, OK, if these vaccines are so great, then let's get them to these low-income countries.
	But people like Bill Gates said at the time, Right.
	They won't know how to do it in their factories.
	It's not just a simple matter of removing patents, Gareth.
	Over there in, you know, poor countries, they're over there in their factories.
	They'll be running around spilling stuff.
	They're not going to achieve a rate as near to perfection as only one in 800 adverse events.
	They can't do that!
	They're too clumsy!
	So again, are they good or are they not?
	You have to make your mind up.
	And you have to tell us in the chat what you think is behind this.
	If you joined us from YouTube, I hope you're enjoying access to this kind of content.
	Believe me, the reason that we are on this platform is simply because we trust in your ability to discern for yourselves what is true, what is right for you.
	And for your loved ones, that we don't believe that you need to have a paternal relationship with the state and media organisations, that you're intelligent enough, intuitive enough and beautiful enough to determine for yourselves what you need to do for your own advancement, benefit and wellness.
	Have a look at this propaganda.
	Anti-science now kills more people than things like gun violence, global terrorism, nuclear proliferation, or cyber attacks.
	And now it's become a political movement in the U.S.
	It's linked to far-extremism on the far right.
	Buy you!
	Yeah, also, all these things that they're talking about, like global terrorism, why does terrorism happen?
	Should we, like, go down the route of how terrorism happened?
	How did ISIS happen?
	What were the things that led up to that happening?
	I'll fill this one.
	There was these baddies over in, I believe it was Iraqi land.
	They simply wouldn't give us their oil nicely.
	So what we had to do, we pull over the statue, make a real point of it, put the bag over Saddam Hussein's head.
	Right.
	And now we can rebuild Iraq and Halliburton, I believe, made a quid or two.
	Not a penny.
	No, Halliburton!
	You think Halliburton next year will be telling me that our sponsors Raytheon make those missiles to turn a few quid rather than just to provide lethal aid to the people who need it most.
	There they go.
	The point about this is you've got a kind of social media savvy and friendly piece of propaganda here.
	You know it's done in that 4x3, it's on Instagram.
	Really being extremely reductive about not just vaccine hesitancy.
	Yeah, gun violence, terrorism.
	But all of these things.
	They're hugely reductive about there's just these awful things and now this is the latest one.
	And then you've got scientists like the ones we've just read who are saying what we need is actual data to be able to give proper opinions on this so that we don't create this polarisation.
	And what they're saying is we're not getting the data.
	I'm going to have to ask you to cool down!
	Sorry mate.
	You're getting very passionate!
	I'm passionate about it.
	You're getting very passionate about the nature of this propaganda and reductivism, and I got a message here from Rick Rubin.
	Lovely.
	Rick Rubin, is it on Friday's show that we're doing Rick?
	Yeah, on Friday I have a wonderful conversation with Rick Rubin.
	You're gonna, absolutely, some people say they love the passion.
	No!
	Too much passion!
	No, it's good passion, Gal.
	Great.
	Like, this is, listen to this, you'll love this.
	20th century elites and institutions relied on having a much less chaotic and engulfing information environment.
	Politicians, journalists and academics now are overwhelmed by A. What they don't know that others do know and they think of, for example, think of a citizen using a cell phone to cover events sooner and more completely than paid journalists and B. By the amount that others know about them that they used to be able to keep secret.
	Think of President Kennedy, for example, trying to get away of his sexual escapades in today's environment.
	The elites cannot accept the new reality that there is so much... This isn't by Rick Rubin, by the way.
	Oh, it's very good.
	It's good.
	It's from a... I think we... I've looked at the book it's from, and I think we can get the person on as a guest unless they're, you know, dead or something.
	The elites cannot accept the new reality there's so much information they cannot control.
	They see new competitors as illegitimate, fake news, and they blame others for the elites' loss of status and respect.
	The general public is frustrated by the arrogance of the elites and they have the means to assemble revolts.
	This has happened everywhere from the Arab Spring to the Yellow Vests to the controversial January the 6th riot.
	These results have no organisation so they end up not accomplishing much.
	Society, it says here, requires authority but the existing authorities can seemingly do nothing other than hope for a return to the 20th century when they had closer to a monopoly on information and they seem to be completely incapable of dealing with the digital world.
	They cannot operate at internet speed, It takes the bureaucracy too long to react to events on an internet scale, and it cites here the Obamacare website fiasco, and talks about the likelihood of an emergence of new elites in order that are adept at coping with the type of information age that we are living in now.
	And what story better illustrates these changes than the Twitter file story?
	I'm very excited to... Oh, are we doing... No, is it a hero vid now?
	It's a presentation.
	Put the thing in the right place, for Christ's sake.
	So in a minute we're going to be talking to Michael Schellenberger.
	Michael Schellenberger is coming on here to talk to us about revelations from the Twitter files.
	It's going to be a fantastic conversation.
	I'm going to ask him very specifically and particularly about the inability to control data within the new technological environment that we find ourselves in and how that's led to more surveillance, more censorship and demonization of dissenting voices.
	You can see now that that's on the rise not just because of That polarity is part of social media spaces and appears to be required but also because that's how centralised authority can manage dissent, you know?
	Okay, so listen, we've got a wonderful presentation for you now and I think you're going to like it.
	It's very good.
	It's a good presentation.
	We worked on it together, didn't we, Gareth?
	Yeah, you're very good in it.
	Do I come across as amenable?
	Funny?
	Good.
	Because as you are aware, if you're an American or even if you're Canadian or from some other country that I've not even heard of yet, where are you watching us?
	Let me know in the chat.
	Kevin McCarthy became the new Speaker of the House.
	You know that already.
	He had to do a bunch of deals with hardline Republicans, including lowering the massive recent Pentagon budget.
	So what we're asking in this presentation, Are Republicans, and particularly the hard Republican right, now the anti-war party?
	And what does that say about politics in general?
	What does that say about liberalism?
	And neo-liberalism?
	And God!
	The devil!
	Heaven!
	Hell!
	See, I'm quite passionate.
	I'm a passionate man.
	Here's the news.
	No, here's the effing news.
	Kevin McCarthy has finally, after a number of deals, become the Speaker of the House, including reducing the
	Pentagon budget.
	But why is the Pentagon budget so high, twice as high as it was during an actual war?
	What's going on in there?
	If you're watching this in the United States of America, you'll be well aware that Kevin McCarthy has just become Speaker of the House, the third most powerful person within the US political system, and that it was a protracted and complex process to get him there.
	They involved making deals with hardline Republicans, which means Trump-supporting Republicans, who advocated for a reduction in the Pentagon budget.
	Why is it that the people that are regarded as the hard right, and I'm just talking about the mainstream perspective on these people, are the only anti-war voices?
	Has the establishment become so co-opted?
	Has the liberal establishment ultimately become part of the war machine?
	And if so, what does liberalism mean?
	What does democracy mean when these kind of deals are getting done?
	And why are we not being offered genuine democracy where we're offered the opportunity to talk about the vast amount of money that's spent on a war machine in a country that, according to them, isn't even in a war?
	His changing relationship with President Trump from frostiness to warmth has fueled accusations of a transactional and malleable leader driven by the pursuit of power more than any specific ideological goal.
	That's all of them, isn't it?
	Let's see what's going on.
	Kevin McCarthy agreed to a series of concessions that have been criticised by both centrist Republicans and Democrats in order to win over hardline Republican dissenters in his House Speakership bid that took 15 rounds of voting.
	McCarthy agreed to cap discretionary spending at the levels they were at the beginning of the Biden administration, which could reduce national defence spending by $75 billion.
	Which could be regarded as a positive thing, and not that long ago would have been regarded as a left-wing talking point.
	That would have been the purview of the Democrats.
	You know, peaceniks.
	You can't keep having all these crazy wars, man, going over foreign countries and telling them how to run their world just in order to prop up the military-industrial complex.
	That's now the job of, like, Trump supporters.
	The proposal will no doubt face serious headwinds from more hawkish members of Congress, especially given that this year's Pentagon budget boost easily passed both the House and the Senate.
	Regardless of the outcome, the proposed deal highlights a significant shift in Republican politics that has taken place in recent years.
	As Bill Hartung of the Quincy Institute told Responsible Statecraft, GOP lawmakers often gave the Pentagon a pass when they talked about curbing big government, but many Freedom Caucus members now seem determined to cut the military down to size.
	Those of us that grew up concerned, for example, about the legitimacy of the Iraq war would never have imagined that it would be the Republican Party, let alone the right of the Republican Party, that was advocating for less military expenditure.
	It shows you now that liberalism has become the new conservative elite, that they have been co-opted by the financial industry and the military-industrial complex, and that the renegade voices, peculiarly, are coming from the right.
	Whether or not you agree with their social ideology, and I know that a lot of you will and a lot of you won't, It has to be said that the Democrats are now the party of the establishment.
	This is by Chris Hedges, available on his substat.
	The Democrats position themselves as the party of virtue, cloaking their support for the war industry in moral language, stretching back to Korea and Vietnam.
	All the wars they support and fund are good wars.
	All the enemies they fight, the latest being Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping, are incarnations of evil.
	The photo of a beaming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris holding up a signed Ukrainian battle flag behind Zelensky as he addressed Congress was another example of the Democratic Party's abject subservience to the war machine.
	So I suppose that in order to serve a war machine, you have to justify the conflict,
	you have to simplify the narrative and say that these people are egregious villains with
	malfeasant agenda and this is like a benign benevolent kind, but you know usually life is
	a little more complicated than that and the route to war is more complex and my suspicion is involves
	capital and finance and profit. There once was a wing of the democratic party that questioned and
	stood up to the war industry but that opposition evaporated along with the anti-war movement.
	The opposition to the perpetual funding of the war in Ukraine has come primarily from Republicans, 11 in the Senate and 57 in the House, several such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, unhinged conspiracy theorists.
	That's what it requires!
	This lust for war is dangerous, pushing us into a potential war with Russia, and perhaps later with China, each in nuclear power.
	It is also economically ruinous.
	The monopolization of capital by the military has driven U.S.
	debt to over $30 trillion, $6 trillion more than the U.S.
	GDP of $24 trillion.
	Servicing this debt costs $300 billion a year.
	We spend more on the military than the next nine countries, including China and Russia combined.
	Military spending next year is on track to reach its highest level in inflation-adjusted terms since the peaks in the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars between 2008 and 2011, and the second highest in inflation-adjusted terms since World War II, a level that is more than the budgets of the next ten largest cabinet agencies combined.
	So I suppose that the power of the American war machine is more powerful than the next 10 countries combined and the next 10 departments within the US political system combined.
	In a sense, it is fair, and you tell me in the comments if you agree with this, to regard America as essentially wrapped around a certain set of interests.
	That can be tracked financially.
	That all of the subsequent cultural artifacts and apparent political procedures seem to, regardless of who is in office, lead to this enhanced expenditure.
	And I suppose that's why it's interesting that the right of the Republican Party is the only place where you would find anti-war radicalism.
	Even if it isn't underwritten in the way we might previously have understood it by sort of long hairs and flowers down the barrel of a gun but more a kind of libertarian unwillingness to spend American tax dollars on foreign wars or perhaps even more precisely extract American tax dollars from ordinary people and put them into the hands of corporations and I as a person that would not that long ago have regarded myself as a sort of left-wing person now I don't think that either of those wings have any validity can See the rationale in that argument.
	Let me know in the chat, let me know in the comments what you think.
	That means that their ties to enterprises that transcend democratic procedure, like the financial industry, the military industrial complex, are so entrenched that ultimately they cannot operate at the service of ordinary people because they are owned.
	They have been co-opted by transcendent interests.
	On the eve of every congressional vote on the Pentagon budget, lobbyists from businesses tied to the war industry meet with Congress members and their staff to push them to vote for the budget to protect jobs in their district or state.
	This pressure, coupled with the mantra amplified by the media that opposition to the profligate war funding is unpatriotic, keeps elected officials in bondage.
	These politicians also depend on the lavish donations from the weapons manufacturers to fund their campaigns.
	So in a sense, it is ultimately theatre.
	What we participate in every four years, or at the midterms in your country, Amounts to just the sort of shuffling of personnel that will ultimately fulfill their will and interests of the organizations that fund them.
	So even to call it a democracy at this point is kind of ridiculous because you can't meaningfully impact or manipulate how your money will ultimately be spent.
	So you find yourself in a position where you have to think, well how can I extract myself from that system?
	What do I do if neither of those parties suit me anymore?
	If my interests are not represented on any level.
	And of course none of us really have time to think like that, either because of financial and economic pressure, or because we're being continually agitated by what's commonly known as the culture war, forgetting that most people have more interests in common with one another than they do with these elite institutions that are vacuuming all of your resources into a centralised pool, and where their ability to prohibit that is being continually curtailed.
	In a quirk of fate, the day's drama took place as the rest of America marked the anniversary of the 6th of January attack on the Capitol.
	If the reality is that the movements and decisions that are made in Congress is ultimately determined by the expenditure of the lobbying industry and the financial interests of the people in Congress, which I would say is pretty clear that that's what's happening, why all the sanctimony and sentimentality?
	Oh no, January the 6th!
	Ta-da!
	Putting up a new board for Kevin McCarthy.
	Just leave up the old one for Nancy Pelosi!
	It's gonna be the same sort of deals that go on.
	Instead of Apple, it'll be Raytheon.
	Instead of Facebook, it'll be Lockheed Martin.
	Who cares?
	Who do you think is ultimately benefiting?
	How is your life going to be changed by what takes place?
	We've just heard how it truly functions.
	Oh January 6th, that was a terrible time.
	That's where we do some of our best corruption in there!
	Bridges, roads, levees, rail, port, electric grid, sewage treatment plants and drinking water infrastructures are structurally deficient and antiquated.
	Schools are in disrepair and lack sufficient teachers and staff.
	You sort of forget, don't you, that there are different ways to organise society.
	There is different ways to spend money.
	There are different ways of empowering communities and the individual.
	All this is forgotten in a giddy blur of too much information, so much propaganda, so much of this impossible discern that, oh, actually, yeah, you could probably break these budgets down, empower states and communities within that state, elect democratically, spend that money, allow people to culturally live however they want to, whether that's right-wing or left-wing or religious or irreligious or whatever.
	Unable to stem the Covid-19 pandemic, the for-profit healthcare industry forces families, including those with insurance, into bankruptcy.
	Domestic manufacturing, especially with the offshoring of jobs to China, Vietnam, Mexico and other nations that you're supposed to hate, collapses.
	Families are drowning in personal debt, with 63% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck.
	These are all issues that could be altered and resolved in a true democracy.
	There isn't nothing you can do about that.
	There's a clear process of the extraction of wealth taking place and we just have to be distracted from that with bombast and bludgeoning and terrifying information and an inability to critically think.
	Seymour Mellman, who coined the term permanent war economy, noted that since the end of the Second World War, the federal government has spent more than half its discretionary budget on past, current and future military operations.
	Half of all of its money.
	So half of it goes on everything else and half of it goes on war.
	But we're not in a war.
	Yeah, but what about past wars?
	And we are in a little war.
	And what about future war?
	What is this?
	Christmas carol?
	It is the largest single sustaining activity of the government.
	Right, that is the business of government.
	The military-industrial establishment is nothing more than gilded corporate welfare.
	Military systems are sold before they're produced.
	Military industries are permitted to charge the federal government for huge cost overruns.
	Massive profits are guaranteed.
	For example, this November, the army awarded Raytheon Technologies a loan, more than $2 billion in contracts, on top of over $190 million awarded in August to deliver missile systems to expand or replenish weapons sent to Ukraine.
	You better believe that war's important, baby.
	You better believe that Putin's evil and that Zelensky's like, might as well be Joey from Friends.
	Because if you try and look for any more complexity than that, you might start thinking, could you build us a school or something?
	Or at least half a school?
	No.
	You can have none of a school and two weapons systems.
	Despite a depressed market for most other businesses, stock prices of Lockheed and Northrop Grumman have risen by more than 36% and 50% this year.
	I wonder if any people in Congress have invested in them?
	Tech giants including Amazon, which supplies surveillance and facial recognition software to the police and FBI, have been absorbed into the permanent war economy.
	Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle were awarded multi-billion dollar cloud computing contracts for the joint warfighting cloud capability and are eligible to receive nine billion dollars in Pentagon contracts to provide the military with globally available cloud services across all security domains and classification levels from the strategic level to the tactical edge through mid-2028.
	So we know roughly when that war will end.
	Foreign aid is given to countries that require foreign governments to buy weapons systems from the US.
	The US public funds the research, development and building of the weapons systems and purchases them for foreign governments.
	Such a circular system mocks the idea of a free market economy.
	You pay for it!
	And you develop it.
	But when it comes to the profit, that's the bit where it disappears.
	You're with it all the way.
	So we're going to be developing some missiles.
	Oh god, that's good.
	That's fascinating.
	And now we're going to be selling those missiles.
	Oh, great.
	Good luck.
	And now we're going to be dropping those missiles on, broadly speaking, innocent people.
	Oh, nice.
	Nice work.
	Great.
	And, uh, did you make any money on that?
	Mind your own fucking goddamn business!
	These weapons soon become obsolete and are replaced by updated and usually more costly weapons systems.
	So even if they don't use them, they have to update them like an iPhone.
	I don't think people care whether the bomb that was dropped on them was obsolete.
	Oh my God!
	That's like an iPhone 3!
	This is barely gonna hurt at all!
	It is, in economic terms, a dead end.
	It sustains nothing but the permanent war economy.
	So I suppose all you have to do is look at who benefits from this situation, and then that's who's determining the situation.
	What we're told is, this is inevitable and unavoidable, there's all this evil going on, and then, oh, what a convenient side effect of this terrible pandemic, war, or whatever, is that these people are making loads of money.
	Yeah, I know, it's a shame and a weird coincidence, isn't it?
	And to point that out is, of course, a conspiracy.
	In 2014, the US backed a coup in Ukraine that installed a government that included neo-Nazis and was antagonistic to Russia.
	The coup triggered a civil war when the ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, the Donbass, sought to secede from the country, resulting in over 14,000 people dead and nearly 150,000 people displaced before Russia invaded in February.
	The Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to Jacques Balde, a former NATO Secretary Advisor who also worked for Swiss intelligence, was instigated by the escalation of Ukraine's war on the Donbass.
	It also followed the Biden administration's rejection of proposals sent by the Kremlin in late 2021, which might have averted Russia's invasion the following year.
	So I don't think anyone is saying that Putin is anything other than a warlord, a tyrant, a dictator.
	I don't think anyone's saying that wouldn't it be great to live in Russia or that the Ukrainian people's suffering isn't real and horrific.
	Just pointing out that there's all of this profiteering and there's all of this agitation.
	And why aren't the mainstream media telling you?
	Let me know in the chat.
	Let me know in the comments why you think that might be.
	The invasion has led to widespread US and EU sanctions on Russia, which have boomeranged onto Europe.
	Inflation ravages Europe with the sharp curtailment of shipments of Russian oil and gas.
	Industry, especially in Germany, is crippled.
	In most of Europe, it's a winter of shortages, spiralling prices, and misery.
	One might imagine when they were coming up with this strategy that extracts all of these public tax dollars from American people, puts them in the hands of private industry, that a likely outcome would be sanctions between Russia and Europe.
	And of course, it would be quite quick to calculate that, well, that's not really going to Affect us much, is it?
	Because I'm not impoverished and living in Europe unable to pay a gas bill.
	When you have a stratified society where the most powerful people are not affected by the consequences of their actions, you are going to get actions that are negative to ordinary people.
	That is what democracy is supposed to prevent.
	But when you have a democracy that is already sewn up and stitched up by lobbying and vested interests and a convergence of interests, even where there isn't conspiracy, what you're going to end up with is one strata of society that's doing incredibly well and hundreds of millions of people that are suffering Does that sound familiar?
	But that's just what I think.
	Let me know what you think in the chat and the comments.
	I'll see you in a minute.
	Thanks for staying with us.
	Thanks for joining us on Stay Free with Russell Brand.
	I'm really excited about the next guest, Gareth, because along with Barry Weiss and Matt Taibbi, Elon Musk's chosen journalist, See where I'm going?
	I do.
	He is one of the, what I'm calling, the free musketeers.
	As a pun, I've made it up myself.
	Free musketeers.
	It's Michael Schellenberger.
	Journalist, author, significant writer and free thinker.
	Michael, thank you so much for joining us.
	We're so excited to have you.
	Great to be with you.
	You're lovely.
	Now, first of all, Michael, I've got an important question.
	If Donald Trump can be kicked off Twitter, I suppose it's an acknowledgement that his power came from this direct contact with, like, his audience, the public, the electorate.
	If it's possible to do that, what level of power does that indicate that social media companies like Twitter have?
	And having seen the operative footprint of that power, what can you deduce, mate?
	Yeah, I mean, the short answer is too much power.
	I mean, I think you obviously I was listening to your show and you're talking about the power that YouTube has in terms of censoring often accurate information.
	We've seen this across different social media platforms.
	You may have seen that.
	In fact, one of the state attorneys general in the United States from Missouri just published an email a couple of days ago.
	That is from a Facebook executive to the White House saying that they are censoring accurate information about COVID because they're worried that it will be misleading.
	So we're seeing an absolute abuse of power, an absolute abuse of freedom of speech.
	We saw behaviors by FBI agents that were chilling.
	I mean, just to open these emails, Russell, and to read the kind of exchanges between the White House And supposedly an independent corporation and seeing the behaviors and the ways in which these behaviors changed over time and the way that these Twitter executives basically got with the FBI program.
	And you saw him kind of getting worn away.
	We also saw FBI deciding.
	I'm sorry.
	We also saw Twitter executives changing their policy and deciding to take money from the FBI three million dollars.
	And this is a source of some controversy and some misinformation, but basically.
	It's true that there is a law that allows social media companies to take money from FBI if they're working with FBI in a criminal investigation, but there was some apparent awareness within Twitter that this creates a conflict of interest.
	So, the fact that the FBI is paying you to help them to maybe catch bad guys.
	That I think we would all agree should be caught.
	It also creates, I think, a conflict of interest for Twitter executives when working on FBI around requests that don't have anything to do with the criminal investigation and are, in fact, potential infringements on our freedom of speech.
	I suppose primarily what these revelations have illustrated is just how close the connections between the deep state and social media organizations are.
	And during the The argument that was offered prior at least to Musk's tenure is that this is a private organization, they're allowed to have whatever policy they want, but it seems that they were being to an astonishing and as you say chilling degree being directed by deep state interests and I suppose one can only assume that elsewhere in the social media space and even in the mainstream media
	comparable directives are being issued. Does that mean, Michael, that we live in a kind of curated reality?
	And when we sort of other the Chinese internet as this sort of heavily censored space,
	we're being quite naive and perhaps ourselves live in a comparable reality.
	Yes. Well, there's a lot there that you said, and there's a lot to unpack here.
	But I mean, I think that, so first of all, when you see the relationship where people are working at the FBI in senior roles, including the Deputy Chief of Staff, which is a very powerful position, and the Chief Legal Counsel, the top lawyer at the FBI, these are two very senior, powerful positions, reporting to the Director or to the Chief of Staff.
	Then going to Twitter the same month, June of 2020, Knowing that FBI has had the Hunter Biden laptop since December 2019, so for a full seven months, FBI was spying on Rudy Giuliani, including at the moment that he gave the Hunter Biden laptop
	First of all, when he acquired the Hunter Biden laptop, and then when he gave it to the New York Post, and then you see these former FBI officials inside of Twitter demanding that the New York Post story about the Hunter Biden laptop be censored.
	That's highly suspicious behavior.
	I don't have proof that there was a conspiracy, meaning an organized secret effort by the FBI and former FBI Agents and executives.
	I don't have that proof, but we do have evidence of a series of extremely troubling behaviors.
	And it's because we brought those behaviors and that pattern to light through the Twitter files that the U.S.
	Congress yesterday just voted to open up a special subcommittee to investigate The so-called weaponization of federal government agencies.
	It's the front page of the New York Times, a big story here.
	This is very serious.
	This is we are potentially looking at what could be criminal activity by FBI agents and officials, both inside the government and potentially outside the government.
	So this is not a kind of this is not just about like people at Twitter being biased.
	We had that already.
	This is about a serious A serious potential criminal activities and abuse of power by our highest law enforcement agency in the United States and doing so in a way that absolutely if these charges of this, this pattern is what it looks like.
	Not only is it depriving Americans freedom of speech.
	And restricting our choices, it's also potentially interfering in the election, which is, you can imagine is 1 of the most serious crimes in the United States.
	Yes, it would appear that that would be an extraordinary revelation and it seems, Michael, given the nature of what we have learned in no small degree due to your reporting, that it would be naive to foreclose on the possibility of even more sensational truths becoming apparent.
	Do you think, Michael, that the way that the information age has altered our ability to communicate and convey data and potentially organise has meant that there's had to be a radical escalation in censorship and demonisation of dissenting voices and it's inevitably led to a kind of clumsiness and overreach?
	Yes.
	I mean, I think that yesterday I published an article that's an interview with, I think, one of the best thinkers on this named Martin Goury, who wrote a book called The Revolt of the Public.
	Martin is a former top CIA media analyst, and what he argues is that basically the internet allows anybody, it allows you and me, To freely speak our minds at length, produce evidence.
	And we're not constricted by just the major TV stations or newspapers that the Internet has really changed everything in terms.
	And so that what you're seeing is a backlash by the elite against these new freedoms that were allowed for by this technological revolution of the Internet in general and by social media in particular.
	Which just kind of radicalizes what was already pretty amazing with websites and emails turn radicalizes it with YouTube and Twitter and other social media.
	So, for sure, you're seeing an effort by elites to basically put the genie back in the bottle to try to get the kind of control over the news media that they have taken for granted in a lot of ways.
	I mean, that was part of what.
	I haven't really said yet, but basically we also discovered a real manipulation of journalists at the New York Times, Washington Post, other organizations through something called the Aspen Institute, which is like the it's like the original Davos of the United States.
	I mean, it's it's in Aspen and it's basically except for they do during the summer, but it's basically they did a workshop to kind of.
	If I'm being nice about it, to educate journalists about the potential of a Russian hack and leak operation, maybe less generously an effort to brainwash journalists into seeing a future story about the Hunter Biden laptop, As a result of Russian disinformation, as opposed to what it was, which was just a very, apparently an intoxicated Hunter Biden dropping off two waterlogged laptops at a computer repair store in Delaware.
	That's the basic understanding by everybody at this point.
	And yet the news media, when it came out, all covered it as though it was a result of Russian disinformation.
	And then of course, a few days later, you had all these former intelligence officials saying it was probably Russian disinformation.
	And that persuaded a lot of people, including I should say myself, my family, every progressive I know, at the time thought that the Hunter Biden laptop was fake, that it was a result of Russian disinformation.
	And in fact, so that's why the censorship Was part of the story, but the censorship of the laptop ended, but the perception that it was the result of Russian disinformation remained.
	And I think, honestly, if we were, I think when you survey the public, a significant percentage of people still believe that that's actually false.
	That is actual disinformation.
	And I think the only question now is, did that disinformation originate from within the FBI?
	Bloody hell, Michael.
	That's so sort of malignant and sort of desperately cunning.
	I'm astonished to contemplate it.
	As you said before, it was evident that there were biases within social media platforms that did a significant amount of the curation basically automatically.
	But what you have just suggested for me is, as that claim is to Chomsky's observation that even by the time you arrive in a mainstream media organisation, you've already been funnelled into that position.
	The idea that it's been more weaponised, that people have been coached, teased, presented with cues, much in the manner that you would associate with a hypnotic trick.
	But you prepare people, you groom people to understand reality in a particular way, so that once the information appears, you've already made the deductions in advance.
	This subject of misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, it's become quite...
	Complex set of prefixes now.
	I understand is to be one of the key subjects of the forthcoming WF.
	It starts on Monday.
	We're very excited.
	We're doing the WF Royal Rumble special for three hours.
	We're doing the best of Klaus Schwab.
	I'd like you to join us.
	As a matter of fact, if you're available, Michael, we're going to do it.
	Will you?
	Good.
	Because I like to watch Davos with friends.
	I see it a bit like the Superbowl or even Christmas as a time for people to come together in mutual joy and tolerance, love and understanding.
	What I'm, I suppose what I'm asking is, do you imagine in the way that you just described that there was that sort of educational Aspen event that the WF perhaps functions in a similar way, set in the agenda Yeah, offering opportunities for people to collaborate.
	Because I want to say this a bit more conversationally.
	Like, we're not allowed to say certain stuff that we've said in this show on YouTube.
	And I thought you're allowed to be wrong.
	It's like, what's the big deal?
	Even if you're like, wrong, I just think this, is this possible?
	Like, this level of censorship is terrifying, the way that it's emerging.
	So, you know, like, what do you imagine we're likely to see at WAF and Davos?
	And what are the worst things about the WAF and Davos that people aren't talking about and people don't fully understand yet?
	Well, this is very important.
	Exactly what you said.
	I mean, in other words, so on the one hand, we're actually seeing censorship of correct information, okay, by the social media platforms.
	And we now have email proof from Facebook saying that they censor accurate information for fear that it will be used the wrong way, meaning not to get the vaccine.
	But we've seen this on climate change.
	We've seen it on a whole set of other issues where accurate information is being censored.
	So, but you're right.
	Even if information is wrong, and there's so much wrong information out there, including by the mainstream news media, including on the Hunter Biden laptop we were just talking about, but also on COVID and so many other issues.
	On the other hand, though, you have this relentless propaganda from the WEF.
	Which, by the way, so what's going on at the Davos, I'm sure, as you know, is it's not only a place where they all get together to get on message in terms of the propaganda they want the public to accept, whether it's about covert or climate change or renewables or eating insects.
	It's also a place where they then are paying each other.
	So you basically get, if you're making insects that you want people to eat, or you're making renewable solar panels, and you want people to think they're okay even though they're being made by Uighur Muslims in concentration camps, or whatever it is that you're selling, you go and pay WEF to get on stage with World leaders.
	And so you basically get this public relations exercise where the newspapers that cover it are being paid by the same people who are a pain to go to Davos.
	They then all go and promote these products as though they're good.
	They're often bad products.
	And then they get heads of state to basically provide that third party validation form.
	And then what happens after the heads of state leave office, many of them go and work or take money in some way from those companies.
	So it's basically It's just a kind of festival of corruption and misinformation that occurs every year in plain sight that we're all supposed to applaud and say, oh, thank God for you saving the planet.
	So what did it tell us then, like, about, what can we glean from it by who is invited and who's not invited?
	Say someone like Greta Thunberg, who I think, like, she's a, like, righteous person and cares about important issues.
	If her voice can be platformed there, what does it indicate?
	Similarly, with something as controversial as the You know, the pandemic.
	If, like, you have, like, Albert Baller showcased in such an advantageous way at this event, what else, what might we assume about their intentions?
	I'm not suggesting Greta Gunfenberg is anything other than a well-intentioned idealist who cares about the planet.
	I'm talking specifically about the way that that voice is being used.
	Yeah, I mean, it's like I said, that basically they're going to go get, you know, a charismatic child or heads of state to sell solar panels made by people in concentration camps in China.
	That is a fact.
	And to use them to sell eating insects, which, you know, I've eaten insects before.
	I didn't care for them.
	But what's amazing is when you go to the WEF website, they are relentless in selling you that we should all be eating insects.
	You know, it's a little creepy and pushy.
	And of course, once you understand there's a commercial motivation behind it, and they're just trying to dress up these pretty terrible products with the kind of glittering propaganda that it's all about saving the planet, it's obviously a manipulation.
	So you have this relentless propaganda on the one hand from WEF, because people say, oh, it's a conspiracy theory.
	No, it's happening every year.
	They're shoving it down our throats.
	And on the other hand, this very concerted effort by elites to censor accurate information through social media and the news media.
	I suppose as well as the demonization of dissenters, the increase in censorship, another component appears to be the removal of nuanced discourse.
	It seems to have created a kind of Conversational reductivism.
	Why is this, Michael?
	Why are we unable, why can this system not sustain detailed discourse, opposition?
	Why is this escalating so quickly?
	Well, precisely because we're no longer constrained by soundbites.
	So we have people like you, we have Joe Rogan, you have a whole set of other folks who will do these regular, long-form podcasts and videocasts for hours at a time that allow for a nuanced conversation.
	So then the relentless propaganda You know, we all must use Chinese solar panels.
	We all must eat insects.
	That's a reaction also by the elites.
	It's a part of the revolts.
	It's the counter revolution by the elites to the revolt of the public enabled by the Internet.
	So it's exactly what you said.
	The insistence on reductionism.
	Everybody must get the VAX.
	You know, even if, like, you've had COVID or even if you don't, even if you're, you know, young or you don't want it, I mean, that sort of thing, or everyone must use solar panels made in China.
	I mean, this stuff, or eat insects, whatever it is, it's a reaction to people bringing more nuance and complexity and substantive discourse like you and Joe Rogan, people outside the elite channels.
	You're obviously a threat to a variety of very powerful financial interests.
	While I can see that this is a new kind of oddly sanitized authoritarianism, more akin to the dystopian depictions of Huxley than in Orwell, although there are in Orwell, you know, in the surveillance, the change of language, the forever war indicators.
	In terms of the aesthetic, it appears like it's a very sanitary dystopia that we're creating, at least in terms of its aesthetic.
	When people on the right refer to it as sort of communism, or even the left, I am confused because while I can see there's a lot of centralised power, it seems to be driven primarily by profit.
	How do you think we can describe what is happening better in order to create new alliances from people that appear to be increasingly being separated and polarised by the cultural war?
	Well, yeah, I mean, I don't, I don't think communism is a particularly accurate way to describe, you know, capitalist enterprises trying to sell Chinese solar panels and insects to large groups of people.
	I don't think that really describes it.
	It's certainly not post, not mid 20th century communism as we understood it.
	I think that a lot of the environmental stuff is just Malthusianism.
	It's really based on this idea that there's limited resources and that we all have to use less.
	Of course, only referring to the public, not to the people who fly their jets into Davos and eat caviar and find foods there, not insects.
	So I think that there's obvious.
	So there's this is really, I think, better understood as a problem of elites trying to retain control over a kind of global order that's rapidly going away.
	I mean, we are not in the post-war or the post-Cold War era anymore.
	I think that obviously, yeah, as you said, Orwell could not have imagined that we would be actually awash in information, and that's part of what creates this anxiety and even mania among the elites to try to control people, you know, whether it's through identity politics or environmentalism Or through covid that we're seeing elite anxiety manifest as a kind of new authoritarianism.
	I think the good news it's terrible to witness up close as we have and reading the Twitter files.
	I think the good news is there's no way they can win because the numbers are against them and.
	And the information ecosystem is just to it's just the cat's out of the bag at this point.
	But I do think it's going to be a constant struggle and a lot of chaos.
	I think what's exciting is that the traditional divides between right and left have been breaking down.
	And we're now seeing that the big divide is really between the elite and the public.
	Michael, we have to go now because the show has to end due to the constraints of what is regarded commonly as physical time.
	It's been so fantastic to speak with you.
	You can follow Michael at SchellenbergerMD on Twitter.
	You can read his work on Substack, which I recommend you do, and check out his best-selling book, Apocalypse Never.
	Michael, will you come and join us for our WEF Davos special if you're awake at that time?
	Yeah, I'd love to.
	What time is it?
	It's gonna be like three hours.
	We've been doing it for ages.
	It's called the Royal Rumble.
	We're gonna really get into it.
	Yeah, if it's after 6am pacific time.
	You can wear a dressing gown and everything.
	It'll be cute.
	Well, it's like a watch along.
	Russell, can I also say I'm a huge fan of your outspoken and your very personal story around recovery.
	That's another passion of mine.
	I wrote a book on addiction, homelessness, and crime called San Francisco.
	And we just literally a few days ago created a North American Coalition for Recovery from Homelessness and Addiction.
	And so at some other point, I would love to talk to you about what we need to do to deal with the addiction crisis, which is really ravaging the United States and other developed economies.
	All right.
	I'll help you with that.
	I'll get the producer that you were in touch with, I bet it was James, to send you my cell phone number and we can communicate and I'll help you in any way I can, which is my duty and my honor.
	Thank you.
	Thank you, Michael.
	Thanks for joining us.
	Thank you, Russell.
	See you in your underpants for our Davos special.
	Did I mention you have to in your underpants?
	Yeah, it's part of it.
	Hey, on the show tomorrow we've got Adam Andrzejewski from... Adam Andrzejewski.
	Adam Andrzejewski.
	Good.
	Yeah.
	Guess who's coming on tomorrow?
	You ain't gonna believe this.
	It's Adam Andrzejewski from Open The Books talking about America's public health secrets.
	That'll be good.
	Yeah, he's done some amazing work.
	We've got to get this geezer on.
	Martin, what's his name?
	He's come up me twice in 24 hours.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	We've got to get him on.
	Yep.
	And yeah, and on Friday, I've got an amazing conversation between me and Rick Rubin, which you're gonna love.
	Remember, if you're not a member of our Stay Free AF community yet, join it because you get first access, you get everything first, you get so much proximity to me, it'll probably make you feel a bit sick in the end.
	It does me.
	Well, Gareth doesn't feel very well, do you darling?
	What are you credited as today?
	Who knows?
	You're a lime green menace.
	That's what I know you as.
	Disruptor.
	Actually, that was a nice shot.
	Yeah, that's why they can't put me up on the monitor because I've just become spellbound.
	I'm surprised you're literally like a blue screen now.
	That's right.
	I don't like any contrast.
	I like to blend into the background.
	Always have to.
	I like to superimpose things.
	Like Delaware and stuff on you.
	All right, Gareth.
	Yes.
	All right, you lot.
	Thanks for being with us.
	We're doing another show tomorrow, aren't we?
	We certainly are.
	We'll be back then.
	Join us then, don't worry.
	We're always with you.
	We love you.
	Join us tomorrow, not for more of the same, but for more of the difference.
	Stay free till then.
	Love you.
	Bye.
	Many switching, switch on, switch off.

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