Russell chats to the "rock star" of the anti-GMO movement, eco-activist and Vandana Shiva about the Dutch farmer's uprising in the Netherlands and the current state of the global food and agricultural industries.Find out more about Vandana Shiva - https://navdanyainternational.org/our-staff/vandana-shiva/ 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 us on Stay Free with Russell Brand.
It's actually our 100th show, which we had a kind of pre-ordained celebratory tone established for before we heard about the recent or the current Nashville shoot-in.
So it's, in a sense, put us in a position where we're uncertain as to how to cover that story.
Because in particular, to be entirely honest with you, I've noticed how Stories of school shootings or mass shootings that are obviously, as you're aware, all too common tend to become politicised and particular pieces of information emphasised or amplified according with the media outlet and presumed political alliances of that channel or broadcaster.
And I suppose one of the things we consider to be our obligation is to look for commonality among all humanity and among all nations while recognizing that we are of course subject to the same or comparable biases to any other group or any other individual.
So for me I feel initially that I will declare that as a parent when you hear about this unnecessary traumatic merger of children the first Impulsive response in fact is one of like dread and anxiety because I've been with my children today as I have every day and all of us live with the assumption of safety and perhaps we should live with that assumption of safety for what is a society other than a set of accepted beliefs, relationships and assumptions between us.
And as the fabric of society appears to deteriorate around us, seems to be more undergirded by conflict, bias, stoked conflagration and loathing, perhaps it is unsurprising that there are these occasional symptomatic outbursts of violence, whether they are large-scale geopolitical expressions of violence, and we've been pretty expressive and clear about what we think the underlying motivations for that It's commonly understood in media analysis circles that the fetishisation and focus on the perpetrator is unhelpful, in particular in that it increases the likelihood of emulation.
And I think many of us struggle with how tonally are we going to deal with that.
knowing that in a matter of days, of course, people are going to talk about other things,
that we are going to recover a sense of normality. And in fact, it's our ability to adapt as human
beings that here appears particularly galling for who could grieve enough for the unnecessary
murder of three nine-year-old children.
For certain, there are families whose lives will forever be scarred by these events, classmates who will be forever affected.
And the fact that this is something that appears to be particular to the United States of America, is something that emphasizes the tragedy in my mind as a
green card holder, a regular visitor and occasional resident of your country.
I have incredible compassion and love for the United States of America, so I'm certainly
not being haughty or condescending or saying that there's something uniquely bad about
America and I'm certainly not presenting any kind of solution.
And I certainly don't want to participate in the politicization of an event that really is a human event.
And I ultimately consider it to be my, not duty or role, because both of those things seem pretty grandiose, perhaps function to participate in conciliatory conversations.
Because I've noticed that even with something as tragic as mass shootings, the subsequent reporting appears to focus on aspects of the story that are politically expedient for certain groups and doubtless that will happen in this case as it often perhaps even usually does and what I feel perhaps we ought to turn our attention to is what are the underlying
Circumstances that lead to this in a way the manifestation of it whether you want to particularize it around the characteristics of this particular shooter or shooters in the past and gain points from it or somehow Express and process the grief through loathing, through certainty, to arrive at some place where it's like, this is what we must do, this is what we must never do, these are the people that it's okay to hate.
I feel like, personally, and again, let me know in the chat and the comments, whether you're watching this on YouTube or over on Rumble, that How you express your pain and your grief is as personal and particular to you as mine is to me.
And what my own life has taught me as a person that is fallible, that's made numerous mistakes, has been granted a second life in recovery because of my own issues with mental health and addiction, that compassion and empathy always has to be part of it.
Compassion and empathy to the people directly affected first and foremost.
The now dead children, the now at this moment grieving parents.
And I feel that when I hold that in my mind, some of the other issues recede and the kind of rapacious race towards solution and conclusion, important though those things are, are secondary to love and compassion.
And I don't mean that in a woolly or ephemeral way.
I mean, love is a robust thing.
When you think of the non-violence of some of the great people of history, of Martin Luther King and of Gandhi, to To insist on non-violence, to insist on the principle of unity in love, to acknowledge that this is obviously a shared problem that our entire culture is experiencing.
But when we rest upon the certainty of condemnation, what we simultaneously do is prevent progress.
I feel like this is a situation where you want leadership, where you want certainty, where you want solutions.
And the kind of leadership and the kind of solutions that suggest themselves to you will probably, undoubtedly, inevitably be informed by your own cultural background, by your own allegiance and biases.
And this is why I suppose the call that I am offering is for a deeper allegiance a deeper alliance to all humanity but once again this seems to me to be an opportunity to recognize our common humanity that none of us want to experience the death of our children none of us want to experience a tragedy like this in our community so while we're talking about this and hopefully we won't talk about it for the whole episode and hopefully we'll find a way of
segwaying into some other subjects.
One of the things we don't want to do is fetishize the identity of the individual that did it to be reductive or in some way darkly celebratory around the gore and horror of the events and to try to find in it some kind of lesson.
Some kind of lesson that includes doubt.
Some kind of lesson that includes our common fragility and fallibility rather than bipartisan and oppositional certainty.
Some kind of I told you so because if this show teaches me anything is that I don't know very much about human beings and how they're capable I've been a desperate and uncertain adolescent that ultimately sought comfort in addiction.
Doubtless, there are many people in the world right now that feel lost and alienated and dispossessed.
Perhaps the success of the film The Joker, which many said unduly fetishised the position of the loneliness, is a kind of eulogy for a culture of dispossession, loss, feeling like you don't belong to anyone or anywhere.
And none of these things are being meted out by me as excuses, not for the inexcusable, not for the inexcusable causing of immeasurable and unimaginable grief.
The type of which has been inflicted today, simply as an offering of, if we are truly to look for solutions to the problems that our culture is clearly experiencing, we're going to have to start considering things that we haven't previously considered.
We're going to have to discover a different type of language.
And my sense, and I would not claim to be certain about this because I know as little as anybody else, Is that what we must have recourse to are deep spiritual values, the kind of values that are difficult to access in a culture that prioritises tribalisation, oppositionism, commodification, individualism and materialism, progressivism, and I mean progressivism in terms of technological progressivism, i.e.
humankind is heading somewhere, we're better than we've ever been.
When those kind of certainties abound and define the conversation, then I don't feel that we're going to reach any conclusions together.
I feel that this is one of those times where perhaps we should be really deliberately listening to people who we don't agree with and taking on board what their concerns are.
Why do you feel so certain about that?
Why do you have such certainty around, let's face it, the divisive subjects of gun control, identity politics, all of the things that I predict, imagine, assume, will come up as the talking points around this issue and will ultimately play out in accordance with a predetermined set of ideals that each side have.
And what I've been struck by lately is when it comes to the political divide, Both sides appear to be, in a way, operating on behalf of interests that are not explicit and not declared.
And all of us really, really have the same interests.
All of us are here temporarily.
All of us are going to die.
All of us are going to love people.
All of us are going to experience loss.
And if we don't find that North Star, something between us and among us that Causes connection rather than division, then I don't feel that there will be much of a chance for healing.
I hope that nothing I've said here is in any way met you as condescension or haughtiness or worst of all possible things, Britishness, because I know what our historic relationship is with your country.
But I feel that really we have to establish a tone together don't we?
A tone and a place for conversation and mutual love because really whether it's this particular shoot-in or the other numerous shoot-ins or the future shoot-ins because let's face it this isn't going to be a watershed or a benchmark we can start to grieve the forthcoming ones too.
We have to start recognizing that people have really Varying perspectives on this, and that should be the starting point for a conversation, not ossified division.
So I suppose what we can all do is look at our own certainty and see where there is room for doubt.
Look at other people's convictions and see where there's opportunity for compromise and conversation.
And therefore, and as a result of that, perhaps move forward together.
Later on the show, we are going to be talking to Vandana Shiva, one of the great mothers of our culture.
She'll be talking about the issues of agriculture and obviously we'll talk to her about this situation because Vandana Shiva is one of the voices that I most enjoy listening to when it comes to what I would refer to as a kind of new populism.
Not right-wing populism, not left-wing populism, a type of politics that includes everyone's voices and looks for ways that we have perhaps the opportunity and possibility of moving forward.
In our item, here's the news.
We're going to be looking at the French protests, which again indicate that people are en masse hugely dissatisfied with the machinery of politics, that it isn't working for them, that it's undemocratic, that it is not inclusive.
Once we click away from being on YouTube and other platforms on Rumble, we're going to be looking at Ram Paul versus Moderna, that recent hearing and conversation.
We can't show that on YouTube because there are sort of guidelines there that are restrictive.
And perhaps if we are able to establish a Tone of conviviality and even joy on a day like this one.
We'll talk about some funny stuff that's happened in the world.
I mean, I suppose one of the things, Gareth, that was pretty surprising is when Joe Biden had to address this issue.
He was in an unusual situation.
I believe he was already at a school.
I was trying to work out when he was called upon to address this subject.
Whether he'd already been informed of the Nashville shooting because he talked inexplicably about ice creams but here are the things I'm considering because what it's reminded me this whole event of is the necessity for compassion and not to lean into assumptions so maybe because he says some weird stuff about ice creams but he's in in a room with children so maybe he was trying to keep a tone of I don't know congeniality and not the sort of horror of murder of children just like the children in the room that he's literally standing in and maybe he didn't No yet.
It's not clear.
But when Fox News threw to him, he was talking about some bizarre stuff.
How do you feel we should handle today's show, mate?
I don't know.
I think what you just said was... There's so much to take from it.
I think in terms of the reaction to this, something has to change in terms of how we react.
Other than the people who are literally involved in this, as you say, the parents, the people grieving, the people affected directly by this.
There has to be a change in the way we react to events like this and I don't necessarily even mean just politically because when you're talking about the politicization of the way these things go, you know, we don't want to kind of draw comparisons and it seems maybe a bit distasteful to bring up Foreign policy and war but the very same politicians who will politicize this who will turn this into and that's why we're better or that's why we're better are involved in Dreadful atrocities around the world where things like this occur all the time, you know And I know that will be pointed out and it's not to kind of in any way Diminish or take away from what's going on, but we also can't pretend that if
Politicians who react to this in a way that's favourable to our politics or not favourable to our politics aren't also directly involved in some terrible events around the world as well.
A broader problem with partisan politics and partisan coverage is it allows people to score points from one another without addressing underlying issues.
I suppose that's true, isn't it?
That people will find ways that this can be leveraged around obviously the issue of gun control and there are aspects of that argument that would Seem reasonable and other people will make points about the identity of their individual involvement.
I feel that what principles and values are and what they refer to, I suppose, and you let me know in the chat and the comments about how you feel about this, obviously we value your opinion, is that If you say, oh, well, what about the kids that die in drone strikes and, you know, were killed in sort of Yemen and Syria and like a while sort of Barack Obama's literally getting a peace prize or whatever, you know, like that kind of culture.
And that kind of myopia means that there is no legitimacy to the discourse beyond it, wouldn't you say?
Because obviously the death of children in other countries by other means is also bad.
I mean, in a sense, when you make it personal, and I know there's always a problem when you make the political personal, but also there are lessons in making the political, personal, you sort of wouldn't really care how
your child died.
I mean, it is particularly egregious, I suppose, if your children is unnecessarily murdered,
but if it was because of the American state, if it was one of the 90% of people that died
as a result of drone strikes in a five-year period.
Again, we can't be glib about this kind of story.
I suppose we have to look at, culturally, what they indicate.
And here are some sort of-- these might be useful tools for your own analysis and discussion
of this subject.
For example, like, there are four commonalities among perpetrators of nearly all mass shootings.
The vast majority of mass shooters in our study experience early childhood trauma and exposure to violence at a young age.
Again, this doesn't justify it, it's just, oh, here's some information.
Secondly, every mass shooter we studied had reached an identifiable crisis point in the weeks or months leading up to the shooting.
Most shooters had studied the actions of other shooters and sought validation for their motives.
When I read this, what I feel is that you have to start looking at the cultural undergirding.
Where is this coming from?
Where is this bubbling up from?
Just in the same way that we would look at the motivations for war.
All the motivations for a piece of legislation or the lack of motivation for a piece of legislation.
With that, let's have a look at some of the coverage.
I wonder if we might start with, yeah, let's start with the MSNBC coverage.
And so just look for a moment at how a mainstream outlet tells this story.
And I suppose we'll look uh at it and analyze it as we go and think oh yeah look they're emphasizing this they're excluding that or would you say it's relatively banal vanilla check it
Good evening, once again.
I'm Stephanie Ruhle, live from Washington, D.C.
We begin with the latest in a deadly national crisis that seems to have no end in this country.
This morning, at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, six people were killed when a shooter walked in and opened fire.
Three of the victims were students, all just nine years old, and three were staff members.
Officials say the shooter was armed with two AR-style rifles and a handgun.
NBC's Kathy Park has more.
The start of a school day.
The things I once saw, this brilliant piece of analysis on a show called Newswipe, which is a UK show that was made by Charlie Brooker, who's a genius that wrote Black Mirror, actually, subsequently, was when it comes to the reporting of mass shootings, this psychoanalyst said, you should never make the shooter sound like some kind of antihero.
You should never start the report with a bunch of sirens going off.
You should never sort of focus on the death toll like it's a sort of a sports score.
So I've said all these things and then they showed how commonly it's reported on in exactly that way, antithetical.
Now that the news media has lost much of our credibility due to the kind of alliances it has with commercial interests, you have to apply the analysis gleaned from that when looking at their reporting on a different subject.
Once you recognise that they report on wars in a way that bears particular biases, or medical matters that bear particular biases, do you imagine these biases are shed when it comes to different, more evocative and immediate issues?
Even though wars are pretty evocative and health crises are pretty evocative, When it comes to something that has the potential for immediate, urgent, visceral sentimentality, like this particular subject, you have to bear in mind that there will be an expression of those same biases.
The psychoanalyst that I'm citing pointed out that the likelihood of subsequent school shootings after a school shooting is very high, and I'm sure that your own research has pointed out ...and helped you to clarify that when there are serial killings or other types of bold and lurid murders there's an increased likelihood they'll occur with sort of social and suggestible creatures.
...shattered by gunshots at the Covenant School in Nashville.
We're under a mass casualty alert.
A school shooting, multiple victims down.
Because it should be the most particular thing that's ever happened.
Like if it's the day that when you're losing someone that you love, it should be the most kind of particular, specific and awful day of your life.
But the grammar of the whole news is so recognisable and identifiable.
Again, the sirens, the sort of the police call turned into entertainment.
What's sort of somewhat galling about this, and I guess we're engaged in it because we're a media organisation of some description as well, is that they will have to get those assets.
Right, someone get the call, the 911 call.
Get the long-range shots.
You can see him push in on the police cars.
Make sure you get the audio of the siren.
Then, in coming days, the clamour for interviews of people that are affiliated with or connected to the shot of the kids holding hands as they're led out of the classroom.
It's, I suppose, terrifying that something that should be as extraordinary as this already has an identifiable lexicon.
Yeah, and I can't imagine that they're not aware of This theory of emulation when the media reports events in the ways that they do.
I mean, literally, we have a list of like seven ways in which the media reports this that has a tendency or the theory is to lead on to copycat cases.
And, you know, they they know this.
They must be aware of this and continue to do it in the same way anyway.
According to Indiana State University, the reporting of mass shooting is reported in seven cyclical stages.
One, tragic shock.
I guess we're in that phase.
Then second, first witness reports.
Three, identification of shooter.
Four, reports of character of the shooter.
Five, media branding, the packaging of a massacre.
Six, official response and official report.
And seven, oh it's gone back to a tragic shot.
It literally is a cycle and that's the way that cycles operate.
We've got like a bunch of statistics around school shootings but you know that they're pretty common and also we've got sort of various reports of how different School shootings have been utilized for political expediency.
There was a shooting in Buffalo where the reporting focused on racism and far-right ideology.
There's that one.
And then secondly, we've got this one Colorado Springs where homophobia was suggested as the motive.
And then this one here in Boulder where the Muslim community feared backlash.
Because of the sort of nature of that particular shooting.
And I suppose already in those relatively recent spate of killings, you can see that there is a variety that crosses the spectrum of identity.
So again, when we're talking about it, it feels to me that Because this will, unfortunately, be an episode in an ongoing drama, you have to look at the solutions and the likely causes.
And for me, social violence is an indicator of a kind of deep cultural and social and spiritual malaise, a kind of deep darkness that needs to be addressed in people.
This is sort of odd actually, because when I first made this point, when I was much younger, when I was still using drugs, there was a sort of a murder, some children were murdered in our country, the UK, it was a very famous murder.
And I oddly made the point that as a culture we should be willing to accept that there must be aspects of our social conditioning and our values and there also must be the absence of other principles that lead to this and indeed the condemnation of the Yeah, individuals involved, and this is me talking about that case, while understandable, ultimately won't lead to conclusions.
And I've still got the scars, actually, like literally, because I did a stand-up comedy at the Edinburgh Festival and I was a drug addict, so I said it in an insensitive and pretty stupid and dumb way.
I did many insensitive and stupid things back then.
But actually, the point I was trying to get to--
say you believe in God and I believe in God.
Part of my belief in God is a kind of a unitary principle, that the reason I have to act compassionately and lovingly
is because in other people's eyes, I see God.
That we are connected to one another, that there is a divinity and a right to compassion
in each of us, and a requirement for forgiveness, and a requirement for redemption and salvation,
and all these ideas that are found, generally speaking, across religions, these perennial ideas
about kindness, compassion, love.
And that, for me, means that when people transgress against me or against the culture--
in this instance, it's obviously not about me--
then I have to try to find my route to forgiveness and find my route.
And of course, in a situation where there are people personally affected or affected because they're
part of that community or part of that state, people may have various ways of connecting to that tragedy.
I suppose then you feel, oh, well, we can forgive them for their anger and for their own urge for violence or retribution or vengeance.
But we, those that are ultimately just observers and just participants in common humanity, We have to find in ourselves, where is the resource?
Where is the cultural and social resource that we're going to rely on to change this?
Because the shared goal must be to change it.
The shared goal must be a better world.
The shared goal must be a culture that's a reflection of our higher values rather than our lower drives and our kind of shared dementia.
We have to, and in order to do that, those of us that are not in the game, as it were, are going to have to strive to be The maximum amount compassionate, I suppose.
Yeah, I think you're right.
And I think even more because when you look at, for example, the media response, which is cyclical, as we've just shown, and continues across various platforms or networks and political responses, that they are always going to be the same.
And As sad as it is to kind of think they will utilise this for their own means and gains in, you know, whatever sense that is.
And so I guess the responsibility does lie with the rest of us to respond in a different way, in a way that can actually make some meaningful change.
I agree with you.
I think as well that I just want to make clear again we don't think we're better than you.
Like I know that you're a person that knows things that I don't know so if you have a really particular and sort of politicized perspective on this then I really don't want you to not have it.
I don't think that my opinion is better than yours or superior in any way.
I'm just saying this is my reaction.
This is it.
You have your reaction as well and hopefully we can find ways to come together.
So If you've got a really strong view around particular aspects of this, I respect your right to have that view.
I really, really do.
And I feel that that, perhaps above all else, is the emergent lesson of our recent conversations and our recent broadcasts is, ah, if we're going to progress, we can't approach other people with certainty and judgment.
Certainty, like the judgment I will reserve for myself, like how can I be better?
How can I treat the people in my life better?
How can I improve?
And then when I'm dealing with you, tolerance and compassion.
And I will fail.
I will fail.
Because I'm a human being like you.
But at least we now know what we're trying to do.
Rather than... The aim of life is to feel better than other people.
And to, with certainty, judge them and hate them.
Whether that's around the identity or the gun control or whatever.
It's just accepted.
I don't know.
I don't know.
How can I know?
This is too serious.
Right now, in Nashville, People just probably in the numb agony and out of respect to that I'm not going to wade into this from a perspective of certainty because I don't think that that's my role but if you are going to do that I also respect that because I'm not you and I suppose that's really all we're left with huh?
Okay so listen if you're watching this on YouTube you can click over to Rumble now because we'll talk about some stuff that's against the community guidelines we'll Leave this subject temporarily with respect to the people directly involved and we'll talk about this conversation between Rand Paul and the Moderna CEO and some of the issues that's brought to the forefront and the possibility that it presents to us to create cross-partisan alliances that might transcend the entrenched corruption that appears to define not only American politics, but particularly American politics, but global politics right now.
So click over if you want.
We'd love to have you.
All right, so let's have a look at this Rand Paul deal over here.
Like, Rand Paul, we want him to come on our show, don't we, Gareth?
Because whenever I see him, he's digging out some sort of pharmaceutical billionaire on something or another.
He's really asking the right questions.
And we did once, I think, as part of one of your investigations, actually, discover that him or his wife owned shares in something.
But again, I don't know, that's the deal.
We're not condemning him for that.
I think most of them do.
Everyone does.
So if you're going to boot everyone out of Congress or the Senate that owns stocks and shares in big pharma, big tech, big energy, then you're going to have an empty Senate.
And maybe that's really what's required.
I don't know.
Let us know in the chat.
Let us know in the comments.
But this is another one of those conversations where Rand Paul appears to be asking the right questions.
Let's have a look at this clip.
You'll have seen it already, but it's pretty fantastic.
Mr. Bancel, Moderna recently paid NIH $400 million.
Do you believe it creates a... I like that him and Bernie are just sat there together, do you?
Well, again, what you were talking about kind of cross parties, this is where like Bernie Sanders have been so heavily critical of Moderna recently, mainly to do with like the price hikes and how much they're charging and how it was all taxpayer funded in the first place.
And so this is like one of those, I guess, cases that happens every now and again, where they're attacking things from slightly different positions, but ultimately their target is the same.
Stay free with Russell Brand.
See it first on Rumble.
What could be more exciting in the context of new and emergent populism than a conversation with Vandana Shiva.
Vandana, thank you so much for joining us.
So Vandana, one of the things I want to start with was this, the new Dutch party, the BBB, who recently have acquired A surprising number of seats in the Netherlands, a party that represents agricultural interests.
I don't know much about this party at the moment, what their other affiliations or perspectives are, but I do know that they're representing ordinary farmers against centralized interests.
And I know that farmers across the world, wherever it's in your country, India or Sri Lanka or
Germany or our country or America, are facing what feels like
a sort of a globally coordinated opposition, which often appears to be couched
in the language of environmentalism.
Firstly, may I ask you, it seems to me whenever we speak that you love the earth quite devoutly,
and that many of these arguments that prohibit and inhibit the ability of small farmers
to eke out a livelihood are not entirely genuine.
Can you just speak to this, the populism around this?
I think the first thing is that it's the farmer-citizen movement.
It's not just the farmers' movement.
It's the citizens of Netherlands who don't want their economy, their land, their country hijacked.
And the three inconsistencies with focusing on the nitrogen problem at a time where Mr. Bill Gates, with his fake solutions, has photographs all over on his website and in his book called How to Deal with the Climate Catastrophe, I love nitrogen fertilizer.
He's standing in front of a fertilizer factory in Tanzania.
Now, the problem with nitrogen is synthetic nitrogen fertilizers.
Otherwise, nitrogen is a source of life.
That's what leguminous plants, the pulses, do for free for us in a non-violent way, not in a violent way.
So no, even the AR6, the climate IPCC report that's just been released, doesn't even talk about nitrogen.
They've jumped from carbon reductionism into methane.
Second is, the nitrogen problem is leading to huge dead zones.
It used to be 10 in 1960, became 169 in 2007, and now it's 415 dead zones because the nitrogen runs off, kills the life in the waterways and sea type.
Netherlands is not the primary problem.
The Baltic Sea and its coastal countries, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Sweden.
So if there's a nitrogen problem, look at all of these countries and shift all farmers.
And I worked with farmers and fishermen in the Baltic region, where fishermen and farmers are making treaties.
That farmers are being told, don't put synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, please put organic so that the sea can live and we can have a life.
All of these are new partnerships that are the real solutions.
Why is Netherlands targeted?
Three reasons.
First, it's a little country sitting in the heart of Europe, next to Brussels.
And the real issue on which the farmers are agitated is the tri-city, the land grab.
And there are two clear worldviews.
For the corporations and the billionaires and the colonialists, land is real estate, land is property.
For the people of the land, including the citizens and the farmers,
land is the mother, land is the identity.
And food for the corporations is a commodity.
Food for each of us as free citizens, for whom food freedom is the basis of freedom, is the very basis of our identity, our relationship with the Earth.
So, the reductionism by which the Dutch farmers' protest was put into a right-wing slot is really the right wing wanting to hijack the whole planet, our water, our soil, our seeds, our food.
It seems that the most essential resources, and even the word resources itself,
suggests utility rather than a symbiotic relationship with the earth, which is difficult to achieve
on a global scale and seems more natural when there is a more integral and local relationship
between the earth, between food, between the people that grow it, it becomes impossible.
I've noticed that this space has become cultivated and censored by voices that appear to be operating
on behalf of sensorial forces, authoritarian forces.
authoritarian forces.
How is it that someone like Bill Gates has become the face of agriculture, has become the authority on agriculture, when his interests so plainly appear to be motivated by capital and dominion?
What is the media structure around this man?
And why is it that it's so difficult to criticise him?
And why are people that criticise him smeared so aggressively?
Well, the reason Bill Gates is interested in agriculture and food is because that's his new empire.
He's worked it out.
Just when Covid was hitting, I was on a lecture tour in the US.
And the local newspaper called USA Today had talked about how Bill Gates has opened a new global agriculture called Gates Ag One.
Gates Ag One.
And the offices of this is right next to Monsanto in St.
Louis, Missouri.
He's imagining one agriculture across the world growing Monoculture crops are speed for lab food.
So Mr. Gates wants to control food at all levels.
He wants to, of course, control land.
And he is the biggest land, farmland owner of America.
You know, the thing, oh, it's only this much percent.
It's like when I was dealing with the mining case for our government and the industry would say, oh, but, you know, the limestone is just this much percent of the value.
And so it can't have an impact.
But the aquifer is the limestone.
It's like saying your heart is just this much percent of your body.
Therefore, we can mess it up.
No, the percentage as a reductionism doesn't work.
Gates wants land.
Gates has already taken control of the sea, not only through The seed banks, the global seed banks, but also, and the soil bad seed banks, but through the new gene editing techniques and has just passed this crazy law of total deregulation.
But he wants lab food.
He wants to destroy real food everywhere.
And he wants to work with bio for more row crops.
Farming with drones, no farmers anywhere.
He really is looking at the future of farming without farmers.
And that's why the violence against the farmers of the world was bad enough when the Green Revolution was introduced in India, in Punjab, which is where the protests began.
But today, it's everywhere where farmers stand up.
They are labeled in all kinds of ways, rather than people defending their food sovereignty, their seed sovereignty, their land sovereignty, their livelihood sovereignty.
I've seen farmers vilified so aggressively, in particular with the Netherlands.
People saying, oh, these farmers are destroying the very land that they cultivate.
Why are these professional liberal media voices so quick to criticise and condemn working people?
Why are they so willing to shill for globalist interests as so plainly epitomised by Bill Gates and his agenda?
I don't understand, Vandana.
I don't understand why there are not more voices advocating for ordinary farmers.
Two reasons.
First, they don't really have a relationship, either with the land or with the farmers.
And when you don't have a relationship, you can be fed anything into your head.
And the PR spin and the narratives are replicated.
And especially if you're rewarded with all kinds of platforms, then if you don't think through your conscience, You just echo.
But the second reason is, there are many people who have fallen into this nonsensical eco-modernist trap.
And they don't really see a world without farmers, because they've defined... Basically, they've forgotten that we are part of nature, that farming with nature is part of nature.
And they've defined humans as the enemy of nature, and farmers who are the closest to the earth Agriculture means the care of the land.
They are being criminalized, as I said, not only because that is the historical narrative of colonialism, but more seriously, food and land is where the future profits are seen by the billionaires.
So, if land sovereignty and food sovereignty becomes the ultimate defense—and I applaud the Indian farmers who fought for 14 months.
We protested in 1993, 500,000.
And I applaud the Peruvian farmers who are fighting.
Which farmer isn't resisting?
Some makes it to the news, and the others don't.
And the interesting thing is, they really tried to criminalize the Dutch farmers, and the Dutch citizens joined the farmers and said, it's not just about farmers, it's all people, it's about democracy.
That is most encouraging when you say that land and food sovereignty are defining issues of our time and will ultimately affect all of us.
our ability to control our food, our ability to control our land
will perhaps become a unifying issue and perhaps one of the themes and ideas that might unite
the people of the world against these centralizing forces that
want to technologize and industrialize yet further agriculture, take it out of the hands and the souls
of the people that have these intimate relationships with the soil and the land in order to--
whether or not they believe that they're pursuing something that is righteous, they are ultimately
facilitating and shilling for very, very powerful interests that ultimately would disempower billions of people.
And I started to look at agriculture after 1984 with what happened to the land where I studied in Punjab
and the land of the five rivers.
And I just want to show you land of the five rivers by the chemical agriculture and green revolution has been reduced to a dead zone.
Land of five rivers destroyed.
So the water crisis, the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis, our health crisis, are all interconnected with a system that they want to accelerate further.
More industrial farming, more industrial food, which is at the root of the problem.
But food is our communication with the soil, with the biodiversity, with our gut microbiome.
It's the ultimate.
Food is community.
And whoever doesn't want community, either in human community or in the ecological community, they will assault in every way.
And this is just the contemporary witch hunts.
It's just a contemporary version of witch hunts.
Even in secular cultures, food remains a sacrament, a connection to the land, to the divine, to the unknowable forces that mean that food is presented, that food grows and sustains and through husbandry and agriculture can be managed.
But there is a component that we can never Fully, truly understand, and I can see why they want to turn everything into data and make everything about control, even as always, while presenting it as being about safety and security.
Ultimately, these things end up being about control.
Thank you, Vandana, for your incredible focus and ability to communicate.
Certainly, your ability to focus is not shared by whoever's operating that camera.
There's been some extraordinary shots, some zooms and some pulls out.
Are you being filmed automatic?
Is there a person there or are you doing that yourself?
What's happening?
Who's filming you?
Me?
No, it's the Zoom.
It's the Zoom.
That's what's happening.
That's the problem with AI.
You need a human being.
If there was an Indian farmer operating that camera, they would respond to the requirements of the circumstances.
Vandana, thank you so much for joining us.
We'll post a link to all of Vandana's many fantastic books In the description, there's a documentary you can watch about Vandana.
We'll post a link about that in the description.
Also, and perhaps most significantly, you can see Vandana Shiva live at Community 2023.
That's between July the 14th and 17th in Hay-on-Wye in the UK.
That's our festival.
Vandana, Wim Hof, me, a whole host of fantastic people will be appearing there.
It's a wonderful event.
There'll be a link in the description for that.
Vandana, thank you so much for joining us.
We love you and I revere you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks for joining us.
Thank you very much for your time.
Please join us again tomorrow.
My guest will be Chris Best, the founder of Substack.
He'll be at Substack, not Substival.
Yeah, I'm going to found that myself.
Yeah, sure.
Yeah.
A few quid to be made there, I'll warrant you.
If you were wondering what happened to the end of the France video, we're going to post that now on Rumble.
You'll be able to watch it in full on Rumble right now.
And hey, if you want to come and see me live this Thursday in Reading, trying out a new show where we're letting you vote on a variety of issues, almost as if the technology for democracy already exists and everything could be democratised, there's a link.
And if you use the code FRIENDS10, you can get a 10 quid ticket.
Go to RussellBrand.com for that.
Sign up to our Locals Community, get my Brandemic Last stand-up special included within that.
There's loads of stuff as well as too many things to list.
It's certainly worth joining us.
Join us tomorrow as well.
Not for more of the same.
We would never offer you that, would we, Gareth?
No, no.
It would disgust us to offer you more of the same.
