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April 20, 2023 - Stay Free - Russel Brand

01:04:40

IT’S HERE…Zelensky’s Dissent CRACKDOWN! - #112 - Stay Free With Russell Brand

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	Yeah, enjoy your life.
	Enjoy it.
	This is your life you're living, you lunatics.
	This is Stay Free with Russell Brand.
	We're streaming live.
	Hello, Vandana Shiva.
	Are you the new Snowden?
	Hello, Vandana Shiva.
	Are you the new Snowden? Are you?
	Join us not for more of the same, but for more of the different.
	Until then, stay free.
	Yes!
	Brought to you by, 5G In this video, you're going to see the future
	Hello there you awakening wonders!
	Wherever you're watching us, the whole show will be exclusively available on Rumble.
	You can roam the internet as much as you want looking for this show, but exclusively on Rumble.
	First 15 minutes will be on YouTube, but then an action as seemingly as innocuous as this contravenes WHO guidelines.
	We'll be telling you why this It's a dangerous act of radicalism.
	Oh, you saucy little citrus!
	A little bit later, we'll also be talking to Branko Marticic about how the US government misled the public on the war in Ukraine and how the media, very much the Joe Biden to the Joe Biden of the state, support the government in their ongoing lies.
	Then we're in our item, here's the news, no, here's the effing news.
	We'll be looking at how military personnel are suffering poverty, suffering Indignity!
	All the while the military-industrial complex is profiting massively.
	Let me have another sniff of that.
	Oh, I'm feeling a little bit better, but I won't tell you what condition it might be helping, according to... There's plenty of conditions it could be helping with you.
	There's nothing wrong with me, mate!
	There's nothing wrong with me!
	The burping for a start.
	What in the holy name of God's wrong with Putin's neck pipes?
	There's something wrong with his neck, look.
	There's strange marks on Vladimir Putin's neck.
	Look at his neck.
	That ain't right.
	Here he is appearing at, I would call it, An orthodox ceremony for the festival of Easter in which our Lord Jesus comes back from death to show us that there are deeper tunes to be played when it comes to the Requiem of Consciousness.
	Here is Putin.
	Let's see if you think there's anything wrong with his neck.
	And also, is that candle just a little bit too thin?
	Have a look.
	I like his neck and I like that ceremony and I like that crown that they have
	orthodox version of a bishop or a Pope or whatever you have in Russia
	Let us know in the comments, in the chat, what you have over there in Russia.
	I don't think those are the bits that the news want you to focus on.
	The point of this, Ross, is they want you to think, oh, Putin, he's so ill.
	He's a deranged madman.
	Right.
	No, and also, he's that as well, of course, he's a deranged madman, but he's so ill that we're going to win this war.
	Putin, Putin, he's so ill, he'll be really easy to kill in our not-proxy war that we're not having.
	We're just supporting Ukraine in a huge monetary effort that's necessary and had nothing to do with NATO impeding on former Soviet Union territory and nothing to do with a coup in 2014.
	No one can!
	Nice.
	I feel like it looked like aging to me.
	That's just life having its way.
	Trump versus DeSantis, the ongoing preliminary battle has reached propagandist levels.
	The mainstream media, of course, enjoying this.
	CNN and sort of, I suppose, the liberal half of the neoliberal corrupt establishment media are enjoying this super PAC spat.
	First up, whose video are we going to see first?
	I think it starts with, uh, Ron DeSantis is on Trump.
	All right, let's see what Ron DeSantis is saying about Trump.
	First of all, let's have a look.
	It is April 2023.
	Yes, April 2023, but an early... Excited about the date.
	That's just the date.
	What are we worried about that for?
	Yep, that's right.
	We know the date.
	You can trust us on CNN.
	I think his point is that these are coming early when the election is next year, but he is just a man reiterating the date.
	And also, like, this is the thing.
	With all of their bombast and banal pageantry, they're in no position to criticise the propaganda of anyone else.
	Look at that, by the way, his name, John King, came thrusting onto the screen, an unwanted graphic priapic erection forced in from the side of the frame.
	If his point is they're doing this too early, just make a decision to not show it then.
	You're doing the thing.
	You're reporting on them doing it too early.
	Yeah, you're getting involved.
	You love it.
	And wait till it gets to the three-finger yogurt.
	A proxy war is underway between the top two Republican 2024 contenders.
	A super PAC aligned with the Florida governor Ron DeSantis in a new TV ad suggests Donald Trump has lost his way.
	Trump's stealing pages from the Biden-Pelosi playbook.
	Repeating lies about Social Security.
	Trump should fight Democrats, not lie about Governor DeSantis.
	What happened to Donald Trump?
	I like that shot of Donald Trump looking sort of a bit destitute, wandering home from a nightclub with his bowtie undone.
	That was good.
	Let's see though, I think Trump's super PAC propaganda, not necessarily affiliated with the Trump campaign, which is a super PAC thing, is better.
	Because what they've gone for Is a garish, galling, gory, and awful image involving pudding.
	Also, like, they're picking up on a weird detail about Ron DeSantis.
	I didn't know that Ron DeSantis ate puddings with his fingers.
	But that's...
	You know, like, have you ever been to India?
	In India, people eat, like, surprising meals with their fingers, and I presume that's common across that region of the world.
	Like, I was in India, and people ate, like, rice and curry with their fingers, and you just have to go, well, why not?
	Maybe it's more weird to hold a little spoon or a fork.
	What are we afraid of, man?
	I still think even in India, they wouldn't do a chocolate They might, mate.
	They might get their fingers right in there.
	If you are watching this live from India now, eating a puddin' with your fingers, then text us.
	But, I mean, it's up to you to use your phone.
	Maybe wipe the pudding off your fingers.
	Or, if you're on DeSantis, and you're watching this in Florida, with a great scoop of pud right there, cradled there in the nook of your third knuckle, suck that down.
	Delicious, like Mother Nature surely intended when she granted us these crazy little hand wands.
	And, uh, let's know what's going on.
	Now, that ad from a pro-DeSantis pack is responding to scathing ads from a pro-Trump group, including this, yes, stomach-churning dig at the Florida governor after a report that he ate pudding with his fingers.
	Ron DeSantis loves sticking his fingers where they don't belong.
	The fact is that DeSantis has got a table and chair, and all that's on it is that pudding.
	Just for pudding.
	That's his pudding table.
	I'm going to the pudding table now, Ma.
	There's nothing else there.
	It's not like a TV or a phone or any distractions, just a man and his pudding.
	And also it's a non-branded sort of looks.
	I don't feel like that's a good quality pudding.
	Like you'd get lots of those for maybe a dollar.
	You get in Walmart and you get 20 of them puddings for a very reasonable price.
	And if you're fingering your way through them at a rate of knots, that's what you want.
	When you're sat alone at your good little jack corner, sticking your fingers at the table, that's what you want.
	Get another one in.
	Like he holds up his muddy little digits.
	And we're not just talking about pudding.
	Yeah, we have a conveyor belt operated by dumper-dumper like on a bicycle. Okay, bring another pudding
	He's like a self-fulfilling one case a one-man one case running his own chocolate factory. He's eating his own
	product Hmm, that's the way to run a state if you ask me and we're
	not just talking about putting DeSantis has his dirty fingers all over senior entitlements
	Making the connection between the senior entitlements and that chocolate smeared. Let's face it. That's an erotic
	image. Yeah Yeah, it is.
	Well, I guess it's both, isn't it?
	What?
	We're doing both?
	What else is it?
	Disgusting and erotic.
	Right, I see.
	I mean, the erotic need not necessarily evoke a passionate or even erotic response in the recipient because the world of sexuality is a complex and wonderful smorgasbord.
	Right.
	Smorgasbord, perhaps.
	A wonderful menagerie.
	A menagerie of potential things.
	And also, it's sexualising DeSantis' pudding eating.
	Maybe it's just efficient.
	Yeah.
	He did it on a private jet, apparently.
	I don't know if that makes a difference.
	It was 2019, Ron DeSantis is in a private jet, flying around, and the story came out that he ate a pudding with his fingers.
	Maybe there weren't spoons on the jet.
	Could have been a one-off, couldn't it?
	I actually myself have probably, I'd call it stooped so low as to eat a pudding with Digit.
	But that's, it's not through choice.
	I'm not getting off on it.
	I've looked around for some sort of spoon or device.
	If there isn't one, what are you going to do?
	Make one?
	No.
	Or use what I call God's sweet spoons.
	God's spoonsies.
	Nature's Forks, these guys are.
	That's what the saying says.
	In a minute, we're going to have a little look at how the media are fetishizing the identity of whistleblower Buddy Boy Texera, instead of focusing on the content of his leak.
	We'll be talking to Branko Marcicic about that in more detail.
	Why are the media always the willing, compliant The tack dog of the state instead of its interrogator.
	Let me know in the chat, in the comments, if you think that the era of mainstream media is over, that, like Elon Musk, we should label them Propaganda Unit, state-funded, funded by Big Pharma, bought to you by Pfizer.
	I mean, they normally do that themselves, actually, to be honest, don't they, as part of one of the conditions that Pfizer imposes on them.
	Here's another story about a lad, Josiah Garcia, he works for the military, I was thinking the Air Guard or something like that, and what he did was he applied to get a job as a hitman on what turned out to be a spoof hitman site.
	Someone, for a laugh I suppose, set up a spoof, you know, wanted hitman to carry out assassinations.
	this poor impoverished service person went, oh god I'll give it a go, I've got nothing
	to lose and then the FBI always looking for someone to arrest, an easy arrest. Like this
	is, you know, the FBI as you are aware have a long history of setting up crimes then solving
	that crime. I mean it's a weird racket they're running over there with regard to that.
	Terrorist organisations that they contribute to and kind of form and then shop them.
	How do you know?
	Well, we started it.
	We gave them all the ideas, funded them, armed them, everything.
	They're terrorists.
	So, hold on a minute, but what if you hadn't done all of that?
	Then they wouldn't have been terrorists.
	They'd have been just carrying on with their jobs.
	I mean, this whole spoof, parody, hitman website game is something that needs a little bit of investigation, if you ask me, as well.
	Yeah.
	Also, I mean, if you're going to set that up, don't be surprised when someone does respond to it.
	Don't spit your drip.
	How dare you, you murderer?
	I was just filling in a form that you put out there.
	Jesus.
	21-year-old Tennessee Air National Guardsman is under arrest tonight, charged with applying to be a hitman.
	Officials say that he applied on a spoof site called rentahitman.com and was taken into custody after allegedly taking money from an undercover agent for a fictitious hit.
	Here's ABC's Mona Kosar-Abdi.
	Tonight, a Tennessee Air National Guardsman is facing federal charges after allegedly using the website rentahitman.com to apply for a job as an assassin.
	But it turns out the website was just a parody, and now he's been arrested.
	According to the criminal complaint, Garcia explained that he was, quote, Unconsciously or otherwise, it presents stories that are soluble and focused on the errors and malevolence, say, of an individual.
	What that does is it prevents us from realizing that what we're dealing with are institutional and systemic problems.
	What's more significant?
	Is it the actions of Jack Taxera revealing on that chatroom site that there was misleading information being propagated about the Ukraine-Russia conflict?
	Or the fact that this type of information is widely disseminated, the propagandist information I mean, in order to support the military-industrial complex, a machine for profit that requires war?
	I'd like to see a story focused on that.
	You so seldom see the interests of the powerful attacked on mainstream media, so you have to ask yourself, who do the mainstream media work for?
	Let us know in the chat.
	Do you think that their primary function is to serve you, to give you information, to help you understand the nature of reality?
	Or do you think that it's actually the opposite of that?
	to distract you from reality, to prevent you with narratives that might be absorbing, compelling,
	vaguely comic, like the poor plight of this guardsman who's obviously not earning enough
	from his pay in the military, who's obviously to a degree desperate to fill in such a form,
	and whose actions, while I suppose ill-advised and unwise, are not nearly so significant
	as for example us being told that the war in Ukraine is going really, really well, when
	in fact hundreds of thousands of people are potentially needlessly dying and no one's
	seeking a peaceful solution.
	That's just one alternative narrative to contemplate.
	Looking for a job that pays well, related to my military experience, shooting and killing the marked target, so I can support my kit.
	Well, exactly that.
	So what?
	A guy who wants to earn more money because potentially he's on food stamps, like one in six military personnel, wants to use the skill sets that he's acquired in the military, probably abroad, killing people that the government want him to kill, over in the United States, and suddenly everything changes at that point.
	If you don't trust the government anymore, then why would you trust them to determine which people it's okay to kill?
	While he's over there killing those people, he's a hero.
	Then he comes over here and fills in a spoof form, he's a villain.
	And the media will present him as such.
	He's answering such a pipsqueak question, when there's like an encyclopedia of inquiry that remains untouched.
	Authorities say Garcia then sent in his resume, which listed his nickname as Reaper, and a copy of his photo ID, adding, quote, what can I say?
	I enjoy doing what I do, so if I can find a job that's similar to it, put me in, coach.
	I mean, actually, I feel a bit sorry for him because of the earnest way that he's trying to fill in this resume.
	I would like it if I say this, coach.
	What am I supposed to say?
	I actually would probably kill him at a price that's right.
	I'm willing to undercut my competitor, assassins.
	It's clearly not the primary problem when you have military personnel willing to carry out online assassinations as a sort of side hustle.
	If you're working for the military, you should be financially looked after.
	But the bleak truth is that many, many military personnel simply are not.
	One in six on food stamps, many insecure about shelter.
	This is not the kind of hero's welcome that the 19 song demanded. It's not the kind of celebration that
	American patriotism and pageantry continually suggests when it's at the recruitment end of finding
	military personnel suggest is available.
	It seems just fodder and objects of ridicule. And again, with the Buddy Boy text era case,
	why are we not focusing on the content of the leaks? Why are we focusing instead on
	irrelevant details about the lad that made the leaks.
	That's something we'll be talking to Branko Marcicic about in more detail.
	As well as Ukrainian censorship and the inability to openly discuss the war in Ukraine.
	Yeah, obviously if this goes any further you can imagine the discussions.
	What a sad end to the career of this military personnel.
	There's a sad end to a lot of people in the military in America.
	Almost 40,000 veterans are without shelter in the US on any given night.
	Veterans account for 11% of homeless adults in the US.
	So whether it's the way that this has gone or just the way that it goes standard for a lot of American veterans, it's not a great end.
	We're not having an adult conversation about the problem because if you want to have A real conversation about even this one story, you'd have to say, why is there so much desperation in an individual that has a job?
	Does that track across the military more broadly?
	Yeah, it does actually.
	It's just like endemic.
	They're endemically impoverished in the military, even though they've got jobs, are jobs, where they're working for their country.
	It's extraordinary and it's at odds with what we're broadly told.
	Complain details that an undercover agent began communicating with Garcia after the website's alarmed owner contacted the FBI.
	The two later meeting up in person, where documents say the agent asked if Garcia was comfortable with taking fingers or ears as trophies.
	Garcia allegedly responding, quote, Into that, a bit, hasn't he?
	Like, with the saying that he was going to, what, make himself an ear necklace?
	Well, also, if one of the questions to him is, are you willing to do this?
	He's not going to say no, is he?
	He'll say, well, actually, no, I refuse at that point.
	He's not going to take the meatloaf defence.
	I'll do anything for this Assassin's gig, but I won't do that.
	I will not make a necklace of my trinkets.
	No.
	Will you make yourself a Buffalo Bill style skin suit out of your victims for sexual reasons?
	Put me in, coach!
	I'll do it!
	I'll make myself a sex bodice made out of my victim's skin!
	I'll make myself suspenders out of people's entrails if it gets me the job!
	When I see that lad standing there, blithely staring into the mirror with these lovely brown eyes and an assortment of odd snacks...
	Oddly behind his head.
	I feel a little bit sorry for him.
	Nothing like it's a terrible indictment of the American military in general and more broadly the way that it's funded when you know that 50% of all military expenditure ends up going via the Pentagon, the unauditable Pentagon, into the hands of the military-industrial complex.
	Let's have a look at some of the profits being made by these organizations like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and all of these guys.
	Look at that!
	That's just the BAE system, 17.5 billion.
	Just have a little glance at that, the amount of profit made by some of the military-industrial complex.
	Meanwhile, there's people willing to do spoof assassinations to turn a few quid.
	Now, the FBI who were involved in that investigation have a long history of setting up stings and then solving the problem that doesn't seem seem to be what you'd want the FBI doing. Here's one of the
	more comic ones. In 2020, the FBI and Justice Department announced the arrest of 14
	Michigan militia members who called themselves the Wolverine Watchmen. Already, that's a
	bit daft, isn't it? If you're naming yourself after Wolverine. Are they watching Wolverine
	or are they watchmen that are like Wolverine themselves? We'll never know. We'll
	never know because they're made up and they wouldn't have done it anyway if the FBI hadn't
	got them all worked up about The FBI claimed that federal agents had thwarted an elaborate plot hatched by the men to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
	Questions of entrapment quickly emerged in the case.
	Yeah, it's entrapment of that poor lad, isn't it?
	It's entrapment.
	He filled in a form.
	Would you kill someone?
	God, yeah, I suppose so.
	I mean, I'm killing people abroad anyway, on behalf of the state.
	I'm desperate enough.
	I've got a kid on the way.
	He's got a kid on the way, the lad.
	Oh, well, bloody hell, you're a mergerer, then.
	The FBI has used a dozen informants and several undercover agents to build the case.
	One of the group's key members, known as Big Dan, was an FBI informant.
	You can imagine these things getting to trial, and eventually, every single person that's standing before the judge will go, are you FBI?
	Yeah, I'm FBI.
	Is anyone here?
	Not FBI.
	No, we're all FBI.
	What about you, Judge?
	I'm FBI.
	The whole thing's ridiculous.
	It's like a school play.
	It's like a diorama.
	It's a complete confection.
	It's to justify their own existence.
	They're justifying their own existence, because if the FBI doesn't do anything, then you don't need an FBI, and what you'll expose is that the infrastructure and architecture of the state primarily exists to subjugate the domestic population, distract and disempower them, rather than protect them.
	So you have to create bizarre cases like the Wolverine Watchmen, who sound made up, and indeed are made up, to justify their own existence.
	You watch now there's these robot Dogs in New York City.
	They'll never revert to not having them, even though once before the people of New York demanded they be removed, they'll continue to justify them, won't they?
	They'll say, oh look, these digi-dogs have been solved in all sorts of cases.
	Look at all the crimes they've solved.
	All these crimes, there was these Wolverine Watchmen.
	Those about, the Wolverine Watchmen, they were going to kick people right up the ball bag.
	There used to be a lot of homeless people in this area and magically they've disappeared.
	Presumably they've all gone and got jobs now as online spoof assassins doing pretend murders.
	Well, a ridiculous waste of everybody's time and money.
	Absurd.
	So there you go.
	Another 21-year-old kid working for the military with a daft nickname.
	What was the other one called?
	GoPro?
	OG?
	There they are.
	There's Jack Texera, 21.
	Josh Garcia.
	Silly childish nicknames because they're only kids, really.
	Working for the government, getting attacked personally by the media.
	Same job, same basic sort of slave wages.
	Poor sods.
	No wonder they're willing to Boost their kudos on chat rooms and fill in spoof murder forms for a bit of attention.
	I would say what needs to be addressed is the way that the military is funded and run and the relationship that the American military has with the people that they all signed up to protect and serve.
	Pay them properly.
	Take care of them.
	It's a disgrace that you can be a member of the military and personally poor.
	End the Let me know in the chat and the comments if you agree with that.
	Now if you're watching this on YouTube, you won't be for much longer because I'm going to be telling you just why I'm sniffing this sweet orange.
	I'm not a Ron DeSantis scoop-it-with-a-finger style perv.
	This is a magical new health kick according to the mainstream media.
	But we can't mention it on YouTube.
	It's just too controversial.
	Dare you sniff this sweet citrus?
	Give it a sniff, gal.
	I'm cured.
	Of course you are.
	But what are you cured of?
	We'll tell you exclusively on Rumble.
	Click the link in the description right now.
	Okay, thanks to Will Sudders' dad, Andy Sudders, who's the only person willing to subscribe to the Telegraph website that enables us to access these stories.
	We can tell you that a study from University College London has found that people with long Covid and anosmia, anosmia, anosmia, that's a silly thing for when your nose stops working.
	nose and nose mirror have suffered a viral rewiring of the brain but may be
	able to get their sense of smell back through olfactory training. Sniff your
	way to health. That's all I was doing. Ron DeSantis will be using that as his
	defense. I was just trying to cure myself along Covid. I'm scooping up the
	goodness. I'm scooping up the goodness. Get away from that cat litter tray Ron.
	Them's not chocolate raisins in there, Ronald.
	Them's cat's business.
	Ronald, get away from that chemical toilet.
	Ronald, get away from that compost.
	Ronald, get away from that aperture between the cheeks.
	Yeah?
	We know it.
	We know it well.
	I call that God's yoghurt pot.
	I know you do.
	God's pudding bowl.
	Yep.
	Chalky-chalky?
	No, no.
	Sniff your way better, Ron.
	Sniff your way better up the back pipe.
	That's right.
	Bit more of this?
	A bit more of this.
	Not this, though.
	Or this or this?
	The article, I think.
	Ron!
	Sniff it.
	I'm feeling better already.
	Sniffing your way to health...
	Is science now, claim scientists.
	Olfactory training is a method where a person with smell issues, you dirty pigs, work to enhance their recognition of senses.
	The scientists suggest taking a 10-second sniff of a common household scent.
	Lemons, oranges, nutmeg, mint, or Ron DeSantis' fingers, at least twice a day.
	I'd get Ron by his wrist.
	I'd say, Ron, let me just...
	Ron, what have you been doing?
	I've only been out of the house half an hour.
	Ron, why is the dog barking?
	What's been going on, Ron?
	Hang on, after all this time and all the debate around vaccines and all these things, are we honestly getting to the point where the answer to long COVID is sniffing stuff around the house?
	All of this trouble, all of them funerals you went to on YouTube, all of those people you couldn't visit, all you needed to do was sniff yourself better!
	I mean, of course I'm being reductive, and ultimately what he's saying is that you can reignite your senses and rewire them through olfactory...
	Training, fair enough.
	But when you add that to the great litany of formerly dismissed cures, steroids, vitamin D, exercise, being outside, breath work, general health, not eating processed foods, not bothering getting numerous booster shots that, according to clinical trials, I'm talking specifically about the Moderna one, don't do F all.
	What's the bloody point?
	The problem is that during the pandemic, no one actually had any oranges, because people were having all those burgers that they were told to eat.
	They should have been giving out, come and get a vaccine, and we'll give you an orange to sniff on the way home.
	Or if you're on Desantis, come get a vaccine, you can dip up to three fingers in my pudding bowl, Ron, and then get home and govern like you bloody well mean it.
	All right, we're going to be talking to Branco Marchetic, Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I think there's a shutting down of journalists in Ukraine.
	Yeah.
	Again, not to say that that, obviously, the same goes on in Russia, but again, that's not the narrative that we're told.
	That's already in the news.
	That's in the news already.
	Shutting down of journalists.
	Shutting them down? Why's he doing that for?
	He's meant to be a friendly guy and a jumper?
	Yeah, again not to say that, obviously the same goes on in Russia, but again that's
	not the narrative that we're told.
	We've already done that. He's got cancer up his neck.
	You've seen that guy's neck, it's too wrinkly.
	If we're going to start judging leaders by their necks,
	I mean Biden's necks, I wouldn't want to eat my pudding off of his clavicle, would you?
	No, I wouldn't.
	Would you want to fill Biden's clavicle with some sort of tapioca?
	Right.
	And then you've got no spoon, you're on a private jet.
	Okay.
	Biden, give us that deep clavicle.
	Give us that deep well that's like chicken skin.
	It's hanging deep there like an inverted ball bag.
	Got it.
	Like an inside ball bag.
	Put your hand all the way in to scoop out the tapioca.
	While Joe Biden goes, he's never been better.
	He's never been healthier than this.
	Dig right down into the clavicle.
	Keep going.
	You missed a bit!
	If you want, if you need a little sauce... Uh oh, where are we going now?
	If you squeeze Joe's nipplets, they've got a saline sauce in them, a clear saline fluid.
	Hunter!
	And if you like a little chili spice, Hunter's always ready to provide.
	That's right.
	Anyway, it's time now to look at some more news.
	If that wasn't, excuse me, I've got to stay well.
	I have to stay well, not just for me, but for the news.
	If you want to know if there is anyone willing to confront a Deputy Defence Secretary with the hard facts of military expenditure and potential corruption in a Pentagon that's failed its last five audits and can't account for literally billions of dollars of expenditure, then look for Jon Stewart.
	And across the aisle, Ally, if you're one of the people that declares themselves Libertarian, or right-wing that watches our show, me, as you know, and we don't know where Gareth is anymore, it's difficult to tell.
	I think that you shouldn't trust any political party.
	I think we need to start again.
	Decentralise power wherever possible.
	Have as much democracy as possible.
	You know me.
	And when you listen to this story, when you watch this story, you are going to be inclined to agree because the military-industrial complex is perhaps the greatest example of institutional corruption there is.
	They are getting 50% of your federal tax dollars and they're not willing to tell you what they're doing with it.
	All this while, as we've explained and described to you today, Did you see Jon Stewart talking to that horrible Defence Secretary?
	Do you know that the Pentagon has never passed an audit?
	Who should really be on trial?
	The Pentagon spending a bunch of money on a war they're lying about?
	Or that little boy?
	Jon Stewart's doing a good job, isn't he?
	Talking to people, having confrontations with that Defence Secretary lady where he brought up the fact that the Pentagon's never passed an audit.
	What's the point in doing these audits then?
	This is taking place, of course, while the Pentagon papers of that lad called something like Buster Teixeira, I'll get his actual name in a minute at some point, Has revealed that we're being told lies about the Ukraine war, the efficacy of the campaign so far, whether or not Ukraine will ever reclaim those territories, all the while money, your money by the way, is being pumped into keeping the conflict going because we've also been informed there's no chance of peace for at least a year.
	So I'm asking you and I want you to answer in the comments in the chat Who should really be on trial?
	That little boy or the military-industrial complex itself?
	Okay, so you need to explain to me.
	Do you understand what an audit does and the degree to which it is linked to the question that you're asking?
	I believe so.
	Okay, go ahead.
	Give me your explanation.
	No, I don't mind learning.
	Has she ever watched Jon Stewart?
	She's been rude, isn't she, to someone who most of us are aware is pretty sharp and knows how to behave on camera, knows how to conduct an investigation, knows how to interrogate people.
	The narrative we're interested in here is why are we focusing on that little boy, buddy boy Texiera, when plainly people in positions of considerable power are literally contributing to the deaths of military personnel.
	Let alone the fact that people that have given their lives in service or have suffered in service aren't being properly looked after.
	You know there's a bunch of people in the military that are living on food stamps whose actions and decisions are actually leading to the death of soldiers and military personnel.
	Is it Buddy Texiera or is it high up people in the defense industry who are masking the facts about the war and facilitating ongoing contracts?
	Let me know in the chat.
	What I would suggest is that the audit that they have in the military doesn't really look at whether or not there's efficacy.
	It's just whether they got delivered the thing that they ordered.
	That is any audit.
	That is any audit.
	That is true.
	But generally those audits aren't $400 billion for Raytheon and $1.7 trillion for a plane that doesn't seem to be doing it.
	There is a lot of waste, fraud and abuse within a system.
	Audits and waste, fraud and abuse are not the same thing.
	She really thinks she's going to be able to get through this conversation simply through analysing the etymology of the word audit.
	You don't seem to know what the word audit means.
	That's not the way out of this conversation.
	Because obviously the question underneath the question is, is the reason that these audits being failed because there's like loads of corruption and money's getting skimmed off the top and creamed off the top.
	I don't want it to be this, do you?
	I want it to be that Jon Stewart sits down and talks to a defence secretary and she goes, Now honestly, what it is, is this is how the money's being spent and we're really doing our best.
	I know it looks on the surface like Raytheon and Norfolk Grumman and BAE system and all of this.
	Looks like what they're doing is they're presenting us with a bill and then they're taking a load of profit then these weapons aren't making it to Ukraine and actually we're prolonging that war so we can keep these deals going.
	I know it looks like that but it isn't that.
	The problem is actually this little boy.
	This bloody little boy!
	Oi!
	I say put that lad in prison for at least a couple of thousand years till he's learned his bloody lesson.
	It's a lesson.
	Also, you can't be all confident and haughty if the Pentagon's failed five consecutive audits.
	At that point, I don't know, man.
	I mean, have you ever failed an audit?
	which is do I know what was delivered to which place?
	Right. Also you can't be all confident and haughty if the Pentagon's failed
	five consecutive audits. At that point, I don't know man, I mean have you ever
	failed an audit? Like right, what you've been doing with the money?
	Oh, I don't know.
	Spent it, I suppose.
	Just asked me Nan.
	My uncle had some of it.
	Alright, well, we'll see in a year.
	If that happened, like, four or five times, you'd feel like you'd be in prison by about the third one, wouldn't you?
	The ability to pass an audit, or the fact that the DoD has not passed an audit, is not suggestive of waste, fraud, and abuse.
	That is completely false right there.
	Lately we're being granted conversations and confrontations that are emblematic of what we suspect is the dynamic between us and the powerful.
	Whether it's Elon Musk and that BBC report, I mean you see like that he doesn't want to answer questions and he thinks that the BBC are beyond reproach or this conversation between Jon Stewart and this lady or some of Matt Taibbi's confrontations.
	What we're getting confronted with is the pose of authority and power.
	A kind of superciliousness.
	A self-entitled authority.
	A kind of because I said so mentality.
	I'm not here to talk about that.
	We're not here to answer those questions.
	Well, guess what?
	Those questions are coming.
	There's a deluge of those questions because people don't trust the media.
	People don't trust the government.
	People don't trust corporations anymore.
	And you're right not to trust them.
	You're right!
	We don't have to indulge in conspiracies.
	What we can plainly see though, on the basis of these five failed audits and the media furore surrounding Buddy Boy Texas lad, is that people want us to look over here at a lad revealing information in chat rooms that doesn't put anyone at risk.
	That espionage act should be called the don't say stuff we don't want you to say act.
	So what is it suggestive of?
	It's suggestive that we don't have an accurate inventory that we can pull up of what we have where.
	That is not the same as saying we can't do that because waste, fraud and abuse has occurred.
	Just because we can't, when ordered, tell you where the money's gone, that doesn't mean fraud or cheating or abuse.
	Yeah, it don't look good though.
	So, in my world, that's waste.
	How is that waste?
	If I give you a billion dollars and you can't tell me what happened to it, that to me is wasteful.
	That means you are not responsible.
	But if you can't tell me where it went... I don't know where a billion dollars got!
	I'm very busy!
	Do you know how long it takes to get my hair to look like this?
	Ages!
	Well, I can't tell you exactly how long.
	Between ten minutes and a month.
	Then what am I supposed to think?
	And when there has been reporting... I mean, this is not... Look, I'm not saying this is on you.
	Also, why is she laughing?
	This isn't funny.
	It's not a funny situation, is it?
	It's not like, oh god, this is hilarious.
	Do you remember when the guinea pig got out?
	This is like, where's the fucking money we've give you?
	And that you caused this.
	But I think it's a tough argument to make that an $850 billion budget to an organization that can't pass an audit and tell you where that money went Like, I think most people would consider that somewhere in the realm of waste, fraud, or abuse because they would wonder why that money isn't well accounted for.
	I mean, I'm trying to understand where you're trying to go other than the dollars, which really bother you.
	Yeah, where are those dollars?
	Oh, you're really worried about that.
	What else are you worried about?
	Whether or not the war is legal or illegitimate, or whether we're telling the truth, or whether or not the Pentagon fundamentally funnels money towards the military-industrial complex, and it's impossible to record that accurately without revealing that military personnel are not benefiting from your tax dollars, but the various military-industrial complex companies are benefiting.
	Yeah, that's it.
	That's exactly what the problem is.
	I think it doesn't really bother me.
	I think it's all connected.
	Okay.
	Tell me that story.
	Bloody hell, she's awful!
	How many times have we got to put up with these people in Congress sneering condescending people?
	Do you know what your job is?
	Your job is you work for the people.
	It should be like, hi, how's it going?
	Yeah, sorry, we've done this.
	I'm sorry about that.
	That is a bit confusing.
	We're going to improve that.
	It is a bit mental.
	We've had five audits and failed them.
	That's terrible that there are American military personnel living on food stamps right now.
	It's terrible that there's a homeless crisis among veterans.
	We're going to address all this.
	You're quite right.
	You should be like, this is funny.
	Oh, this is brilliant.
	It's not hijinks.
	It's hijacking public money.
	I mean, we got out of 20 years of war and the Pentagon got a $50 billion raise.
	Like to me, that's fucking corruption.
	I'm sorry.
	And if like, if that blows your mind, And if you think, like, that's like a crazy agenda for me to have, I really think that that's institutional thinking.
	Jon Stewart there, staying relaxed and spelling it out to a giggling, shrieking, awful government apparatchik.
	Let's have a look at it in more detail.
	Last year, the Department of Defense revealed that it had failed its fifth consecutive audit.
	The Biden administration provided details this month on its $886.3 billion budget proposal for national defence in fiscal year 2024.
	The Pentagon's spending path would put the military's annual budget over the $1 trillion threshold in just a matter of years, its chief financial officer said recently.
	When an institution receives that much revenue, they have to be accountable and responsible.
	The problem with the defence minister there, the deputy defence minister, is not just that her haughtiness is socially unpleasant, it's that it aligns very neatly and beautifully with the attitude we can assume is institutional based on these facts.
	Oh it seems like they don't care and they think they can do whatever they want and they don't even have to answer questions or indeed pass audits because their power supersedes the power of government and indeed democracy and no matter what party's in they're going to ensure that the military-industrial complex continues to thrive even if that means sponsoring and prolonging foreign conflicts that lead to the death of American military personnel whose image they're willing to use as propaganda to mask their corruption.
	And who they're willing to put to the forefront when conducting a trial against poor old buddy Texiera in order to say, hey, we're doing this because we want to protect American personnel.
	If you do want to protect American personnel, then use the resources that the American taxpayers are giving you to give American service people a decent, fair wage and a respectable way of life.
	Instead of, of course, funneling it seemingly unaccountably towards the military-industrial complex.
	Jack Teixeira, suspect in the Pentagon leaks, has been charged under the Espionage Act, which criminalizes the unauthorized retention and disclosure of national security secrets.
	It carries a sentence of up to 10 years per count, and each leaked document could be its own count.
	The Washington Post says it has about 300 documents.
	That means that Jack Teixeira will be 3,021 years old by the time he gets out.
	I think if he's not learned his lesson in the first 2,000 years, the penal system also needs an audit.
	The releases of classified information by Edward Snowden, a contractor at the National Security Agency, and Chelsea Manning, an army intelligence analyst, were treated by the government as catastrophes that jeopardized human lives.
	This did not turn out to be true.
	Documents released by Snowden revealed that the government was engaged in unconstitutional spying on Americans, while information that Manning provided to WikiLeaks showed that US forces killed journalists and civilians in Iraq and lied about it afterwards.
	Despite the government's dire warning, subsequent reviews showed that no deaths could be linked to the disclosures by Manning and WikiLeaks.
	None.
	Zero.
	Not one.
	So they said it was endangering the lives of military personnel, but in fact what it revealed was they're spying on you and killing civilians and journalists.
	How dare you say that we are killing civilians and journalists in Iraq and spying on American people?
	That put American personnel's lives at risk.
	How?
	OK, give me a minute.
	Well, we're going to audit you on this in a moment.
	Oh, no, I can't be expected to pass audits.
	Audits are complicated.
	Don't even mention those to me.
	I'm going to need a couple of billion dollars worth of missiles even to get through this audit.
	One of the leaked documents revealed the U.S.
	doesn't expect Russia-Ukraine peace talks in 2023.
	Another leak that was also reported by The Washington Post says the U.S.
	thinks it's unlikely the Ukraine will regain any significant territory in its expected counteroffensive, a stark difference from what the Biden administration has been saying publicly.
	So the key thing here is these revelations have made it plain that in private, the Biden administration say they're not going to get any territory back.
	In public, though, the Ukrainians are brave, strong people.
	This counteroffensive will be a success.
	It's worth pumping your taxpayer dollars into it.
	If they don't believe what they're saying, what is it they believe?
	And I'll offer you this.
	Is it possible they believe it's profitable to continue the war?
	Is it possible they consider it necessary to engage Russia in an ongoing conflict?
	Once we know that they don't even believe it as a result of these leaks, by the way, no one's ever covering that, no one's covering the content of the leaks, then we have to ask, we have a duty to ask, what Is it, they believe?
	Why are we talking about the criminality of young Jack Texera, who it seems isn't a plucky little idealist, but just a kid on a chat room revealing stuff for casual kudos in those chat room encounters.
	Why are we talking about him?
	He's not the story.
	He's inadvertent.
	Look at how the media partner the government in distracting us from the facts.
	In November 2022, there was legislation pending in Congress that indicates that the US government believes the Ukraine war may continue for years.
	On October the 11th, the Senate Armed Services Committee submitted its amended draft of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2023.
	Nestled within the draft is a provision that would establish an emergency multi-year plan
	to award massive defence contracts to Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, BAE Systems and other war
	corporations to produce weapons for Ukraine and to replenish US stockpiles as well as
	those of foreign allies and partners.
	An amendment spearheaded by New Hampshire Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen and co-sponsored
	by Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn would allow the Pentagon to award non-competitive
	no-bid contracts to arms manufacturers under the plan.
	Those kind of pieces of legislation sponsored by both parties as usual suggest that actually
	what's happening is that there is an agenda to continue funnelling public money into private
	Let me know in the chat and the comments if you agree.
	And the reason the Pentagon keeps failing audits is because these relationships are kind of messy and potentially corrupt.
	Congress is supportive of this.
	They're going to give us multi-year authority and they're going to give us funding to really put into the industrial base.
	And I'm talking billions of dollars into the industrial base to fund these production lines, said the Pentagon's chief weapons buyer, Bill LaPlante.
	What you really want is these people on trial.
	Jack tax area, if he goes away for a thousand, five hundred, ten years, a million years, it's not gonna make any difference to you, it's not gonna make any difference to the military.
	What we should be analysing, auditing, scrutinising, adjudicating, is this expenditure.
	If this doesn't change, the world cannot change.
	This is a key component of systemic corruption and ultra-democratic power, power that is beyond democracy.
	If we don't address this, nothing can change.
	Past and current military spending equals 48% of all spent federal tax dollars.
	So these are not insignificant sums.
	Half of all federal tax dollars, federal tax dollars, so I guess you've got state taxes as well, but half of all federal tax dollars is going in this direction.
	This is a significant industry.
	I mean, it's almost inconceivably large.
	So the blasé, insouciant, haughty attitude of that politician, who you also pay, so you can add that to the eventual figure that won't ever get audited, it's not an insignificant sum.
	And it's certainly not funny.
	Before the war ends, many Ukrainians and Russians will die while Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Norfolk Grumman make fortunes.
	So this is the key point of the video we're making.
	Who's causing more deaths?
	Little buddy boy Texera or Norfolk Grumman, Raytheon and the military-industrial complex partnership between your government that you pay for and those organisations?
	If you were to audit it, good luck, and scrutinise it, good luck!
	What would result?
	Like, hold on a minute.
	That meant that we made that decision, and that meant we prolonged it, and that meant we didn't debate this, and that meant a peace deal was taken off the table, and that meant we inspired that coup.
	Oh, and that means that that money never made it to that particular organisation, and that meant that those service people ended up homeless.
	That means these service people are on food stamps.
	Look at all the deaths.
	That meant these people committed suicide.
	Count it all up!
	Count it all up!
	Because I've had a good look at Chelsea Manning and Snowden and Assange, and the total is zero!
	Zero!
	Like the number of successful Pentagon audits!
	Zero!
	At the same time, networks and cable news is replete with pundits and experts, or more accurately, military officials turned consultants whose current jobs and clients are not disclosed to viewers, for obvious reasons.
	This while military families are reporting housing, health and financial challenges according to a survey released by the Military Family Advisory Network which found that nearly a quarter of enlisted families are experiencing food insecurity and more than 60% of respondents pay more than they can comfortably afford for housing.
	So if you're in the military, which was one of those jobs that used to mean, well at least you're taken care of, You're gonna eat and have hours.
	60% of them can't comfortably afford housing and quarter of them can't eat.
	One-fifth of active service families and nearly 40% of veteran families surveyed reported less than $500 of emergency savings or no emergency savings fund.
	And over three quarters of military families indicated that they carry debt.
	Almost 40,000 veterans are without shelter in the US on any given night.
	The leading causes of homelessness among vets are PTSD, social isolation, unemployment and substance abuse.
	Veterans account for 11% of homeless adults in the US.
	Sounds to me like a system that could be radically improved.
	With a few key decisions and a few audits.
	Although sometimes I read stuff like that and I feel despair, sometimes I see people like that defence minister and I feel hopeless.
	Actually, it shows that the room for improvement is so vast that we would have to be stupid not to demand it.
	We'd have to be stupid not to put aside cultural differences and come together in order to prioritise what are plainly the defining problems of our time.
	Corruption.
	Systemic abuse of power that takes place beyond the reach of democracy, i.e.
	whether you vote Republican or Democrat, you're gonna get some version of this.
	So we have to form new alliances, we have to form a new agenda, we have to create a new manifesto.
	Because it's disgusting to me that people that give their lives in service, whether they actually die for it or not, are Ending up homeless or unable to afford food and shelter while the Pentagon are unable to pass a bloody audit and while the representatives of the defense industry just haughtily dismissed the inquiries of an on-screen journalist.
	We have to demand better.
	We have to put aside all other arguments until these problems are addressed.
	But that's just what I think.
	Let me know what you think in the comments and chat.
	I'll see you in a second.
	Here's the fucking news!
	Joining us on the free internet here on Rumble.
	You won't get this on YouTube.
	Sniff me some citrus, baby.
	My snout's getting stronger by the second.
	I'm being joined now by friend of the show, Branko Marcicic, an investigative journalist for Jacobin, the author of Yesterday's Man, the case against Joe Biden.
	Uh, this is a really cool quote from Branko to get you in the mood.
	So sit yourself down in your chair, wherever you are, and listen to this.
	It's gonna get you hot and wet for Branko.
	This is a Branko quote.
	What's more corrosive to US democracy, that the president secretly put US booties on the ground in an escalating war zone in Ukraine, breaking a promise and going against the wishes of the voting public, or that the public was finally told about it?
	That's a bit of the brilliant journalism of Branko Marticic, except for I made the word... I said booties instead of boots.
	I don't know why I did that now.
	I don't know why I did it.
	It was silly.
	Branko, thanks for joining us.
	Hey, thanks for correcting the record there.
	That's important.
	We are, like you, independent journalists, and we have a duty to take truth pretty bloody seriously.
	I'll congratulate you, firstly, on your hair today, and secondly, we'll move on to my first question.
	Gareth Roy is very excited to have you here.
	He believes you to be a rising star of the independent journalism scene, and he wants to frame you as one of our key voices on Stay Free Media.
	So just know that, Branko, before you even begin your answer, that you are loved and believed in and adored.
	Now, the US government misled the public on the war.
	Why are the mainstream corporate media more interested in going on about that lad's nickname being OG?
	Why are the New York Times involved in his capture and arrest like Scooby-Doo and the Gang or Lovejoy, if you're British?
	Instead of focusing on the content of the leaks, please, Branko.
	I mean, this is basically a pattern that happens every time there's a major leak that exposes something politically convenient or embarrassing or even scandalous.
	Particularly from the U.S.
	government, I can give you a number of examples.
	I mean, basically, you know, some of the biggest leaks in U.S.
	history, you think about Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, you think about the various leaks that WikiLeaks put out under Julian Assange, the Snowden leaks, Chelsea Manning's contributions to the Assange WikiLeaks stuff.
	All of these people were, rather than, well, alongside, you know, writing about the genuinely kind of scandalous and revelatory stuff that they revealed, at the same time there was this obsession among certain segments of the press on You know, were these people, are they heroes or traitors?
	Are they good people?
	Let's talk about some of their misdeeds.
	Sometimes misdeeds are completely imagined, in the case of Snowden, who's been accused of being A Russian and a Chinese spy and all this kind of stuff.
	But, and then also sometimes, you know, very real misdeeds.
	You know, I think Assange, the sexual assault allegations against Assange were credible.
	Obviously, this guy, this latest leaker has, you know, this record of making, you know, offensive and racist comments and so on and so forth.
	But, you know, the entire time that we're talking about whether these people are good or bad and whether they, you know, are deserving of our respect or our valorization, We're not talking about the actual stuff that they revealed.
	In the case of Wikileaks, it was evidence of war crimes by US and coalition forces in Iraq and other places.
	In this case, there's so much important that's come out of this leak.
	I would say number one, The fact that the Biden administration apparently does have boots on the ground, despite saying it would not deploy troops, that has, you know, dozens of special forces personnel in Ukraine, as does the whole of NATO.
	I think it's saying like 97 people.
	And on top of that, I mean, there's this major revelation about how easily this war could have already spiraled
	into all out, you know, World War III or nuclear catastrophe.
	There was this incident last year where Russian and British pilots kind of got into a scrape
	of the Black Sea.
	We heard about it.
	There was a bit of alarm over it, but we didn't quite know the full details.
	Now it turns out that actually the Russian jet, the Russian pilot misunderstanding instructions
	from, you know, radar operators fired the missile at the British jet, and the missile malfunctioned,
	and nothing happened.
	But I mean, if that had, if that malfunction hadn't happened in the nick of time, this could have been a very different thing.
	I mean, this could have been absolutely disastrous.
	I mean, that's two things.
	Out of the many things that have come out but you know these are very important topics to discuss in the context of this ever escalating war and we don't talk about them because we're focused on is this person good or bad.
	Why can't the US be honest about the extent of their involvement in this conflict, plainly admitting that there are American personnel within Ukraine?
	And why can't the mainstream media hold them to account when these leaks are made?
	Why does this consensus to maintain one narrative exist, Branko?
	I mean, unfortunately, in the US especially, the press has long been kind of more eager for escalation and kind of a more aggressive military posture from the Biden administration.
	I mean, if you, you know, whatever you think about the Biden administration's policy to Ukraine, They have been relatively restrained compared to what the press has been asking.
	I mean, you know, from the earliest days of the war, there were White House press corps people who were saying, you know, basically, why won't you set up a no-fly zone?
	Which, you know, would have basically been the declaration of World War III.
	Or, you know, saying, why aren't you constantly pushing the administration to send more advanced, more escalatory weaponry to Ukraine, and so on and so forth.
	So I think for that segment of the media that kind of wants a more aggressive, confrontational posture from the United States government, it doesn't pay to talk about the risks.
	It doesn't pay to talk about the way that the US government has actually misled the public.
	around it's already fairly deep involvement in this war.
	And I mean for the Biden administration, of course, it wants to maintain this idea that, oh, you
	know, we're having a hands-off approach, this is not a proxy war, this is the
	This is not a conflict between the U.S.
	and Russia or between NATO and Russia.
	We're merely providing support to Ukraine at once.
	We're not ourselves actively, you know, belligerents in this war.
	Because I think for domestic consumption, it convinces people that, hey, the U.S.
	elite, you know, the U.S.
	officials have not sort of blundered the country into yet another potentially catastrophic war.
	And I think on the You know, it has this benefit of making the United States seem like a kind of honest broker in this war rather than, you know, what Lula, the president of Brazil, recently said, which is, you know, it's been sort of encouraging the prolonging of the war that's been going on.
	Why is Zelensky declaring war on dissent, centralising nearly all of Ukraine's national TV networks?
	Why, if the leadership of Ukraine are on the side of righteousness, why can they not accommodate dissent Debate and conversation and obviously I would apply that to the ongoing march towards censorship in our countries, you know, Australia, England, America, all that.
	Why is there an unwillingness to accommodate dissent and debate?
	What does that indicate?
	But start off by telling us what's going on specifically with Zelensky in Ukraine.
	Sure.
	I mean, to put it briefly, the sort of authoritarianism that existed in Ukrainian politics, which, you know, long predates the invasion.
	Unfortunately, ever since the breaking of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has been several different struggles over the decades to kind of try and make it a more democratic, less corrupt country.
	You know, grassroots This has been a problem for a long time, and that was a problem under Zelensky before the war, but things really ramped up.
	You know, there's been both anecdotal and also if you look at the data, the prosecution data, there's just been an explosion of prosecutions, detainments, all this stuff against anti-war dissidents, or really just any dissidents of all kinds.
	What does that mean?
	It might mean that, you know, you are someone who criticized the Zelensky government within Ukraine for, you know, helping to making decisions that helped sort of lead to war.
	It might mean that you even support Russia.
	There are definitely people in Ukraine who, you know, it's a small number, a small minority, but there are definitely people who support the war effort.
	It might mean criticizing the Solicitor General for some of its anti-democratic overreaches.
	It can also mean, you know, things like just basically putting forward kind of left-wing ideology.
	A lot of leftists have been kind of caught up in the repression over there.
	The sum total of it is that, you know, basically there's been a crackdown on anything that kind of deviates from the official Ukrainian line, whether it's about the course of the war, the causes of the war, the fitness of the Ukrainian government, all this stuff.
	Whatever it is, if you're saying it and it's, you know, politically inconvenient to the government, you might get a knock on the door from the SBU.
	Now, in terms of why this is happening, I mean, there's two explanations.
	Number one, obviously Ukraine's been invaded by a larger neighboring power.
	Any country that comes under foreign attack and outside attack in wartime, you see a typically a centralization of government power.
	You see Things like censorship policies being put into place.
	You know, it happened under Lincoln during the Civil War.
	I mean, it happened just thinking about what happened with the United States after September 11 and how that kind of led to a centralization of a bunch of repressive powers.
	And so it's not surprising that Ukraine being under attack has kind of resorted to this A classic method of sort of control and unity during wartime.
	However, that's not the full story, because this was happening, like I said, long before, under multiple presidents, but, you know, ramped up under Zelensky too, who, well before the war, when his approval ratings had plummeted, and, you know, he had actually faced some pretty bad outcomes in municipal elections around the country, started to go after his opposition.
	You know, he sanctioned the kind of leading opposition bloc and basically through that got rid of a bunch of opposition media.
	He started to look at banning parties and so on and so forth.
	And then there were the mayor of Kiev, obviously now everyone's very much united, But before the war, the mayor of Kiev got a knock on the door from the SBU as well, the sort of, you know, security service of Ukraine, who, you know, went in and I think searched his apartment and it was, at the time, ran as a form of political intimidation against someone who might be a future Zelensky rival.
	So, it's those two things combining that there was already a trend towards authoritarianism under Zelensky's rule, but the war has, for multiple reasons, kind of made that just go to a far more extreme level than it was before.
	Good analysis, Branko.
	Thanks very much.
	Some of it is legitimate and understandable.
	When a nation is under attack, there is a requirement for authoritarianism, centralized control, and a clear agenda that can be pursued without one might query or quibble about the idea of necessary dissent or necessary opposition.
	But certainly that makes sense and is understandable.
	But there is some politics, as usual, wiping out of opposition.
	Furthermore, I wonder how it relates to the post-war plan to rebuild Ukraine in partnership with Black Rock, eliminating the potential for a Ukrainian trade union movement to be able to meaningfully oppose the kind of restrictions and conditions that Any centralised and financially underwritten project of that nature would likely impose.
	Branko, thank you so much for joining us.
	I'm glad you're a regular contributor to our show.
	You're certainly a valued addition.
	You can follow Branko's work on Jacobin and his book Yesterday's Man, The Case Against Joe Biden is available to buy using money right now.
	Thank you, Branko.
	Cheers, I appreciate it.
	Cheers, man.
	See you soon.
	We've got a great show coming up for you tomorrow.
	We'll be asking and then answering this question.
	Is Taiwan the new Ukraine?
	You want a new, tell us in the comments and chat if you're up to speed, because we're going to tell you some interesting things.
	Hey, why don't we have a look in the gallery, Dan, at all of the people that are doing their work?
	I love seeing those.
	Nice guys.
	I enjoy seeing it.
	Have a look at the whole team now doing their work in there.
	And then would you put it up on the screen so as I can see them as well?
	It gives me some joy.
	We've also got some damning off YouTube information about vaccines and vaccine injury to tell you about.
	We've got Beate Simkin.
	There you go.
	There's Lara.
	She's doing social media.
	There's Joe doing audio.
	Look at this fantastic team of people toiling right now to bring you necessary truths.
	Young Al, they had a birthday.
	Only recently.
	Sometimes Al doesn't post the entire show up when they're pre-recorded shows.
	Do you, Al?
	Do you?
	Don't do you?
	Can't be relied on to do that.
	Remember that face?
	He's the sort of fool who'd fill in a spoof assassination form without even knowing it was a parody.
	We've also got some fantastic guests coming on the show tomorrow.
	We've got Beate Simkin, my friend and breathwork teacher.
	You can sign up to Locals for more exclusive content.
	You can watch live podcast recordings, you can come here to Stay Free HQ and join us.
	I do weekly meditations, bespoke and tailored to your needs.
	Gareth, do you need a guided meditation?
	I need an orange, that's all I need.
	My friend, take that and sniff it.
	Sniff yourself well.
	And should you need a puddin', I got one I want in.
	No, I'm fine.
	I'm fine.
	If you need some puddin', no spoon required.
	No spoons here, baby!
	I understand.
	Take that puddin' straight from the sauce!
	Hey puddin'!
	I get it.
	Hey!
	We'll be doing some exclusive Q&As for our community, so press that red button that's somewhere on your screen now to join us deeper, deeper down the rabbit hole before we ultimately start communities.
	See that join button?
	You can press that.
	We'll be starting physical communities before you know it.
	Remember, we do the Community Festival every year for three days.
	We're going to be travelling around the world, building communities, building resistance, opposing this machine.
	Trying to break out of the prison planet on a daily basis, bringing you the best possible contributors and alternative narratives that you simply will not get anywhere else.
	Happy birthday, Leon.
	Happy birthday, Al.
	That's a full happy birthday to you, not just 60% of one.
	See you tomorrow, not for more of the same.
	We wouldn't serve you that dross, but for more of the different.
	Until then, stay free.
	Switch on.

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