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Oct. 17, 2023 - Stay Free - Russel Brand
01:24:51
Is The Israel Palestine Conflict Being USED To Sustain Ukraine Spending?! - Stay Free #225
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In this video, you're going to see the future.
Hello there, you Awakening Wonders.
Thanks for joining us today.
If you're watching us on YouTube, we'll be there for a few minutes before being exclusively available on Rumble because obviously, this is a time where we have to be supported and we have to be incredibly cautious about the way we talk about an omni-crisis across the world where there is so much suffering, so much conflict, so much doubt.
We have to be very, very specific about what we say, and your support is absolutely invaluable to us.
We're talking, of course, about the ongoing crisis in the Middle East and America's potential role in arming the world.
50% or 57% of the world's autocratic nations have been sold arms by the American military-industrial complex.
Additionally, we're talking to Larry Sanger, one of the founders of Wikipedia, about how Wikipedia Exemplifies the trend towards censorship from open source and collaboratively achieved information.
So we'll be with you for about 15 minutes.
If you could download the app and turn on notifications, it'll really, really help us.
And if it's within your means to support us, click the red button and support us.
The question The question that we want to really put to you is, as
support for the Russia-Ukraine conflict appears to be waning, do you agree with that?
Let me know in the chat.
And as people start to question the logic and intelligence of increasing tension between
the US and China over Taiwan, is Israel being used to bolster that support?
Certainly financially.
Are people bundling together this conflict in the Middle East with other conflicts that people are starting to query the validity of?
Have a look at US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen saying that The US can absolutely continue to financially back Ukraine.
It's very interesting the way this conflict is being exploited in a number of ways, and that's what we're going to talk about.
Is it being exploited to facilitate censorship?
We'll be looking at that story in a moment.
And how are, in particular, I suppose you'd have to say, Democrat politicians using it to facilitate perpetuation of other conflicts?
Let's have a look at Janet Yellen now.
What this all means.
Paul Tudor Jones, the famed investor, was on CNBC this week and he said, this is the most threatening and challenging geopolitical environment that I've ever seen.
At the same time, the US is in its weakest fiscal position since World War II, with debt to GDP at 122%.
Can America, can the West afford another war at this time?
I think the answer is absolutely.
America can certainly afford to stand with Israel and to support Israel's military needs.
And we also can and must support Ukraine in its struggle against Russia.
It's clear there that the two issues are being conflated and there's an invitation to put the funding for both of those conflicts into one mental space.
If you look into how Janet Yellen is herself funded, you might question whose interests she's representing when she speaks there.
Let's have a look at what Joe Biden recently said when asked about these escalating conflicts, and in particular when it comes to combining aid packages.
He's very curious what's happening right now.
right now. Have a look.
Are the wars in Israel and Ukraine more than the United States can take on at the same time?
We're the United States of America, for God's sake.
That doesn't seem like the kind of analysis a situation that this is this complex requires.
We're the United States of America.
Can't just say the name of the country again when there are wars all over the world that are escalating.
And as we will show later, many of the arms that are being used in these conflicts are potentially provided by the United States of America.
Put simply, the United States of America are unable to properly trace where weapons that are sent off in aid packages are ending up.
You'll have heard that it's possible that Hamas used US-made arms to conduct those horrific attacks.
The most powerful nation in the history, not in the world, in the history of the world.
The history of the world.
We can take care of both of these and still maintain our overall international defense.
Interesting hyperbole.
Do you think that that's the kind of language that's required at the moment?
A time where there's surely room domestically in America to consider a variety of options.
So Ukraine on Wednesday received 1.15 billion of direct budgetary aid from the US.
In 2022 alone, Congress approved 113 billion dollars in aid.
Do you think this aid is working?
Is it bringing about a peaceful solution?
Is it advancing the interests of Ukrainian people?
Is it Attending to the humanitarian crisis that's evidently unfolding there.
And is it wise to conflate these two conflicts that potentially are quite different?
Let me know in the chat what you think.
Also, we're drawing a vowel somewhat over American domestic interest.
Research published in the Journal of American Medical Association showed that poverty is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States and was linked to at least 183,000 deaths in one year.
83,000 deaths in one year. I'm not sure if that's death from poverty or death with poverty.
Sometimes people get confused about those things. Also, this conflict is being used
or this set of conflicts are being used, as you know, as all crisis are being used to
shut down dissent and communication. Donald Trump has been issued a gag order by the federal
judge overseeing the criminal case over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020
election prohibiting him from making public statements attacking prosecutors. Now, I know
that's a tangent or issue, but have you noticed generally speaking that it's becoming harder
and harder to openly communicate?
It is if you're Donald Trump.
We're also following news out of federal court here in Washington, D.C.
The judge overseeing former President Trump's federal election interference case partially granted the government's request for a gag order actually restricting the former president from making disparaging statements relating to this case.
Today a judge put on a gag order I'll be the only politician in history that runs with a gag order where I'm not allowed to criticize.
What is this book that is for sale here?
The Kid's Guide to President Trump.
Learn Trump's Achievements and Vision for the USA.
And there's bonus kids.
What is that?
And how's that being advertised during this?
And what is it that you want children to know about Donald Trump as well?
They can't vote.
With a gag order where I'm not allowed to criticize people.
Can you imagine this?
Where is he?
Why is he doing this in front of these sort of giant cereals?
What is the backdrop of this speech?
We're allowed to criticise people, so we'll see.
We'll appeal it and we'll see, but it's so unconstitutional.
The good thing is we have so much support, it's incredible.
And it just makes it even more so.
Look, I'm the only guy that ever got indicted.
I got indicted more than Alphonse Capone.
Did anyone ever hear of Al...?
Al Capone, if you looked at him the wrong way, he was seriously tough, right?
Scarface.
You know, they call him Scarface.
Had a little scar in there.
That is a really unusual Alphonse Capone, Scarface.
Had a little scar in there.
Also, Donald Trump's hair and the hay are of the same texture and colour.
It's interesting.
I'm sure it was a minor accident, but...
Brilliant.
Actual stand-up comedy.
Again, sort of a communicative skill set that is going to be effective in a climate of hyperbole, bombast, disingenuity, dishonest reporting, lack of institutional trust.
It's like the lessons are not being learned of how effective Donald
Trump is as a communicator because of his willingness to say things that when Donald Trump says, you
know, I know how these tax loopholes work, I use them when he uses language that is anomalous
that stands out, it functions as a kind of valve, I suppose. Let me know in the chat in the
comments. I know loads of you love Donald Trump anyway, but it's very interesting to see that one of the
techniques to control Donald Trump is to stop him communicating altogether and you can see why
because he's sort of amusing when standing at some sort of barn dance. But Al Capone, if you looked at
him in the wrong way, if he didn't like you, you looked at him a little bit askance, he blew your
brains out.
He was only indicted one time.
I've been invited, I've been indicted four times.
The weaponization of government agencies and institutions appears to be a trend of our time.
There's a lot of legacy media reporting.
Have you noticed this about how Hamas are using cryptocurrency to raise funds?
Is the suggestion then that cryptocurrencies need to be regulated or shut down?
Do you feel that when a crisis like this happens it's looked at Opportunistically.
Brilliant.
Right.
What we'll be able to do is perpetuate the Ukraine-Russia conflict because people are getting less interested in funding that war.
We can use this to attack cryptocurrencies.
We can introduce additional censorship in online spaces because of hate speech.
Do you think it's utilised in that way?
And what I suppose that points to is a total lack of trust in these institutions.
We don't automatically assume that Oh, they're acting in our best interest.
Yeah, God, it's good that they've shut down cryptocurrencies.
You don't assume that there is a clear moral centre at the heart of the establishment, do you?
Well, let me know in the chat.
Let's have a look at this tendency now, or at least a report that suggests a tendency to regulate cryptocurrency because it's being used to support Hamas.
At least that's what's being alleged.
Investigators in the U.S.
and around the world have identified a revenue source being exploited by Hamas, online donors offering support in cryptocurrency.
Now, even before Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, U.S.
officials had been probing the group's use of cryptocurrency through alleged money launderers.
Hamas's use of digital currency represents just one of the many ways the terrorist organization has sought to raise funds while evading sanctions.
Hamas and other terrorist groups have used Facebook and X to publicly post their crypto wallet addresses asking for donations.
That's according to a report by U.S.
authorities.
So the story that's being told is that cryptocurrency can and they say is being used to fund Hamas.
The story that's not being told is that the military-industrial complex's profligate supply of weapons to unregulated potential bad actors means it's likely that weapons are ending up in the hands of opponents.
In a sense, what's happening is a perpetuation of crisis where you have to fund aid, the
weapons themselves that are being used to escalate the conflict are coming from potential
American resources.
So in a way, the information that we're given usually has a trackable agenda observable
if you look for it, i.e.
Oh, well, we should censor this information on Facebook, shouldn't we?
I mean, you don't want Hamas being armed, do you?
No, but if you don't want Hamas being armed, perhaps also be very careful about the sales
of weapons around the world to autocracies.
This kind of hysteria is also leaking into stories that perhaps don't warrant it in a
global climate that's so fraught with obvious tension.
It's like the media has escalated to a point of hysteria where they now are unable to discern terrifying stories, and God knows there's enough of them and I pray to God that they end, to sort of human interest stories or stories that are a little bit disgusting but are not An invasion of a foreign enemy.
Have a look at this.
This is bedbugs being discussed in France as potentially the worst thing that's ever happened in Paris.
I don't know what the Gilets Jaunes would make of that verdict.
Paris is gearing up for next year's Summer Olympics, but for now they have unwanted invaders.
Megan Fitzgerald now on the city's bedbug problem.
Tonight, a bed bug infestation sweeping through Paris and anxiety quickly rising.
Don't get anxious about it already.
Let's take our time.
We've got enough to think about.
Videos like these causing sleepless nights with reports of the blood-sucking parasites on... Might as well be Putin at this point.
...buses and trains, inside movie theatres and hotels.
That is just becoming an issue for the Parisians in our daily life.
Paris is a global destination with millions visiting from across the world for events like Fashion Week last month.
Concerns travellers can take the bugs home.
While it's a national crisis in France, the tiny... National crisis compared to what's going on in the actual world.
You might have to scratch a little bit at bedtime and there's potential that a bed bug could sneak away back to your home nation in your cuff.
Bloodsuckers are a problem across the world, in American cities from Chicago to New York, and recently in Arizona, where exterminators found massive infestations with thousands of bugs.
According to the CDC, bed bugs are known to hide, tucking into seams of suitcases, folded clothes, bedding and furniture.
I attribute intent to the bedbugs now.
These bedbugs cannot be relied upon.
They're using cryptocurrencies to travel to Chicago and to New York and across the world.
Watch out for these bedbugs.
These bedbugs will need additional funding.
While the bugs don't pose a serious medical threat, their bites on It's a serious matter.
What are we worried about it for?
Let's just drop it.
There's enough to concern ourselves with.
Unless we have some kind of global awakening, a series of revolutions, we're all potentially on the precipice of numerous apocalypse.
I ain't got time to worry about bedbugs that aren't even actually that bad.
...can result in rashes, blisters, and allergic reactions.
Rashes?
Is that what we're worried about now?
It's terrible.
It's the most awful thing that has ever happened.
What?
No.
Hold up.
What?
No.
Come on.
You can't say that now.
Look, not with recent events.
We've had pandemics.
We've had terror attacks.
We've got escalating tensions around the world.
There are culture wars.
We can't trust any of our institutions.
But look at these little guys.
I quite like them.
Rhea Melissa Guarte is an American who's lived in Paris for 26 years.
She's battled bedbugs twice before.
When the exterminators came, they told me that they've been really, really busy because Paris has a real problem.
Is that what this is now?
Bedbugs are everywhere.
We're closing down your communities.
You can only travel in 15 minute jurisdictions because of the bedbugs.
These bedbugs are escalating.
We just need 15 days to stop the spread of these bedbugs.
Listen, we've found a solution, a convenient solution to these bedbugs.
You could drive into a parking lot and one simple jab and all of the bedbugs will go away.
It's no problem at all.
So there you are.
It seems that there's a sort of a broad trend towards reporting on issues from a perspective of hysteria and terror.
Whether or not it's cryptocurrencies being reported on in a way that legitimizes their censure, or bundling together numerous complicated and distinct issues in order to perpetuate, I would argue, the agenda of the military-industrial complex.
You can see how what the legacy media does is Amplifies the intentions of the powerful.
And sometimes by looking at a ridiculous story like the bed bugs it becomes sort of clear what the template is.
Let me know in the chat if you saw that.
Remember if you want to support us, support us now.
Become a member of our community.
This story now is an analysis of whether or not it's possible that Hamas used American-made weapons to undertake their recent attacks on Israel.
The reason that we have to even consider this is because of the irresponsible way that the military-industrial complex has exploited various global conflicts and not paid
attention to its own analysis of what constitutes an autocratic nation when making weapons sales. Isn't it a really
interesting story? Listen to what Joe Biden says on one hand about
No.
that oughtn't be trusted and potential enemies on the global stage and
America's role as peacekeepers across the world and America's escalating
sales of weapons actions that have previously been condemned. This is
another example of hypocrisy, another example of propaganda and another
example of putting elite establishment interests ahead of literally global
safety. Here's the news, no here's the effing news.
Joe Biden rightly judges Hamas's attacks of Israel as sheer evil.
If, as some have claimed, those weapons turn out to be American-made, which wouldn't be surprising as the American military-industrial complex provides more weapons to the world than anyone else, what would that make Joe Biden?
Let's talk today about the potential that some of the weapons used by Hamas for their attack on Israel were American-made.
It's clear that America arms nations that it regards as autocracies, as undemocratic countries, and to a degree, as enemies of freedom and liberty, and even the experiment of democracy itself.
Notably, and most obviously, Saudi Arabia, who Joe Biden said he would make a pariah.
Make them, in fact, the pariah that they are.
And then continue to provide weapons to even more than Donald Trump, who he condemned for providing weapons to Saudi Arabia prior to his own election.
Some are saying also that potentially weapons from Afghanistan ended up in the hands of various terrorist groups around the world.
So in the wake and in the light of these appalling attacks, this incredibly awful, challenging, disruptive, heartbreaking time, Let's look at who is exploiting this situation, who is benefiting from this situation, and potentially even who caused it.
This is an act of sheer evil.
President Biden condemned the attacks by Hamas, which he revealed killed at least 14 American citizens.
Comparing him to the worst rampages of ISIS.
With the fighting ongoing, the president huddled with his national security team this morning and held his third phone call since the conflict began with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, offering more military support, including precision-guided munitions for fighter jets.
The first shipment of supplies landed this evening.
The president today issued this warning.
Anyone thinking of taking advantage of this situation, I have one word.
Don't.
How do we put Joe Biden's clear speech into a context that includes reversing their original position on providing arms to Saudi Arabia and the potential that Iran have access to weapons that were made by America and have fallen into what we might describe as the wrong hands?
Let's have a look at the complexity behind it and As ever, when discussing the situation, we remain committed to respecting those of you that are directly involved, either ideologically, emotionally, nationally, religiously, and focus our attention instead on the causes and conditions
And how we got into this position and who's exploited it.
We've already talked about people in Congress investing in weapons.
Now we're going to discuss how these weapons are in the hands of terrorists, autocracies and groups that are plainly capable of committing acts of evil.
Are you sure that you want to run again?
Yes, because I'm sure.
Look, when I ran, I said the world's an inflection point.
The world's changing, but we have an opportunity to make it.
So imagine if we were able to succeed in getting the Middle East put in place where we have normalization of relations.
I think we can do that.
Imagine what happens if we in fact unite all of Europe and Putin is finally put down where he cannot cause the kind of trouble he's been causing.
We have enormous opportunities.
It's an interesting exercise to imagine those things, but it's unlikely to happen without considerable amendment of policy, and in particular, arms policy and the proliferation of arms around the world.
Let's have a look at what Joe Biden's administration does and how that compares to what he says, because this is a complicated issue with very high tensions and polarised emotions throughout the conversation.
Let us focus our attention on people in positions of power and powerful institutions that are able to direct the global agenda and how there's a disparity between what they're saying publicly about creating peace and what they're doing actually when it comes to proliferating arms and creating more tensions, more geopolitical tensions and more military opportunity, particularly for organizations that may use that power in the most nefarious way imaginable.
Several reports suggest US-built weapons are being used by Hamas that are supplied from Afghanistan by the Taliban.
In 2021, the US ended its operations in Afghanistan and left a stockpile of weapons that were taken by the Taliban after it took control of the country.
It's also being investigated whether some of the weapons that the US sent to Ukraine have also ended up in terrorist hands.
It's a theory that many people are familiar with, that Mexican drug cartels peculiarly ended up with some of the missiles that were intended for use in Ukraine.
Makes you think that this isn't being monitored correctly and strange things taking place between aid packages to nations in conflict and the delivery of those weapon systems.
Would you agree?
Let me know in the chat.
Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson alleges that Hamas is using weapons supplied by the United States to attack Israel.
That's very difficult to even consider, but this is what's being claimed.
The former intelligence operative suggests that it's highly likely these weapons were diverted from US supplies intended for Ukraine, Afghanistan or the Palestinian Authority.
We would be less inclined to consider that possibility if we didn't know that the United States military-industrial complex has a long history of providing arms to organizations that by its own judgment oughtn't be trusted and behave autocratically, undemocratically, and sometimes they declare them to be evil.
Let's just take the example of Saudi Arabia.
I've never said Saudi Arabia are a pariah and should be cut off, but Joe Biden did say that and then escalated the amount of arms sold to that nation.
There are early reports that there are other nation states that are involved in this conflict.
At these tentative early stages, I'd certainly myself advise circumspection, but people are saying that Iran are potentially involved, and certainly this mentality of providing the world with arms, providing nations and organisations with arms, even if not directly, and sometimes the way that this is accounted for, verified and tracked, is really dubious and opaque, is creating a more hostile and dangerous world more broadly.
I'm also continuing to push to stop funding the war in Ukraine and push those countries to peace.
And now with what's happening in Israel, we're looking at a whole different situation.
I want to track the serial numbers of the weapons that Hamas is using against Israel, and I want to know if they came from Afghanistan or if they came from weapons that we provided to Ukraine.
So these are answers that I want from whoever's running for Speaker.
That claim being made by Marjorie Taylor Greene, who some of you will like and some of you won't like, but there's now some consistency to this claim, which of course is being politicised domestically, as all such crises and matters generally are these days.
Let's look in a little more detail about the American military-industrial complex's activities globally and the kind of arms relationships that already exist, and whether or not they're responsible and potentially very, very dangerous.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's annual analysis of the global arms trade showed the United States was the number one weapons exporter by a large margin.
The United States accounted for 39% of major arms deliveries worldwide, over twice what Russia, oh those bastards, transferred, and nearly 10 times what China sent, those bastards, to its weapons clients.
So remember that Russia and China are continually portrayed as aggressors in the American legacy media, but when it comes to the blunt fact of selling arms around the world, in some cases, in a significant number of cases, to autocracies, no one surpasses the American military-industrial complex.
And remember what I'm offering you is this isn't America, like the nation of Jimi Hendrix and the hot dog, We're talking about elite interests that are transcendent of your national identity.
In addition, the United States has far more customers.
103 nations are more than half of the member states of the United Nations.
In a sense, the military-industrial complex requires ongoing war.
This is outside of the current conflict.
In fact, Both of the conflicts that are defining the world right now, Israel, Hamas and Russia, Ukraine, across the world, weapons are being sold.
There's a necessity.
If this ended, what would it do to the military industrial complex?
What would it do to that aspect of the economy?
What would it do to that institutionalized aspect of the establishment?
What would happen if that stopped?
Since President Joe Biden came into office in 2021, he has described a battle between democracies and autocracies.
And we're selling weapons.
In which the US and other democracies strive to create a peaceful world.
A very simple narrative is being offered.
There are democracies, and then there are autocracies.
I wonder how those terms are arrived at.
And if they are legitimate, and if they are arrived at in consensus, then why would you
sell arms to the autocracies?
You wouldn't, would you, if you had a moral position on that?
You'd say, well, these are autocracies, they're corrupt nations, we can't trust them, they're
aggressors, these weapons might end up in the hands of terrorist groups and end up inflicting
pain and suffering and inconceivable damage, therefore we're not going to sell arms to
those organisations.
And indeed, that is the sort of thing they say, but it isn't what they do.
The reality, however, is that the Biden administration has helped increase the military power of
a large number of authoritarian countries.
According to an Interceptor review of recently released government data, the US sold weapons to at least 57% of the world's autocratic countries in 2022.
So on one hand, they're calling them autocratic Dictatorships or regimes that are not in alignment with global peace edicts.
And on the other hand, they're providing them with weapons.
Both of those things shouldn't be true.
And if they are, that's hypocrisy, isn't it?
To judge something to be an autocracy or a bad actor on the world stage and then continue to sell them arms, probably with a good degree of knowledge that those arms may end up in the hands of enemies of certain ideologies or could be used against civilian populations.
So Larry Johnson's claim that Hamas could have been using America-made weapons seems plausible and even if it doesn't prove to be the case in this instance you can see how a economic model of this nature means that it's likely that weapons will end up in the hands of people that will misuse them and that's like to Apart for a moment from the reality that the only function of weapons is to cause harm and ultimately they're going to end up being used in that way by somebody and if you're selling them to autocratic nations then surely it's exponentially increased.
The fact that weapons intended for Ukraine in what is framed as a moral crusade against Russia ended up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels shows you sort of how bizarre and tangential the roots of these weapons can be.
And it also shows you that Stopping that doesn't seem to be a priority of the military-industrial complex because they get to replenish stockpiles.
Their business model requires it.
It requires the world to be a dangerous place.
In fact, if you were cynical, you might say that they benefit from terrorist organisations having access to arms because then you can legitimately sell arms to favoured nations that you determine to be democracies.
Again, I'm not talking specifically about this instance with all of its complexity and its horror and legitimate grievances.
I'm talking about an economic model that likely facilitates more terror, more war, more death, more money for the most powerful interests in the world.
So is it a crisis or not?
You tell me.
Where are you?
If you're in that strata of society, is it a crisis?
If you're in Congress buying shares in weapons manufacturers, is it a crisis or is it an opportunity?
Tell me in the chat.
Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners have transferred American-made weapons to al-Qaeda-linked fighters, hardline Salafi militias, and other factions waging war in Yemen in violation of their agreements with the United States, a CNN investigation has found.
Well, we're going to put a clause in to this arms deal saying, don't give it to terrorists.
Will you sign it?
Of course we'll sign it.
Oh, well, there you go then.
What?
You mean to say they lied in the agreement?
Can't you even do an honest-to-God arms deal these days without people killing people with those weapons?
Well, No, actually.
The weapons have also made their way into the hands of Iranian-backed rebels battling the coalition for control of the country, exposing some of America's sensitive military technology to Tehran and potentially endangering the lives of US troops in other conflict zones.
The rhetoric around the American military Necessarily, and in my view quite rightly, remains one of heroism.
We must support the military.
We mustn't put the troops in danger.
Well, who's really putting the troops in danger?
If you are doing arms deals that you know could lead to bad actors having access to weapons, and then you put American troops into those, who's really creating the problem?
Who is it?
Is it Julian Assange?
Or is it the military-industrial complex?
And Joe Biden?
Let me know in the chat.
Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has been the biggest weapons dealer, accounting for 40% of all arms sales in any given year.
When we consider a fact like that, it shows us, doesn't it, that you can't have the military-industrial complex without that level of business.
So in spite of Joe Biden turning up on your TV set saying, give us another four years and this time I'll really commit to peace and really do the things I said I'd do last time, He can't, can he?
Because when the weapons industry spends billions per year lobbying and has more lobbyists than there are people in Congress, how is it possible, how is it even conceivable within this model that the proliferation of arms would ever stop?
How are the calculations going to be like, oh, this is an autocracy that we don't agree with, yeah, but look at the profit.
Selling the arms.
Oh no, it's ended up in the hands of terrorists.
Well, we'll have to send troops over there and replenish our own stockpiles.
And now we'll have to sell arms to these other nations in that region.
Can you see that that kind of works as a business model?
In general, these exports are funded through grants or sales.
There are two pathways for the latter category, foreign military sales and direct commercial sales.
The US government acts as an intermediary for foreign military sales, or FMS, acquisitions.
It buys the material from a company first and then delivers the goods to the foreign recipient.
So they actually are integrally involved.
It's not just like that company's in America registered there for tax purposes.
That probably wouldn't bear too much scrutiny, I bet.
The American government takes responsibility for the delivery.
DCS, Defence Collaboration Services, acquisitions are more straightforward.
They're the result of an agreement between a US company and a foreign government.
Both categories of sales require the government's approval.
So actually, the government are in a position to prevent sales to states it deems unfavourable.
And if there are no states that it deems unfavourable, or at least very few, then perhaps they should just drop that category and say out loud, we're a business.
Our business is selling arms.
What happens to those arms once they're sold?
We're not really concerned about that because it will probably lead to opportunities to sell more arms
Anyway, a total of 142 countries and territories bought weapons from the US in 2022 for a total of 85 billion
dollars in bilateral sales We can't bring you unique inspiring groundbreaking content
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Of the 84 countries codified as autocracies under the regimes of the world system in 2022, the United States sold weapons to at least 48 or 57% of them.
and fill out the form.
The United States sold weapons to at least 48 or 57% of them. The at least qualifier
is necessary because several factors frustrate the accurate tracking of US weapons sales.
The State Department's report of commercial arms sales during the fiscal year makes prodigious
use of various in its recipients category.
As a result, the specific recipients for nearly $11 billion in weapons sales are not disclosed.
So over 10% of those weapons sales are disclosed only as VARIOUS.
You'd think that something as important and significant and potentially dangerous as the sale of weapons to autocracies shouldn't be listed as various.
I'd like to know exactly where you sold this.
Oh, I don't know.
I can't remember all the details of all of my arms deals.
I just conduct them on the fly.
I don't even write it down sometimes.
For me, it's more of an art than a science.
And do you imagine that of the 11 billion that are listed as various, that all of those are, oh, we sold these 11 billion to Nepal.
The Dalai Lama bought those missiles.
We're pretty sure he just bought them to stockpile them to prevent them being misused.
There's going to be nations that if you knew about it, and if it was written down in inventories, you go, you shouldn't sell weapons to them.
That's terrible, isn't it?
It's not going to be that those weapons were a surprise for your birthday party and you ruined it, is it?
These findings contradict Biden's preferred framing of international politics as fundamentally a struggle in which the world's democracies, led by the United States, are on the side of peace and security, as he called it in last year's State of the Union address.
He's reiterated that point.
Imagine, he said, just then, we watched him say, imagine if I had a bit more time and I could get peace in Russia and Ukraine, I could get peace in the Middle East.
Well, let's just take Russia and Ukraine.
what's being done there to bring about peace other than escalating tension
through the provision of arms, incendiary and reductive rhetoric, exploiting that
situation plainly for military-industrial complex partners, not
acknowledging the role played by the United States, NATO and other US
affiliated interests in the creation of that conflict going way back but notably
in 2014. So it's very difficult to imagine that that is what they're going to do.
It's much easier to imagine that whatever happens, Joe Biden is essentially a puppet of deep state and corporate globalist interest, will continue to facilitate a political trajectory which is profitable without due consideration to the havoc, harm, mayhem and suffering that those decisions wreak upon the people of the earth.
Opposing the United States and its democratic allies are the autocracies that collude to undermine the international system, Biden has stated.
That's the simple narrative we're offered.
There's the United States and we're just trying to help everyone by selling weapons, mostly.
And then there's all these baddies that are just over there using weapons.
And who sold those weapons?
Let me just look at the inventory.
It just says various, really.
And what about the sales bit?
There's a smudge there.
I don't know, maybe... Hunter, have you used these papers?
In a speech in Warsaw last year, he said the battle between democracy and autocracy is between liberty and repression.
And we're selling weapons to both sides.
And between a rules-based international order and one governed by brute force.
And we're selling weapons to both sides.
Despite that rhetoric, a review of the new data suggests, instead, a business-as-usual approach to weapons sales.
That's what they're actually doing, business-as-usual.
They're not trying to direct world events towards peace and diplomacy.
It's business.
It's business as the priority.
If we can, God help us, put aside the horrible moral complexity of our current situation and consider what's the conduct like?
Is it business as usual?
If the answer is yes, then that will at least tell us something about whose interests are served and how this situation is being exploited.
Former President Donald Trump based his arms sales policy primarily on economic considerations, corporate interests above all else.
In his first foreign trip as president, he travelled to Saudi Arabia and announced a major arms deal with the repressive kingdom.
Trump's business first approach resulted in a dramatic upturn of weapons sales during his administration.
Now you'd imagine That people that don't like, oppose, vilify and loathe Donald Trump will say, aha, there's the evidence.
Donald Trump is uniquely bad among presidents and political figures.
Why?
Look at the way he went and sold arms to Saudi Arabia.
However, in Biden's first full fiscal year as president, weapons sales from the United States to other countries reached $206 billion.
Biden's first year total surpasses the Trump era high of $192 billion.
The multi-billion dollar effort to train and equip Ukraine doesn't fully explain the dramatic rise in total arms sales last year, let alone to autocracies.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine didn't occur until five months into fiscal year 2022, and much of the assistance from the United States to Ukraine took the form of grants, not sales, and the transfer of material from Pentagon stockpiles through the Presidential Drawdown Authority.
So there are almost difficult-to-trace weapon sales going on.
exponentially higher under Biden than under Trump, who was condemned for his business-first approach.
Rather, the new figures reveal the continuity between Republican and Democratic administrations.
While Biden signalled early on that his arms sales policy would be based primarily on strategic and human rights considerations, not just economic interests, he broke from that policy not too long after entering office by approving weapons sales to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other authoritarian regimes.
So there you are, observably a distinction between the rhetoric and the declared ideology and the conduct while in office.
And that's important and it's informative.
Is this in part why you are despairing of American institutionalised political life as reported on by the legacy media?
That you can have Joe Biden saying, I'm going to be the opposite of Donald Trump.
Then coming into office, and with regard to arms sales in particular, increasing the arms sales, or the wall, building the wall anyway.
What does that tell us?
Doesn't that induce a kind of despondency, apathy, hopelessness, despair, clear observation of plain corruption?
They say this, they do that.
How can you remain enthusiastic about, oh, the Democrat party, what they're going to do is this, It shows you that they just say what they need to say, then do what they're going to do.
And I think when you have that information, in addition to the information about the arms sales in particular, you're able to intuit and discern what their real agenda will be when it comes to any global conflict.
Are they interested in humanitarianism, justice, morality, democracy, civilization?
How then do we square that with the economic deals that have been made?
If those things are true, and I pray, I pray to you Lord, that those things are true, then why the arms sales to autocracies?
Why the peculiar listings of where those arms sales have gone?
Why can't the Pentagon pass an audit?
Why did the military-industrial complex spend so much money on lobbying?
A few more questions.
How come 51 members of Congress And their spouses own defense contractor stocks.
Even Marjorie Taylor Greene, I have to say, purchased stock in Lockheed Martin two days before Russia invaded Ukraine.
Weapons makers have spent $2.5 billion on lobbying over the past two decades, employing on average over 700 lobbyists per year over the last five years.
That's more than one for every member of Congress.
Doesn't this point to a system that requires war?
Doesn't this point to a military-industrial complex that has been irresponsibly providing arms wherever arms were required, not even providing in some cases the ability to track and measure where those weapons are ending up?
But that's just what I think.
Why don't you let me know what you think in the comments below.
for these appalling attacks on Israel or not, clearly the conditions for that to happen
are in place. And surely we have to ask questions around the rhetoric that's being used in this
dispute by people who potentially will exploit any situation in order to generate profit,
custom and business from the most appalling crises in the world. But that's just what
I think. Why don't you let me know what you think in the comments below. I'll see you
in a second.
Here's the fucking news.
Click the link in the description now if you're watching this anywhere other than Rumble and download the Rumble app if your device will allow it so you will know every time we make content because we're looking at another significant issue right now.
We're observing the way that censorship has increased, how the internet itself has changed from a potential place of communication, revolution, decentralization and democracy into a dystopia of censorship and surveillance.
We'll be talking to Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, president of the Knowledge Standards Foundation.
But in order to participate in that, you've got to join us over on Rumble.
Click the link in the description.
If you're here on Rumble, thank you for joining us.
Remember, become an Awakened Wonder, then you get access to our additional content where we talk about Off-grid communities, where we talk about cryptocurrencies, where we talk about solutions to the problems we talk about here every day.
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Time now to introduce Larry.
Larry, thank you so much for joining us today.
You must have started Wikipedia as, I'm imagining, a fresh-faced idealist, full of potential and possibility, believing that Wikipedia would become an open source of knowledge collaboration, perhaps creating a consensus around a variety of complex topics.
Can you tell me how Wikipedia changed from the vision you originally had to it and how it can be used as a kind of thermometer for a changing global climate when it comes to establishment intervention, You ask a very big question.
So let's just take the first one, then, basically, how it changed.
You know, when it started, there was a very robust neutrality policy.
Articles had to be balanced.
Many different points of view needed to be able to be stated, and they were, actually, in the first several years.
I mean, it was already starting to lean left because that's how most of the contributors were, but still, they made a real effort.
And over the next 10 years, and really solidifying by about 2015, The left had continued its march through the institutions.
One of them, now one of the dominant institutions of big tech, is Wikipedia itself.
And so by 2015, it It's shared in the same sort of outright bias that you see in the mainstream news media.
So they wear their bias on their sleeve, and they have for the last several years.
And this is particularly clear For any of the issues that we like to refer to as the narrative or whatever the current thing is.
So as I say, around like maybe 2016 when the Brexit debate was happening and Donald Trump's first election, that I think is what really made the switch for the major news media.
and I think that at the same time is what kicked the bias of Wikipedia into high gear.
So I could say a lot more but... I have a bunch of questions based on what you've already said.
With social media sites like Facebook or Twitter, now X, it's understood that these sites can be used to form consensus through communication and we're aware as a result of the Twitter files that deep state agencies were sort of embedded within Twitter.
Certainly they were spending money, they were directing content, they were Pre-emptively asking for certain types of content, even true information to be suppressed.
Most of our audience will be familiar with those practices now.
But when it comes to those social media sites, they're communicative tools that create a consensus around news.
Wikipedia is a different type of resource.
It's not a social media platform, or is in fact the only one of the top five that isn't, I suppose, other than Google, which encompasses different types of social media sites, I suppose.
So can you tell us, what is the distinction, and post Brexit and Trump, how did you see that neutrality being impeded upon?
Was it because of intervention of deep state agencies?
And can you give us a couple of examples of topics that were previously been collaboratively and somewhat objectively conveyed, becoming more biased and clearly subject to, as you say, a particular narrative?
I have cited a number of examples in a series of blog posts.
And it's hard to pick one, especially because after I make these blog posts, they'll go to the articles and try to clean them up to some extent.
So they're not quite as embarrassing to them.
But you ask a very interesting question.
Basically, What is the difference between the techniques used for information control by Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, whatever, and on the one hand, and Wikipedia on the other?
Well, I think the difference is for X or Facebook, They are literally throttling the views that they don't want people to share.
I myself, I used to have a blue check, but I now have less traffic than I had before I had a blue, before I got my
blue check on my posts, and this back in 2019. And so it's
really, it's very interesting to me.
Now, on Wikipedia, on the other hand, it's actually much more straightforward.
They simply don't allow certain points of view to be introduced.
Now, from the outsider, or even people who are working and not even thinking about what's going on behind the scenes, It's what it looks like is just a bunch of random people who are anonymous, mostly, debating on what's called the talk page of Wikipedia, negotiating about what the article will be, and just a whole bunch of people who are really, really left wing or really, really, because it isn't necessarily the left, right?
It's the establishment.
It's the establishment left, mostly.
And they are all, you know, pushing a certain point of view.
And if you try to give voice to any sort of, you know, skepticism about the jab, just for example, then they will shut you down and block you.
But I think what's going on is that Any number of prominent players in the media landscape, and by that I mean not just, you know, I'm not talking about the, you know, network anchors or anything like that.
I'm just talking about whoever is influencing the media, whoever cares, and that includes especially like PR firms, and quite frankly, A variety of government agencies that make it their business to direct these things, as we have learned in the last couple of years, especially in the Twitter files, right?
I hope your viewership is aware of the Twitter files.
Yeah, we are.
We've had Matt Taibbi, Michael Schellenberger, Barry Weiss, David Zweig, all of these people come on our show and very much inform our perspective on how deep state agencies and corporate interests have co-opted big tech, how there's been a sort of formation of new elites, how the online space essentially could be conceived as a new Territory opening up, much like the discovery of what was somewhat dismissively regarded as the New World, which was subsequently being colonized by various sets of interests.
The once organic space that afforded the advent of Napster and the changes that that created, or the Arab Spring, has necessarily become co-opted and controlled in the same way that We would have assumed, and continue to assume, that legacy media outlets like the BBC, CNN, ultimately see independent media now as their competitors rather than one another.
We understand that there is an agenda, that the function of the legacy media is to amplify the agenda of the powerful and normalise the agenda of the powerful, and they increasingly are encroaching on the spaces that afforded actual dissent, independent thinking, independent conversation, their publishing of counter narratives.
I suppose what's interesting about Wikipedia is because it was so successful and effective, it became the de facto resource for everybody from schoolchildren to, well, let's face it, media, like new media, like we look at Wikipedia, Still.
And I suppose there's a difference from looking at, like, Henry VIII and, like, I know, was he six?
Did he have six wives?
And seeing potential inflections that might not have been available to Tudor philosophers imposed by more modern perspectives.
And that's, you know, that's all part of progress.
And that's Interesting and exciting.
But if you can't say, why were Pfizer afforded an indemnity agreement?
Why are they not publishing those results for 75 years?
What is the relationship between vaccine injury and myocarditis?
How effective and what clinical trials were conducted?
For children and pregnant women, what are the studies that suggest that breastfeeding women can safely take the vaccine?
That is precisely where you're saying there will not be open conversation and again the coronavirus pandemic is more a lens rather than a unique, whilst it was unique in many ways, I primarily myself have started to regard it as a Opportunity to see how institutions and power always function.
Where do their interests converge and how are they trying to establish new elites?
Now, recently, Larry, perhaps we had on the show Dr Robert Epstein.
You've maybe heard of him and the studies he does of Google activity and how new and how reality is ultimately curated, cultivated and imposed through Google's ability to manipulate, ultimately, news feeds, I suppose.
Now, is it true that Google makes significant donations to Wikipedia, and as a result, are able to manage and control the reality?
Because I suppose the way I see Wikipedia, you know, it's a pretty simple and obvious metaphor, I suppose, or at least analogy, is like, it's like a library.
And if you have control over what's in that library and what's not in that library, you control the knowledge base itself.
You are able to, that's why we live in this siloed and bifurcated cultural space, is because half of the world are not gaining access to any counter-narratives.
They're receiving hyperbole and bombast and consuming it as facts.
In particular, what is the relationship between Google and Wikipedia?
And is it true that there are paid consultants managing Wikipedia?
And so how is it ultimately that financial interests are managing the information you see in Wikipedia?
Right.
Well, I think Google has contributed to Wikipedia in a couple of different ways that are really important.
They have given millions of dollars, but Wikipedia gets, you know, tens of millions of dollars per year now in donations from various sources.
I'm not sure that a really significant amount of that comes from Google, but it doesn't matter because Google's main contribution by far is the massive amount of traffic that they send to Wikipedia.
And there is, you know, what internet theorists have called for a long time, the long tail of topics.
And Wikipedia, if you want to look up an article about, I was looking at this Civil War general, Sylvester Morris, or something like that.
And there's only one encyclopedia article about this Civil War figure, and it's from Wikipedia.
You won't find a separate standalone article about that guy.
And there's literally millions of topics like that, Wikipedia, that Wikipedia has the only article about.
So I noticed back in the beginning, back in the day, how each month, because it happened on a monthly basis,
the Google bot would come through and it would spider new set of articles,
and we'd get a new influx of traffic and a new influx of editors as a result.
And that pattern continued on for years and years.
So, as a friend of mine likes to put it, Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that Google built.
And I think there's something to that.
And it's very sad.
But I have to say, Wikipedia is not the only encyclopedia out there.
I hope you're going to ask me about the solution, because there is a very clear solution.
All right.
Well, Larry, it would be quite remiss and almost unbearably recalcitrant for me now not to say.
Larry, watch me do this because I'm a professional.
Larry, this is very difficult for me to listen to.
Almost inducing despair.
If only there was some sort of solution to this centralised, authoritarian, highly censored and cultivated space.
Is there?
There is.
There is.
I'm going to... That's all we've got time for today.
We're gonna have to... That's a joke.
Matt, I'm part of the problem!
That was funny.
Okay.
Now, you were a comedian before.
That's right.
Okay.
I guess you still are.
All right.
Hey!
I don't tell you how to build encyclopedias.
Don't tell me how to do my job.
All right.
Well, you made me laugh.
All right.
So...
Yes, I think it's like this.
There are a lot of other encyclopedias, and if you do search for encyclopedia articles on any topic, Even Google will still give you articles from other encyclopedias.
Wikipedia is usually the first result, right?
But if there are more, and especially if people are going to other sites more, Wikipedia, I think, will not be pushed as heavily by Google and other sources.
So there's a couple of things that we need to do.
I talked about the long tail of articles.
All of you people out there need to start writing encyclopedia articles, and you need to start putting them on your blogs.
And I mean about like that Civil War general, the long tail.
There are a lot of specialized topics that you have knowledge about that other people don't know things about.
You should be writing encyclopedia articles about them, And putting them on your blogs, and you will, and we actually have, so when I say we, I mean the Knowledge Standards Foundation, we have a plugin for WordPress that will allow you to push an article that is only on your blog to the Encyclosphere.
And what the Encyclosphere is, is a free collection of all the encyclopedias, or at least that's what it will be when we're finished collecting them all.
It takes time to collect them all.
We've got 35 encyclopedias.
We're going to be doubling that number soon.
So Encycloreader and Encyclosearch, those are two different encyclopedia search engines and readers.
You should be using those instead of Wikipedia if you want to look at Wikipedia.
In fact, there's another thing that we do.
We have a plugin for Chrome or Chrome-based web browsers like Brave, which is what I use.
And if you do a search on any topic that is in the encyclosphere, which is most of them now, then it will come up with some search results above the Google results, if you're using Google or, I think, DuckDuckGo.
And if you click on those results, or if you click on a Wikipedia result inside of the results, instead of going to Wikipedia, it will load the article directly in your browser.
Right?
So, in other words, it will grab it through the web torrent network.
You won't even visit their website.
None of your traffic will be logged.
So, and this is possible now, right?
Because, well, we've been working on the technology.
Okay, here's another thing that you badly need to do.
We really need to start doing this now.
We are complaining about the bias of Wikipedia articles, right?
Well, we can fix that.
We can rewrite the Wikipedia articles.
There is, in fact, A big, I think, well-managed organization.
It's not a big organization.
It's a big project.
It's a major new project called Justopedia, as in it's just an encyclopedia.
And they have forked Wikipedia and they just put the articles up there for you to edit and make your own versions of.
And it's really great, and soon the Justopedia articles will also be automatically included in the Encyclosphere.
So I don't think that people are going to start using like Encycloreader or Encyclosearch anytime soon.
But if we organize all of the other encyclopedias in one giant database, that's what we are doing, right?
And then we make it available to other search engines, like Brave, for example.
I've talked to the CEO of Brave, Brendan Eich.
And he's interested in using our content.
I shouldn't say our content.
It's not our content.
We are simply aggregating the content from all of these sources.
That will essentially make a unified but decentralized network of all of the encyclopedias.
Wikipedia is in there.
It's included in there.
But it's all of the encyclopedias.
And of course, the whole is greater than the part.
Which is just Wikipedia, right?
I like the phrase unified but decentralized.
That's a flag I can march under.
Also, it's very surprising to see that you're kind of a real-life neo, navigating the matrix, organizing renegades, Trying to create rebellion against centralised information.
And in a way, Larry, it seems like you're reviving the spirit of the early internet, where there was this kind of utopian moment that everyone's collective knowledge could be shared, that communities that were geographically disparate but shared an interest could form.
that actually the necessity for authoritarianism and centralisation is itself diminished by
the ability for communities to come together around what might be regarded as niche issues.
In a sense, the advent of this technology could be used to, in a way I suppose, enhance
our anthropological origins as a tribalised but not necessarily oppositionist and conflict-strewn
society.
There was a time where there was true diversity, where we wouldn't expect people in Iceland to have the same culture as the people in Senegal, and we would glory in the truly distinct cultures around food and religion and ideology.
And now there is this homogenizing force Masquerading as, like, we're interested in diversity.
Even when people use the term, like, left, I think, well, is it about redistribution?
Is it about the real support of various communities?
Or is this actually authoritarianism?
I'm sure you're familiar with Martin Gurry's analysis that the terms left and right are becoming almost redundant as a new dynamic between Centralising authority, establishment authority and peripheral dissent is becoming the root.
That's why there are these extraordinary alliances.
That's why someone like me, I'm more inclined to think that Donald Trump is going to provide a solution than I would Joe Biden.
Even though I think what's really needed is massive systemic change.
And now those kind of things can be openly discussed.
Even though what you're undertaking is a vast enterprise, it alludes to and infers an even greater possibility for decentralization.
How significant do you think those principles are?
And particularly what you said, unified but decentralized.
Do you think that's something that could be mapped onto political ideals?
Because plainly it's an ideal of yours.
A real ideal is a principle, and principles can be applied almost universally.
Yeah, I think so.
It's interesting.
I remember I was once asked to speak to the intelligence community back in, like, 2008.
And they were asking me, you know, would it be possible to create a wiki for intelligence?
And that is actually kind of what you just said.
It's immediately brought that to mind.
In other words, there is something about the notion of trying to organize organic, naturally occurring behavior that militates against freedom, okay?
So let me say this, though, before I try to attack your question in a different way.
I need to say this.
I think some of your viewers might be worried that by collecting all of the encyclopedias, unifying them, as I say, that we would then be giving them all a single neck to cut off.
That's absolutely not the case.
In other words, we're not unifying them under any sort of management.
The thing that unifies them—this is the important point.
It's a technical point.
All right, is that there is a standard for encyclopedia articles now.
We call it the ZWI or zipped wiki file format.
So all of those encyclopedia articles that I described have been represented.
They have been captured in the ZWE file format.
And there's also a standard way of organizing the articles in a database so that different organizations that manage different aggregators of different collections of encyclopedias They can exchange articles via these files, all right?
It is the fact that there is a technical standard that no one is in control of, that everyone sort of agrees to use organically, right?
That is the thing that enables Freedom on the internet.
The reason I'm going on this, I know it sounds very wonky, I know it sounds like irrelevant and and merely technical, but it's not.
This is the core of the issue.
This is the core of the issue of internet freedom, and a lot of non-techies don't realize this, but I'm telling you, it's the thing that enables freedom and always has on the internet, the thing that made the internet free in the first place, were Standards, okay?
And I mean technical standards, communications standards.
And when there are standards, Well, that means that you actually have to build clients that connect with a network, which is necessarily amorphous and existing in many different places.
And so, for example, we have two different aggregators started by two different programmers
using two different programming languages, and they are exchanging their files between them.
And we're encouraging others to...
Another guy wrote one out of the blue, not part of our organization, I should say.
So, the thing that we need to be doing, the real solution here to the technical problems
actually involves things like...
I'm not saying that blue sky is the answer.
It probably isn't, and there are other things, but Blue Sky is an example of the sort of thing that I'm talking about.
So Blue Sky on social media is this project that was started by the former CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey.
It basically aims to enable people to host their own data, to host their own lists of followers and people they follow, so that you could actually own your own presence online and interface with others via standards.
So even the Knowledge Standards Foundation has started a project like this, and I'm not saying that ours is the best solution either, but we use the RSS standard.
We actually are built on top of the blogging network.
Right?
And so it is actually a plugin for WordPress.
That's the sort of thing that I'm talking about.
In other words, if you really, really want decentralization online, and if you want to make that a reality, then you have to adopt standards, and you have to adopt free clients that are easy for grandma to install, that plug into those networks.
If you just start creating alternate websites like Rumble, for example, that's just another... it's just another competing centralizing force.
So, now, okay, to address your question about, you know, how Cognate concepts might be developed for Politics.
Government.
I mean, it's called freedom, right?
I mean, I would think rather that we are taking pre-existing political concepts, self-determination, freedom, individual rights, and applying them to the sphere of tech.
Basically.
So I actually think it goes the other way around.
I don't propose to innovate politics.
I mean, I'm a conservative libertarian.
Conservatarian, as we call them in the United States, right?
But, I mean, we must not lose sight of the fact That so much of our governance now takes the form of technology, right?
The policies that something like Twitter more directly affects my life than a thousand laws passed by Congress or Parliament or whatever.
Wow.
In other words, the technology policy matters a lot.
I understand, Larry, what you're saying, and I can see where these ideas mesh together.
Ultimately, there's a requirement for standards and principles, and that those have to be indefatigable, enshrined and clear.
And when you start to culturally mess with ideas like freedom of speech, of free speech, Then you facilitate and now through technology are able to execute forms of previously unimaginable tyranny.
So what you're saying is the principles that preceded online spaces have to be applied in them and there has to be a consensus around what they are and you've explained to us very lucidly and clearly what the Tissue is that connects these ideas, that there are ways to govern these spaces that are in alignment with values that we used to consider to be important.
We still claim that we consider important, but everywhere we see them trespassed against.
Larry, thank you so much.
Is there, before we leave, what is the function of the Knowledge Standards Foundation?
Is this something that's beyond what you're describing in terms of the aggregation of these various Encyclopedia, or is that part of that same deal?
Well, we've got a lot of different things going.
But yeah, the most important task that we have is to aggregate all of the encyclopedias, make them available via search engines and readers.
But even that isn't as important as simply aggregating them, making all of the data available And then encouraging developers to build on top of that in order to, again, have a decentralized but unified collection of encyclopedias that together is greater than Wikipedia.
Larry, thank you for being so clear about a subject that's very, very important and sometimes so vast it's difficult to contain without anchoring it to a simple principle like freedom.
And the phrase, unified but decentralized, is one I'll remember for a long time.
Thank you for joining us.
I hope that you'll come on again and talk further about some of these principles and ideas, will you?
Sure, absolutely.
Yeah, yeah.
Send your viewers, please, to encyclosphere.org.
The name of the network is the Encyclosphere, so it's called encyclosphere.org, and there you will find links to EncycloSearch and EncycloReader and our other projects.
Couldn't you think of a name that was more difficult to spell?
Why don't you call it Encyclo-Sphinx Establishmentarialism?
Christ, Larry!
Just focus on the marketing!
I can see what Jimmy Wales was doing in that operation.
He was making it manageable!
People complained about Wikipedia, too.
What kind of name is Wikipedia?
Geez, nobody's ever gonna, like, use that.
That's like you're doing it to failure.
So, I'm not worried.
Thank you, man.
Thanks so much for joining us.
We're gonna post a link in the description to many of Larry's endeavors, each of which is more difficult to spell than the last.
On the show tomorrow, we have Dr. Asim Malhotra, the man for whom this sign was invented.
When he starts talking, it's very difficult to stop him.
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Because you know what we're gonna do?
We're going to ensure that conversations like that one, unified but decentralized, are continued.
Wouldn't you like to see Dr. Robert Epstein and Larry Sanger together talking about how we can radically use the internet?
How we can free ourselves from these colonizing and centralizing forces?
Also, as well as that, there's extended interviews, meditations, and readings, ideas that are going to change the world.
Your voice, How is your voice going to change the world?
You just heard from Larry there.
Your principles are important.
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Join them.
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Join us again tomorrow, not for more of the same, but for more of the different.
Until then, if you can, stay free.
Man, he's switching.
He's switching.
He's switching.
Man, he's switching.
He's switching.
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