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Sept. 11, 2023 - Stay Free - Russel Brand

01:01:58

WAIT…Elon Prevented THIS From Happening In Ukraine?! - Stay Free #204

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	I'm gonna make you pay for this.
	I'm all, I'm all for the steal.
	In this video, you're going to see the future.
	Hello there, you Awakening Wonders.
	Thanks for joining me on our mutual voyage to truth and freedom.
	Together, we can create new systems, new communities.
	We can analyse these extraordinary times together, independently.
	Those of you watching us from the United States of America, take this This is a great opportunity to reflect honorably with you on the lives of those lost on September the 11th in particular, as someone who behaved so astonishingly at the time.
	That's what I was a crazy young man back then.
	Some of you will be aware of my mad behaviour on MTV way back in those days and now I'm able to
	share with you in acknowledging the horror of those events and actually look at them from a
	new perspective. How it changed history, how it altered our perception of the world, how it was
	utilised, how the Patriot Act was mobilised, how the war in Iraq came about as a result of those
	tragic events.
	We're looking also today at the new revelations that Musk prevented a Ukraine attack on Russia last year because of his... What's it called?
	Skylink, Skynet?
	Starlink.
	Starlink.
	Sounds too much like a train.
	I struggle to accept it as such a significant technological advancement.
	Sounds like Starlink.
	I also think he's going to tuck on Crimea, which is a clear distinction there.
	You know, as in, Musk's point is that when Crimea's a red line of Putins, that could lead to nuclear war.
	Then he's got a bit of a bigger point there.
	Let us know in the chat if you agree with Musk's actions.
	If you're watching us on YouTube, give us a like, give us a comment.
	If you're watching on Rumble, you can't rumble us no more.
	Our rumbling days are over.
	It's like the like has usurped the rumble.
	As the way of acknowledging your approval and registering your content with us.
	We'll be talking in more detail about the, like, Musk's actions in preventing an attack on Crimea.
	And later in our item, here's the news, we'll be talking about Fauci being questioned by CNN on masks and a new take on some of the data that emerged from that period, which I will not discuss with you.
	You 6.5 million awakening wonders on YouTube because you know how that platform is regulated and we love you and we adore you.
	But in a few minutes, we're going to want you to click the link in the description to join us for a conversation with Max Blumenthal, who will be talking to us, presumably at length, about that conflict and revealing stuff that simply wouldn't be safe to talk about in heavily regulated mainstream spaces.
	But first, it's time for Moderna's Shot of the Day.
	Now, if you sponsor Shot of the Day in a major tennis Grand Slam tournament, there's one man who I'd be pretty keen to see bypass.
	I wouldn't even want to see him as a contender.
	But, the fact is, this guy's good at tennis.
	For some reason, he's a rat!
	His heart just keeps on pumping!
	Almost as if he's healthier than the other tennis players that he has some sort of advantage that is indescribable and difficult to discern, particularly within mainstream science.
	Let's have a look at Djokovic's shot of the day and the extraordinary hypocrisies around that.
	The dirtiest shot of the day and it was... The match point to get to number 24.
	There were a lot of shots that were highly impactful.
	But here's the final one.
	Relief and release there.
	Sometimes it's not in the moments of high analysis and great exposés and brilliant
	investigations where you see the reality of our system.
	just the normalization of Moderna's shot of the day, showcasing the brilliance of Djokovic.
	It's extraordinary and inconvenient. Those of you that have been following these stories
	closely know that if you're from the UK and let us know in the chat if you are and if
	you're watching us on Rumble, press the red button right now and join us in the locals
	community. There's a fantastic chat going on in there right now. Some of you mentioning
	like no Dugganoku. Is this a pun, Moderna shot of the day?
	I mean, I think it is a deliberate pun. I think it definitely is. And yet that pun is placed
	in a new framework by Djokovic's victory and the excellence of his shot.
	And of course, us still being on YouTube, we have to be cautious about what we say.
	But you'll remember, of course, that Rishi Sunak, the British Prime Minister, look at his investment strategy prior to becoming Chancellor and then Prime Minister.
	You will remember.
	What's his name again, Jonathan Fantam?
	Van Tam.
	Van Tam, government advisor, making all sorts of suggestions during the pandemic period.
	And he went on to get a job at, I can't remember where it was, wasn't it, Dr. Bernardo's charity for children?
	No, it was Moderna.
	That's where he went on to get a job.
	You'll remember some of the booster shots that were recommended after clinical trials on just eight mouses.
	And they call it science.
	It's an extraordinary day to look at Shot of the Day.
	Shot of the Day also seems to suggest that it's going to be one shot every day.
	That's the old name.
	This will be effective... Well, what time is it?
	I'm afraid we're going to need another one.
	What we can do is we can thwack them at you from across a net and they'll end up where they may.
	Isn't it also incredible that... The thing about having Shot of the Day and Moderna is how normalised it's become that a pharmaceutical company can be one of the main sponsors of a massive tennis event.
	Gareth, you make an incredible point there, because it's the normalisation of the system that makes it kind of invisible to us.
	That it's gone from something where we're like, what?
	You want us to do what?
	Are you sure this is effective?
	Hold on a minute, indemnity for perpetuity.
	The drug companies that we used to somewhat vilify.
	Moderna, shot of the day.
	You're quite right, it's in the innocuousness, it's in its banality that that's where the true creeping tyranny will be seen.
	This is not the authoritarian dictatorships of the last century in bold primary colours and military uniforms with Evident gulags, executions and genocides.
	The visible, evident, appalling horrors of the last century.
	No, this is a much more sanitised version of control.
	Where you feel afraid to speak freely.
	When you do not know when you will be persecuted.
	When you do not know what's safe to say anymore.
	A society extracted of all but data and only convenient data.
	Where there is no accountability for some organisations.
	I'm probably straying into that.
	Allegedly.
	That kind of territory by about now on and there's so much more to talk about particularly on this sort of historic week for particularly for those of you watching from the great continent of North America.
	It's a great nation of North America.
	Also the way in which Djokovic was vilified you know I mean again the great irony of all of this is that he's he's won a tournament that he was banned from for two years for not doing something that now we have new information around.
	I mean it's just perverse really.
	There's no in the chat Guys, now, the vilification of Djokovic.
	He wasn't allowed to compete in competitions.
	The US Open.
	Do you mind if I don't do that, Medicine?
	What?!
	Already, I'm outraged all over again.
	It seems unfeasible, the way that the framing can shift, fluctuate, and alter.
	When they are wrong, it just disappears into the mist.
	It just vaporizes into nothing.
	Where is Where is the mea culpa?
	Where is the explanation for the events of the last few years?
	Where is the examination into the role of organisations of that scale, their ability to manipulate and control political processes?
	Astonishing.
	Extraordinary.
	And this is exactly why Moderna does sponsor events like this.
	This is the whole point.
	You are normalising your product.
	Any controversies like surrounding the vaccines at the moment are whitewashed, aren't they?
	I had a fantastic conversation earlier today with Max Lugavere.
	Can you say it for me?
	Is that right?
	Say it over the thing because it's a name that I've never seen written down.
	Lugavere.
	Lugavere.
	Max Lugavere has done some unique research into Alzheimer's and the medications around Alzheimer's that, again, we possibly can't discuss here.
	But once again, you can see how there are likely dietary factors that are early markers and indicators and causes, in fact.
	allegedly of Alzheimer's, then there are unaffected medical solutions that are offered and this
	sort of normalisation, the presence of pharma, in the same way that sort of years ago, in
	somehow more sane times, it would be remarked upon as ridiculous that Coca-Cola and McDonald's
	would be able to sponsor the Olympics because we all know that sugar, fat and salt to that
	degree, immersive as it is, readily available, cheap and eaten too readily and likely with
	appalling consequences.
	And given to you free during the pandemic.
	Have one of them, as long as you get your shot of the day, and then do you want fries with that?
	And now, it's Big Pharma.
	It becomes impossible to morally adjudicate because we're being stripped of the, almost of a reliable context, it seems, and just in an innocuous and not-inoculating event like that.
	like that is an indication of how far we've come. Let's learn in the chat if you agree
	with that. Coming up is Max Blumenthal. He'll be, as always, I call him the grey zone's
	favourite son. He'll be exposing truth in radical ways to all of us. But before that,
	we're going to talk a little more. Let's have a look, because actually this is a historic
	time for America. When is it not? Joe Biden gave a speech in Hanoi in Vietnam. I don't
	know if it was related to the previous military conflict between Vietnam and America. Imagine
	that's another episode in American history. If you had the philosopher's friend, the time
	machine, go, shall we have this war with Vietnam? Well, probably not actually. Probably just
	leave that alone, shall we? Well, here is Joe Biden giving a speech in Hanoi. Let's
	Let's have a look at that.
	We talked about, we talked about at the conference overall, we talked about stability, we talked about making sure that the third world, the, uh, excuse me, third world, the, uh, the, the, uh, the Southern Hemisphere had access to change, had access.
	That's the kind of thing.
	That doesn't look good, does it?
	You can't say third world and southern hemisphere as interchangeable terms, can you?
	Is that allowed even?
	Again, how can we be having these sort of charged conversations about the problems within the libertarian, the independent, even RFK as a potential candidate for the presidency?
	When this is what has been normalised, when this is what's become normal for us, we've been sort of, I think, marched onto a bizarre peninsula where it's just ordinary to say, Moderna's shot of the day, here's Joe Biden in Hanoi saying that the southern hemisphere is the third world.
	The guy can hardly sort of speak.
	How has this become normal?
	Well, especially when we're in a culture now, aren't we, of always having to say the right thing, you know?
	And again, not one that I'm criticising in any way, but when people's pronouns and things are so important, and that's the culture that we're all told that is the right one that we should be following, for then the President to be making remarks like that, Third World rather than Southern Hemisphere, it's like, well, hang on, what's he doing then?
	We don't need to legislate for kindness.
	We can all find kindness within us.
	We can find basic principles, I'm certain of it, around which we can reorganise society.
	But when you have someone that's held up as an emblem, I remember when, about two days ago, Kamala Harris said that thing, and here is the champion of Big Pharma.
	And again it was a sort of an extraordinary carnival of doublespeak where we were told
	that Big Pharma had been reined in, attacked, neutered and castrated when it amounted to
	a handful of drugs that have no generic competition, that have already been on the market for nine
	years, will from 2026 be available to senior citizens.
	So you sort of told it as it like, you know, like Martin Luther King at the pulpit.
	Billie Jean King in the administration.
	I don't know if there's anything really wrong with Billie Jean King, but I thought, you know, it's a good contrast, I suppose, because, let's face it, tennis is not administrating politics, unless you're Djokovic, in which case you better watch out, as he used to say.
	Let's have a look at the rest of Biden's... what should we call it? Oratory?
	It wasn't confrontational at all.
	Thank you everybody. This ends the Calum Press.
	That's enough of that about the Southern Hemisphere, old man.
	Get out the way!
	Okay, thanks everyone.
	He just sort of takes it.
	I don't know, man.
	What do you guys think about this?
	Are we at the point where it's sort of cruelty?
	Elder abuse?
	Is that what it is at this point?
	Get ready for another six years!
	This guy's got years in him!
	He's nowhere near the periphery of his talents.
	If this is him now, imagine in 2024!
	It's astonishing.
	It's astonishing that it can even be discussed in any sane society and perhaps we'll never know because we don't live in one.
	Here's CNN attacking Elon Musk for trying to prevent nuclear Armageddon.
	Another bizarre news story.
	This is Jake Tapper talking about Skynet, SkyLink, Stardust, Starlight Express.
	Let's have a look at Jake Tapper criticizing Musk.
	Is that actual Anthony Blinken?
	And what's he saying?
	I can't criticise Elon.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Well, he does, because they're in a very difficult position, because they're having to rely on a private company, which, you know, all the ways in which the government relationships with private companies, it's really not that convenient in this case.
	Right, because it's difficult to have a cohesive policy if private entities are required to enact policy.
	Exactly, but those private entities in other ways are very useful to you, you know, and so they'll have massive military contracts with Amazon providing a service.
	Microsoft.
	Microsoft, all of these.
	They're very useful when we need them.
	When it comes to being put in a position of being critical of them, they have to be careful at that point.
	Let's see how the mainstream media want you to think about this.
	SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has recently confirmed a report that's in Walter Isaacson's new biography of Musk that last year Musk blocked access to his Starlink satellite network in Crimea in order to disrupt a major Ukrainian attack on the Russian Navy there.
	In other words, Musk effectively sabotaged a military operation by Ukraine, a U.S.
	ally, against Russia, an aggressor country that invaded a U.S.
	ally.
	Should there be repercussions for that?
	Jake, I can't speak to a specific episode.
	Here's what I can tell you.
	Starlink has been a vital tool for the Ukrainians to be able to communicate with each other.
	Jim Earthsea calls him Black Rock Blinken there in the chat.
	Curious.
	And particularly for the military to communicate in their effort to defend all of Ukraine's territory.
	It remains so, and I would expect it to continue to be critical to their efforts.
	So what we would hope and expect is that that technology We'll remain fully available to the Ukrainians.
	It is vital to what they're doing.
	I don't know that you can't speak to it.
	You won't speak to it.
	Musk says he was reportedly afraid that Russia would retaliate with nuclear weapons.
	Reasonable concern.
	Legitimate, I would say.
	What about a nuclear war, though?
	It's one of those problems people seem to have put aside lately.
	Yeah, Crimea.
	I mean, literally a red line of Putins.
	He said that.
	He's been pretty plain about it.
	I mean, so if you owned a company and you thought that your company was potentially facilitating a nuclear war, don't you have the right, as an owner of a private company, to make a call on that, would you not say?
	I think it's actually, as I understand, in the terms and conditions.
	And often you look at terms and conditions and it says things like, we will not let you use our technology to start a nuclear war or an international conflict.
	Well, I'm hardly likely to do that.
	But in this case, that was precisely how it was going to be used.
	This is from a post of Musk's on air.
	X. The onus is meaningfully different if I refuse to act upon a request from Ukraine
	versus made a deliberate change to Starlink to thwart Ukraine. At no point did I or anyone
	at SpaceX promise coverage over Crimea. Moreover, our terms of service clearly prohibit Starlink
	for offensive military action as we are a civilian system.
	So they're again asking for something that was expressly prohibited.
	SpaceX is building Starshield for the U.S.
	government, which is similar to, but much smaller than, Starlink, as it will not have to handle millions of users.
	That system will be owned and controlled by the U.S.
	government.
	How astonishing the relationship between big tech and the government literally could intervene as surely as it could facilitate nuclear conflict.
	Yeah, it's a tricky relationship that they have, the government and big tech now, because
	as we've seen, I mean, we've got Max coming on later, but the Twitter files revealed so
	much about the collusion between the government and big tech.
	So they're in a position where they can't be condemnatory of Musk necessarily, because
	they need him for all sorts of things in the same way that they need Facebook.
	Hence why they've allowed all these companies, for example, Facebook, for years to violate
	your personal freedoms, to violate your privacy, because of the need that they have for these
	companies.
	How can you ever regulate big tech companies when there is such an over-reliance on them?
	When there seems to be a pretty porous revolving door, would that work?
	A porous revolving door between big tech and the deep state with CIA and FBI operatives
	revealed to be working within numerous social media organizations, as well as within conventional
	media, how can there be any trust in these organisations?
	How can there be any ability for these new titans of the globe to respond to the will of ordinary people?
	These are just some of the questions I'd like you to ask and possibly answer and we'll ask Max Bluth or possibly Possibly.
	Over here in the UK, Daniel Khalif, a former Royal Signals soldier and terror suspect, has been arrested after his escape.
	Daniel Abded Khalif has been subject to a nationwide manhunt, having finally been captured 75 hours after outwitting the guards at a London prison.
	and let's have a look at some news footage of that event.
	It's the news headlines.
	No, it's not.
	We're going straight to me.
	This is breaking news.
	That's right.
	Now, GB News, that's their style, isn't it?
	Yeah.
	They're sort of a bit like us.
	All right, here's the news.
	What's now?
	We're coming straight to me, yeah!
	It's fast happening.
	Because, as we just said, we... It's happening.
	News, yeah, a bit of news just then.
	The app... The Terror Man...
	Terror Man!
	Terror Man!
	Don't glamorise him!
	The guy's a jailbreaker!
	He's already got fantastic eyebrows.
	The last thing you want to do is give him a moniker that's going to catch on and allow him to have T-shirts and mugs and stuff.
	It's all gone wrong.
	It's here.
	Chip Chapman.
	We have him coming up soon on the arrest of the terror suspect.
	He escaped from Wandsworth Prison and he's been apprehended.
	It's all coming up in GB News.
	We've got our first guest.
	Wow, it's an interesting place over there on GB News.
	In a sense, are they new media or old media?
	Are they traditional?
	Are they straddling?
	Where are they funded by?
	I mean, it's sort of like, I know they do a lot of stuff online that's pretty interesting, but that was amazing.
	I guess it's sort of just like it's hard to do breaking news sometimes.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Let's see if he gets it back.
	He's escaped.
	They've arrested prisoner Daniel Khalif.
	Beg your pardon, we're getting the autocue in the right place.
	This story is just happening.
	Joining me now for the latest is GB News home security editor Mark White.
	Are you there Mark?
	We have Chip Chapman.
	Chip?
	Chip Chapman!
	It's Chip Chapman.
	Chip Chapman.
	Terror man.
	I'm going to watch more of this station.
	It's amazing over there.
	It's sort of like Be No News.
	It's a wonderful, it's like a Pixar film.
	Yeah.
	The kind of characters that are turning up.
	It does feel like it's been made by like school kids or something.
	Audio!
	You can't keep saying Chip Chapman.
	Oh no, here's the Prime Minister man again, Moderna man as we call him.
	Hold on a minute, we're still on YouTube.
	You can't call him that there just because he was the founder of a hedge fund that invested 500... Co-founder, Ross.
	Come on, come on.
	We even have a like button now instead of a rumble button so you can like us like it's 1999.
	We'll be talking to Max Blumenthal who's the editor and journalist at the Grey Zone.
	Hey listen, if you're watching us on YouTube now, why don't you click the link in the description
	and join us over in the home of free speech. We even have a like button now instead of a
	rumble button so you can like us like it's 1999. We'll be talking to Max Blumenthal who's the
	editor and journalist at the Grey Zone. He's got some interesting stories around censorship and
	what seemed to me like the forces turning against him.
	They're starting to meddle with the money.
	You know, it's getting serious when it gets to that point.
	Click the link in the description and join us over there.
	If you're already on Rumble, why not press the red button now?
	Become an Awakened Wonder.
	Get some Awakened Wonder Pants.
	The first thousand of you that join us in our Locals community get an astonishing pair of Underpants.
	Is that in any sense an incentive?
	I'm not sure.
	We do question, let us know yourselves by simply joining us.
	As Max Blumenthal, and I'm not suggesting that he's in Wonderpants, Awakened Wonder, though he surely is, he's joining us now.
	Max, hello mate, thanks for coming on.
	Great to see you.
	How are you doing?
	Thanks.
	Yeah, you know, man, we're operating in a beautiful space.
	I'm sure you'll agree that working in this independent media space is free from consequences.
	It's a giddy, buccaneering affair, and you never get the sense that the forces of evil are co-aligning and coalescing to, for example, shut down your GoFundMe.
	Can you tell us a little bit about that story, mate?
	Yeah, well, it's a giddy buccaneering affair for independent swashbucklers like ourselves and our ship was targeted by...
	Apparently national security state pirates.
	We have no idea who they actually are because they hide behind the veneer of the supposedly private Silicon Valley based companies like GoFundMe.
	As you said, you were saying before in the run up to this interview, the FBI has honeycombed its places like Facebook or Meta and Twitter with its own operatives.
	You even have former CIA people there.
	But these crowdfunding sites do the same thing, and it's poorly understood.
	So I'll just tell you what happened to us, and I think your audience will better understand how dangerous it is for them to try to raise money for anything remotely political.
	When you have the national security state operating behind the scenes telling them that they may have to sanction people if their political views go against their own objectives.
	So we launched a crowd funder for three of our contributors.
	You've had one of them on named Kit Clarenberg.
	Three of our most dedicated contributors to provide them with long-term positions.
	And so for our audience, it was a chance to just support independent media that they like.
	We went through GoFundMe.
	People are now calling me naive.
	And GoFundMe was failing to transfer the money.
	We had raised about $90,000 in three weeks.
	And I went over to GoFundMe's That's all I heard from her.
	and what happened to the money.
	And it took a while.
	And I finally received a message from a trust and safety officer, only named Sabrina.
	I had no idea who she was.
	And she said that due to some external concerns, they have frozen the money and they're not
	transferring it to us because they need to verify it.
	That's all I heard from her.
	And so our donors didn't know that this had happened.
	So eventually I had to announce it.
	Which means that I was basically, when you announce this and go public, you're sabotaging your own fundraiser because no one's going to want to donate if the money's being frozen.
	But they wouldn't explain why.
	And eventually we had to force GoFundMe to refund all the money to everyone and move to a different fundraising site called SpotFund, which has been much more trustworthy and responsive.
	We were able to get their chief technology officer on the line who promised us that they would transfer the money immediately, and they've done so.
	But with GoFundMe, it's obvious.
	That they're working hand-in-glove with the national security state and applying financial sanctions on outlets and causes that threaten the imperatives of the powers-that-be.
	And I'll point directly to the Canadian truckers, the Freedom Convoy.
	You know what happened there.
	Back in early 2022, GoFundMe froze their $10 million that they had raised, $10 million US dollars they'd raised, and then announced that they were transferring it to, quote-unquote, established charities.
	So they were stealing the money from donors to the Canadian truckers protesting Justin Trudeau and the Liberal government's vaccine mandates and the lockdowns, and just giving it to charities of their choosing.
	And they eventually had to relent because this was a violation of U.S.
	law.
	Several attorney generals in the states were going to investigate them.
	But they wanted to steal the money.
	And why were they doing that?
	Because that liberal government of Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland had declared emergency law in Canada, had told GoFundMe to do that, and they were telling the banks to basically Take people's money who are donating to this because the protest was threatening their policy.
	And so that's what we think happened with us, and we weren't going to let them reroute the money somewhere else, so we just shut it down.
	And the crazy thing is, now they're telling journalists, like our friend Matt Taibbi, who actually called them at GoFundMe, that this was a totally normal procedure and that we voluntarily shut it down, as though we were just going to sit there and allow them to continue this complete Banking fraud forever.
	It's astonishing.
	You know, like Lee's story, we're talking about the relationship between Elon Musk and the American government and how Elon Musk is able to intervene in the military imperatives of the, you know, in this case, the Ukraine.
	I know your views on that war have been pretty well and widely expressed.
	And here we have a story where, once again, the relationship between big tech and the government
	becomes quite curious.
	It's interesting and exciting when there's an obvious adversarial component,
	such as in our last story.
	But when you see this kind of cohesion, this kind of collaboration, like you cite with the Canadian
	trucker story, and obviously now you've been a personal, I guess, should we say, victim of it,
	you've certainly experienced it, it makes you realize that, ultimately, what we're
	sliding towards are more and more normalized, centralized, authoritarian models, centralized currency,
	ability to close down people.
	We're hearing more and more stories about the intervention in people's financial affairs.
	It's something that's becoming more prevalent.
	And I'm not surprised that you're a prominent and high-profile organization
	to be subject to that kind of obvious corruption.
	And what does it make you feel about the future of the gray zone and your ability to report independently,
	for example, on the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia?
	Does it make you feel that you are being persecuted?
	Does it make you feel that it's kind of a threat?
	Or do you think that in this sort of new space everything is sort of sanitized, technocratic, I mean that sort of literally, and yet a digital tyranny kind of pervades invisibly like a sort of a binary gas where there's no sort of baddie to locate but just an ideal that can be conveyed and a new type of oppression without clear villains, you know?
	Yeah, exactly.
	I interviewed an author and satirist who's based in Germany, who's American, named C.J.
	Hopkins, who you might know.
	He did a book called The New Normal Reich, which is just a send-up of the Covidian regime that prevailed in Germany, across Europe, and across the West.
	And his book cover features—it's a play on William Shire's The Rise and the Fall of the Third Reich.
	It features a swastika embedded within a mask.
	And for that book cover, Germany, a German court has found him guilty of glorifying a national socialist organization and sentenced him to 60 days in prison or $4,000 fine.
	And the way, I mean, he's facing kind of a jackboot in the face, the hard censorship.
	Germany doesn't really have freedom of speech, although it pretends to be a liberal democracy.
	But what we're facing in the U.S., which has a First Amendment, is kind of the national security state, which we never elected, a
	bunch of faceless individuals who are able to meddle in elections across the world, including
	in our own, meddle in politics, is this kind of soft totalitarian model. Sheldon Wolin, the
	late sociologist, called it inverted totalitarianism, where liberal democracy
	is used as cover for a more authoritarian project.
	And you can get quietly shadow banned from behind the scenes by some operative in an air-conditioned office and disappeared or suppressed or censored without having any recourse or due process because it's being done ostensibly through a private corporation, which just is saying, hey, we're just enforcing our terms of service.
	And so that's insidious.
	It's dangerous.
	It's deeply anti-democratic.
	And the public, whether it's us or anyone else who's been censored financially, like our friends at Mint Press News or Consortium News, they never know who actually pulled the trigger and censored them.
	So who's responsible for this?
	Was it the U.S.
	government?
	Or could it have been the Ukrainian government?
	Because we know For a fact, because of the Twitter file that my colleague Aaron Maté obtained, that the Ukrainian security services, known as SBU, called the FBI, sent them messages containing a list of Twitter accounts they wanted banned.
	And the FBI went to Twitter and told them to ban these accounts.
	And these accounts included Americans and Canadians, Like Aaron Maté.
	And it was solely on the basis of their political views that they were disrupting the official narrative that Ukraine was just fighting this glorious war for democracy.
	And Twitter, this is in the pre-Elon regime, actually refused because it was too extreme for them to just ban Americans and Canadians on the basis of a foreign government telling them to do so.
	But who told GoFundMe to do that?
	Who were these external concerns?
	Was it the Ukrainian government?
	Was it the British government which detained And interrogated our contributor, British citizen, Kit Clarenberg.
	I know you've interviewed him about that.
	Or was it the U.S.
	government?
	We will probably never know.
	And so we're existing in this inverted totalitarian model behind the guise of liberal democracy, where most of the public still believes that they have due process and free speech.
	They don't, as long as we're relying on these private companies managed by the national security state as our digital commons, as our kind of speaker's corner.
	God, man, there's so many points I want to pick up on there.
	There were sort of Orwellian images, of course, with the boot on the face of the man who used that image in a mask in a plainly satirical way, and sort of when satire and comedy gets challenged to that degree, you know, bloody hell, Germany, they should be encouraging.
	Robin Williams' famous line, why are Germans so unfunny?
	And he said, because he killed all the funny people.
	But I'm also minded of Huxley, like being the sort of sanitized version of tyranny,
	this inverted tyranny that you describe, as well as the kind of Kafka-esque idea,
	which I'm sure, I guess, was more of a critique of Stasi-style, Soviet-style, communist oppression,
	bureaucracies that were masked, and are oddly diaphanous, and impossible to locate.
	This now seems to have migrated to our countries, the United States, the UK.
	As well as when you were talking about this inverted tyranny, I'm sort of minded of a moment in my conversation with Sam Harris last week.
	It was a point that the great philosopher and friend of the show, actually, Brad Evans first made, I believe, that we've been sort of trained to regard jihadist violence or certain type of violence as extreme.
	And of course, you know, I'm not sort of obviously endorsing any type of violence, but like he made the point that he imagined jihadists to be in ecstatic states and sort of That, for him, made the violence all the more nefarious.
	But the kind of violence that's carried out, for example, under Obama, who we made a really
	good item about earlier today, are these sort of sanitary, as you say, air-conditioned rooms
	where either your funds are shut down or a wedding adjacent to a potential terror suspect
	is bombed, where progress, technology, rationalism themselves are used to mobilize a type of
	tyranny that, to misquote Wilde, dare not speak its name, tells us that it's liberal
	and democratic, all the while gently closing in on our freedom.
	And in one more Orwellian tag, Max, what do you feel about the war, good, peace, bad NATO
	members' concerns that any opposition to a proxy war might drive Ukraine to pursue, oh
	no, peace talks with Putin?
	Well, there are a number of obstacles to peace talks, because it's obvious now that Tony
	Blinken, the U.S.
	Secretary of State, was recently in Kiev for a more extended period than usual to probably put the idea of negotiations on the table.
	And this is because of the colossal failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, which the U.S.
	has been heavily involved in.
	They failed to capture any real territory.
	They were supposed to cut off the land bridge between Russia and Crimea.
	It's not going to happen, and soon there's going to be rain in the eastern regions, the eastern plains of the Donbass region, and it's going to be impossible to get armor through there.
	So it was a total failure.
	Why can't they negotiate?
	Number one, why should Russia negotiate at this point when the West has just stabbed them?
	It just completely cut off the possibility of negotiations and sabotage negotiations at every turn leading to this proxy war.
	Back in April 2022, the U.S.
	cancelled negotiations between Zelensky and the Kremlin and said, keep fighting.
	And they sabotaged the Minsk Accords before that, so why trust the West?
	And why negotiate when you could actually start capturing more and more territory, given this terrible state of Ukraine's military and the hundreds of thousands of casualties they've suffered?
	They don't have much left, apparently.
	So there's that factor.
	Then there's the factor of, like, Tony Blinken himself.
	This guy has major skin in the game when it comes to continuing this war.
	He founded a firm called West Exec Advisors, which finesses contracts for the arms industry and big tech through the Pentagon and the State Department.
	And him and his former colleagues from the Obama administration got together and started
	this firm to basically profit off their connections with the major winners of the Ukraine proxy
	war, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Palantir, all the Beltway bandits, as we call them here
	in Washington.
	And so, if Tony Blinken leaves government, he could make a lot of money off of this war,
	as long as it's still continuing.
	And that could be either through a kind of frozen conflict, where Ukraine is transformed into what Zelensky has called a big Israel, and it's just constantly at war with Russia, and its entire society is securitized and mobilized.
	The tech industry will love that as well, because everyone's going to be under surveillance, you know, drones and cameras everywhere.
	Uh, and so, you know, you have all these people who, why would they want to end this conflict?
	It's doing, they're the real winners of this war.
	And then finally, you have the ideological investment, just the hatred of Russia that prevails, particularly among the Democratic Party foreign policy elite, but also within the Republican Party.
	The idea that we just can't lose this war and that this is about democracy.
	So there are all these obstacles to negotiations, but obviously the war isn't going.
	There's no progress for Ukraine in this war.
	They should have negotiated over a year ago, but they've been drunk off of these delusional fantasies spun out of Washington that they can somehow win when victory is never even defined.
	Oh man, those are the kind of home truths that you do not want being funded under any circumstances.
	Do avoid going to spot.fund forward slash defend the grey zone again and donate in to
	Max Blumenthal's incredible endeavours there at the grey zone.
	We'll post the link in the description.
	Now they've got to do it all over again precisely because the news they convey is a threat to
	mainstream narratives and look what happens.
	Astonishing, astonishing the price you pay for telling the truth.
	Max, that's exceptional.
	Thank you so much for that.
	We're always grateful to spend some time with you.
	Thanks for your contributions.
	I'm going to make a donation myself.
	It's a GoFundMe, right?
	A couple of hundred pounds.
	Guy, just give it to someone.
	Give it to someone you think I'd like.
	I don't know what I want.
	I'm an idiot.
	You decide for me who I should support.
	Well, none of it's going to me.
	Not one dollar is going to me.
	It's going to The three of our bravest, most dedicated contributors.
	Wyatt Reed right now, our managing editor, he is in the Donbass region.
	He's in the conflict zone right now, and he's been cut off from Venmo and PayPal for his reporting.
	He's basically financially sanctioned.
	It's going to kick Klarenberg, who you've interviewed before, and his bombshell expose on 9-11.
	which it is 9-11 today, on how the CIA actually recruited two of the hijackers,
	completely factual report based on public court documents, recruited two of the hijackers
	and then refused to tell the FBI about their plot as it developed. He was interrogated about that
	article by British counter-terror police when he arrived to his home country in London.
	So, I mean, these are the people that deserve to be supported.
	These are the journalists that deserve to be supported, and that's who our fundraiser is for, to provide them with long-term support.
	Amazing.
	That is a way to fund Real News, Real Truth.
	We'll post that link.
	You guys there should support that.
	Thanks once again, Max, for joining us.
	It's fantastic to see you, as always.
	I'm sure your donation is not anonymous, because we'd love to have it up there.
	All right, let's leave a donation under my name.
	I'm looking around, like if someone's going to solve that for me, like The Dog or Gareth or someone.
	I will, I'll leave a donation.
	We'll do it.
	Someone nodded.
	Young Putin, of course.
	Of course he would nod!
	Of course he would!
	He's a sympathiser!
	Thanks Max.
	Cheers for joining us, mate.
	appreciate the support. Hey, guess who we got coming on tomorrow? Max Lugavere. Max Lugavere. Look at him. That
	handsome. He's beautiful. He's another what I call boy band academic. Absolutely. This is what I call him. Saladino.
	We're getting some of the most beautiful people telling you how to live forever, how to avoid Alzheimer's, the way
	we're being lied to by Big Pharma. He's he's a fantastic conversation that I reckon you are going to love. Um Gareth,
	I think we've just delivered yet another fantastic slice of
	truth to these people.
	Well done, you did really well.
	I liked some of the stuff you said about Djokovic.
	Let's have a look at the poll about masks that we did.
	What did we ask our beloved audience?
	If face mask mandates were reintroduced, would you wear one again?
	Some of you say no, never again.
	Some go, yeah, I would!
	There you go, and you're all welcome here, and we love every single last one of you.
	Also, it's not an if question, they are being reintroduced in various places.
	Well, there you go, 91% of you are going to be in a great deal of trouble.
	Certainly don't wear ones such as was described in that German or that American comedian there.
	Those we would have to go against.
	That's a satirical leap too far.
	Now, do you remember in Sweden during lockdown?
	Well, I'll tell you, they didn't have a lockdown.
	That's what they did.
	They went, oh, look, we'll work it out.
	We'll trust you as adults and citizens of a democratic country to do what you want until we have a better understanding of how this deal is gonna go down.
	And did you see CNN talking to Fauci?
	This bug-eyed dude is giving Fauci hell, but Valtteri ain't taking none of it.
	Note the way that he talks about the difference between sort of individuals and a whole population and the significance of such an observation in a pandemic.
	In a pandemic!
	Here's the news.
	No baby, here's the effing news.
	Here's the f**king news!
	Mask mandates are back!
	Are lockdowns coming back?
	And can that ever be justified when Sweden's no lockdown stance appears to have been verified?
	Would it have been better all along if we'd done nothing?
	We're talking about the return of mask mandates, Trump's new perspective on vaccines and lockdowns and
	Sweden.
	Did Sweden get it right all along by being non-interventionist?
	Now, we can't revise the past, but we do have to remember it.
	We do have to learn from it.
	Now, Donald Trump, and I know a lot of you guys love him, was very proud of those vaccines, right?
	That's probably one of the things you're like, oh, but he does like the vaccine.
	Well, let's see what Donald Trump is saying about the vaccines, lockdowns, and potential pandemic policies going forward.
	The left-wing lunatics are trying very hard to bring back COVID lockdowns and mandates with all of their sudden fear-mongering about the new variants that are coming.
	Gee whiz, you know what else is coming?
	An election.
	They want to restart the COVID hysteria so they can justify more lockdowns, more censorship.
	I do believe in the general analysis that first there is an appetite to achieve something and then they reverse engineer the way to achieve it.
	The legacy media is falling apart.
	The ability to control the narrative and control the people is starting to change.
	The suggestion is, we need new systems and new models.
	There should be more democracy, not less.
	Less authority, not more.
	And Donald Trump, whether or not he delivers, and you can let me know in the comments what you think about this, he knows the language, he knows the rhetoric, he knows the questions, he knows how to frame these arguments.
	And because what we're offered as an alternative to Donald Trump is such inept Innocuous, vacuous, deceptive politics.
	People claiming that there's a new farmer bill.
	You look at the details.
	It's bullshit.
	The Hawaii fires.
	Well, let's look after our own.
	We care about diverse people.
	It's bullshit.
	Because of that, this kind of language, this kind of rhetoric is much more powerful.
	And because we were all, generally speaking, so compliant in the lockdown era, and then you learn Sweden, who basically said, oh, go about your business.
	We'll work it out.
	We're trying to cross-reference it with The economic impact of lockdowns, the impact on cancer, heart disease, diabetes, medical health, addiction.
	We're looking at it and we're thinking probably a non-interventionist approach.
	Plus we're a genuinely liberal democracy who don't secretly crave as much authoritarianism as possible.
	Because of that, they had a different approach to the pandemic.
	Now we can see the results.
	Stay awake, stay aware, keep educating yourself, and remember events of just six months ago.
	Then you'll be better equipped to have conversations.
	That's what we're trying to do.
	Arm you with the facts so that when they come to you with the next pack of lies and pack of suggestions that are going to impede your freedom and curiously not affect the globalist corporate state, you can say, but what about last time?
	You said X and Y turned out to be true.
	Let's have a look at those X's and Y's.
	And maybe the Y naughts.
	We will not shut down our schools, we will not accept your lockdowns, we will not abide by your mask mandates, and we will not tolerate your vaccine mandates.
	They rigged the 2020 election and now they're trying to do the same thing all over again by rigging the most important election in the history of our country, the 2024 election, even if it means trying to bring back COVID.
	But they will fail because we will not let it happen.
	When I'm back in the White House, I will use every available authority to cut federal funding to any school, college, airline, or public transportation system that imposes a mask mandate or a vaccine mandate.
	Thank you very much.
	So I suppose the conversation has radically changed because Donald Trump, at the height of the pandemic, of course, declared that the vaccines were a tremendous success and he was in a different position then and there was different information available now.
	But let's just take the temperature of our current moment.
	Donald Trump has assessed the situation and has decided, wow, it's now going to be more effective to say, in government, I would make mask mandates illegal or I'd do anything within my power to prevent them, rather than, you know, we have to deal with this pandemic.
	So that's a significant change.
	Now, stay with us to the very end.
	Firstly, what we're going to assess is what's being proposed right now.
	And then we're going to look at the results of what happened in Sweden.
	And hopefully this is OK to discuss on the YouTube platform, because, of course, the WHO guidelines are what determine the community guidelines on YouTube, which amount to their ability to censor this type of information.
	Let me know in the comments if our videos are still appearing in your feeds, for example.
	Despite very low numbers of people with serious illness, a recent rise in COVID cases has led to a return of mask mandates in a number of institutions.
	In Hollywood, the movie studio Lionsgate issued a requirement for masks, as have several colleges and universities, along with hospital systems in California and New York.
	Some medical Health professionals have even demanded a return of mask mandates in schools.
	So is it a health issue or is it a political issue?
	Was it ever a health issue?
	Was it always a political issue?
	Now at the very beginning I think we were all scared and concerned and it was an entirely novel thing but the conversations about the measures began pretty swiftly didn't they?
	And it became politicized and divisive rather than unifying pretty quickly.
	Let me know at this point is the pandemic or any potential variant of it a political or health issue?
	Let me know below.
	The return of required face coverings, of course, echoes official masking guidance and policies that were enacted in many contexts from spring 2020 through early 2022.
	Universal masking was part of a broader pandemic response beyond vaccinations that was based on mandatory non-pharmaceutical interventions that also included quarantining healthy people who were potentially exposed to an infected person, banning gatherings of healthy people in churches and other locations, and long-term preemptive closures of schools and businesses.
	It'll be very difficult for those in power not to conclude from the events of 2019 to 2022 that if required you can control people, you can control people's behaviour, you can massively influence their spending habits, their eating habits, their Their social habits, their habits of worship, their most enshrined values can be altered by government edicts.
	I don't think they've ignored that information.
	And I wouldn't be surprised if we saw attempts to utilise that knowledge, if not through coronavirus pandemics, where there is obvious and explicit resistance in various forms, including us here on this channel, I would have to say, through wars, through climate.
	Significant, important issues that have to be addressed, but I would contest in ways that affect powerful institutions, not ordinary people.
	Let me know in the comments if you agree with that.
	Mask mandates and these other interventions were and are premised on a basic idea.
	A large proportion of healthy people may unknowingly be infected with COVID and could transmit the virus to others.
	The results from a unique new study, however, call this logic into question.
	The paper published in the August issue of the journal The Lancet Microbe found that infected people pre-symptomatically, that is before they develop symptoms, very rarely had the ability to infect others.
	Have you heard that information before?
	I am not claiming that it's entirely true.
	I'm asking if you have seen those studies.
	Let me know in the comments.
	What this means is that compelling people without COVID symptoms to wear masks in any number of environments, including most controversially, schools, along with quarantining healthy people, closing schools and other social distancing measures, likely yielded far, far less societal benefit than we're told.
	If something doesn't have a rational scientific basis, its qualities are essentially apotropaic.
	A good luck charm, have that word.
	Let's see what Fauci, who advocated for masks more strongly than anybody, even though he privately expressed doubts about their efficacy numerous times, that's a matter of record, let's see what he's saying about this new data.
	Brett Stevens in the Times talked about Cochran, put that on the screen.
	As a side note, watch how many times this bloke intensely stares and let me know if that would freak you out if you were chatting to him.
	Or worse.
	The most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of scientific studies conducted on the efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of respiratory illness, including COVID-19, was published last month.
	Its conclusions, said Tom Jefferson, the Oxford epidemiologist who is the lead author, were unambiguous.
	There is just no evidence that they, masks, make any difference, he told the journalist Mayan Damasi.
	Full stop.
	But wait, hold on.
	What about the N95 masks as opposed to the lower quality surgical or cloth masks?
	Makes no difference.
	None of it, he said.
	Bloody hell, New York Times and CNN took their time, didn't they?
	I remember when it was all, watch out for the horse paste and shame the unvaccinated.
	Seems like, you know, get to near on 2024.
	Oh, it's time to talk about the truth.
	Must be another hustle coming.
	Can you imagine how hard it is for us to go to Pfizer after a thing like this and say, get some money, will you?
	We'll advertise Pfizer.
	It's impossible.
	Can you imagine the challenges we have that the legacy media don't have?
	We care about you.
	We care about truth.
	But we've got to keep this movement running.
	That's why we have commercial partners like these.
	Support them if you can.
	And I'll try and make the advert funny by being silly throughout it, even though I respect our commercial partners.
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	Well what about the studies that initially persuaded policy makers to impose mask mandates?
	They were convinced by non-randomized studies, flawed observational studies.
	How do we get beyond that finding of that particular review?
	Now he's already starting with the staring.
	He's trying to stare into Anthony Fauci's innermost thoughts.
	And really what we all want to hear from Anthony Fauci is why did you advocate so strongly for mask mandates when you yourself questioned them?
	Why did you query the lab leak theory when you yourself thought it was plausible?
	Why did you promote the wet market theory so aggressively?
	Because some people thought that might be because that would lead to the conclusion that science itself would generate this problem and therefore should clear up the mess and that there were financial ties between the... There's so many bloody questions and you know all of them.
	Let me know if there's any I've missed below.
	But have a look at how Antony Fauci turvicuscates and provericates in order to avoid telling us the simple truth.
	I was wrong.
	I was wrong about that and it's unfortunate I make so much money.
	Yeah, but there are other studies, Michael, that show at an individual level for individual, when you're talking about the effect on the epidemic or the pandemic as a whole.
	That's so extraordinary, isn't it?
	Because a pandemic and an epidemic by its nature is about populations.
	Start saying, yeah, but as an individual.
	Well, if it's for individuals, maybe don't mandate it.
	Maybe have a individual choice or liberty or freedom.
	It's almost as if there's an appetite to curtail and control individual freedom.
	That's the starting point.
	And then ways to legitimize controlling individual freedom.
	freedom are introduced, even if they're seemingly insignificant things like, would you mind wearing
	this mask or would you mind standing two meters away? Two examples which increasingly under
	scientific scrutiny are looking to be arbitrary, unaffected, and that means that the recommendations
	and in some cases mandates were untrue. When you're talking about the effect on the epidemic
	or the pandemic as a whole, the data are less strong. Do you see the true expertise of Antony Fauci?
	Do you remember when he used to say, I am science?
	Now, what we have to say is, he's just a skilled prevaricator and communicator.
	The science over populations is less strong is another way of saying, that isn't true at all.
	Less strong sounds better, doesn't it?
	Because you've got the word strong in it.
	Almost like, oh, it's sort of right, and it's sort of OK.
	When really, what this dude should be saying right now on the news, if he had any integrity at all, is, I was completely wrong about that.
	But then you wouldn't have the ability to censor people.
	Then you wouldn't have the ability to control people.
	Do you see how this works now?
	now, because I'm beginning to.
	When you took it to broad population level like the Cochrane study, the data are less
	firm.
	Oh, it's less strong, less firm, not there at all.
	With regard to the effect on the overall pandemic.
	This being 2023 and all, we now have a pretty significant study.
	Sweden had an entirely different approach to the pandemic based on looking at the various factors, economics, other diseases, mental health issues, etc.
	Let's have a look.
	The reigning narrative of Sweden during the pandemic is that the Swedish government took a brazenly hands-off approach to COVID-19 and suffered mass avoidable deaths as a result.
	During the spring and summer of 2020, Sweden bucked the international trend by not issuing emergency stay-at-home orders, mask mandates or school closures.
	With the exception of restrictions on nursing home visits and large gatherings, the country stayed open during that time.
	The concurrent spike in Covid deficit experience, particularly in comparison to its Scandinavian peers, was all the proof politicians and much of the press needed to dismiss its liberal... There's a word that used to mean something.
	Approach as inferior to Chinese-inspired lockdowns that swept the rest of the globe.
	Chinese!
	Those are the guys to emulate when it comes to democracy.
	The New York Times called the country a cautionary tale.
	Well, that turned out to be peculiarly perspicacious because, here's the caution, don't trust the government, don't trust the legacy media, trust yourselves, trust independent media.
	Then-President Donald Trump denounced the country's approach on Twitter.
	Trump, like most of the establishment, favoured coercive measures early on.
	On April 30, 2020, Trump tweeted, Yet, this interpretation of Sweden's COVID-19 performance as disastrous and deadly is likely wrong, argues Johan Norberg in a new paper for the Cato Institute.
	The data that's accumulated over the past three years suggests that Sweden's laissez-faire approach seems to have paid off, writes Norberg.
	It seems likely that Sweden did much better than other countries in terms of the economy, education, mental health and domestic abuse, and still came away from the pandemic with fewer excess deaths than in almost any other European country, and less than half that of the United States.
	Hmm.
	So all of those other factors, as well as less excessive deaths.
	Well, what does that point to?
	That's extraordinary.
	So now you have to look at the motivations.
	But unless Sweden is the land of the geniuses, and I thought their greatest achievements were the Volvo, the Sauna and Abba, but we can now add to that freedom, liberty, common sense, which I think were Abba's names.
	No, Benny, I think.
	I don't know.
	Sweden has largely been dismissed as a failure on COVID-19 because its COVID death rate was middle of the back of the list when compared to other European countries and much higher than other Scandinavian countries that had harsher restrictions.
	Sweden did get hit harder earlier in the pandemic and it's on this earlier performance that much of the commentary about the country's pandemic failures came from.
	That snapshot is misleading.
	Well, of course it's misleading.
	That's what the mainstream media do.
	Sweden's comparatively dismal performance at the start of the pandemic was mostly a result of other countries having managed to delay cases and deaths rather than having prevented them, writes Johan Norberg.
	Sweden suffered most of its deaths in 2020 while the Nordic neighbours and many other countries got them in 2022.
	The Cato paper cites one Norwegian public health official as saying, other countries managed to delay some deaths but now three years after we end up at around the same place.
	My god.
	So you have to think about it.
	Was it worth it?
	Let me know in the comments what kind of outcome would you have preferred, particularly if you're watching this in America, and I know the majority of you are.
	Would you have preferred a Swedish approach?
	Let me know in the comments below.
	Norberg's paper repeats a common practical argument against lockdowns, that they're unnecessary because people will voluntarily restrict their interactions with others in response to rising risk of the virus.
	You as an individual are capable of making decisions yourself.
	Can you see how ontologically profound, how ideological it becomes at its genesis?
	When you look at it at the truly molecular level, you are making a case for freedom.
	You're making a case for what is your relationship with your government?
	Who does your government work for?
	How is your government funded?
	What kind of decisions does your government make?
	Does it seem like your government loves you and cares for you based on their actions historically and even currently?
	Are they telling you the truth right now about a whole host of issues?
	Bearing all that in mind, Who do you want making decisions for yourself and your family?
	You or them?
	That people adapt voluntarily when they realize that lives are at stake.
	Swedes quickly changed their behavior and mostly followed the recommendations, writes Norberg, citing data showing a rise in remote work arrangements and a collapse in public transit ridership early in the pandemic.
	So in a sense, what we're discussing is the role of government, the nature of government.
	Obviously, America and countries like mine and other anglophonic and Western nations assume, no, people are stupid.
	People have to be controlled.
	You can't say to people, you voted us in to help you guys out, right, and to run your institutions and agencies.
	Look, here's some of the data, here's a variety of opinions.
	We're advocating for staying at home, particularly if you're at risk, or you spend time with people that are at risk, and we'll keep you informed, but we're going to leave it to you guys.
	That actually sounds like the type of government I want.
	Let me know in the comments if that's what you want, and if you think we should move in that direction.
	Particularly when authoritarianism is so often wrong.
	He suggests that the reliance on voluntary compliance meant Swedes were more willing to comply with pandemic precautions for longer.
	Mandatory COVID restrictions in other countries bred backlash to any countermeasures, leading to a greater number of deaths later on.
	Perhaps that's true, but if it is, it doesn't seem any of it made much difference in the deadliness of the pandemic.
	Again, Sweden ended up in basically the same place in terms of overall mortality as its Nordic peers, and in a much better place than many other rich countries.
	Tell me if at the time you were saying, but how's this going to affect the economy?
	How's this going to affect community?
	How's it going to affect our children's learning ability?
	How's it going to affect diabetes, cancer, mental health, addiction?
	You can add to that list, I'm sure.
	Add infinitum.
	Add to that list below.
	Swedish students suffered no learning loss during the pandemic, whereas half of US students did.
	The country's economic growth outperformed the Eurozone and the United States.
	It avoided other countries increased suicide rates and deteriorated mental health.
	All things that could have been prevented, all things that were discussed at the time.
	This is not a 2020 hindsight situation.
	To be sure, Sweden's COVID-19 policies weren't completely anarchic.
	Some of the restrictions the country adopted during the winter of 2020 and spring and summer of 2021 were comparable or even stricter than what many US states had in place.
	The country was nevertheless much more respectful of people's individual choices during the pandemic than other European countries and most US states.
	That additional freedom doesn't appear to have proven more deadly in the aggregate.
	Instead, it seems to have helped Sweden avoid many of the asocial knock-on effects of banning or restricting public life for months or years at a time.
	There you have it.
	An entirely different perspective.
	An entirely different approach.
	One that seems based on the principles that we hear discussed so often.
	Freedom.
	Liberty, compassion, kindness, people being able to make their own decisions for themselves and their community, an admission from Antony Fauci that mask mandates don't work across a population, they're a decision that should be left to an individual.
	Do you sense that a theme is developing?
	Individual freedom?
	Localised democracies?
	Less centralised authority?
	Stop subsidizing and funding media organizations and big pharma companies that seem to benefit from lying to you and backing the government in their desire to control you.
	To me, Sweden's approach makes a lot more sense.
	But that's just what I think.
	Let me know what you think in the chat.
	Come see me live if you want.
	There's a link in the description.
	But more important than any of that is that you please, if you can, stay free.

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