Russell chats to Dave Smith, an anti-war advocate, comedian and host of the Libertarian Podcast: ‘Part Of The Problem about the 20th anniversary of the Iraq war, the on-going war in Ukraine, Julian Assange and the motivating factors behind war.Find out more about Dave Smith - https://comicdavesmith.com/ Get My New Stand Up Special 'Brandemic' NOW https://rumble.com/v2d09w8-brandemic.htmlFor a bit more from us join our Stay Free Community here:https://russellbrand.locals.com/Come to my festival COMMUNITY - https://www.russellbrand.com/community-2023/NEW MERCH! https://stuff.russellbrand.com/
Thanks for joining me for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
If you're watching this on Rumble, you can see the whole show.
If you're watching it anywhere else, just the first 15 or 20 minutes is accessible till we have to yield to our pangs for free speech and be exclusively available on a platform that champions it.
In the news today, the US actively don't want a ceasefire.
All we're saying is give war a chance.
Does anyone Advocated for war.
Couldn't war be the answer?
And then we'll be talking later exclusively on Rumble about... No wonder they don't want to talk about that lab leak theory.
Perhaps because they carried on doing gain-of-function research during the pandemic.
Did you know that?
Let me know in the chat whether or not you were aware.
That during the pandemic, in London, where I live, where I take deep inhalations, where I could easily be infected, they were combining Covid variants.
We'll be talking about that in detail exclusively on Rumble in a minute.
That's why you should click on the link in the description.
Here's the news.
No, here's the effing news.
We'll be talking about how Tucker Carlson extraordinarily is the only person that openly admits to regretting the way that the war was reported on from a personal perspective, a bit of a mere culper, and is also one of the only mainstream media broadcasters that will house Julian Assange.
So even if you see Tucker Carlson At his worst, even if you have a very negative perspective of him, like say, I've heard people say he's racist and that he's unsympathetic towards vulnerable people.
How do we square that with, you know, you ain't getting any other mainstream show saying, what are we going to do about Julian Assange?
Or maybe I'm wrong.
Let me know because I'll watch those shows if there are any.
But firstly, Hunter Biden is suing the repair shop owner who worked on his laptop.
Accused him of trying to invade his privacy.
That's really interesting that that's what Hunter Biden has deduced.
Yeah, that's the solution.
That's my private laptop on there.
What was on there?
Just that, I don't know, we were accepting payments from Ukrainian energy firms, Chinese energy firms, some stuff about my private life, which I actually don't... I agree with him there.
That's no one else's business.
The big guy.
The big guy?
Who is that big guy?
Who knows?
And who's this little fella?
There's a whole host of characters on Hunter Biden's laptop and Hunter wants to keep them to himself.
Also, how much is he going to sue him for?
It's like a guy in a repair shop.
It's not like taking on Apple, is it?
Mr Biden, please.
We're just trying to make ends meet.
How often do people get their fucking laptop repaired?
Excuse my language.
Just generally speaking, people just get another one.
Maybe you replace a screen on your iPhone, you go to that place.
I know.
Could you replace the screen on my iPhone?
Yeah, of course.
What the hell's this?
Nothing!
Give that back!
I'll see you in court, my man!
With the money that he was making, allegedly is it?
I don't even think it is, from Burisma and those other companies, that he could have afforded multiple laptops.
The real problem here is not the man in the Delaware laptop shop.
It's a corrupt political system and it's keeping that story out of the news while it could potentially sway the outcome of an election.
A charge for which Donald Trump, I don't know, we don't know, is he being pursued in a white bronco even now?
Is Donald Trump in chains even as we speak?
We'll get regular updates on the status of Donald Trump but it is, you know, using campaign funds And how that might pertain to the outcome of an election is what turns it from a misdemeanor into a felony.
I'm an investigative journalist.
I know you are.
And a legal one.
I journal on all sorts of subjects.
Let's have a look at Hunter Biden.
He's saying that he don't have to open his kimono.
One thing that I don't have to do is sit here and open my kimono as it relates to how much money I make or make or did or didn't.
But it's all been reported.
I like the way that he says that.
A phrase that we all know.
Don't open your kimono.
Because the kimono is already only is halfway up the thigh.
Yes.
It's already alluding to something, isn't it?
It's a sexy garment.
Like with some of the things on that fella's laptop, the kimono is not the house coat he should have put himself in.
He should wear something, a onesie.
I don't have to unzip my onesie.
I don't have to flip open that hatch that they have on in cowboy films when they say you varmint and then they jump into their asses on fire for some reason and they get into the horse trough.
That bit?
Thank you, yeah.
I kind of know what you mean.
And they've got poppers on their ass.
Oh, yes.
You know that.
We know also that war is a good thing.
This is a literal Orwellian story where the US are preventing China from brokering a peace deal with Putin.
And also, it's not unprecedented because China are actually quite good, it turns out, at brokering peace deals.
Here it says, look, the White House says it opposes a ceasefire in Ukraine.
Even though Zelensky would be up for it because peace is surely that's the ultimate goal.
Peace rather than victory.
Victory feels like a real 20th century outcome to a 21st century situation.
But look at this.
Antony Blinken said the world must not be fooled by China's peace plan.
Yeah, you can't trust them or their crazy talk of peace.
Do you see now how advocating for peace is being framed as somehow duplicitous and potentially injurious?
How can that happen?
I was unaware until Gareth mentioned it as a result of his own research that China have precedent for brokering complex peace deals in the Middle East.
Not that one, sadly, but this one.
Have a listen.
Yeah, Saudi Arabia and Iran.
This was brokered earlier this month.
I actually didn't know they weren't getting on.
I've got to pay more attention to the news.
for seven years I think it's been going on and China has stepped in.
There's an agreement that's been signed in Beijing to re-establish diplomatic
relations. So it's not like China, I mean it does seem like they're doing stuff
and being effective about it. Of course we're not naive enough just about to
just assume that China are benevolent pacifiers traveling around the world
with no intention other than spreading the light of the Lord Buddha and Jesus
Christ's twinkling wonder because there'll be more Christians in China
than anywhere else in the world in a couple of years.
Did you know that?
Of course you didn't, because you've not spent time studying Christianity in the way that I have.
Generally speaking, even if China have their own worldview, their own agenda, which undoubtedly they do, if part of that agenda is brokering a peace deal, surely that's something that has to be considered.
Let us know in the chat and the comments if you agree with that.
The other worrying aspect of this, I suppose, is that if Zelensky has expressed openness to China's proposal, but it's been rejected by President Biden, Who is in charge of Ukraine and who is this war between?
I mean, we've said proxy war for a long time, but if it's got to the situation where Zelensky's like, yeah, I'm kind of up for this and Biden says no, what is going on?
Given that we've been continually told that this is not a proxy war, President Biden rejecting the peace deal is Is that what's happened? Can we look into this further? It
doesn't seem right. Is Biden in a position to reject peace deals for a war that he's not in,
that he's not involved in? The US involvement is measurable. It's something that we can
observe. Of course it can be financially observed because we know that there is aid continually
coming out of the United States in the form of packages from Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, etc.
And we'll get into that in a moment, because this peace deal may have a few obstacles before it's realised.
Because, you know, firstly, Biden is opposed to the peace deal, even though America are not involved in the world, other than just cheering from the sidelines.
But also, it seems that Putin is not a person who finds handshakes that easy.
I didn't know this right up until today.
I always saw Putin as a self-assured, empowered man, as an alpha leader, as testosterone-fueled.
Sure, I've seen the propaganda that he can't help crapping himself every half hour.
Of course, I would agree that the devastation wreaked upon Ukraine is disgusting, and particularly after we read that list of war crimes the other day, and the degree of suffering is...
Incomprehensible, actually, what's been going on.
Those war crimes that the US has equally committed.
The sad news is that every single war crime that Russia has committed in Ukraine, the United States have committed elsewhere since 1998.
We were disgusted to find that out and concerned, and that's why they can't cooperate with the ICC attempt to arrest Putin for war crimes.
But one thing that would make Putin Teflon in any attempt to arrest him is if the arrest Commenced with a handshake.
Sir, on good faith, I'd like to arrest you.
Put it there, my man!
Because Putin is a man who simply can't shake hands.
I've always been, myself, concerned about whether to go for the high five, the fist bump, the conventional handshake, that handshake.
I'm never really certain.
And then it's to what degree you shake a hand as well.
Whether to do it for a long while, whether to do a squeeze.
Exactly, a squeeze.
How hard you go in on it.
It should feel loving.
Do you remember when we met Tucker Carlson's brother?
Oh, how did he go?
He had the hardest handshake ever.
Buckley!
Buckley Carlson!
Unbelievable.
Buckley Carlson with his sort of piratical tan.
Buckley Carlson with a smuggler's glint in his eye.
Wasn't he?
Buckley Carlson!
He's the naughtier of the Carlson brothers.
The people that don't like Tucker Carlson...
God help them if they meet Buckley.
That cad, he's a rapscallion, isn't he?
Absolutely.
Sort of like wavy hair, he looks like he's from another time altogether.
I think within seconds of meeting us, he's like, you got a gun?
No, are we going to need one?
You sure are, buddy.
Buckley Carlson, Buckley Carlson.
Lovely man.
Actually, lovely man.
Lovely.
Don't speak out of turn about our meeting with the Carlsons for our attempt to bring together new alliances because we're politically astute people and we realise that you can't use the labels of left and right anymore.
You have to look at it as centre and periphery, as I learned from Martin Gury, a man who I reference more often than my actual children.
Let's have a look at Putin failing to shake hands again and again and again to a level that's I don't know, he's worrying really.
I think they might actually be setting up with him.
Let's have a look.
That's all right, that could easily happen.
I think what his problem is mostly is he don't time handshakes well.
Try and look at this.
Is it a lack of confidence?
Is it simply the issue of timing?
I've never thought of Putin as being an impeachable guy, like as in nervous.
Whenever you see him and he's like practicing doing missile launches and that, or like in that helicopter.
That's right.
He always looks pretty like, I don't care.
You know that he's in the KGB.
My assumption is that he's actually literally therefore killed people himself.
I don't know, cause I'm sure within the KGB, they're probably job sweepers.
I don't think it's a wild speculation.
Not wild.
Certainly he's, I mean, he's a war criminal.
Like at least that's what the ICC is saying.
Certainly he's like making choices that lead to the death of children.
But maybe even with those hands that he can't seem to shake on cue,
he might've actually throttled.
I don't know how the KGB do their murders.
There was that umbrella murder they did over in our country in Salisbury of all places, little poison murder.
And you know, they do proper spy murders.
Yeah, they were very sneaky those ones.
Sneaky murders.
You could imagine him doing it like he's wrestling a bear or something.
He would take his top off and he'd murder you.
Like you'd be asleep in your bed.
You'd get nudged like that on the shoulder.
You know, huh, what's this?
And then it's Putin, focus out.
I've come to kill you.
But then just grab the pillow, start throttling.
That's my wife!
That's not a woman, that's my wife!
Oh, sorry, you!
No!
No!
That's my special orthopedic neck pillow!
That's why he probably had to leave the KGB.
Right.
Them shaky hands of him.
He is not a man that could work for Jim Henson.
You can't have Putin operating Kermit.
Putin's puppets?
No.
Putin's puppets?
Hey, come on, man!
I don't want to reveal that my Jordan Peterson impression comes from a Kermit impression, so I'm going to stop right there and have a look at Putin bungling social norms.
What's he doing there?
He's really keen to get back into that, isn't he?
Yeah.
Because there was a bit where he seems to suggest maybe we'll just do a thumbs up instead.
Take it back a bit.
Go back a little bit, because he did do that.
He tries to... He starts off, handshake.
Then I think I see fist bump.
Then I see thumbs up.
Back to handshake.
It's like he's rock, paper, scissor in this poor guy.
Okay, so let's have a look.
Who is this dude?
And then he just tries to pretend he's going in.
Oh, I just went in there.
Say someone, say you're, look, I don't know how good your eyesight is, Gareth, I've never asked.
It's not that great.
So, you're arriving at something, and there's some people, maybe someone goes like that, but they're across a room.
Right.
Like, do you double check it's you?
Yeah, no, I tend to just whisper.
You just respond.
Yeah, I'm just happy.
I can't take the shame.
I'm happy someone may be communicating with me.
Like, if I go like that.
Yeah.
And then I sort of look over my shoulder, and it's someone else.
I just think, oh no, I've really just wasted this wave.
No, I just, I commit to the wave.
Just wait.
There's a beaming smile.
You and Putin are a disaster waiting to happen.
We are, absolutely.
Like when my mate shook hands with Eminem, he said that I've told you this before, that other people did that.
Eminem wants that handshake.
He wants that one, you know?
Obviously.
My mate said that the other people there all did that one, letting Eminem lead the way, but then he forced Eminem out of that one into that one.
He wasn't saying that like he was on IARD.
He was saying... I don't know why he did it.
He forced a British handshake on Eminem.
Yeah sure.
It was a very English way of handling it.
Let's see, now this one is just bad timing.
Here Putin goes for, well the problem is, was he Kim Jong Il?
Kim Jong Un, as we've already established, he does not focus on what he's doing, in my part.
Limited facial expressions as well.
There's so many powerful, these people.
These are the world's most powerful people.
They're either atrophying, cadaverous presidents of the United States who can't remember the sentence they started by the time they're six words in.
They're Putin, who can't carry out a normal social interaction like a handshake.
There's Kim Jong-un, who, like, what I will credit him with is he's switched off from reality, isn't he?
Like, he's in bliss.
This is Kim Jong-un.
I don't even know if I can do that face.
I've never been that relaxed in my life.
You're jealous of him, aren't you?
There's a point, somewhere in an orgasm, or somewhere at the absolute high point of a poo, where I'd like...
Oh, it's worth staying alive for a split second!
If this could last forever!
I could do a couple more years of this crap.
But mostly, I'm agitated with just the grind of reality.
I mean, have we ruled out that he needs a poo a lot?
He looks constipated in his own way.
He looks like he's given into it, doesn't he?
I mean, I hope these are not cultural issues that North Koreans have.
No, let's hope not.
I mean, we'll look weird.
Anyway, let's see.
So this is when an immovable object meets an irresistible force or whatever the hell it is.
Because Putin and Kim Jong... I mean, God knows what happens if they try to make love.
If this is a handshake, imagine the complexity of inverted oral activity, for example.
Shall we imagine it?
Yes.
Let's all do that as a society together.
Have you ever felt happier than holding that image in your mind?
Why not do that?
It would be better, like we're disgusted aren't we by that, but it would be better that they did that if world leaders were put in a room and said make love with each other until you come up with a viable solution to this endless war.
Biden, go on, you had it in the day.
You get in a room with Putin and the pair of yours says now you should click over and watch on Rumble.
We haven't got any images of this stuff.
I forgot we're on YouTube!
Is that alright so far?
How bad has it been?
If you're watching this on YouTube we're going to click over in a minute.
Remember we're going to talk about how gain of function, not actually gain of function, how amalgamations of variants within the coronavirus We're being irresponsibly amalgamated in City of London, right in the very midst of the pandemic.
What are you going for?
Are you going to Jack the Ripper?
I thought you were going to go into Jack the Ripper territory.
Alright, me staff!
That sort of stuff.
Fetish and pathogens!
Here, come this way, Pearly Pole!
In Old White Chettle!
He shouldn't be trivialised, he was a murderer.
Absolutely.
A murderer and a sex criminal.
Yeah, they do tours for him.
I know!
Little tours around East London.
It's scary, I used to live in East London, I'd see those tours going by.
Very unnerving.
Yes.
That's where he done those murders of innocent women.
That shouldn't really be celebrated, but there you go.
The British have always been a strange breed.
Well, we gave Obama a Peace Prize, so...
You could have a peace prize and you could have a musical!
Like Sweeney Todd.
I think Sweeney Todd was real.
Right.
I don't know.
Let's not get too bogged down in it because I'm still chomping to see... I wasn't suggesting Obama did those kind of things, by the way.
No, you said he's a war criminal.
Right.
In fact, you didn't even say that.
No.
The facts say that because he participated in the bombing in the Yemen that's led to 400,000 civilian deaths.
Right.
Let's have a look at this handshake.
It's just a game.
Come on.
Now look at his face. He's ready.
Look at this, he's ready.
Now, that's out of order.
Is Putin not regarded with much respect in Russia?
Have we just got it all wrong?
Is their propaganda that good that actually the rest of the world?
Oh no, oh no.
Here it comes.
This is your big moment, Vladimir.
Why don't we go for the fist bump?
Oh man.
Maybe I'll try a thumb wrestle with this fella.
He's like Frank Spencer.
No, I'm not doing that.
But anyway, Biden, who's nothing to do with that war as far as we can understand, blocking a peace deal surely is not connected to this.
The US has announced a $350 million weapons package For Ukraine.
Again, obviously, Ukraine will have the right to protect themselves and all of that.
But a peace deal would be better, I think.
$350 million including ammunition for the HIMARS rocket launchers, artillery rounds, high speed.
It just looks like a bunch of dangerous stuff.
Anyway, it's profitable stuff.
And they're being pulled from the $45 billion aid bill Congress passed in December.
And aren't we hearing that they want more and they don't think it's enough?
Yes.
I think Hillary Clinton said it recently as well.
She wants to pipe down.
Don't you?
Every time she says anything, you think, oh, come on, mate.
Well, you know, she's still in Congress.
Oh, no, she's not.
It's just a hobby.
It's just a simple hobby of hers to get stuck in and get involved.
Like good old Tony Blair as well.
What I'd like to know is, it's 20 years since the Iraq War.
Yeah, speaking of Tony Blair.
Let's celebrate that, the Iraq War, right?
It's weird now that wars have anniversaries, don't you think?
It is a bit.
Like, you know, is it, you know how, like, you maybe get paper or wood or ruby or diamond or those type of ones.
Like, now wars have anniversaries.
We all saw Joe Biden have a lovely celebration of one year.
He did that night in Pol- One night only!
Joe Biden in Poland.
Ooh, one night in Poland!
Too much?
I don't know, it's about the right amount.
But it's 20 years since the Iraq War.
Here's some terrifying facts about the Iraq War before presenting to you Julian Assange's long-cherished edict that the function of war is to funnel money from you, the taxpayer, and us, the public, to private interests.
So, during the Iraq War, in the last 20 years, money spent on weapons has doubled to nearly $2 trillion a year.
Blimey.
In 2020 alone, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman... Ay-up!
...accounted for nearly a third... Ay-up!
We're in a weapons game!
If you're English, you'd know that Northrop Grumman sounds like a Yorkshireman who's, like, selling weapons as part of... He's a bit part clown or creatures great and small.
It sounds like a place I would have worked as a teenager.
Right, come here.
You're an apprenticeship at Northrup Grumman.
Get in, son.
Right, we're selling these telescope lenses.
They're perfectly ethical.
But tell you what, where we turn a pretty penny, and you know how a Yorkshireman likes to earn a pound-notch, is these missiles.
Now, if we can sustain war here at Northrup Grumman, well, I'll get thee, Raytheon.
I'll get thee, Bowen.
Yeah, that's right.
Yorkshire people use thee and thou.
They kept hold of that pronoun for reasons that none of us, not even them, fully understand.
And you are them, aren't you?
I am.
I don't understand.
Why thee?
Why thou?
Why?
Why indeed?
Anyway, look, Northrop Grumman accounted for nearly a third of the $480 billion obligated by the Pentagon to defence contractors.
It's estimated nearly, well he just made loads of money, you know that already.
Halliburton, Halliburton were the black rock of their day.
See, obviously, the reason we're talking about Iraq is we're saying that these wars are still happening.
And while you might say, no, no, no, it's a necessary war.
Putin's a monster.
Have you seen that guy try and shake hands?
All of that stuff valid and true.
You have to acknowledge also that the Iraq war was not a popular war at the time.
It was a war in all good, on a lie, on a deception.
The deception being, of course, that there were weapons of mass destruction.
Millions of people protested in the street.
It was a pivotal moment in our history.
You should look at our conversation with Glenn Greenwald that we had a couple of days ago.
He gives a beautiful description how the events of 2003 and the events of 2008 still define the world that we are living in.
Perhaps, you know, like I suppose since 9-11 it's been a surveillance state.
Only thanks to figures like Julian Assange and his bravery are we even aware of many of the atrocities that took place in that war and that's of course why he's in Belmarsh prison to this day without Ever having had a trial.
It doesn't seem right that someone's in a maximum security prison without a trial.
Is that how we do business?
Apparently it is.
Halliburton in 2009, it was the world's second largest oilfield service company.
What's all this?
You know, they've made a lot of money.
Halliburton made a lot of money.
And I remember reading about Clinton, Hillary Clinton, this was and in terms of that quote that we saw of her recently post Iraq, where she spoke about Iraq as a business opportunity for American interests.
She did literally a speech where she was talking about it as a business interest.
And then you discovered the people who made a lot of money out of it.
Some were, you know, weapons manufacturers, others were energy companies, all incredibly donated to the Hillary Clinton Foundation.
So there you go.
Click over right now.
If you're watching this on YouTube, we're going to tell you about Landon Tan and their ludicrous experimentations that went on even at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
And we are going to give you some unique insights into the life of Hillary Clinton directly from Alex Jones.
So click over, right now, if you want to hear them.
I've just been talking to Alex Jones.
Click over!
You won't hear them on YouTube.
I won't say them there.
All right.
Join us on Rumble, where we can speak freely, damn it.
So, listen, I'm not going to say that, Alex Jones.
No, I'm not actually doing that.
That's just a joke.
I was mucking around.
Like, we've not spoke to Alex Jones for a long time.
That was clickbait is what you just did there.
I baited you there to click that.
But we are going to tell you some stuff about gain of function.
And the other thing I want to talk about on the anniversary of the Iraq war, Gareth.
Yes.
It's like that Tony Blair, who sort of grinned his way through that Iraq war.
Certainly did.
He's wringing his hands, smiling his artist.
Yeah, I remember seeing him and George Bush with their hands in their little jackets, walking up the, you know, when he went to see.
War jackets, like camo.
Yeah, like that.
Do you know, I don't think politicians should be allowed to do that, unless they have been in the army, like Churchill.
Right, like we saw Rishi Sunak recently.
They love it!
They got such little stiffies for Zelensky in his khaki jumper, don't they?
Look at Zelensky!
Vladimir!
You know, like Trudeau.
Oh Vladimir, can you borrow me that Cub Scout hoodie?
They're so into it, aren't they?
Yeah, exactly.
Blair is worth $60 million now.
That does not surprise me.
I'll give you all of that posturing.
And the rest.
Yeah, probably more.
He's got one of those bloody philanthropic associations that doesn't pay taxes and accumulates money.
That's allegedly.
I'm just making it up.
It really is.
You do the... Come on, it's plain as day that he will have.
Shall we have a look now?
Now that you've joined us over here and we're unable to feed you any Alex Jones-style information about the private business of Hillary Clinton, which, frankly, I don't mind about.
In fact, I have no personal dislike of any member of Any family, anywhere.
Just what I feel like they are good at helping us understand is how politics functions, how there's sort of aristocracies within various political parties in the United States of America, that they're undemocratic, that it's pretty well understood now that within the Democratic Party they scuppered the campaign of Bernie Sanders because they wouldn't be able to stay true to their paymasters if Bernie got elected.
And I know loads of you don't like Bernie because you think he's got too many houses or stuff like that.
And I did hear when I was on Bill Maher the other day, there was a bit where he goes, you know, no, you've got to have centralised forces.
And I thought, hang on, what's that all about?
Yeah, I think.
Yeah.
I mean, could that be a centralised response that is positive and democratic rather than unelected bodies like the WHO, WEF, all that kind of stuff.
All I think about Bernie Sanders, he's got a hell of a lot better policies than, for example, Hillary Clinton.
You wouldn't argue with that, would you?
Let us know in the chat.
Let us know in the comments.
And while you're thinking about, you know, moving around deck chairs on the Titanic with different political figures within established political movements that are funded in exactly the same way, we'll tell you this.
I can't believe this is true.
And tell me if you can believe it.
Right in the middle of that pandemic, when we were concerned about how it came about, how it was going to end, what the proper response was, whether people were being honest about vaccine medications and the consequences of them, In London, where the Queen was living at that time.
It's not what took her, is it?
What's that?
It's not what took her from us.
We cannot know for certain!
Risky research, down the road.
Allegedly.
Risky research while there's a vulnerable old lady, rich, absolutely minted, her face all over the cash, poor cow.
Allegedly.
It's out of order.
You shouldn't, if you love her... Was the allegedly for poor cow?
Just in case.
Allegedly.
People don't maybe think it's rude.
Look at this, how brash... I should just say sorry.
Sorry about that, mate.
Don't lie!
F**k it!
There's a whole host of things on here.
Chainer.
Okay.
I would feel physically sick.
That's what I'd feel if I found out Her Majesty the Queen was compromised because of these experiments.
Well, look, while they were naysaying the potential for that lab leak coming out of Wuhan, Quibbling that it would be of natural origin regardless if it went via a bloody lab with the newly emergent raccoon dog magic bullet theory, courtesy of Anthony Fauci.
Did you know that they were carrying on with what I'm going to refer to obliquely as scientific skullduggery in London?
British experiments risk making the COVID pandemic more lethal.
You shouldn't be doing any experiments where there's even the slightest risk Of making it more lethal.
You wouldn't think so.
We're in the throes of the pandemic.
We're in the throes of one.
Right?
We're all taking it so serious.
Do you remember that?
Can't go out, gotta wear a mask, all of that stuff.
It was so annoying.
Because also, like, gain of function is controversial and always has been.
Like, scientifically, it has been controversial and divided opinion.
You think the one time where you might go, do you know what?
We probably don't need any more of the kind of controversy at the moment.
Should we just stop doing gain of function, especially on this, during this time?
You coward!
Come on!
Why did you get into the Covid game?
What is their trouble, even?
What's the best possible outcome?
Sometimes I don't understand where it is we're progressing to at such pace.
I do.
It's a dystopian, centralised, authoritarian nightmare.
And another thing that came out of the conversation with Glenn Greenwald is that oligarchs just a century ago Greenwald charmingly described would toss dollar bills from their passing limousine in an attempt to curry favour with the great unwashed in post-Dust Bowl America.
But now you're oligarchs!
My God, the way they carry on!
It's like they've doubled down.
They've realised we don't have to appease these people.
We've got robots now.
We can kill them if we want to.
Yeah, we've got connections with the government, we've got connections with social media companies, we can basically rewrite the narrative.
Stay free with Russell Brand.
See it first on Rumble.
Thank you for those comments.
Whipsnade says, Russell, I don't know how you do it, how you've ever done it, how you continue to do it, but just carry on doing it.
Whereas Brentford Safari says, I've had enough of you, son.
You're starting to wind me up now.
And then look at this, little old gypsy boy.
Gareth Roy, what's going on with you, son?
I've had just about enough of it.
You made me taste sick in my mouth.
What's going on with these comments?
Who knows?
Who knows who these people are, how they operate?
You let me know in the chat and the comments.
Sometimes I worry about you guys.
I'm trying to just shine love out of my heart into your hearts.
Now, Julian Assange, we told you about Julian Assange believes that the function of government is to filter public money into the hands of private organisations.
We're going to have a look at Julian saying that, and then we're going to talk to our guest Dave Smith, who's an advocate for anti-war and host of the Part of the Problem podcast, who will, I believe, strongly agree with that metric, because he believes in as little government as possible, being, as I understand, a libertarian.
Check out Assange saying that.
Because the goal is not to completely subjugate Afghanistan.
The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the United States, out of the tax bases of European countries, through Afghanistan, and back into the hands of a transnational security alliance.
That is the goal, i.e.
the goal is to have an endless war, not a successful war.
Endless war.
Julian Assange, you can see why he's banged up in Belmarsh, because what he's doing is spitting facts and providing evidence.
Today, we've been talking about war a lot because it's the anniversary of the Iraq War.
Happy anniversary, Iraq War!
How do you do it?
And one year now of the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia, all the terrible deaths incurred, particularly, you know, Ukraine, who are obviously under attack.
And there is an ongoing war in Syria.
We're talking to Dave Smith today on the subject of war.
Dave, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm a huge fan.
Oh, that's so kind of you to say.
Dave, what do you think about Julian Assange's maxim there and how applicable it continues to be even in conflicts like this current one?
Well, I mean, there's no, it's not really debatable that he's correct.
I mean, factually, that's what happens.
I mean, people like so many special interests have been enriched over the last just 20 years of say the war on terrorism.
Every one of those bills to arm Ukraine ends up just being cash in the pockets of weapons manufacturers or the CIA budget increasing.
I don't know.
It's like with the COVID stuff.
I don't know if that's the only motivating factor. I think sometimes they also wanted, you
know, they might also want to say tank Donald Trump's chances of getting re-elected, but
their pharmaceutical companies are also raking in profits. I think they did want to overthrow Saddam
Hussein for other reasons, but that's definitely part of it. Dave, with the ICC
announcing that it is their bizarre intention to arrest Vladimir Putin, a man who I don't
imagine would cooperate with an ordinary arrest. Although having seen him attempt to shake hands, I
can see that if you were to approach him from the front, he could be vulnerable.
What do you feel about the war in Syria and the bombing of Yemen, which indicts Biden, Trump and Obama all as war criminals to the same standard of Putin, the same standard by which Putin is being charged?
I mean, I think it far exceeds it if we're just being objective.
I mean, Ukraine is a catastrophe and Putin has a lot of responsibility for that, so he doesn't have all the responsibility.
But the humanitarian crisis in Yemen is objectively, if that's a catastrophe, this is a catastrophe times ten.
There's just way more people dying.
And it wasn't soldiers dying over the last eight years in Yemen, it was like babies starving to death and dying of cholera and stuff.
Yeah, look, there's a great video, I don't know if you've ever seen, where Noam Chomsky just breaks down the war crimes of every post-World War II president of the United States of America.
So, like, I'm fine if we want to indict war criminals, but let's get them all, you know?
And you see something like, if you look at Yemen particularly, you just see how much Like, the whole military-industrial complex, American empire establishment, they care about humanitarian issues when it's convenient.
You don't see every day in the corporate press people talking about the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, or in Palestine, or in Syria, or in Somalia.
But we do see the one on Russia's border that we can blame on Russia.
That's the one that they hyper-focus on.
Yeah, that does concern me.
And even when we raise these points, we are often smeared.
And it's difficult not to assume, even though it seems reductive, even when I'm saying it, that the financial benefits of these conflicts are the determining factor.
and the alliances between the military-industrial complex and the media and the government
are what determine the way these stories are presented, because you're right.
If that were not the case, you would hear as much about Yemen,
you would hear as much about other conflicts.
If the metric by which we measured catastrophe was deaths and destruction,
and nobody's saying that those things are not present in the tragedy in Ukraine
and that it oughtn't be stopped as quickly as possible, but other criminals would be brought to the forefront as
well.
In our recent show we talked about the lack of moral authority for any agency that would Seek to arrest Trump.
That's not saying that Trump isn't guilty of wrongdoing.
In fact, we're ignoring that altogether, because if Trump is guilty, then, you know, the Clinton campaign will be guilty by the same measure.
But what we're saying is that the lack of faith in institutions that we are currently experiencing means that we clearly need systemic change.
Am I right in understanding, Dave, that that's precisely your personal perspective And if you are a libertarian, and I know you are, I'm just using this rhetorically, what is the role of government?
How minimal can government involvement in the lives of ordinary Americans, ordinary people of all persuasions, be?
And do you not agree that the role of the government and the function of the government is supposed to be to, in a sense, provide some kind of edifice against corporate corruption, even if it Obviously doesn't do that now.
It does the bloody opposite.
It'd just be good for you to unpack some of those ideas for us, please.
Yeah, sure.
I mean, well, I think I'd like the government to be about as small as we could possibly get it.
And I think from my perspective, the idea that the government was ever supposed to be a shield for the people against big corporate interests, as always, there might be some people who really believe that.
I think in reality it has never been that and it's always been, you know, much more a tool for big money interests than anything that was ever working against them.
And if you ever see, anytime that you ever saw the government working against big business, it was almost always on behalf of some other big business who wanted their competition stomped out.
That's just the way of the world.
It's like power corrupts and there's nothing more powerful than a government.
And so if you're saying that you need the government To check the power of a corporation.
Well, in order to do that, it's going to have to be more powerful than that corporation.
And so now, once you have this power center, it's going to become a race to see who can buy it off and, and who's going to have a better shot of doing that than the biggest businesses.
So I think the whole paradigm, like you talked earlier about like the left, right paradigm being all kind of like, it doesn't really apply anymore.
I think that basically it's not a question of like, are you anti big business or anti big government?
I think if you oppose one, you have to oppose the other because they're all in bed together.
And, you know, just to touch on what you said there about the kind of like getting called all the names because you oppose the war, you know, on this anniversary of Iraq, just remember that the people who were opposed to this war, the war in Iraq, the line back then was, you're either with us or you're with the terrorists.
They basically said, if you don't want to overthrow Saddam Hussein, then you're happy that 9-11 happened.
You're on their side of that.
And now, years later, even John McCain, on his deathbed in his memoir, wrote that he acknowledged the war was a mistake.
Everyone now acknowledges that those people were right to oppose the war.
So just to keep that in mind with all the people, they'll call you a Putin-apologist or something like that now if you oppose the West's involvement in the war in Ukraine.
But yeah, the whole thing is a racket, and it's all big business interests that control the governments.
That's really interesting that you say that, mate.
That it plainly was a transgressive war and the way, and I didn't remember that, that they said, yeah, that they equated it with terror, made it unpatriotic and made it like you were dishonoring those that died on 9-11.
And now, even if you're non-compliant around coronavirus, remember there was the same kind of shaming narrative that, like as if you were a friend of coronavirus, like you're its little mate carrying it about and stuff.
It's weird, the role, the palette that it's drawn from.
Even though sometimes we think of these systems as sophisticated, secular and of course by their nature political, the game they're playing is emotional.
They're dealing with things like shame and fear and sort of destroying your personal ability to live life, you know?
So I can understand I appreciate libertarianism from that perspective.
I think a lot of attacks that I hear on libertarianism is that it's somehow disavowing communal responsibility and collective power.
But I don't believe that those things should be imposed by some centralized agency anyway.
I think they should be voluntary.
I am a libertarian in so much as I do not like being told what to do.
And when someone tells me what to do, I think, where are you getting that authority from?
And when it's like we're the government or we're the police, I mean, well, I don't agree with either of those things.
So spiritually, I agree with it.
But how do you square it with the idea that we're here to take care of and love one another?
Yeah, so from my perspective, it's like the complete opposite of that criticism of libertarianism.
I think we're empowering the community.
I mean, the idea that, like, libertarians aren't arguing that people shouldn't join groups and help each other and do things as a community.
We're arguing that it should be done voluntarily, that it shouldn't be done through force, that you shouldn't... Every inch of government is there with the threat of a gun to your head.
It's like you pay your taxes or you go to jail.
Every law has a gun behind it saying you violate this and we will throw you in a cage.
It's really insane when you think about it, how advanced modern human civilization is, and that we still will throw human beings in a cage like an animal for ridiculous crimes.
No, I mean, okay, I'm, you know, yeah, if you if you murder someone or rape someone or, you know, stab someone or, you know, upset someone's house on fire, okay, fine.
Maybe that's the best we can do.
You kind of think still we could find something better.
But regardless of that, the idea of like, funding this monopoly on violence at the threat of will ruin your life.
And it's such a binary to say, oh, if we didn't do it that way, Then there'd be no community, then no one would care about taking care of the sick, or no one would think about like, oh, there's someone who's hard on their luck, we have to help them out.
I just don't believe it.
I don't believe that these people, these genocidal maniacs, these blood-soaked monsters, are like, the only way we would make sure grandma had a sandwich is if they're funded.
That's good.
Because actually, that sort of misanthropic assumption is what underwrites centralised and legal authority anyway.
The assumption that if you leave people alone, you know what they're going to do?
They're going to run into the streets and start masturbating and killing each other.
That's like the idea that legitimises the state power.
I suppose early sovereign power was underwritten by the idea of protection.
There are bandits, there are threats, there are dangers.
If you give the king your taxes, the king will protect you from those threats.
But it's mutated into something extraordinary.
And it's pretty obvious that even the most unquestioned version of democracy is laughable in 2023, that you need a representative to go 400 miles or whatever on horseback to tell the central authority this is what this parish believes it's antiquated and it's irrelevant and it's only being kept alive because it's beneficial to the kind of state and corporate interest that you rightly diagnose as being a kind of hybrid hydra and as you said very eloquently Dave a blood-soaked monster
Dave, thank you so much for joining us for this conversation.
I hope we get to have many more like it.
Dave Smith is an advocate for anti-war and clearly an advocate for freedom, host of Part of the Problem podcast, which you can find wherever you find podcasts.
Thanks again for joining us, Dave.
Thank you so much, man, and keep doing what you're doing.
It's incredible.
Thank you, man.
You too.
We'll see you soon.
Thank you very much.
Well, wasn't that a fantastic show?
Are you glad you joined us?
I enjoyed it.
Did you have a nice time?
Nice watching you guys.
There I was, just chatting away.
Nice conversation.
Perfectly, perfectly friendly, amiable conversation between Dave Smith and I. Libertarianism, you know, gets a lot of bad rap, doesn't it?
I thought it made it sound alright.
What I think, mate, is the same way that anarchism would be attacked and libertarianism is attacked, same way that socialism is attacked, they all are subject to smear campaigns from the existing system.
But I reckon probably what's also true is there's the potential for unquestioned utopianism as well.
Hold on, how are these things going to work?
If we're serious about changing the world, we probably have to have conversations about how we're going to reorganise it.
I do agree, keep governments small, keep communities small, keep them autonomous, keep them democratic, leave people alone has got to be one of the first principles.
Like I say to my kids, either be nice to each other or leave each other alone!
One of those options!
Stop fighting, for God's sake!
All right, well, listen, we've got plenty more time.
We've got the rest of our lives to come to some conclusions, which might not be long because it seems that people are advocating for a global holy war.
So that would get in the way, of course.
Tomorrow's show is promising to be a banger because we got Graham Hancock from the hit Netflix series Ancient Apocalypse He's coming on to talk about arcane civilizations, psychedelics.
If you entered our competition, you could be here at Stay Free HQ.
If you're a member of our locals community, you can be online while we're having the conversation, sticking your oar in, you know, asking Graham questions.
Well, you said they could touch him.
I actually got a bit out of hand and said that you could make love to Graham.
You did.
Even though I've not asked Graham whether or not he's available to make love to strangers as a prize in an online competition.
He's not winning the prize, just to be clear.
Dave, I've done you... Graham Hancock, I've done you a tremendous service here.
You will be having... First prize!
Your first prize in a sex competition I organised on the internet!
Well, I don't know about that, although the Mayans predicted something very much of this nature.
One could have happened.
Yes, yes, come on, come in.
Yeah, don't mind that.
A bit less chat chat and a bit more that that from you Graham, my man.
A bit less comic could have hit the earth and called a cataclysmic event and there's water erosion on the pyramid and a bit more noshy noshy.
No.
No?
Yes.
Sign up to our locals community where you get more things like that.
Why wouldn't you want that?
Why wouldn't you?
For example, you could see a little bit of my stand-up special Brandemic.
$20 for a one-off hit.
Or join our community.
It's there all the time.
It's only available for a limited time if you vote for $20.
Gone in a couple of weeks.
Gone just like that.
Hey, you also get access to Stay Connected, weekly meditations that I do with people.
