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March 28, 2023 - Stay Free - Russel Brand
01:02:31
My Thoughts On Nashville - #100 - Stay Free With Russell Brand
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In this video...
In this video, you're going to see the future.
Hello there, you Awakening Wonders.
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 politicized and particular pieces of information emphasized 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 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 are,
or more localised forms of violence.
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,
are families whose lives will forever be scarred by these events, classmates who will be
classmates who will be forever affected.
forever affected. And the fact that this is something that appears to be particular to the
And the fact that this is something that appears to be murder of three nine-year-old children. For certain, there
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 nonviolence, 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 segueing 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, it's that I don't know very much about human beings and how they're capable of behaving.
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 prioritizes tribalization, 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 Pre-determined 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 that 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're 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.
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 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 know yet, it's not clear, but when Fox News
proved 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 mean it was yeah I think what you just said was uh 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.
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 favorable to our politics or not favorable 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 the individual involved.
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 how you feel about this,
because obviously we value your opinion, is that if you say, oh, well,
what about the kids that die in drone strikes and were killed in Yemen and Syria,
and while Barack Obama's literally getting a peace prize or whatever, 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 is our 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, and 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, 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 a war, or the motivations for a piece of legislation, or the lack of Let's have a look at some of the coverage.
I wonder if we might start with the MSNBC coverage and just look for a moment at how a mainstream outlet tells this story.
I suppose we'll look at it and analyse it as we go and think, oh yeah, look, they're emphasising 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 things I once saw, this brilliant piece of analysis on a show called Newswipe, which was 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.
He sort of 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 know this.
They must be aware of this and continue to do it in the same way anyway.
According, yeah, here is that list Gal.
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, it's gone back to a tragic shot.
It literally is a cycle.
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.
Um, and I suppose already in those relatively recent spate of killings, you can see that there is 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 or I suppose I suppose you have to look at the solutions and the likely causes.
And for me, like, 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 individuals involved, and this is me talking about that
case, while understandable ultimately won't lead to conclusions.
And I'd like, I've still got the scars actually, like literally, because I did it as 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.
And, but actually the point I was trying to get to, you know, say you believe in God, and I believe in God.
say you believe in God and I believe in God, part of my belief in God is a kind of a unitary principle
Part of my belief in God is a kind of a unitary principle, that the reason I have to act compassionately and lovingly
that the reason I have to act compassionately and lovingly is because in other people's eyes, I see God,
is because in other people's eyes, I see God, that we are connected to one another, that there's a divinity
that we are connected to one another, that there's a divinity and a right to compassion
and a right to compassion in each of us, and a requirement for forgiveness, and a requirement for redemption and
in each of us and a requirement for forgiveness and a requirement for redemption and salvation
salvation, But actually the point I was trying to get to,
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, which is 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 our 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.
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 utilize this for their own means and gains in 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.
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.
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.
You're like, 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 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.
Alright, 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.
Like, 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 think that's a big deal.
We're not condemning him for that.
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, look, 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.
Yeah, when we talked to our friend of the show, so-called journalist Matt Taibbi, about his experiences in Congress, it feels like those hearings were kind of literally a show in so much as the conclusions had already been drawn.
They weren't really investigating anything.
What they wanted to do is discredit Matt Taibbi and Schellenberger.
For their revelations throughout the Twitter fires.
Oh, you're a stooge of Musk.
You're making money out of this.
You're not even a legit journalist.
You're appearing as a Republican witness.
But this kind of hearing, this Senate hearing that's taking place around the vaccine prices and Moderna, is it a 4000% price hike?
Since they've known that they can't force you to take it, they're going to bloody well charge the people who can.
Or who voluntarily do take it.
And what I would say is that Rand Paul appears to be really down with asking the right questions.
And Bernie is well into the corruption and the profiteering, even though he's not investigating the potential negative side effects stuff.
Because that became plainly, overtly and unhelpfully politicised, didn't it?
Yeah, of course it did.
But I think, you know, I think it's really important that like both these things, I mean, ultimately, this is about transparency.
And what is publicly funded medicines, you know, ultimately, we need, they need to be answerable to the people who funded these things in the first place, whether that's through the information around what side effects there are, if there are side effects, or whether it's around how much money they're literally making out of this, you know, they, they should be accountable.
And at the moment, they have not been accountable any of these people.
I can't even believe that.
Even though we sort of talk about it all the time, like that Moderna's research was taxpayer funded and Moderna profited enormously.
That don't seem right.
Does that seem right to you?
Let us know in the chat and the comments.
Have we gone mad?
Why are American taxpayers paying for the development of it, or in the case of BioNTech, bought by Pfizer, German taxpayers, and then the profits are taken by the company?
That's not right, is it?
Socialism in development, capitalism in distribution.
That's what you said earlier, isn't it, Gareth?
It's a good catchphrase.
Let's have a look.
Conflict of interest for the government employees who are making money now off of the vaccine to also be dictating the policy about how many times we have to take the vaccine.
Good morning, Senator.
Keep trying to change the subject.
Firstly, good morning.
Isn't it lovely morning?
Have we even talked about that?
No, you're right.
Birds in the trees, lovely day.
Don't try and get me on good morning.
Indeed.
We recently made, before Christmas last year, a $400 million payment to the NIH for an old patent that they had developed, not related to COVID, but useful in the development of a COVID vaccine to pay them for their work.
It's for the U.S.
government to assess how that money should be used.
You think it creates a conflict of interest for the same people deciding the policy of how often we have to take the vaccine to also be making money the more times we take the vaccine?
Yes or no?
This is for the government to decide.
You have no opinion on whether or not that creates a conflict of interest.
Is there a higher interest or a higher incidence of myocarditis among adolescent males 16 to 24 after taking your vaccine?
This at least seems to me what I want politics to kind of look like.
A powerful and rich CEO being asked difficult questions in public by someone who's done some research at least looks right.
right? Not like that Matt Taibbi deal with what's her name, Debbie Vasserman-Schultz
where she's like, this is my time, this is my time and it all seems sort of like weird
and shrill and cruel. This at least is someone going, listen mate, does it cause myocarditis
or not? And the other person's like, mate, I don't want to listen to all that. Mate,
does it cause myocarditis?
Yeah, that's my vision of it.
Sort of a vaguely cockney inquiry.
On the back of a pub or something.
I would like it to feel somewhat like it's happening at the back of a pub.
And him there, what's he called?
Stéphane Bancel.
He's a billionaire.
Well, yes, of course.
He's got billions.
What do you think happened in the pandemic?
Where did he get that money?
What happened?
Tell us, could you talk us, Stefan, how did you become a billionaire?
You know that pandemic?
Oh god, it was awful, wasn't it?
We were all locked in our houses, all of the pressure, all of that.
Our kids couldn't go to school and stuff like that.
It was terrible.
What about you?
That's actually quite good!
I became a billionaire during that period.
He defended the proposed price, telling the Wall Street Journal
that he believes this type of pricing is consistent with the value.
But that's actually, he's just describing the principles of zombie capitalism.
That means we are able to charge that, so we're gonna charge that.
You aren't gonna believe this presentation that we've already made about that prostate cancer drug.
There's a prostate cancer drug that's costing the people that are using it
$180,000 a year.
Joe Biden went on the TV saying like, oh, I'm gonna do everything I can.
You know, we beat big pharma this year, all of that stuff.
And there's literally a piece of legislation, the buy dull clause,
that means that when pharmaceutical companies are charging too much money for a product.
They can say, listen, charge a reasonable amount for this or we're going to white label it and we're going to rescind your patent and anyone and everyone will be able to make it.
Like Ivermectin, a drug that is... Oh, you can say it now, can't you?
Yeah, we're on rumble.
So I'm able to say the word Ivermectin.
Waiting for that.
Might as well call Rumble, the place where you're allowed to say Ivermectin.
Like, and I suppose, but you know, many people said that part of the reason that they've not trialled Ivermectin is for its efficacy against COVID is that it is not patented and therefore not profitable.
And a case like the prostate cancer drug one, and what's that company called?
Alicetra or something?
Anyway, you know, they're another bunch. And when you see how Moderna are charging a price hike by 4000%
and no one's using this buy-dull clause to inhibit, prohibit or curtail their ability to profit to this degree,
it shows you that because of the lobbying, because of the number of people in politics that own stocks and shares,
because the parties are funded by the pharmaceutical industry, they legislate on behalf of big pharma.
They don't legislate on behalf of you.
So if you've joined us from YouTube on Rumble for the first time, thank you very much for joining us.
Now it's time for our presentation where we have a real deep and intrinsic look No.
news stories, we're talking in this particular instance about the protests in France. What's
going on there? Is it just about the French government undemocratically making every single
person in France work for an extra two years in spite of high taxation? Or is there more
to it than that? Here's the news. No, here's the effing news.
No, here's the fucking news!
Vive la revolution!
Part deux!
Why is France burning down right now?
Is it because French workers are being asked to work an additional two years?
Or is it because of a neo-liberal conspiracy to drive people into the ground, surveil them into the shadows, and to punish them simply for being alive?
France is burning down ostensibly because undemocratically a bill has been passed to add two years onto the working life of the average French person.
And there's no such thing as an average French person.
Have you ever met one?
Extraordinary.
Why has this had such an incredible impact?
Why is this thing, albeit wrong, had a disproportionately large effect?
How does it relate to the Gilets Jaunes protests, yellow vest protests, of a year or so ago?
And does this mean that across the world we're starting to see a rise of populism that will accept nothing less than systemic political change, new decentralized systems, meaningful democratic representation, and an end to unfair taxation?
Revolution is in the air, everybody.
King Charles has postponed his upcoming state visit to France.
Oh, no!
What do they care?
They don't care if an English king comes.
Normally, when they have an aristocrat in Paris, you know what they do to them, don't you?
Nighty-night!
Into the basket.
As chaos continues over the nation's planned pension reform.
Time after time, police sending off baton chargers to try and force back the protesters.
We're very quick to criticise the mainstream media on this channel because usually they deserve it.
Let us know in the chat and the comments if you agree with us.
But that guy, well done!
Time after time, oh sorry about that.
Time after time.
Ah come, might as well join in.
Fuck off you bloody French pigs, cerdos.
But I don't know what's French for pig, that's Spanish certainly.
French people angry after President Emmanuel Macron forced through a pension reform bill without a vote.
Should we get a vote on this thing where we make people work another two years?
No!
What's the point?
What if they were to say no?
Then I wouldn't be able to do what I want!
Good point.
Just put it through.
Thursday afternoon, France's Prime Minister, Elizabeth Borne, an ally of Macron,
triggering a constitutional tool that allowed the bill through
with no floor vote.
The uproar immediate.
Opposition members shutting down parliament belting the French national anthem.
French politics is more sexy, isn't it?
It's a bit madder in there.
That one says, let me put it to the honourable gentlemen.
That means something in our one.
Over there, someone might take their top off or do a shit.
Frustration fueling strikes.
Airline to railway service disrupted.
Garbage piling up.
Of course, it's not just on the street protests, but organized worker strikes.
And I would suggest to you that if you're ever going to get some meaningful change from outside parliamentary or congressional democracy, it's going to require coordinated action.
That is why all political parties are ultimately opposed to union movements, because those movements mean that you have a way of organizing its power, whether that's based on your geographical community or your job or some other issue. When a public coalesces around something and
acts as one we literally have the power that democracy is supposed to
afford us.
Why is 62 to 64 a deal? To be able to work and as well to have our proper life and good health.
She's talking about a quintessential French value of work-life balance.
Literal joie de vivre, the joy of life.
But, I mean, you might have forgotten this.
You're meant to enjoy your life.
It's not meant to be endured.
It's not meant to be, I'm alive, oh God, isn't this terrible?
The corruption and the lies and the heartbreak and the despair and the pointless senselessness and the charade of it and just looking at things on the screen that don't mean anything and eating food that's not quite right and the sense that there's something just out of your reach, some connection, some beauty, some joy that's not for you, that you're being deprived of.
It's meant to be enjoyable and let's Let me tell you this, it's possible.
And it's so exciting, for me at least, to see many people come together as they did in the Yellow Vest protests of a year or so ago in such quick succession.
Let's face it, this is a time of crisis.
One crisis often leading to another, whether it's military or Medical or financial?
We're seeing the necessity for radical change and we're seeing the opportunity that mass action can create.
What we do not yet have is a cohesive response to the existing corruption, a vision and an agenda for how to bring it about and obviously that's what we want to develop with you.
We don't just tell you always and everything crap all the time.
You know that, I know that.
What are we going to do about it?
What is the point of having a National Assembly if they ignore you?
What's the point of having Congress if they ignore you and respond instead to the edicts suggested by the lobbying money and your own interests if you own stocks and shares?
What's the point?
What's the point in voting in our parliament if they have a second job that pays them more money?
Democracy in its current form isn't working anywhere.
This kind of populist energy that people fear is exactly what's required.
This transcends the cultural issues that have come to define our time, which are important for all of us.
We should all learn how to accept that there's many, many ways to be human, traditional, progressive.
Let's get on with that stuff, shall we?
But this is what we really need for us to come together and confront centralised power.
As long as we're caught up in that quarrel, we're not going to be able to do this.
A recent poll by AFP finds a majority of the French support the protest movement against pension reform, and 59% support bringing the country to a standstill over it.
They're radical, aren't they, the French?
60% of them.
Let's bring it to a standstill!
But as his country descended deeper into chaos, Emmanuel Macron stepped out in Belgium for an EU conference with a wink.
Hey!
We are corrupt!
We're ignoring democratic procedure!
But the idea that Macron is out of touch is unfair and untrue.
He knows exactly what time it is.
The blockades, we need to be able to lift them when they prevent normal activity.
To negotiate and then to requisition.
It's been reported that Macron in that interview took off his ridiculous, lairy, sexy gold watch
because he was sort of saying, Mom, we've all got to work together for a fairer France.
Oh, shit!
I'm rich!
Viva la France!
So, let's explain the basics of this story, the pension reform bill, why it was bypassed, and what this story tells us, not only about France, but about the whole world, this popular uprising that we're currently experiencing, and what we're going to have to do about it together if we're going to do anything other than make minor changes that won't make any bloody difference.
The pension reform itself is deeply unpopular, opposed by 70-80% of the French public.
But the manner in which the new law was passed, invoking the 49th article of the French constitution allowing the Prime Minister to bypass the National Assembly to force through the reforms without a vote, sparked real anger.
That Parliament was not consulted is widely perceived as an anti-democratic affront.
Ignoring Parliament is anti-democratic.
Having politicians that don't represent people is anti-democratic.
The world is not democratic.
While the scale and intensity of the protests have made media headlines worldwide, the government response has attracted the attention of human rights organisations.
Amnesty France has condemned the use of violent and repressive policing tactics.
It has highlighted frequent use of dangerous crowd control methods such as kettling, which is illegal in France.
Human rights organizations have also condemned the excessive use of tear gas and hundreds of arbitrary arrests.
It seems like the usual tale that we're becoming familiar with.
Something undemocratic takes place, people protest, the protest is treated like that's the problem.
Shut them down!
Get the limbs!
Spray them with gas!
Rather than, why are these people doing this?
Is there any legitimacy to this movement?
Any protest, I think, should be assessed in that way.
Any.
Even the ones you don't agree with.
People aren't really motivated, I don't think, by abstract ideological things.
I think people are motivated by, hold on a minute, this is my life, I can't live my actual proper life now, as in this instance.
This is an article by Charles Devilon, French, you know, Senior Lecturer in Political and Social Thought at the University of Kent in England.
The shift towards security is perhaps the most striking aspect of macronism.
Aren't you noticing that worldwide, sort of handsome or good-looking people are stepping to the forefront to tell you how liberal they are and then surveilling you and taking away your right to protest?
Justin Trudeau, the world's gentlest, loveliest, sort of barroom crooner, I can't wait to evoke emergency action.
Rishi Sunak, that lovely little haircut of a man, can't wait to bring in tough new protest laws.
Everything has become about appearance.
And the problem with that sort of symptomatic approach, whether it's the aesthetics of power or the way of treating protest and dissent as a symptom rather than an indication of a deeper problem, means that we're not ever getting any closer to a solution.
In fact, we're exacerbating the problem.
Oh, here's something that looks like it would be a solution.
A guy saying that he's nice and progressive.
Yeah, well, none of us are having our lives improved, so we're going to continue to ultimately protest.
Then more laws get passed.
When a fundamental, integral, and essential solution is required, we're continuing to present panaceas, distractions, illusions, optical solutions that don't actually change things for us.
He has replaced liberty with security and made this the cornerstone of his regime.
Even before COVID-19 reached Western countries and governments responded with lockdowns and curfews,
Macron had securitized the French state against internal threats.
Is it me or does the future feel more insecure and uncertain?
Wars, pandemics, lies, trickery.
My cats keep having kittens.
The last one's personal.
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There you are.
I hope you enjoyed that video and that it informed you somewhat around some of the context that's led to these protests in France, which seems to me to be another emergent populist uprising.
And 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.
I can't hear you, Vandana.
So, Vandana, one of the things I wanted 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 centralised interests, and I know that farmers across the world,
whether 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 the populism around this?
I think the first thing is that it's the farmer-citizen movement.
It's not just the farmers' movements.
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 with 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 censorial 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 as feed 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, this 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.
The percentage as a reductionism doesn't work.
Gates wants land.
Gates has already taken control of the seed, not only through the seed banks, the global seed banks, but also, and the soil-based 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 Bayer for more row crops, Farming with drones, no farmers anywhere.
He really is looking at a 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, 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, Van Donner.
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 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 chilling
for very, very powerful interests that ultimately would disempower billions of people.
And you know, just, you know, 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.
I'm going to found that myself.
There's 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.
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.
It will simply be more of the different.
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