Edition 149 - Governor Jesse Ventura Returns
Governor Ventura talks about being "off The Grid" - and about Ukraine and the missingMalaysian Airlines plane...
Governor Ventura talks about being "off The Grid" - and about Ukraine and the missingMalaysian Airlines plane...
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Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes and this is The Unexplained. | |
Thank you very much for the torrent of emails that I've had over the last week. | |
Literally scores and scores and scores and scores of emails every day. | |
A lot of new listeners and a lot of you discovering this show, telling your friends about it, which is great. | |
That is how we grow. | |
And I think part of this is down to the fact that we're simply being linked to by a number of sites, more and more of you discovering the show. | |
And of course, we're now on the rotation of shows on Art Bell's Dark Matter Network, which is a great thrill to me. | |
So, you know, however you're hearing this show, nice to have you there. | |
But however you're hearing it, please go to the website and register a hit on it. | |
Maybe send me a message or a donation for the show, which would be vital. | |
The one way to do that, the one-stop shop, is to go to the website, which is w.theunexplained.tv. | |
www.theunexplained.tv. | |
That's my website. | |
It's been there for years, and it's been maintained, designed, created by Adam Cornwell from Creative Hotspot in Liverpool, who also gets the show out to you. | |
So literally, as I've said so many times before, and this theme is very relevant to the person we're about to speak to on this show, we're a very small outfit here. | |
We are not part of the mainstream media. | |
It's just Adam who gets the show out to you and looks after the website. | |
I set up and do the shows with a little help from my friends. | |
And you, three people, a triangle. | |
That's what we are. | |
No producers, no intermediaries, backers, sponsors, people who will say, oh, no, no, no. | |
We don't have that. | |
This is the new media. | |
And this is part of what the guest I'll be talking to this time is all about. | |
We'll talk about him and that in just a second from now. | |
You had a lot of thoughts about Simon Parks, the British politician who says that for many, many decades, most of his life, he is a serial abductee and contactee. | |
Now, I thought that this show was either going to go very, very well and you'd love it, or I'd get battered over the head with it because you'd think it was so far out. | |
But you were very broad-minded about it, and you gave the man a hearing, and a lot of you, and I do mean a lot of you, really, really liked what he had to say. | |
I found him intriguing. | |
I don't know whether it's all true, but I think it's a fascinating and intriguing narrative that the man gave us. | |
And if even 25% of it is happening, it's pretty damned remarkable. | |
And if all of it is happening, then where does that leave all of us? | |
So thank you for your feedback to Simon Parks. | |
If you want to send feedback about any show or make a donation to the show, like I say, www.theunexplained.tv. | |
As I record this, and this show may reach you a little bit earlier than you might have expected for a good reason because we might get into talking about this with the guest who we've got on this time. | |
The disappearance of that Malaysian Airlines flight. | |
As I record these words, it's Monday coming up for Monday evening in the UK, Monday afternoon, East Coast, USA, Monday morning, West Coast, and well into the evening as we move towards the likes of Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, those sorts of places. | |
So that's where we are in time as I'm speaking these words. | |
And this story of the missing flight MH370, now 10 days and no sign, is one of the greatest mysteries of my lifetime, maybe yours too. | |
A lot of things have been said about this. | |
And for my day job in this last week, I've interviewed a couple of experts in their field, people who've examined aircraft and air crashes. | |
And it strikes me that in this instance, their view at this stage is as good as yours or mine because they don't know and neither do we. | |
All they can do is based on their knowledge, speculate. | |
I spoke to one guy on Friday who's a very, very senior aviation expert. | |
And he said that his best guess, his gut was telling him that the plane had deviated as we know from its flight path and then crashed somehow. | |
And we will eventually find wreckage of the plane, but so far no sign of that. | |
Now, of course, they're looking at the pilot and the pilot's flight simulator. | |
They say he had a simulator at home, but of course a lot of people have got those with software these days. | |
Maybe he was just sharpening his piloting skills, who knows. | |
The co-pilot, apparently the last person to make contact with ground control, and a lot of fascinating facts about this and one or two dead ends to do with the story. | |
Like people were talking about they were ringing cell phones, mobile phones. | |
Of course, if you ring a cell phone in many countries, even if it's not functioning, you'll get some kind of response from the routing center. | |
So maybe that doesn't mean anything at all, but there are many, many avenues like this that may mean something, may mean nothing, but it is an enormous mystery. | |
So I'm going to try and run it past the guest we've got this time. | |
He's not on mainly to talk about this, but we'll see if he's got anything to say because it's the kind of thing that he is interested in and so am I. It's Governor Jesse Ventura. | |
He was on last November talking about the anniversary of JFK's assassination and he's going to be on this time talking about his new show called Off the Grid, which is a great title because as we say in the UK, it does what it says on the tin. | |
It's a show about being off the grid and off the mainstream. | |
I think you know my views on how, to a big extent, a lot of the mainstream media in the US, UK and everywhere has severely let us down. | |
We get one version of the truth and we don't get serious questioning of issues that need to be asked about. | |
I think that's where Governor Ventura is coming from. | |
So we're going to talk to him in just a second in the US. | |
I'm very pleased to have him back on. | |
I really enjoyed the conversation last time and I know you did too. | |
So it's a bit of a coup to get him back on here and I'm going to love talking with him. | |
Just to say, to repeat that if you would like to make a donation to the show, that would be very gratefully received and utterly vital for what we do here. | |
If you want to send me feedback or make a guest suggestion, I've got a pile 10 miles high of guest suggestions that I'm working through. | |
But I am working through them. | |
WWW.theunexplained.tv is the place for all of those things. | |
All right. | |
Let's get on a fascinating man now in the central time zone Of the United States Governor Jesse Ventura. | |
Governor Ventura, good to talk to you again. | |
Well, it's nice to be back, Howard. | |
You know, I'm doing a new show now on the internet called Off the Grid with Aura.tv. | |
And I'll describe it as my dream show because I have no handcuffs. | |
I can talk about anything I want. | |
And I go out Tuesday through Friday now, four times a week. | |
And it's wonderful because I've been kind of, they've kind of blackbugged me here a little bit. | |
My last book, I couldn't get on a lot of the networks and a lot of the shows. | |
So we're getting around that now. | |
I think you reach a stage, and we talked about this last time, where you either take it and maybe moderate what you do, which clearly you wouldn't be willing to do, and I'm not particularly keen to do, or you simply find your own way. | |
Oh, yeah, most definitely, because, you know, right now, the media, the dangerous thing about the mainstream media is that there used to be so many outlets, and now through these corporate takeovers, you have about six major companies that really are controlling the mainstream media and everything they're putting out. | |
And I don't think that's necessarily a good idea. | |
I think when it comes to media, the more, the merrier. | |
You know, the more independent the media can be from each other, the better it is when it all comes through the rack. | |
I think that's true. | |
It is difficult to achieve unless you have a certain amount of status and a certain amount of notoriety, which you do. | |
And I guess that helped you create the product. | |
I've been watching your show online off the grid, and I've been looking at some of the guests that you've had. | |
And the whole product is really good. | |
I mean, as it evolves, it's going to get even bigger, and it's going to look even more professional, as they say. | |
But I don't even think that it needs to look like a mainstream TV show. | |
It needs to look like something that stands by itself, not like stuff we're already getting. | |
Well, it can't be because, number one, we are indeed off the grid. | |
And when you do something and you're, you know, when I do live off the grid, and so you're dependent upon, you know, alternative energy sources. | |
So, you know, the show is going to, we don't want it to be like a regular mainstream show. | |
That's the uniqueness of it. | |
When we came up with the concept, I had been living off the grid for like eight years with partial time out of the year. | |
And that was my lifestyle. | |
And with Aura TV, I told them that that could be a problem if we tried to do this show. | |
And they assured me that it would not be a problem, that with the technology that they have, and they have state-of-the-art, the best that's available, and are always upgrading it to even improve it all the time. | |
They said there's nowhere we can't do your show. | |
And so the show really then morphed into being about being off the grid, that I would be outside the United States, taking a different viewpoint from the outside looking in as opposed to what I had been the inside looking out. | |
And I think it's a good perspective for people in that country to hear from someone from the outside looking in who used to be one of them on the inside looking out. | |
It's a bit of a mission impossible job, you know, like good morning, Mr. Phelps style, to contact you. | |
There's always a little bit of cloak and dagger mystery about it. | |
Whereabouts are you now? | |
I had a strange little routine to go through. | |
We won't obviously reveal what that was to make contact. | |
You kind of sound to me like you're on a cell phone. | |
Oh, no, no, I'm actually on a hardline. | |
Right, okay. | |
And whereabout are you in Mexico? | |
Where are you? | |
Right now, I am on the grid. | |
I'm on a hardline phone, but I'm about a thousand miles from the border of the United States. | |
Okay, you're in Mexico, right? | |
Well, I could be in Cuba. | |
I could be anywhere. | |
I'm like Wolfman Jack. | |
You don't know where I'm at. | |
You're going to be on X-T-R-A next. | |
That's the great thing. | |
You know, that's the great thing about the modern technology of the internet. | |
You can, today you can reach the world and you can do it from virtually anywhere now. | |
That's the truth of it. | |
And that's how you're able to do this. | |
So the show looks like a TV show. | |
It has that, look, you've got a background there. | |
You know, you could well be doing NBCs, ABC's, nightly news, whatever. | |
Can you do that from anywhere? | |
You can, yes. | |
You put it up and do it. | |
They have the technology today. | |
It's remarkable. | |
You know, when we went to do this show, I thought that would be the stumbling block. | |
And as I said, the stumbling block, how ironic, it turns out to be the hook of the show. | |
And I have to tell you, this is my dream show. | |
I mean, I have nobody, nobody controls me. | |
Nobody tells me what to talk about. | |
There's no FCC regulations of the government breathing over your shoulder. | |
You can say anything you want without the threat of a fine or the threat of anything, any repercussions whatsoever. | |
That's the beauty of the Internet. | |
And, you know, it's the future. | |
Let's face it. | |
We have generations now. | |
I believe that mainstream television is going to be buried pretty soon and that everything will be pretty much evolved through the internet in way, shape, or form. | |
It's already doing that. | |
You're getting the guests. | |
For example, your recent guests have included Edward Snowden's legal advisor. | |
Tell me about him. | |
Well, he's just, he's a gentleman that, you know, he's a qualified lawyer who believes he works for the ACLU. | |
He believes that everyone deserves naturally a defense, especially in the United States of America, you know, under our Constitution and Bill of Rights, which are in jeopardy right now. | |
I personally believe our government is operating like they're suspended or something and that they don't apply, which that can only be in a case of martial law, and they haven't declared that. | |
But it's like an undeclared martial law going on. | |
But he just Talked about the defense of Snowden and the situation. | |
And I'm a believer. | |
I hail Snowden. | |
To me, he's a hero. | |
Anyone who blows the whistle when the government is violating the law of the land, which is our Constitution and Bill of Rights, and then when they're lying about it on top of that, well, the person that has the courage to expose that is definitely a hero because that person's going to incur the wrath of the government because the government's going to want to make an example out of him so that nobody else will do it later. | |
And yet I've heard people say about Snowden, I've heard people say, Governor Ventura. | |
That type of intimidation is not the type of government that I want to be governed by. | |
I've heard people say about Edward Snowden, though, and you had his person on, that yes, he's done a lot of us a service by revealing the extent of surveillance in this society, which has shocked a great many of us. | |
But also, there are claims that by revealing some of the stuff that he's revealed, he has actually put honest people's lives at risk. | |
What do you say to that? | |
I would like an example of whose life is at risk over the truth. | |
Right. | |
Well, I can't hand you a name right now. | |
I would say I would like to see a specific example of whose life was put in danger because of telling the truth. | |
In other words, we live in a world today where lying and deceit is so prevalent that that's the national order and we've somehow lost light of what the truth is. | |
And do you honestly think by doing something like this, laudable though it is, you're making your own effort and you're having a stab out there, but do you really think you can change anything by doing this? | |
Well, I believe, all right, I believe in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. | |
I believe they're the fabric of our nation, and I believe it's our job as citizens. | |
We are the brass. | |
We are the brass, not the government. | |
And we need to assert our leadership and our brass ability again. | |
And the only way we can do that is through the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. | |
And the government, to me, needs to be put in their place that they work for us. | |
We don't work for them. | |
One of your guests was Adam Koresh, a man whose name I had not heard until I read about him today. | |
He's got a pretty radical political agenda, though. | |
I mean, this is quite radical stuff, isn't it, that the man's talking about, and you're giving him a platform. | |
Good. | |
Why shouldn't he get a platform? | |
The United States of America is a place where there should be diversity of thought. | |
Whether you choose to believe that platform is ultimately your choice, isn't it? | |
But why should we practice in, you know, that's ridiculous. | |
Of course he deserves a place where he can be heard. | |
And you as an informed listener or citizen can dissect through it and make your own decision. | |
But certainly his viewpoints deserve to be aired. | |
This guy's an Iraq war veteran. | |
He was sent off to war by this country. | |
And just remind us what he wants to be president, doesn't he? | |
I don't know if he does. | |
Who knows if he's just making a political statement or not. | |
But certainly in the United States, you should have the freedom to do that if you desire to. | |
Ultimately, it's the people's choice who they'll put in there. | |
But why are we so stuck on these two political parties? | |
They've ruined the country. | |
Did you know that a child born in the United States today, when it takes its first breath of air, is $50,000 in debt? | |
Really? | |
How? | |
The national debt. | |
The national debt is so large that every man, woman, and child owes $50,000. | |
Now, if the Democrats and Republicans conducted their personal finances that way, they'd be street people, bag people, homeless, living in the street. | |
And that's what they've done with our budget and our country. | |
The new show. | |
It's despicable, the Democrats and Republicans. | |
Why do you think I left office after only four years? | |
Because hanging out with them makes you feel like you need a shower. | |
Would you ever want to go back into politics then if it is so dirty? | |
We talked about that last time, didn't we? | |
Well, you know, I never say never. | |
You know, there's always a claring. | |
I'm patriotic. | |
I believe in my country. | |
And there's always that voice in the back of my mind that says to me, if not you, then who? | |
And I think that's what everybody, many people feel that way. | |
If I don't do it, then who's going to do it? | |
And sometimes you put in that corner to where, and that's how people come forward and leaders step forward are the people who are willing to respond to that call. | |
If not me, then who? | |
Would there be anybody, any kinds of people you wouldn't put on your show? | |
Presumably you have a gatekeeper in your head that says, okay, some things are beyond the pale and some things I won't talk about. | |
You won't have anybody on there, will you? | |
Well, I'll pretty much, if I'm interested in it, I'm open to talk about it. | |
If it's something that I have no interest in, then I'm not going to deal with it. | |
And for the most part, I don't like dealing with the fluff stuff. | |
You know, like, let me go back a few years when that Anna Nicole Smith died. | |
I mean, she was headline news for, like, they gave her more news coverage than they did when President Kennedy was murdered. | |
And, you know, I don't care for that type of, because that doesn't affect a great mass of people. | |
Murders, as unfortunate as they are, or deaths, happen all the time. | |
That's the old coach. | |
The only thing you can be sure of is death and taxes. | |
And, you know, and so as tragic as deaths are, I think that I don't care for reporting on them individually like that because to me, death is a private thing, and why should he have media coverage for things of that nature? | |
What kind of response are you getting To this new show, Jesse? | |
I have no idea because my job right now is to perform, and I don't particularly pay attention to the response. | |
I guess I'm doing good. | |
I did that Reddit thing where you ask any question, and they had over 500 of them while I was on there. | |
And so I think, and Aura TV seems exceptionally happy with it. | |
But my job right now is to perform. | |
I have the freedom to perform and the freedom to do this show Tuesday through Friday. | |
I'll shamelessly promote it, 3 p.m. Eastern Time. | |
And you can get it on the internet, Jesse Ventura, or Astigrid or Aura.tv, wherever. | |
But it gives me the ability to speak out and to speak out on many issues. | |
And it makes me more livable. | |
My wife loves it because now I can go and invent and relive much clamor because I have a way to vent my frustrations and express myself, which I didn't always have when I was at the beckoning call of the mainstream media. | |
Now I don't need them anymore to do this show. | |
I have my show itself, and we're developing a following. | |
But my job again is to perform. | |
I'm not worried about how it's doing right now. | |
I laud the fact that you don't need the mainstream media. | |
I think that's great. | |
That's the way we have to go. | |
But I do notice that you need multinational corporations because your shows, certainly the ones that I've seen, have adverts around them and they're big companies that are doing the advertising by the looks of it. | |
Well, you know, it's a business. | |
That's part of the business that I'm not part of. | |
My part of the business is to perform and to do a show. | |
And that's what I do. | |
And I'm doing it under the best circumstances I can imagine. | |
The temperature here is 85 and sunny virtually every day. | |
I'm not a winter person. | |
I'm living in a place that I truly love. | |
I live amongst people that I truly enjoy. | |
People who don't worry about the stock market. | |
If you ask the grid, you're more worried about what you're eating tonight rather than what the stocks are going to be a week from now. | |
And it makes you much more aware of the world directly within your eyesight. | |
And I think, and I don't watch any television here. | |
You know, I don't watch American television down here. | |
I haven't for a number of years now. | |
And I find it quite refreshing to live life without television. | |
Well, yeah, I listen to a lot of radio. | |
I don't watch a lot of TV, I have to say, because I despair of what television's become in the UK. | |
And I'm sure it's that way magnified 10 times in the U.S. It's all reality TV. | |
It's bread and circuses and a little bit of news thrown in. | |
And that's about it, if you can call it news. | |
Yeah, well, it's just a personal life choice. | |
And I'm fortunate because they have the technology now that I can do this show. | |
And like I've said on a number of interviews, this is like my dream job. | |
I mean, if you can imagine having a job that you thoroughly enjoy, you never mind doing it at all. | |
It breaks up the monotony of the week, gives you other things to focus on, and allows you for me to communicate, which is what I've done my entire life, and I have the need to communicate. | |
And this fulfills that. | |
So I couldn't be happier. | |
I mean, you know, people have asked me if I'll run for president, and even Larry King asked me, and I had difficulty. | |
I said, Larry, with doing this job and living the life I'm leading right now, I have to tell you it would be a very difficult choice to attempt to do that. | |
But again, that little patriotic bug in your whole says, if not you, then who? | |
But right now, I couldn't be happier in what I'm doing and the life I'm leading. | |
And yet, if you went back to the continental United States, if you went back within the mainstream, certainly of politics, there would be people who say, well, this guy sold out on everything. | |
He went to Mexico or wherever you are now. | |
You know, you're doing your show from Cancun, wherever it might be. | |
If you were really committed to it, you'd be in there rough and tumbling with it, and you're not. | |
Well, and why should you be? | |
In our country, you're not supposed to be a career politician. | |
In our country, you're supposed to be a citizen government who you come, you bring the life experiences you've had, and you serve. | |
And when you're done serving, you're supposed to go back to what you used to do or go on to a new career. | |
Where on earth did we get the idea that you spend a career in public service getting elected? | |
When did that become reality? | |
Well, that wasn't what our country was formed upon. | |
Our country was formed that it could be a citizen government where you brought, you served, and when you're done serving, go back to what you used to do. | |
Right. | |
Well, that's what a few people have done. | |
They've had to do it by necessity. | |
If they're voted out of office or they leave office because they're found out doing something, whatever, they have to go back to what they were doing before. | |
Unless, of course, you're Nixon and then you'd retire as reasonably, gracefully as you can. | |
Well, again, you know, governments evolve. | |
And when they evolve, sometimes it's not for the better. | |
And sometimes you need to reverse that evolution. | |
And in our government, our forefathers, we were supposed to be a citizen-based government, not career politicians, not lawyers, whatever you are. | |
And that's who's supposed to be the governing body of this country. | |
And so it's not out of line to consider what the forefathers had in mind. | |
So let's make it very, very clear now for our listeners in America, in the United Kingdom, around the world, what kind of government would you like? | |
A government where it butts out of most things. | |
It just looks after the big things like defense and the small little bits of interference in our lives that involve us being highly taxed to pay for them. | |
You'd want those things to stop? | |
Is that where you're coming to it from? | |
Well, when you speak of defense to me, then let's call it defense and not war. | |
And let's keep it defense. | |
I follow the teachings of Major General Smudley Darlington Butler, who was a Marine two-time Congressional Medal of Honor winner, who wrote a tremendous book. | |
In fact, on my show this month, I do once a month, I do the book of the month. | |
It's my book this month. | |
It's called War is a Racket by Major General Butler. | |
And Major General Butler won two Congressional Medals of Honor. | |
And you don't win those by sitting behind a desk. | |
And so he is a man who knows. | |
And when he states war is a racket, and General Butler says that our military we should pass a constitutional amendment that doesn't allow our military to go over 500 miles from our country. | |
And what about because Obama's got a lot to say at the moment about Ukraine and Putin muscling in on Ukraine? | |
They've just had a referendum there where, of course, the vast majority of Russia supporters within Ukraine have voted, yes, we want to be part of Russia. | |
The rest of the people abstained. | |
There is some abuse of human rights by the looks of it going on there. | |
Not everybody's getting a fair shake. | |
You think America should have no part in any of that, even if Putin decides to get even more heavy-handed? | |
I think that America should do everything diplomatically to do what's right, but we should avoid war at all costs. | |
War is the failure of politics. | |
When countries go to war, it's because politicians have failed miserably at their jobs, because that is the end result of failed politics. | |
War. | |
A lot of people would agree with you about that. | |
Wait a minute. | |
We've been in enough war. | |
I'm born in 1951. | |
I'm post-World War II. | |
I'm 62 years old now. | |
I'm a United States Navy Vietnam veteran. | |
And we've been at war literally my whole life when you count the war on drugs. | |
And the war on drugs is likewise a war. | |
We go from one war to the next war to the next war. | |
We have a war culture that needs to be broken and changed. | |
We have a war economy that needs to be changed into helping people rather than killing them. | |
I find it very interesting that man has no predator. | |
Nobody eats us. | |
So we eat ourselves. | |
Because we have no predator, we find ways to kill ourselves. | |
And I find that just astonishing. | |
And we need to start working and changing the culture of war to a culture of peace and a culture of moving progressively forward with good in mankind. | |
And I know that sounds wonderful and utopian, but what we have today, this culture of war, was ridiculous. | |
But Putin sent his army into Ukraine and Crimea, and they flexed. | |
We went into Iraq, didn't they? | |
Well, we did, but that's a different thing. | |
We flexed. | |
He flexed. | |
Yes. | |
And wait a minute. | |
And did Iraq invite us in? | |
No, they did not. | |
I remember Dick Cheney lying to us, telling us that when we got into Iraq, we'd be greeted like liberators. | |
We were hardly greeted like liberators. | |
The war got worse. | |
After we invaded and they declared victory, the war got worse after the declared victory. | |
So how can we say one thing about what Russia's doing when that's exactly the same thing we did with Iraq? | |
But the problem with it is done nothing to us. | |
The problem with it is invaded the country. | |
Sure, the problem with it is I don't advocate war at all. | |
War is a big mistake. | |
And I thought, you know, doing all of that stuff with Saddam Hussein and all the rest of it, we didn't handle that well. | |
And Tony Blair here, Prime Minister, has an awful lot of questions to ask. | |
But he's on the lecture circuit now, making millions of dollars, so it's all right for him. | |
So I don't agree with any of that. | |
I'm completely with you there. | |
The only problem is there has to be some kind of sanctions. | |
If Putin wants to get expansionist and if he wants to start flexing his muscles and showing off his military hardware, which he's doing to an extent at the moment, what do we say? | |
Can we not say, well, you know, we do have our tanks and our ships as well. | |
Not that we're necessarily going to use them, but we're backed up by that. | |
So the answer is to create another Cold War. | |
The answer is to build up our side and show him we can already blow up the Earth 20 times over. | |
Everybody knows that. | |
And by building up and flexing our muscles with each other doesn't do any good. | |
But automatically if we're going to stop Putin, then let's stop him economically. | |
Well, that's what we're in the process. | |
That is what we're in the process of trying to do now, isn't it? | |
That is what we're in the process of trying to do now. | |
But who knows how that's going to go? | |
Howard, my point is this. | |
War is not going to starve up one way or the other. | |
Well, I think you and I are completely singing from the same hymn sheet there because I think war has always been a waste of time and a sad expenditure of life. | |
And it's not the people at the top who make the decisions who die. | |
It's the poor people at the bottom, the cannon fodder who have to go there and face the bullets and the bombs. | |
It's like what I've proposed. | |
I've proposed that I'll give an example. | |
If Jesse Van Burr were president, here's a law that I would propose. | |
Any politician in the United States that votes to go to war, that takes an affirmative vote, that they have to pre-designate a family member who at that moment, that they take that vote, has to begin military service. | |
That's called putting your money where your mouth is. | |
Well, that's called having a dog in the fight. | |
It's easy to vote to go to war. | |
See, people have asked me, I had a right-wing guy ask me. | |
I said, going to war is an easy decision. | |
And this guy said, how can you state that it's an easy decision? | |
I said, it's easy. | |
I said, a war is justified if you're willing to send your son or daughter. | |
If you're not willing to send your son or your daughter, then the war is not justified to send someone else's son or daughter. | |
Problem is, though, if we eschew the use of military force, and I'm not a supporter of that at all, please don't think that I am. | |
If we say no, no, no, we're not going to do that. | |
The other guy is. | |
That was the whole case with Saddam Hussein. | |
It was the case with Hitler. | |
Putin is flexing his muscles. | |
Look, I don't even want. | |
Wait a minute. | |
I don't want to hear Saddam Hussein and Hitler in the same breath. | |
That's absurd. | |
Saddam Hussein pulls no threat to nobody. | |
What about his people? | |
Saddam Hussein, Saddam Hussein has sanctions already against him. | |
He couldn't do a thing. | |
He was just helpless. | |
That's why it was a walk in the park, basically, when we went in there. | |
That's laughable, dude. | |
Don't even do that, Howard, compare Saddam Hussein to Hitler. | |
I'm just interested in how much as reasonable people in the free world as we like to think we are, how much we can allow to happen and turn a blind eye. | |
That's all I'm interested in. | |
I'm no warmonger. | |
I hate war. | |
I would ban war. | |
Let's go to Saddam Hussein. | |
Excuse me. | |
When he was in charge, women in Iraq were going to college and they didn't have to wear facial scarves. | |
Now that Saddam Hussein is gone, women are back being subjected to religious freedoms taken away. | |
They'll have to wear scarves again and they're not going to college anymore. | |
I mean, listen, I agree with you totally. | |
On so many levels, we made no difference whatsoever. | |
But it's the moral question of how far, if at all, do you get involved in anything when people behave badly? | |
If you don't, until it directly affects you, then it becomes your business unless it's genocide. | |
If it's a genocide, then it has to be with NATO, the United Nations, it has to be a third world. | |
Because what gives us the right to go intervene in all these countries throughout the world, until it affects us directly, we have no right to intervene unless we're asked to, and Iraq never asked us to. | |
There wasn't one Iraqi telling us to invade them. | |
And the one thing about today's politicians, Governor Ventura, is that they're just not smart enough to do this. | |
They couldn't get it right. | |
They ended up making it all worse. | |
So you and I agree about that. | |
Sorry. | |
The problem, however, with today's politician is that they've created a system of bribery where you bribe them with money. | |
If you do that in the private sector, you go to jail. | |
But it's alive and well in the public sector. | |
And that's the problem. | |
They create special limitations, laws, whatever you want to call them, that don't apply to real life, that only apply to them. | |
It's an elitist type thing. | |
And we have to pull that down. | |
We have to get rid of that. | |
And again, have government by the people instead of by the elite. | |
And the problem is the United States is slipping to being governed by the elite rather than by the people anymore. | |
Governor Venturi, you told me that you don't watch the television, but I guess you get to hear the news. | |
As we record this, we're 10 days into this drama of this Malaysian Airlines plane that's gone missing. | |
Nobody in this day and age where we are the most surveyed planet. | |
You know, we've never been as surveyed as we are from space and from the ground and from everywhere, and yet they have no idea where this thing has gone or what's happened to it. | |
I wondered if you have any thoughts about this. | |
It's astounding, like you said, with the technology they have today and that they can look in all of our computers and you've got the MSA violating the Fourth Amendment to our Constitution and all the massive surveillance and the level at which it's done. | |
Holland, you're completely right. | |
I'm astounded over the fact that they can't locate this plane. | |
It's as big a mystery as anything that's done in Ohio as to how this could happen. | |
I guess it goes to show the same thing as 9-11, how 19 Islamic radicals allegedly armed with box cutters could defeat the United States multi-billion dollar air defense system, all while conspiring with a bearded guy in a cave in Afghanistan, | |
and then have no one get fired over the colossal collapse of this multi-billion dollar defense system, which I would assume operates like I did when I was in the military of the fact that failure is not an option. | |
Well, clearly there was a major failure and yet nobody got fired. | |
Well, this thing's kind of the same thing. | |
Here, you've got this airplane that literally disappears off the face of the earth. | |
And the mystery is how could that happen with today's technology? | |
I don't have an answer for you, Howard, if you're looking for me to give you one. | |
And just in this instance, with this story, your view, my view, and their view, they're of equal value because none of us has any idea what's happened. | |
Maybe that's a sign that we should feel good for our news for the first time in ages. | |
But there are now at least, you know, genuine questions are being asked now, and people are using their thinking heads, as we say here, to just, you know, to consider this thing. | |
One guy today, a very intelligent man, qualified man on a radio phone in London, suggested something I'd never even thought of. | |
He said, what if somebody on that plane had had access to some technology, had invented something, had some kind of secret that somebody somewhere wanted to make sure at the very highest level was kept a secret? | |
Well, then you would put that person on a plane and then you would disappear that plane. | |
That is a fascinating theory, isn't it? | |
It shows that people are starting to think. | |
And, you know, as much as you'd look at that as a fascinating court theory-only theory, it certainly could be true because, you know, let's face it, when you get into some of the things that governments have done down through the years, | |
A lot of them are not pretty things, and a lot of them are decisions were made to allegedly benefit the public at the expense of collateral damage, where the collateral damage sometimes is immense. | |
And so, certainly, I don't think it's anything at this point in time, Hollard, I don't think anything is too far-fetched after all. | |
We have no idea where this plane is. | |
Do you know anybody of the people who you have contact with? | |
And I know you have contact with quite a few, who would give you any kind of steer about this? | |
Might be even doing that now. | |
Well, not really. | |
You know, when I left Barthos, I really, from that point on, my contacts have kind of, I haven't used them anymore. | |
And living down here off the grid, it's not like I'm not running an underground revolution that's taking place as we speak, nothing of that sort. | |
So, no, really. | |
And my guys are now, you know, the Navy SEALs that I know, that I'm intimate with, we're all old guys now. | |
You know, it's kind of like talking about the guys that worked at Area 51 back in the 50s. | |
You know, they might know what was going on there back in the 50s and 60s, but they're not going to be privy to what's going on there in the turn of the new century. | |
So I'm as ignorantly probably, you know, kept out of it as you are. | |
But, you know, even though you may be moving forward in years, I still kind of see you like those guys in that Clint Eastwood movie. | |
What was it, Space Cowboys? | |
You know, you came back and showed them all how to do it one more time, you know? | |
Well, you know, in our minds, we all like to believe we can, but, you know, I've got a right hip that I've got metal in now that tells me how many years have gone by. | |
And, you know, when I get up every morning, I have aches and pains that I didn't have from the day before. | |
And you shouldn't wonder where those came from. | |
So Catherine Hepburn was right when the great Catherine Hepburn, the actress, when she made the statement that growing old was not for the faint of heart. | |
Yeah, well, you get no argument with me about that. | |
I wake up with more aches and pains now, and I still have to wake up at 4 o'clock in the morning and go to work and do my stuff. | |
But it takes me just a little bit longer now, Governor Ventura, than it used to. | |
Oh, it does me too, Howard. | |
Don't kid me, living off the grid gets more difficult all the time, but I still love it, and it's what keeps me feeling young right now, so I'm going to keep doing it. | |
And to what extent are you off the grid? | |
Are you generating your own? | |
I live an hour from pavement and an hour from electricity. | |
So are you growing your own food? | |
No. | |
Okay. | |
I buy from organic markets. | |
I don't grow it. | |
I got money. | |
Funny how you can have money, and money makes living off the good a lot easier. | |
And as far as electric goes, where I live is completely solar-powered. | |
I live off the sun. | |
Being off the good means you're just not accepting any services from, shall we say, government or anything of that nature, power companies. | |
I have no telephone. | |
I have no TV. | |
And all the power I get, I get from the sun. | |
So you're independent to a big extent, which also makes you, just in case some of the stuff that you're broadcasting on this off-the-grid TV show, you know, some of it's going to upset a few people, I don't doubt, back home. | |
The fact that you're self-sufficient in that way also makes you a little harder to get to and get at. | |
Well, maybe so. | |
I don't know. | |
I like it. | |
You know, where I live at, because there's no electricity, the stars at night, when I see a shooting star, I actually watch it break into three or four pieces like fireworks because that's how well you can see because there's no backlight at all. | |
And so it's just a lifestyle that's a little bit different. | |
Call it eccentric, maybe, but it's a lifestyle and an adventure that my wife and I and our dog are enjoying very much right now at this point of my life where I'm still young enough to do it. | |
And what do you want to do with this, this concept of off the grid, the TV show that's connected to it, the fact that you are now finally self-sufficient, you're talking to the world independently? | |
Where do you want to take it? | |
I don't know. | |
I'll take it wherever it'll go. | |
It's an enjoyment to do it. | |
I look forward to doing it when I do it. | |
The excitement and the challenge of doing it has made me feel young again. | |
And the fact that nobody's telling me what to do. | |
Nobody stands over above me and says, here's the topic, Jesse, you've got to talk about today. | |
I make those choices completely, and I can change the subject as we speak. | |
If I decide I don't want to talk about this subject anymore, I guess it's kind of like being captain of your own ship. | |
You're going to determine sink or swim in the direction that you're going to go. | |
But it's so self-gratifying that to win, lose, or draw, the experience of doing it is just plain good enough. | |
And as you said, there is a commercial element to it. | |
Are you hoping to get rich off the back of this? | |
You know what? | |
To be honest, Howard? | |
I'm down here off the grid. | |
I don't even keep. | |
Somebody asked me how the numbers are. | |
I said, I don't know. | |
I said, my job is to perform. | |
I said, if I perform, the numbers will be there. | |
If I don't perform, they won't be. | |
But somebody must be writing a paycheck to you every month, are they? | |
I think so. | |
And I haven't been back to the States to check. | |
I'm going back in a little round, and then I'll check. | |
Do you think there's a prospect that you might, you know, I mean, in Britain, talking about money is indelicate, but it might make you a nice pile for retirement? | |
Well, put it this way. | |
I already have enough to retire. | |
So this job isn't required. | |
That's maybe why I like doing it so much. | |
I don't need it. | |
I don't have to have it. | |
I retired technically eight years ago when I moved after good. | |
I did that by a lifestyle choice with my planning in the future fully encompassed in that decision. | |
Well, listen, I love the look and feel of your shows. | |
Just remind people here in the UK and around the world: if they want to see these shows, if they want to get the Jesse Ventura experience, how do they do it? | |
Where do they go? | |
Well, it's simple. | |
You can just go to aura.tv, or you can go to Jesse Ventura Aster Good. | |
We'll have Eastern Time Zone, 3 p.m. | |
Postgres, Fridays, the live shows. | |
And then, of course, being that it's the internet, you can pull up any show that I've done any time that I've done it at any time that you want. | |
That's the great thing about the Internet. | |
You have it at your convenience. | |
But we'll actually have 3 p.m. | |
Eastern, which would be noon Pacific, Tuesday through Friday. | |
I'll have new shows every week and a week. | |
Well, listen, I love talking to you. | |
You know that. | |
I hope that next time we do it, the phone line is a little clearer than this one. | |
It's been a bit of a struggle, but I've been able to understand you. | |
But I look forward to the next time when we can talk. | |
And, you know, if you're in London, maybe we can do it in person. | |
Well, thank you, Howard. | |
I would look forward to doing that naturally. | |
But you've got to put up with these things when you're asked to do it. | |
That's part of the excitement about it. | |
It feels a little rough and shabby, and you're not going to get perfect, but that's the enjoyment of it. | |
But again, thanks for having me. | |
Look forward to it. | |
And if I ever do come to Britain, you can bet I'll do your show live right there with you. | |
Please look after yourself. | |
Good to talk to you, Governor Ventura. | |
Okay, thanks, all. | |
Have a good one. | |
Hey, take care. | |
Bye-bye. | |
Bye-bye. | |
Governor Jesse Ventura. | |
Always a pleasure to have him on. | |
Let me know what you thought about what he had to say. | |
Go to www.theunexplained.tv, www.theunexplained.tv. | |
That's my website. | |
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And above all, thank you to you. | |
More great guests coming soon here on The Unexplained. | |
I'm glad you're enjoying what we're doing here. | |
We can only get better. | |
We can only get bigger. | |
Until next, we meet here on the Unexplained. | |
Stay safe, stay calm, and stay in touch. | |
My name is Howard Hughes. | |
I'm in London. |