Hearts of Oak Podcast

Major (Ret) Russ Cooper - The Patriot Pilot: Charting a Course for Canada's Future through C3RF

Welcome to Hearts of Oak, where we explore the stories of individuals who embody the spirit of resilience and advocacy. Today, we're privileged to have on the show Major (Ret.) Russ Cooper, a man whose life has soared through the skies as a fighter pilot and now navigates the contentious terrain of civil liberties in Canada. From his distinguished service in the Persian Gulf War to his subsequent career at Air Canada, Major Cooper's perspective from the cockpit offered him unique insights into the world. But it was upon retiring that he found himself drawn into a different kind of battle—one for the soul and freedom of his country. Join us as we delve into Major Cooper's journey from the air to activism, sparked by his concerns over Motion M-103 and the perceived threats to Canadian values of unity and free speech. His fight has led him to co-found the Canadian Citizens for Charter Rights and Freedoms, an organization championing individual rights amidst what he sees as a growing tide of restrictive legislation. Today's episode is not just about one man's fight; it's about understanding the challenges to our freedoms and the call to action for every citizen to stand up for the principles that define us. Stay tuned for an enlightening conversation that touches on the heart of what it means to be Canadian.
Interview recorded 9.10.2024
Connect with Russ and C3RF...Major (Ret.) Russ Cooper:https://www.canadiancitizens.org/
Canadian Citizens For Charter Rights And Freedoms (C3RF) is a group of Canadians whose mission is to educate Canadians about threats to their Charter Rights, advocate to protect Charter Rights and Freedoms, and propose countering legislation and regulatory frameworks especially focused on freedom of expression.
Connect with Hearts of Oak...𝕏                         x.com/HeartsofOakUKWEBSITE            heartsofoak.org/PODCASTS        heartsofoak.podbean.com/SOCIAL MEDIA  heartsofoak.org/connect/SHOP                  heartsofoak.org/shop/
Transcript
(Hearts of Oak)
And hello, Hearts of Oak.
Thank you so much for joining us once again with a brand new guest over in Canada, and that is Major Retired Russ Cooper.
Russ, thank you so much for giving us your time today.
Oh, thank you, Peter.
It's a real honour to join you, today.
Great to have you on, and thanks to the one and only Valerie Price for connecting us, as she does with many, many people.
And it's always good to have someone like that working in the background, isn't it?
Well, I tell you, it's amazing what she does.
She gets a lot of people started in the area of civil liberties, and she's responsible for my start.
I started, I guess, popping off writing this and writing that, and it was her and her website that gave me a public profile and got me going way back in, what was it, 2016.
And that probably story could be retold by many, many people that we have all bumped into worldwide.
But before we get in, CanadianCitizens.org is the website, and that is the organization you founded and are present of, Canadian Citizens for Charter Rights and Freedoms, or C3RF.
All the links will be in the description.
And we want to talk about the work that really came together, I think, on the Islamophobia bill back in 2017.
So, we'll get into all of that. But your background is fascinating to me as a private pilot, as someone I look at your career with a little bit of envy.
Your background, fighter pilot in the Canadian Air Force, retired commercial pilot.
Maybe tell us a little bit about that background, which I could do a whole podcast on, but we won't.
Tell me a little bit about that background before we get on to how you got involved in activism.
Well the civil aviation background was it flowed out of my military background flying.
My last fighter tour was on cf-18s.
Oh f-18s
Yes, modern era fighter and I had the opportunity, the honor really to fight for Canada in combat during the first Persian gulf war.
I was there with our 439 tiger squadron a squadron of cf-18s that participated in that that particular conflict and out of that I came back home from Germany, went into a ground job and then in 1997 retired from the military after about 29 years of service and then began looking for a job.
I was still fairly young at the time, I was 45, and wound up in civil aviation initially flying training business jet pilots and and flying business jets from Bombardier Aerospace.
From there, I spent a couple of years there, three, four years, and then applied to Air Canada and got picked up by Air Canada at the salty age of 48.
I remember going into my first meeting with my class, and everybody was coming up to me asking if I was the instructor.
So, I was kind of a late start, a late bloomer when it came to Air Canada.
I proceeded to fly for Air Canada and started out with DC-9s, the old DC-9. Loved that airplane.
Then Airbus A320s and then wound up on the 777, which was just a magnificent aircraft that we took all over the world.
Take a trip, Toronto to Beijing, Toronto, Hong Kong.
Toronto, San Diego, our Asian destinations would go over the polar, over the north pole on the other side down through Siberia and Mongolia and to into china.
It was just an amazing amazing job very glad I had the opportunity to do it, but things being as they were we had 2002, 2003, the company went bankrupt on me and I had to drop out of Air Canada.
I took a leave of absence for about five years.
And then as I was on leave of absence, I picked up an engineering billet for an avionics firm in Montreal.
And basically from there, with my flying background, I got into a position as an engineering flight test pilot.
And so that's where I wound up my flying career, my aviation.
I spent about 40 years, 40 years plus in aviation.
I always think there must be no greater office than a flight deck at 40,000 feet.
How beautiful.
The view is, yeah, the view is wonderful up there, yeah.
Yeah, I've seen a lot of interesting sites up in the concrete, particularly at 777.
Wow.
Well, I would love to delve deeper into that. But I want to get on to the current fight that we have across the Western world for the right to criticize, the right to offend, the right to disagree, which seems to be fast disappearing.
So you're in aviation 40 years.
Then, Probably politics wasn't really something you're engaged in.
How did you end up starting an organization that would pull people together to fight the government on Islamophobia legislation, in effect?
Well, it was kind of a sidestep.
But when I look back on it, not really.
It was kind of a natural progression there.
I was, when I was a fighter pilot, an officer in the Air Force, I guess there's no other way to describe me, but as a true patriot, I love my country.
And when I went into a combat tour, I did so gladly.
I stepped up because I really felt that Canada was a country worth fighting for.
It had values that were not only worth protecting, but projecting.
And in that particular case, we're involved with kicking a tyrant out of a country that didn't want him.
And I thought, yeah, this is a good place for me to be.
So I'm a bit of a bit of a patriot that way.
And then there's another tyrant in Trudeau.
Well, I tell you, we can talk about that for for the whole show, too.
I mean, getting back to my sojourn into civil liberties, it wasn't that much of a step, as I say, because when I – back in 2016, 2017, I was fully retired.
I was going to kick back and enjoy the grandkids. You know, it was time for me to enjoy my golden years.
But all of a sudden, we had these funny narratives coming out of Ottawa.
And all of a sudden, 2016, 2017, they came up with a motion, M103.
And the motion, its underlying premise was the fact that Canadians are systemically racist.
The Canadians are religious discriminators, especially when it comes to Islam and Muslims.
The narrative was, I found extremely insulting, and it is not, they were describing a Canada that I knew did not exist, because over the course of my 40 years, I've been across the country.
I've been around the world, I've seen Canadians of all sorts and stripes work together to do great things.
This is a great country, and we've got great people, and I took offense to, you know, our own leaders telling us that there was, we were debased.
We were, and then that narrative just kept going.
And we were, we were a post-national state.
We had no core values.
Then we were genocidal, you know, with the way that we treated our indigenous populations.
It just went on and on and on.
And I, just could not, as a patriot, I just could not sit back and tolerate that.
I felt compelled.
I was compelled.
I had to sit down and start writing.
What I did was I started writing letters to all the MPs, the members of parliament in Canada, telling them that this is my take.
This is my evidence.
You know, this M103 is wrong.
All it's going to do is show favor to one religion over others. others, it's going to shield that religion from criticism and fair debate and comment.
I said, this is not fair at all.
I mean, if you want to have put something in place that says you can't discriminate against Muslims, fine, I'm all for that.
We shouldn't discriminate against anybody.
But when you start homing in on one religion and creating favor to that religion, all it's going to do is divide.
And that's exactly what it's done.
So that's where it started.
I started writing a few.
When we talk about Valerie, Valerie Price, I don't know how she got a hold of me, but she got a hold of me, and I needed someplace to publish the stuff that I was writing, because I was just writing nonstop, and she gave me her website, and I started posting on her website, and that attracted a couple of folks.
We had less than a dozen got together, and we formed C3RF, Canadian Citizens for Charter Rights and Freedoms, And I think it's a pretty good name because we represent Canadian citizens.
We're not politicians.
We're not lawyers.
We're not this race or that religion or anything.
We are Canadian citizens.
And I think that that's the secret of Canada is that everyone unites under the banner of civic nationalism.
We don't unite under a banner of this tribe or that clan.
No, we all believe we have a common belief.
Not like Trudeau said, we have no core values. We have no beliefs.
We do have common beliefs, and they include things like respect for individual rights and freedoms and basically what the Canadian citizen sees in the Charter.
And I say that specifically because Canadian citizens see a certain intent in that Charter.
They see fundamental rights and freedoms that are supposed to be protected by Canadians, by their representatives, and it's that intent that somehow over the years since the Charter was formed in 1982 has evaporated.
Our politicians, our judges, our legal class, they all seem to forget about the intent.
If anything, they take that intent and ignore it, that intent that there are certain fundamental freedoms, that's Section 2 of the Charter, free speech, freedom of religion, and freedom to assemble and associate.
There are fundamental freedoms that are called fundamental for a reason because the intent was to protect and preserve them.
And that intent has been ignored.
And I think that's a travesty.
So us Canadian citizens, I think we have to do something about that.
Do you think those freedoms are being taken for granted?
Do the people think that, well, previous generations have had certain freedoms therefore it's automatically assumed they will continue.
Do you think that's part of the reason why not just Canada but many nations in the west have got ourselves into the predicament, because we've just sat back and assumed it will continue?
Well, yes I think that's a very valid point.
I think you know you go back in time a little bit I grew up in the 50s and 60s as a kid and I remember back then how things were and you know things changed a lot starting in the 60s when we started having the sexual revolution we had the whole the whole thing the whole kind of culture that underpinned, you know, our our western liberal democracies kind of faded away.
People let it go and um and and I think as as a result, we left ourselves open to be taken advantage of by other narratives, other ideologies that we are told are equivalent.
Now we're told that there's no one culture that's better than another.
There's equivalency across the board.
And there is no real truth, this whole thing about objective reality being an imaginary thing.
And everything under the sun is just as good as everything else under the sun.
So we lost that, I guess, that Judeo-Christian ethic, I guess you could call it.
We let that slip away.
And as that slipped away, the vacuum was filled by other ideologies, other ideas that basically took us away from the strength that we did have and the belief we had in a strong and free Canada, in my case.
And we let that slide. So I think that's a valid point.
There's another side to this, and the other side is that actually certain people, certain individuals who have these other ideas or have stepped into the vacuum and purposely and deliberately confused and confounded Canadians and Canadian society with a lot of ideas that don't really belong in a Western liberal democracy.
And we see those ideas thriving now, and they're crazy.
Some of them are just so off the wall that I go, we go back to motion M103 where this Islamophobia came up and the damage that caused in dividing the nation.
But we also have other things that came across the board.
In about the same timeframe, in 2016, we had Bill C-16 in Canada, which was the gender identity and expression bill all of a sudden our our legislators actually told us that if we didn't identify people the way they wanted to be identified as instead of a male or a female they had to be identified as I don't know a puppy dog or a kitten or something like that.
We you know then we could be taken to task we could be taken to a human rights tribunal.
We could be put under the under the the microscope we could be examined we could be punished if we didn't allow our speech to be compelled.
Certainly this was totally, totally against, you know, our right to free speech as per Section 2 of the Charter.
When you're telling people they have to speak a certain way and think a certain way, you are out of bounds.
And we still have that bill, and it's still thriving.
It's now impacted our school system where our children are being taught thought that, you know, they weren't born a boy or a girl.
God may have made a mistake, and you're not really a boy.
You're not really a girl.
How confusing is that for a little kid?
And that drives me around a bit because I got six grandkids, five girls.
And I look at that kind of influence on their upbringing, and, you know, that's not going to smirk.
And I think the majority of Canadians feel like I do.
And I think a lot are just a little bit scared to pop their head above the parapet and say, this is wrong.
No, this is not going to stand. It's wrong.
Well, that compelled speech, I guess that was where Jordan Peterson came to fame over his pushback.
And we're now seeing compelled speech everywhere, having teacher in Ireland recently and on and on.
And he's been one of the biggest figures highlighting this.
But I want to talk to you about kind of the political engagement and also the engagement of the public.
But the issue on the Islamophobia, it's a toxic, dangerous term, as dangerous as the term racism is.
Whenever you use Islamophobic or racist, then immediately it shuts down debate.
And the argument is one because no one wants to think of themselves as someone who hates someone else.
Immediately you pull back, but it's also a huge topic to wade into the issue of engaging on Islam and Islam's position and the freedoms we have to critique any ideology or religion.
So tell me about that because I think maybe when you look back you might think could have picked an easier one, a less inflammatory one, but this is a big issue.
But tell me how that came together, how people came together, how you engaged with the political process in trying to stop that.
Well, it was kind of amazing because it came from nowhere.
And I started writing my letters, my website postings, and I started, we started a petition and that kind of cranked along slowly.
And then all of a sudden, things just changed gear.
I mean, it was like shifting gears in a car.
It was just all of a sudden we were in high speed mode, because people started to pick up on the conversation that was coming out of the press as they covered the Conservative Party who came forward and said, no, we don't think this is a good idea.
We'd like to change the motion to read instead of concentrating on Islamophobia.
They wanted to concentrate on discrimination against Muslims, Jews, Christians, basically everybody, all the religions.
They wanted to make it across the board an equal thing.
That caught the attention of the public, and from that point on, we saw our petition numbers just crank over, you know, just accelerated.
And there were other petitions on board.
In total, I think there were over 200,000 signatures on two or three petitions, ours included, that they just couldn't ignore.
But they went for it anyway.
This was a slam dunk.
You know, the Liberals, they came out with this.
It was a slam dunk deal for them, and they were going to put this through come hell or high water.
And they did, but there was a lot, a lot of people caught, or it caught the attention of a lot of people. So, much so that one member of Parliament, Trost was his name.
He was a conservative.
He reported on his Facebook page that in the few days prior to the actual vote in 2017, he reported that the parliamentary offices had received over 800,000 emails, most of which were against the motion.
They had never seen anything like that.
Over almost 900,000 emails, people saying, no, this is nuts.
Don't do it.
And they did it anyway.
But because there was always, I think, the plan to introduce this motion and open up this Islamophobia gateway.
That eventually there were various funds that were put in place behind it.
They said it was a non-binding motion.
It wouldn't make any differences, but it opened up the doors for a lot of millions and millions of dollars of funding for things like fighting Islamophobia, racism, and everything else.
It became an industry.
It did, and that, what you described, reflects where a lot of us are in or the public servants are no longer servants they have become masters and they simply take in public consultation to tick a box.
It used to be there would be dialogue now it seems to be politicians always know better and we must submit or comply.
Is that how you've kind of seen us in Canada on this issue and the wider issue of free speech?
Well, yes.
And I think the proof is in the pudding.
And we saw that, I think, in spades with the advent of the COVID pandemic.
Because here you saw, there were a lot of questions.
People were wondering just what the heck is going on here?
You know, we've got to stay six feet apart.
We've got to, you know, some poor soul would pop their head above the parapet and say, why six feet?
And then they would immediately get slammed back down into their pod where they belonged.
And you couldn't even ask questions about, you know, like this is an experimental vaccine.
Are there any long-term studies?
Well, you can't ask that question.
I mean, who are you and how do you deserve the right to ask such a question?
So, yes, there was a, I call it an untethering.
Our public service, our politicians, our judiciary, Sherry, they became untethered.
Or maybe the better way to explain it is they had become untethered quite a while ago, but this whole COVID pandemic made everything so crystal clear that they had no intention, no intention of doing what was best for the population.
As a matter of fact, they purposely and deliberately told us we had a safe and effective vaccine when they knew when they were told by their contracts with organizations like Pfizer that it's not, we don't know if it's safe and effective.
We've got no long-term studies.
It's right in the contract.
So we can't guarantee anything down the road that there won't be adverse events that, you know, that might come aboard.
They knew it wasn't safe and effective, and they lied to us, and they were totally untethered with their responsibility to serve the public that they were sworn to serve.
Yeah.
And then, again, I guess the other proof in the pudding there is we talk about Canadian citizens taking notice and finally having enough.
We had Freedom Convoy 2022.
That was a seminal Canadian event that no one wants to admit it in the political class, but that protest was a one-off in Canadian history.
And it went on to spark similar protests around the world, New Zealand, Australia. Basically, all the Western world picked up on it.
They're still driving tractors down highways in Holland and Ireland.
And again, people, I guess we should thank our politicians and our judiciary for doing such a poor job and representing us because it's so poor that we can see it.
And it's crystal clear that we've got a problem.
And one other thing we talk about, you know, this worldwide event, you know, people standing up across the world, right?
They are standing up, I think, against – when we look at the restrictions that are being placed upon people in Canada, we're seeing the same thing happen in Ireland, in Britain, and across the West, in the United States. It's as though our Western leadership is in lockstep.
I'll give you an example.
In the UK in 2021, your government came up with something called the Countering Disinformation Act, or the Countering Disinformation Unit.
Unit, I think.
Countering Disinformation Unit or something, yes.
It was the Disinformation Unit.
When they did that, they coordinated those activities with Canada, Australia, United States, and 20 other.
They had bi-laterals with 20 other nations to do the same thing.
And basically what this disinformation unit was all about was taking a look at any information that they could determine, misinformation, disinformation, and quash it, find it, get it off the Internet.
And you had your legislation come forward as a result. So we are dealing with legislation that comes out of that initiative in 2024 now called the Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act.
Basically it's all the same. So across the board we're seeing all these nations.
I think it started with Germany in 2016, 2017 with their internet bill in Germany. And now you see all the Western nations basically replicating that legislation.
People may be standing up in unison against this oppression that we're facing when it comes to our speech, but I think they're doing so because they are going up against a unified oppressor in the form of our Western liberal, so-called liberal governments.
Oh, yeah.
And we'll get on this now, the online harms bill, because we have the online safety bill in the UK. Europe has the DSA, Digital Services Act.
I think Switzerland have similar legislation.
I think the US have COSA, Kids Online Safety, which I think that will be used in this way.
But we see it and you realize how clever the other side is.
They talk about protecting children.
They talk about safety, stopping harm.
These are terms that keep coming up and no one can argue against that and that's the difficulty.
What has been the pushback like in Canada because in the UK parliament collapsed completely in adoration of this bill.
There were maybe might have been a dozen politicians who were against it, but everyone got sucked into this mantra that we must protect children online and this is the way to do it.
What political pushback has there been on this legislation in Canada?
Initially, none.
And it was very much the same case as your experience in Europe.
But what happened was this whole bit about, you know, protecting children online, non-consensual postings online, that was the Trojan horse that was rolled out and presented to the public.
And, you know, this is how they presented it back in February when when our Justice Minister Virani presented it to the Canadian public, this is going to address these very evil things that were happening on the internet.
And no one can argue with that.
But the fact is, is that these are issues that are either already out of bounds in our criminal code or can be addressed through current laws, criminal codes, with modifications here and there.
So, having an online harms act to deal with these things is not really even the best way to go.
Because what they've done is they've included all these other add-ons to the bill. For example, they've constructed a whole new bureaucracy in the form of a digital safety commission. And this commission has powers that are unbelievable.
They can actually, they're not constrained by rules of evidence.
They're not constrained by rules of reasonable search and seizure.
They can walk into an organization, into a company, into a social media place and start collecting files and data without due process.
They can take an anonymous complaint against an individual and with that anonymous anonymous complaint.
They can they can investigate the the the evil wrongdoer the other the person who who said something hurtful or get this might say something hurtful in the future.
This is this is really a pre-crime bill it's It's Orwellian. It's 1984.
It's even worse than 1984.
George Orwell couldn't have envisaged such an oppressive bill.
It's incredible.
And it just goes on and on.
I mean, they just take the charter and they shred it.
They shred Section 1 Limitations Clause to show evidence, to have proof of the need to relieve someone of the rights.
They do away totally with a section two freedom of speech. It's gone you can't even think about anything that might be hurtful.
Gone is section seven and uh section eight search and seizure due process.
I mean the whole chart all the fundamental freedoms are stripped and this is a good thing.
So, I think you talk about you know what's the reaction initially we had a couple of folks, Michael Geist, is is one we have some communications experts that commented on it a few articles here and there with the national post a favorite of ours is is Barbara K.
She stood up and she said this to quote her she said this bill must be stopped.
It's in no uncertain terms she's a iconic Canadian author and a very famous national post columnist she She came forward and said that. So there has been some pushback.
I think we're starting to get to recognition across the board.
I saw this thing happening with Motion M-103.
We've kicked off our own petition in this, but this time we're doing a House of Commons petition.
You have the same thing in the UK where your parliamentary house, a member of it can sponsor a petition.
And if it gets over a certain number of signatures, they have to deal with it.
That's what we've done.
And we've had the good fortune of having the member of parliament, Cathay Wagantall, from the Conservative Party, sponsor our petition.
It's out there now as petition 5160. If you want to take a look at it, just Google petition 5160. And you'll see a pop-up as the number one choice and go ahead and sign it.
And so we are very fortunate to have a miss Wagantall sponsor our petition has just kicked off a few days ago and I got a feeling that this is going to be another another motion demo or three thing where people once they once they start catching on to just what this bill entails and how many any rights they lose, they're going to be furious, absolutely furious.
The politic, because you look at Trudeau when he had a very bad, not disastrous enough general election, and he was weakened, and yet this seems to be continually pushed through.
You've got the Conservatives seemingly with a Conservative leader now in Pierre Paul, I can't pronounce his surname. Paul-Yves.
Paul-Yves. Forgive my French. in Pierre.
So that seems to be, and Maxime Bernier has been pushing many issues extremely well, but hasn't had that political traction electorally.
So there are things happening, and I've certainly seen a number of Pierre's speeches doing very well.
How does that all fit together with a weakened Trudeau and possibly an actual conservative Conservative Party?
Well, I think we're seeing it now.
I think we're seeing the Liberal Party is really on the ropes, not only with this particular issue and the stripping of our Canadian Charter of Freedoms and Rights. He's in the locking stock. He's for scandal.
I mentioned earlier in this discussion how the Liberal Party; they put these funds together to fight Islamophobia, fight racism, but they put other funds together that basically are in the budget, but they don't have any particular thing assigned to them to be spent on.
They're just for Islamophobia.
They're for racism.
They have big ones for capital infrastructure, $35 billion fund for capital infrastructure.
It could be anything, LRTs or whatever, you know, just whatever you want to go in there and request.
They also have huge funds for greening, the greening of the new green deal type thing.
And the latest, I guess, scandal is the fact that 330 million of these green fund dollars have gone have slipped off the have slipped into the ethosphere and and wound up in in companies that are headed by by liberals or friends of liberals and so it's kind of embarrassing.
And so we see a weakened liberal party a weakened Trudeau and uh at the same time I don't think coincidentally you're seeing a rising Pierre polio he is becoming now.
He's becoming more forceful as he garners more public opinion on his side.
As his polling numbers go up, he is becoming more and more brave in asserting conservative values that have been kind of, you know, kept under the covers for many, many years now.
So he is being emboldened.
And that is a very good thing to see.
Up until now, I think the only politician who's really been pushing these issues, these attacks on our freedoms and our rights, is, as you say, Maxime Bernier.
But he's a voice in the wind.
He's got a lot of good ideas, but he does not get a lot of press play.
He is not popular with the press.
If anything, they denigrate him.
They insult him.
They say he's far right, he's extreme, he's a white nationalist, Christian nationalist.
You know, anybody that's kind of just to the right of – you know, Marx in Canada, it's a tell of a hundred these days, you know, like there is no, there is no right left.
It's just, you got your right thinkers, and you got your wrong thinkers in Canada.
And if you're a conservative who believes in conservative values, family values, well, you're, you're, you're on the wrong end of the narrative there, but it is starting to change.
I love having Maxime on a great interview with him and love following him from afar, complete common sense, able to put forward a position and doesn't give up and engaging.
But I mean, you look at the political landscape, you think of Canada as more to the left.
You kind of, it seems to be it's kind of 60-40 or two-thirds, one-third. So it does seem as though any conservative leader has an uphill battle.
I don't know whether that kind of mix is in the population or whether it's more media pushed or whether it's kind of just traditionally being politically the stronger party has been the left.
I don't know kind of where all that fits together because it does seem worldwide on the left there is a lack of patriotism a self-loathing of the nation state of history and that's why we've got to the position we are in.
I think you hit the nail on the head there.
It is true that Canada is very much a left-leaning nation.
We've kind of lost that whole concentration on that Judaeo-Christian ethic is evaporated and the vacuum has been filled by people I wouldn't say you know people are necessarily of left persuasion.
I think a lot of people get uh they just fall into line i mean Canada is a country that
Has that kind of tendency to lean to the left. I mean, it's kind of baked into our history.
It's the old Garrison mentality, you know, like Canada is the great white north.
You know, we're always cold here.
It's freezing.
It's like the Arctic. You know, you've got to band together, help each other out, you know, to get to the winter side thing.
And that, you know, you end up with this Garrison mentality that can really take hold of the national fabric.
There's another aspect to this, though, and that, you know, along with having that Garrison mentality, you know, that we also have this pioneering spirit.
You know, we have the Voyageur that, you know, launched off from Upper and Lower Canada into the hinterland and canoes to trap and trade with the indigenous population, to build up the nation on the basis of going out and exploring, then we have that.
Actually, you see that very much so in the West. And the West is kind of that, was built on that, with that pioneering spirit in mind.
And you can see that divide in Canada.
You know, you've got your Laurentian folk who basically, Central Canada, who basically have the power, have the political power, run the country,
The Western folk, the more pioneering type, I guess, who provide all the resources, work, and money for Central Canada to use as they see fit. It's an arrangement that is wearing thin.
And this recent last nine years under the Liberal government with all the division that has been brought on board, I'd say Canada's in for a rough time when it comes to keeping itself together and keeping itself unified.
And we're seeing, especially when you have this east-west divide, you're looking at the central Canadians wanting to quash fossil fuels, and you look at the west who need fossil fuels.
It's the basis of their prosperity.
It's in everything that they do and they build.
Fossil fuels are a big part of that.
So you're creating a divide here that is ultimately capable of splitting the nation.
We used to say French-English, but I think the East-West, that divide is much more pronounced.
So it's an interesting time.
No, it is.
And I know that the diversity, inclusion, the multiculturalism, that is a battle we're all facing.
But it seems like Canada is, and there is a fight for identity and what it means for the nation state.
And Canada seems to be maybe even a little bit more than the UK.
I could be wrong, but seems to be in a state of confusion of what it means to be itself.
Mass immigration changed Canada a lot.
Toronto is a complete melting pot. Well, as is London.
So this is not on Canada, not on the UK.
We're in the same boat.
But is that a fair assessment that there is a struggle at the moment for Canada as a nation to understand what it means to be Canadian? Because that seemed to be chipped away.
And there's a struggle to understand what those values mean.
Yes, that's very true.
And what we're seeing now is we're importing, we're bringing people in at record rates.
It's our population kind of jumped 2 million in a couple of years there, just over the past couple of years, it's incredible.
It's to the point where we can't handle the infrastructure, can't handle this, the newcomers that are coming at us.
So we're having housing crises, we're having inflation, we're having all these problems as a result of basically it's self-inflicted immigration policies that are really killing us that we could change tomorrow, we could change overnight.
But our betters, our political betters don't seem to want to do that.
They have another agenda in mind and it is wreaking havoc on our unity as well because the problem on the unity side is the fact that we're bringing these people in and we're encouraging them to maintain their old cultures.
We're bending over backwards to let them do things the way they want to do them. And as a result, we're basically importing a whole bunch of tribes with no unifying message to unite them that underpins their presence in Canada.
The only thing that can unify people like this of diverse backgrounds is to have a common understanding that everybody signs up to.
And up until now, that common understanding in a Western liberal democracy has always been individual rights and freedoms.
You know, if you concentrate on giving on servicing individual rights and freedoms, well, then all of a sudden all the tribes go away.
Because okay you can have your tribe you can you can worship the way you want to worship but
Underlying all that is an understanding and a respect for individual rights and freedoms so that you respect what the other person wants to worship or do with his life.
And this whole aspect of allowing people to, as much as possible, live their own lives the way they want and realize their own life dreams.
In the States, I think they do that when they say in their constitution that they talk about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
In Canada, we have life, liberty, and the security of the person.
I think that's a mistake on our part, because I think the pursuit of happiness really homes in on that whole idea of people being unencumbered to live their lives without being bothered by governments and being told what to do, which is the case in Canada right now.
We've let that unifying philosophy slip out of our fingers and it's playing havoc right now is what it's doing.
So we here at C3RF, we like to think that we are in the business of educating, of letting people know that, you know, there's a history to Canada.
And it does really concentrate on individual rights and freedoms.
And we really need to get back there because it's the only way we're going to unify a nation and all these various tribes that are landing on our shores.
It's, you know, it's the way we have to go if we're going to survive as a nation, I think.
Okay, so just to finish off with, there'll be Canadians watching, there'll be individuals watching, and they want to know what part they can play.
They go to the website canadiancitizens.org, they're on the screen.
What part are you asking citizens to play as you fight back against this online harms bill?
Well, we'd really love for Canadians to take a look at our House of Commons petition and sign up.
They can go to our website at www.canadiancitizens.org in the take action heading in the banner up top.
You can click on that. It'll drop down. You'll see say no to Bill C-63.
Click on that and you'll have the whole explanation and the bill at your disposal.
Or you could go to, you know, Google petition 5160 with a space between petition and 5160.
Petition 5160, you'll see petition pop up as one of the top choices.
Click on that and go ahead and sign the petition. We really have to get this. We really have to let our members of parliament know that we're taking this very, very seriously. obviously, because from what I can see, this is the final nail in the coffin that they're burying free speech in.
This is the final nail.
If they bring this bill on board, then basically, speech in Canada is going to be chilled like it is going to be the Arctic of the Great White North. It's going to be unbelievably hard to have an opinion that doesn't meet muster with our betters.
So please take a look at our website, canadiancitizens.org, petition 5160, and sign it.
Well, thank you so much for your time, Major Russ Cooper.
It's fantastic to talk to you, to meet you, and to hear of the work that Canadian Citizens for Charter Rights and Freedoms are doing, the vital work and the fight back for free speech.
So thank you so much for your time today in sharing what you're doing.
And the viewers and listeners can be part of that by going to the website, sign up and see by signing the petition, and what else you can do. So, thank you so much for your time today.
Well, thank you.
It's been an honor, Peter and thanks very much for the opportunity.
It's been great.

Chris Farrell - Challenging the System: Judicial Watch's Role in Combatting Corruption Across Administrations

Show Notes and Transcript
Welcome to Hearts of Oak, where today we're diving into the intricate world of government oversight with none other than Chris Farrell, the head of investigations at Judicial Watch. Join us as we explore Chris's remarkable 25-year journey at the helm of this influential watchdog organization, and his relentless pursuit of transparency and accountability.Chris Farrell isn't just a name; he's a force in the quest to keep government operations open and honest. With a background in military intelligence, his transition to Judicial Watch marked the beginning of an era where the Freedom of Information Act became a sword against corruption. In this episode, Chris will unpack how Judicial Watch has evolved, facing both the consistencies and the ever-changing landscape of political oversight. We'll touch on the legal battles fought, the costs associated with seeking truth, and the organization's unwavering commitment to debunking misleading narratives.From election integrity to the media's portrayal of Judicial Watch's efforts, Chris will shed light on how these battles are fought on multiple fronts. We'll also delve into his view on the ideological divide concerning election accountability and why issues like economic stability and immigration are at the forefront of the upcoming election.
 Judicial Watch is a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation, which promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law. Through its educational endeavours, Judicial Watch advocates high standards of ethics and morality in our nation’s public life and seeks to ensure that political and judicial officials do not abuse the powers entrusted to them by the American people. Judicial Watch fulfils its educational mission through litigation, investigations, and public outreach
Connect with Judicial Watch...WEBSITE            judicialwatch.org𝕏                        x.com/JudicialWatch @JudicialWatch
Interview recorded 03.10.24
Connect with Hearts of Oak...𝕏                         x.com/HeartsofOakUKWEBSITE            heartsofoak.orgPODCASTS        heartsofoak.podbean.comSOCIAL MEDIA  heartsofoak.org/connectSHOP                  heartsofoak.org/shop
*Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast.
Check out his art theboschfawstinstore.blogspot.com and follow him on 𝕏 x.com/TheBoschFawstin
Transcript
(Hearts of Oak)
Hearts of Oak, thank you so much for joining us once again.
I'm delighted to have Chris Farrell, who I think I met maybe two years ago when I was stateside and I had the privilege of being on his show, on Watch.
Obviously, Chris has been with Judicial Watch as their head of investigations for 99.
So it's your 25th anniversary, Chris.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
(Chris Farrell)
That's right.
25 years.
And thank you for having me on.
I appreciate it.
Folks at No Judicial Watch, we're a government watchdog group.
We try to uncover the operations of government and then inform and educate the public about what their government is or is not doing to them or for them.
We try to uncover corruption and we try to hold public officials accountable. That's our mission.
And so I've been here for 25 years.
Before that, in my misspent youth, I was an army intelligence officer focusing mostly on counter espionage investigations, some double agent operations, and also commanding the Army's surveillance team, which we used to do physical, technical, and aerial surveillance for counter-espionage investigations and also for human intelligence collection work.
And so we won the Cold War.
This is all many, many moons ago.
And I decided to leave the intelligence world.
I was a contractor for a while to defense and intelligence agencies, but then in 99 I came to judicial watch and as the saying goes the rest is history.
Well, I guess and people obviously if they're not following half our audiences UK if you're not watching judicial watch you need to watch them.
The freedom of information or foyer as you call them.
We we know them in both countries well, that seek to hold government to account and seek to get answers to those questions they do not want to answer.
But people can obviously get on judicialwatch.org and at Judicial Watch on Twitter and X.
I mean, what led you to Judicial Watch?
Because I guess someone in the military background, it is staying in the private sector, contracting, maybe being in pundit work, so on the media. What led you to actually become part of Judicial Watch?
Back in 98, 99, I was watching the work they were doing.
So, I was just an ordinary private citizen looking at what was going on.
This was sort of the crest of the Clinton scandals.
And then the Clintons had made an art of monetizing their government service.
So, there was a lot of corruption going on.
I looked at the organization, thought they were doing great work, and I used my intelligence skills, my background as a case officer, to identify and approach and pitch the leadership and say, hey, you need me.
And it worked. And here I am.
Were you politically attuned back then?
I was.
I was really a committed conservative, not so much partisan in the sense of being rabidly a party operative or faithful.
I really, in general, frankly, I kind of loathe political parties.
I find them to be probably half of whatever problem we have is the party structure and the party activities and the party egos.
So, I was more philosophically conservative and small C conservative and decided that, you know, there had to be some kind of reform.
We could not continue doing what was going on in our government.
And I was going to try to fight for some accountability and some transparency.
And as my colleague, Paul Orfanides, who's our director of litigation here, likes to say, you know, let's sue the bastards.
And so that appealed to me, and it made sense.
No, I've kind of followed Paul's work, and we've had Tom Fitton on before, and giving the overview of what Judicial Watch do.
Now, I get the work that Judicial Watch do, it doesn't come for free.
I mean, when you get in the legal sphere, in the UK it's expensive, in America it's horrendously expensive and ruinously expensive.
I mean, tell us about that and actually using the system, the legal system, against the system, the government or politics.
Right.
Well, we're very fortunate that our Freedom of Information Act law allows anyone, and I mean that literally anyone, to file a request with any of the executive, agencies of the government and ask questions about public policy matters, decisions.
The commitment of funds.
And so we've really refined that to a science.
We have it down in a way that allows us to make very aggressive use of those laws to get records and documents. Because as you well know, particularly when it comes to politicians.
People lie and records don't.
So we can get records and documents and create a record, get the history of what has occurred.
And then we can have an argument about policy and you can have your opinion and I can have mine.
But in the end, if I pull out the records and documents and show them to you and say, well, here's where the money went or here's where the approval to do something or to decide something.
Here's the documentation of it. it kind of deflates a lot of the hyperbolic rhetoric and the hysterical claims, because you have the record, you have the document.
And so we do that a lot. And we sue the government a lot to compel them to answer our requests.
We also file constitutional claims where there's been some grievous wrong or where some government official has been just out of control with their behavior and actions.
They've abused their office. And then we'll sue those officials as well.
There's a crazy example. Just the other day, we had an argument in the Supreme Court of the state of Minnesota, where all of the teachers, the teachers union and the state had entered into a contract.
And for whatever crazy reason, they had agreed to make the contract racist.
I mean that literally.
So under their definition, if you were a person of color and you were a teacher, you couldn't be fired.
If there were layoffs, you could not be laid off.
If you were, I guess, a person not of color, whatever that means, according to their lexicon, well, then you were the first to be fired or the first to be laid off.
And this to me is just blatant racism.
You're making hiring and firing decisions based on skin pigmentation.
It's insanity.
We fought a civil war over this.
Anyway, so that's an example of lunacy that we feel compelled to challenge and we have in Minnesota.
Again, just an argument in the Supreme Court of Minnesota just this past Tuesday.
Wow.
I want to get on to the current political climate in the US.
But I mean, how have you seen your work change over 25 years with all different administrations, all different government officials, some better than others?
How have you seen your work?
Is it you're focused on actually highlighting injustice and exposing corruption and showing wrongdoing?
Or does it change with different administrations?
Well, there's sort of a core set of things that we always look at.
So, we're always looking for reckless expenditures of money and abuse of power or authority or position.
Those things sort of never change. It doesn't matter whether you're a Republican or Democrat.
You sometimes compare it to, you know, a couple of eight-year-olds fighting over the controls of the Xbox.
You know, they each want to play the game and who's ever in charge.
So there's a certain level of bad behavior, regardless of what your party affiliation is.
But there are some things that are really just crazed, right?
Just really abuses. I think the big lesson, though, over time is that the government has become more and more ingenious on how to obfuscate, hide, lie, mislead the public.
And then on the other side of that same coin, we now see really radical moves to censor people.
And I know that you have your own very sad experiences in the UK with respect to thought control and psychological conditioning of people and what you can or cannot say, which you, in fact, I know I've seen video where a person standing quietly on a street has been arrested because they were silently praying, which I thought was insane.
Orwell's warning in 1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual. And that's what we see, obviously, here in the United States, also you in the UK.
But the government going around dictating what can and cannot be said or posted or put on social media.
There's a guy who put up a funny meme, a joke about Hillary Clinton and the election in In 2016, he's sitting in prison.
Wow.
Well, it's crazy. And we have our online safety bill.
Europe have the same legislation and it will come to the US because this seems to be a worldwide desire to control any speech that doesn't fit into whatever current government of the day.
So, and I know on with you, Chris, discussing that in the UK and yeah, it's the free speech restrictions are not just a UK issue.
And I mean, because when you look at your first and second amendments, when you look at the protection that gives you the right to defend yourself, I guess those only work if you have the political will, but even more the judicial will.
Actually, if the courts actually back you up, because if the courts don't back you up, then you're left holding a bit of paper, which is the Constitution, which gives you the right, but if it's not backed up.
And America's walking a very fine line on this issue.
Indeed, yeah. Yeah, the presumption was that the persons in authority or in power would act and behave honestly, and that judges would uphold the rule of law, even if they didn't like it, even if their personal opinion was one way or the other.
They would look at what the law said, or they would look at what the founders intended in the Constitution.
And we could have a discussion about how that isn't what they really meant, or, you know, when it comes to the Second Amendment, they were talking about muskets.
They weren't talking about AR-15s or I've heard all the arguments, right?
But there is a remedy, a lawful remedy to that, which is rather than running to the courts and having a government attorney in a black robe issue an edict, the real solution is go into the legislature and craft a law, get it passed from a bill into a law, and then have the executive sign off on it and exercise the legislative process in order to create a law and not just get frustrated, because you don't like it and then dream up some lawsuit and drop it in front of a friendly judge and get them to sign off on it and issue an edict that affects the entire country.
Well, more and more and more, or we've seen that sort of judicial activism in the United States where, again, lawyers in black robes, government attorneys in black robes, they all draw their paycheck from the U.S. Treasury.
They're not some, you know, they're not up on Mount Olympus, up on high, you know, making decisions.
They're right in the middle of the game.
And three quarters of them are government bureaucrats who come out of one government agency or another.
So they're all sort of political operatives.
And this practice is really corrosive.
It is undermining the public's faith in government.
And it's had a very negative net effect, particularly over the last, I'd say, decade.
12 to 16 years it's it's really been it was bad but now it's crazy.
See that from far away from across the pond.
What is it like, I mean your high profile figure judicial watch is a very well-known organization.
I can imagine government officials getting information from judicial watch and thinking, oh no they're just a pain in the ass.
And that doggedness that I think judicial watch have shown in not walking away from a fight, but always up for it.
That I mean that puts you in the crosshairs of a whole range media, judicial, political, I guess you have had to face attacks from all different angles.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So what's interesting is that, you know, I proudly say that we're equal opportunity offenders.
We have upset everyone, left, right, and center, because we're going to be intellectually honest.
If we're going to ask for travel records about what a president is spending flying around the country or around the world, we're going to ask it of Republicans and Democrats alike.
Not everybody likes that.
Well, tough, right?
We have to be even-handed.
We have to be faithful and truthful to what our mission is.
I once was giving a talk to a group of Francophone African delegates who would come here to the United States.
It's all the former French colonies, obviously. I was explaining what we did.
One gentleman burst out in laughter.
And he said, I apologize.
I'm not laughing at you.
I'm just laughing Because if I tried this in my home country, they would throw me in jail And they probably would.
So, yeah, there are challenges.
There are people who don't want to hear what we have to say.
We have social media, like, you know, TikTok, I think, banned us.
Because we say things, here's the irony.
This isn't just our opinion.
We've sued.
We've used the federal court process to get government records and documents.
These aren't our records.
This is what the United States government or some state government has said.
This is their material.
And they try to run away from it and pretend it isn't their work.
Or they're stenographers in the press.
They're not even reporters.
They're just taking dictation.
You know, they say, well, you know, that just simply can't be true.
I mean, we found 113 illegal aliens that voted in the District of Columbia, here in the nation's capital, voted in the last election.
And we have the registrar of the elections telling us this.
So we promote it.
And we have an entire army of fact checkers running around saying, oh, it isn't true. It's not our work.
The election people told us that the 113 illegals voted.
So, I mean, this is just a small example.
I could go on for literally hours.
I love it the way you use government information against them.
That's what's so beautiful about the work the Judicial Watch do.
Right, right.
This is all their own stuff, you know.
It's so good.
Can I, so we are a month out from the election.
We've just had the VP debate with Jerry Vance and Tim Waltz on, was it CNN it was on, I think?
I mean, looking at that and then the wider election, what are your thoughts on this?
And we'll pick up on a couple of the separate issues, I think.
But yeah, what are your general thoughts just days after that debate?
Well, of course, CBS humiliated themselves yet again.
They promised not to fact check.
And right out of the box, what did they do?
Oh, no, Mr. Vance, what you said isn't true. So, I mean, it shows them for what they are, right?
It's a very unpleasant, but I think revelatory example of them exposing their inner bias.
They can't help themselves.
They're so far off the charts in their manic hatred of Trump and all things on the conservative side of the spectrum that they just, they go on and on.
So that just reveals itself.
What I'm most interested in, of course, is the conduct of the election.
Our Constitution says we have an election day, period, not an election week or an election season or an election month.
And we, the country, the United States, when they go to bed on Tuesday night, the 5th of November, or perhaps into the wee hours, maybe by 2 a.m. On Wednesday, the American public needs to know who the president is.
Period.
This routine where we all are going to count votes for the next week because they may have been postmarked and then somebody else, they didn't sign the mail-in ballot and all this double talk and rigmarole.
Nobody doesn't know when the election is. Nobody doesn't know what they're supposed to do if they're interested in casting their vote.
To play this ridiculous game where there's this never-ending opportunity, I want to be very careful.
So the F word, fraud, has a very specific legal meaning.
It's not just that word.
It's also more euphemistically irregularities, right?
Where all the normal procedures and processes are not followed.
And so you have judges in Pennsylvania saying, well, if the ballot is mailed in and it's not dated and they didn't sign it, well, we can still count it even though it's a week late.
That's craziness.
So we need to have an answer on election night or the wee hours of the next morning.
Judicial Watch has been successful at removing 4 million false and inaccurate registrations from the voting rolls in several different states.
In Los Angeles County, county alone, there were 1.5 million false, inaccurate registrations on the voting rolls.
When you have that level of voting rolls being essentially dirty, It's an invitation for mischief.
It's an invitation for manipulation and gamesmanship.
We can't have it. And so we've been very successful at forcing people to do their jobs and make sure that the voting rolls are true, accurate, and correct.
And if you've died, if you've moved away, if you're a felon, those are reasons not to be on the voting roll.
And the registrars have an obligation to make sure that that is correct.
Yeah, in the UK we don't usually let dead people vote, but I know in the U.S it is...
We have a special voodoo you know kind of undead voting patterns which is very, very troubling.
I've seen that. Well I'm praying looking forward to Trump winning his third term so that in that phrase you get where I sit on on this issue, but we I mean you look at it.
I've been involved in all different elections in the UK, European, parliamentary, local, and it's a rush to get the votes in.
There are what we call paper.
I could hold up a bit of paper for the US viewers.
You put an X with a pen, with a black pen.
But it's, I mean, at what point has it been a long slide in the U.S. In terms of actually this integrity of elections slipping, slipping, because it just didn't start in 2020. It's been happening before then.
Yeah.
So way back in 2000, I'd been at Judicial Watch for about a year, there was a 2000 election that was hotly contested between Al Gore, you'll remember, and Bush the Younger.
Was that the Florida votes they were counting or something?
Right.
And you know the people that caused all that castronation in Florida?
Listen, watch.
We're the ones who did it.
We knew that it was hotly debated.
Yeah.
My colleague, Paul Orfanides, and I, we filed 67 Florida Sunshine Act requests.
So Florida has a state-level open records law that they call the Sunshine Act.
And Paul Orfanides did some research and realized that a ballot in the state of Florida is counted as a public record.
And so we, there's 67 counties in Florida.
So we filed 67 requests since really counties administer the election.
And we asked for access to all the ballots.
And you may remember people were looking at hanging chads and dimpled ballots.
There was much controversy over the actual ballots themselves and whether they were accurate and truthful or whether it was a shenanigans.
So we hired an auditing firm, accountants, and we audited the entire election.
We did sample auditing and we got access to all those ballots.
Now, when all the big news media companies saw what we were doing, I think they were a little jealous.
They jumped in behind us.
And so when the New York Times and ABC and CBS and CNN all show up and suddenly say, me too, we want to see the ballots, we kind of got pushed out of the way just by the weight of the media interests.
But that entire thing was actually created by Judicial Watch because we wanted to know what was going on with those ballots and were they being accurately counted and what is a hanging chad and what is a dimpled ballot and how could that happen? And so our audit said that Bush won by about 800 popular votes. And sure enough, when everything was said and done, the official government tally
Confirmed what we had concluded that bush had won by a very very narrow margin maybe eight or nine hundred votes that's it.
I mean and it is the issues that are important but the issues mean nothing if you're doing the election integrity to back that up.
Right
Look at it and in the UK as in the vast majority of European countries and I know you've done a lot of work in in Hungary so you'll have a an idea of some of the election issues and political issues across Europe, but it is a single country decides and you will have some variations but by and large single country in America it's not just at the federal level.
It's not just the state level, it's the county level, and it means there's so many moving parts to it.
Yeah.
Which actually is a beautiful thing.
It makes stealing an election more difficult, unless you have activist judges and crazed governors like Gavin Newsom, who mailed out ballots to every street address in California.
Talk about asking for irregularities and manipulations of the voting process.
But if people are honest and they stick by the written law and they don't do weird things like like in Wisconsin, where the people administering the election had a meeting.
They're all wearing their little COVID masks sitting there. And they say, we know that we're violating the law, but this is an emergency.
We have to do it anyway.
They flaunted it.
They bragged how they were, they knew that everything that they were doing was not within the scope of the law, and they just didn't give a damn.
They're going to do it anyway.
And was any of that overturned or reject it? No. It was accepted as, oh, well, you know, it's COVID.
So, you know, we don't have to pay attention to the laws and the constitution anymore.
We have to have an exception to everything and we're going to keep counting ballots until we get a number that beats Trump.
I mean, that's really the unspoken part of the irregularities that were going on.
I mean, is it Trump Contrangement syndrome that's just turbocharged this left lunacy, really.
Yeah, just yesterday, the prosecutor, and he's a disgraced prosecutor, I want to be clear. Jack Smith is a clown.
He went after the governor of Virginia.
A few years back, maybe it's 10 or 12 years ago, he went after the governor of Virginia on sort of his own political jihad and ended up removing the sitting governor of Virginia.
And then when the case was appealed, Jack Smith was reversed nine to nothing.
A unanimous Supreme Court said that his entire case was a fraud.
It was a lie.
And he had already removed the Governor of Virginia.
Where does he go to get his reputation back?
Where does he go to get his life back?
But Jack Smith, I mean, you would think that an attorney who had a nine to nothing Supreme Court reject everything he was doing, you would think he'd go move on to do something else in life.
But he's a hatchet man. He's a political operative who's called in to do this kind of dirty work.
And now he's doing it against Trump.
So 30 days before an election, what does he do?
He releases another set of pleadings with all kinds of wild, reckless claims.
And of course, look, just because he puts it in a pleading doesn't mean it's true.
This is not evidence, right?
It's just a claim before a court with with no foundation, with no proof. It's simply, we did interviews and we think this is true.
And he dumps this into the public record a month before the election. If that's that election interference, if that isn't the Department of Justice putting its thumb on the scale and trying to unduly, unlawfully influence an election, I don't know what is.
I mean, how did this become a left-right issue?
Because you would think that you sit and talk to a citizen whatever political persuasion they are and they want to know their vote counts and yet we have this crazy situation in the States where election integrity is called into question.
And it's the left that seem to want to have as many dead people or immigrants vote where it's those in the.
Right that seem to want a fair election.
So only those who are able to vote can vote.
How has this become a left-right issue?
So the left, the people on the left, they are, this is my view, sort of a political philosophy here, but they are, the left are creatures of the state.
They love big government, big programs, big tax dollar, you know, supplements, entitlement payments.
They never saw a program or a project or a government initiative or a government agency that they didn't love.
That's their ecosystem.
They swim around in this environment where they love to use and manipulate the levers of state.
Right.
All the organs of the state, a good Soviet term, they love utilizing that to maximum effect.
That's where they're coming from. On the right, you find a lot of people who are small government people.
They're strict constitutionalists.
They don't believe in never-ending government programs and subsidies and all those sorts of things.
A lot of people on the right will show up to do their government service, whether they're members of Congress or they serve on some county commission, and they do their bit, and then they go home.
They go back to running their business or being part of their community in some way. They don't stay in the statist ecosystem.
And so they're just not oriented.
They don't think and believe and act in the way that folks on the left do.
So of course, The left knows how to use all the different levers of the state, all the agencies, all the tactics and techniques of big government to achieve their ends.
And folks on the right, they're not thinking about it that way.
I've gone out and talked to people who are interested in voting.
And I've said, look, I've got about 24 years of voting, you know, verification and certification experience.
You guys, speaking to people on the right, you guys are great at having your rally a day or two after the election's been lost and protesting.
Right.
All your equal opposite numbers on the left, they've gone and studied all the rules and regulations, all the laws.
They know every single official in the voting chain.
They've met with them.
They've lobbied them. If there's something that goes wrong with the election, they know exactly what paragraph to cite to file their claim, to challenge a vote.
That's their ecosystem.
That's where they live.
And the folks on the right just kind of show up to complain.
It's a very different mentality, and it needs to be addressed directly.
I mean, is it naivety?
Because I guess if you go back a generation, you had a strong church that was vocal, that actually believed what the Bible taught, which is very different today.
You had a legal system that did understand right and wrong. You had individuals engaged maybe at the at the local level, at the community level.
You had an education system that that worked a heck of a lot better than it does the moment, so maybe conservatives just sat back and it's that false sense of security on the left have been realizing they need to burn this down or maybe conservatives have thought actually it's fairly good, and I think it will just continue.
I mean, is that just naivety that's meant conservatives have been asleep on watch?
They have.
And the other thing that's very disturbing is that there's been various polling done that shows the number of committed Christians, self-identifying believers, who do not vote.
They just don't show up.
It's something like 40%. So if 40% of the committed Christians in the country bothered to show up and just vote, what a difference that would make.
There's also, this is unpleasant to say, but it's truthful, so you kind of have to, you got to admit it, is that there's a lot of cowardly pastors as well.
They're afraid, oh, I'm going to lose my nonprofit status as a church if I express a political opinion.
That's a lot of garbage. That isn't true.
You can comment on things that objectively, that morally are objectively right or wrong and let people draw their own conclusion.
Killing children is bad.
It is wrong, objectively, period.
Now, you have a candidate that supports killing children, and then you have one that doesn't.
Pick.
This is not tough stuff, right?
It really isn't.
But there's some pastors who are kind of afraid of their own shadow or they don't want to get out of their comfort zone.
And that's an enormous disservice, really.
And I don't mean that just politically.
I mean that spiritually.
It's a horrible disservice.
They have an obligation to shepherd their flock and to educate and inform and enlighten.
And if they're not doing that, something's very, very wrong.
We see exactly the same in the UK.
I've had numerous conversations with pastors who will agree with you behind closed doors, but publicly it's a fear of man more than the fear of God.
And that puts the church in a dangerous situation.
What has it been like with Judicial Watch?
Camping on these issues and you personally heading up those investigations and campaigns, how does that fit in with the church?
Because in a way, you're highlighting injustices that the church should really be doing.
It should be their job.
And yet you're having to do it as a private organization as opposed to the body of Christ doing it.
Yeah, I mean, so we have a role, and it is a decidedly nonpartisan, nonsectarian, you know, the organization Judicial Watch politically is nonpartisan.
We're philosophically conservative and unapologetic about that.
And likewise, you know, persons of faith or persons who decide no, that they're not, we don't even go there, right?
But we do talk about things that are objectively disordered and things that you can prove to be morally true or false.
And I've done this innumerable times with people.
I don't care what they believe or don't believe, but you can't materially cooperate with evil.
And you can get there in a secular way or you can get there through faith.
Personally, for me, it's through faith.
But I'm willing to engage with anyone and discuss the morals of this.
Years ago, I taught a journalism law class at a university here.
And there's a lot of moral relativism and a lot of, well, you know, that's just how they feel or what they think.
So the way I would try to break through and explain that there is objectively right or wrong is, and a couple of students in particular would be very vociferous in their objection to me talking about right and wrong and good and evil.
And I'd say, well, okay, tell me how rape is good.
Go ahead.
You have the floor.
It shuts down.
No one in their right mind is going to defend that or explain that somehow it is good.
And so there are ways to demonstrate to people that we really do have to make a choice and we have to stand on what we believe.
And if you're a person of faith, frankly, it should be very easy.
We have a wonderful instruction book.
It's called the Bible.
I recommend it to people.
But let's say you reject that and you say, no, no, no. I don't believe all that.
That's just mythology, et cetera, et cetera.
Okay. Well, there's still ways to prove things.
The example I gave you about asking a question on rape or the people that are wrapped up in this crazed, radical gender ideology, you know, they can say whatever they want to say.
And if they say that they believe in science, okay, well, there's chromosomes, right?
It's either XX or XY.
That's it.
You can talk about it endlessly.
You can discuss your dysphoria or whatever other psychological condition you may or may not have.
But the science says the chromosomes show up as XX or XY. And that is it.
So we are able to give examples.
We are able to prove things.
We are able to, and I don't mean that in a demeaning way.
What I'm trying to do is give people encouragement, right?
I want your viewers and listeners to say, wait a minute, maybe there is something I can do.
Maybe I can share my faith or my beliefs with people.
Maybe I can engage with my neighbor, or I can do something with a family member.
I don't know.
Each of us has a way to go forward positively.
What I'm saying and what we've been talking about, my goal and objective is to provide, encouragement and courage to people to go make a difference you don't have to go off and lead you know some big movement you can do it in your very own community.
Everyone can play their part and it's interesting what some of the issues the pro-life issue you can say we're all made in the image of God therefore every life has value or you can look at some of the the scientific background ground of the repercussions of abortion or what actually is life. And so there are all different ways of tackling this issue.
But Chris, I 100% agree that if you look at the Gospels, you see how Jesus lived.
You pick up the Bible, look at the Psalms or Proverbs, and you can see guidelines live.
And the Bible is packed full of that from Genesis to Revelation.
You can't get a better manual in the current chaos than picking up a Bible.
Can I just finish with the issues in this election? It seems that, well, it's the economy, stupid, but that's always been a bread and butter, what people are feeling in their pocket with the paycheck, with the cost.
And And that's had a dramatic change in terms of inflation and chipping away. And the other side is an open border.
I mean, a government's one of their primary duties has to be to protect the citizens.
And you can't protect if you don't control who comes in.
Are those issues still immigration and the economy?
Are those still the two main issues that you think will decide this election?
Absolutely.
Undoubtedly.
They are dominant above all else, I think.
There's also, I think, a third issue that people are sensitive to.
They may not be sort of dissecting it down to specific policies, but there's, generally speaking, there is great unease with wars around the world.
And so obviously Israel is under attack.
Israel is under attack from every angle and is in a precarious position. They're fighting back, and I applaud them for fighting back.
They should.
I have no criticism whatsoever of how Israel has defended itself since October 7th.
I know there's all sorts of people lined up ready to call them names.
You know, don't start wars you can't win, right?
You're going to start a war, you're going to get a reaction from it.
And so just because you're losing doesn't mean you can now, you know, scream, oh, you're being mean to me.
Well, you know, they didn't need to come across that fence on October 7th.
So, now Now they're going to get the reaction from that and all that comes from that. And the other thing is Ukraine.
So we have a wide open southern border with, who knows, 16, 18, 20 million people come in in the last three and a half, almost four years.
So, we're going to spend $180 billion to support Ukraine's border, and we're not going to do a damn thing about our own southern border?
People have a hard time trying to balance that out.
They don't get that.
And I think, you know, without being too controversial, Ukraine is an incredibly corrupt environment.
And Mr. Zelensky is not Churchill, right?
So, again, unpleasant things to talk about, but that's what we have to wrestle with. These are the big questions in front of the American public.
And do you think that.
I mean, the voters seem looking at even polling over the last couple of days and obviously Kamala Hyena Harris had her bounce whenever she got stuck in.
That seems to be dropping away.
I just, I mean, well, she was the border czar, so everything that's happened is on her.
People will see through that inability to understand.
Was it Trump that said about it? He said, oh, Biden has become this way. Harris was born this way, looking this way.
You get those one-liners, you think, oh, genius.
But I think the public will see through them.
And I've even seen quite a lot of clips on CNN and MSNBC see and commentators beginning to call Harris out for what she is, which is just completely out of her depth.
She has not held an actual real press conference since she was anointed by the general secretariat of the central committee.
Since the party decided, without a single vote being cast, the leadership of the party decided that she's the new candidate, right?
So that goes back to the summer.
Now we're getting into the fall now and a month out. And she has not sat in a room with 50 or 100 reporters and said, OK, what do you got?
Let's go. Let me answer some questions for you.
Trump does it every day. And she's hiding and people know that people know, or they have reason to believe that she's not, well-equipped.
That's a good word to use. And even Putin finds her laugh fascinating.
That was so good.
But Chris, she does have to practice her accent.
So come on, she's busy doing that.
She has every, every couple of days, depending upon who she's talking to, she develops a a new dialect, a new accent for the listening audience.
It's quite remarkable.
It really is.
Chris, we find ourselves in strange times, one month out from not only one of the most important elections in the US, but I think for Europe, for the UK, and worldwide, because since the Second World War, we've relied on America being a strong country that speaks truth and has military might to actually back that up.
And at the moment, maybe the US military have got more rainbow laces than actually weapons to fight back.
So it is a key election.
I think it is so important even for the U.K audience to hear what is happening.
So, thank you for giving us your overview of that and touching upon some areas that Judicial Watch is involved.
So, I appreciate your time Chris, so thank you very much
Peter, Thank you very much, it's a pleasure being on with you.

The Week According To . . . Jennifer Arcuri

Welcome back as we dive into another episode filled with riveting discussion and critical analysis. Today, we're thrilled to have Jennifer Arcuri return once again, bringing her sharp insights into the myriad of challenges facing the US and UK. From the aftermath of devastating hurricanes in the States to the contentious political manoeuvres across the pond, Jennifer will shed light on how these events reflect deeper issues of governance, accountability, and the tug-of-war between citizen rights and government overreach. Stay tuned as we unpack these urgent topics, challenge the mainstream narratives, and explore what it all means for the sovereignty and spirit of the people.
California based, American tech entrepreneur Jennifer Arcuri is the founder of the Innotech Network, Hacker House, Pinksheet Database, and Proxsey London.She founded the Infotech Summit to encourage entrepreneurs, policymakers and investors to discuss and shape tech policy.A former film student who started in digital distribution and film production, In 2008, Jennifer produced the short film, "La Valise", which was part of the Short Film Showcase at the Cannes Film Festival.She started her career at the Walt Disney Company as Radio Disney DJ Razzle Dazz, operating under the ABC Company and ESPN Broadcasting, and she has also worked as assistant PA under Bravo's "Inside the Actors Studio" with James Lipton.Jennifer has previously run a video streaming platform and is a cyber security expert, tech geek, producer, adventure seeker, is hot on video content, data visualization and is always looking for game changing technology to rock the world with.She loves to laugh and enjoys anyone with a good story to show and tell.
Connect with Jennifer...𝕏                         x.com/Jennifer_Arcuri  @Jennifer_ArcuriTELEGRAM        t.me/RealJenniferArcuriPODCAST          jenniferarcurichannel.podbean.com
Interview recorded  4.10.24
Connect with Hearts of Oak...𝕏                         x.com/HeartsofOakUKWEBSITE            heartsofoak.org/PODCASTS        heartsofoak.podbean.com/SOCIAL MEDIA  heartsofoak.org/connect/SHOP                  heartsofoak.org/shop/

Dr Brian of London - Israel's Fight for Survival or the Beginning of WWIII?

Join us as we dive back into the heart of the Middle East with Brian of London, who brings us up to speed on the year that has passed since the pivotal events of October 7th. In this gripping episode, we explore the intricate dynamics between Israel, Hamas, and the formidable Hezbollah. Brian sheds light on the strategic warfare, the psychological toll on Israeli society, and the pervasive influence of Iran in this enduring conflict. Listen to first-hand accounts of military innovation, the erosion of trust, and the relentless spirit of a nation under siege. Don't miss this compelling conversation that goes beyond headlines to deliver a nuanced understanding of a region in turmoil.
Dr Brian of London is an Indigenous Jewish Rights Activist & re-settler living in Tel Aviv.He completed a PhD in Computational Fluid Dynamics just as the Web was emerging.But then he left academia to do management consulting and eventually moved to Israel to do business.Brian's working on the cutting edge of the new Podcasting 2.0 to make sure this relic of the early web, stays free from capture by the centralising forces of Web 2.0 and their dangerous desire to turn us all into dairy cows.Brian was also the admin on Tommy Robinson's Facebook account that had over a million followers before it was nuked!
Interview recorded 3.10.24
Connect with Brian...𝕏                        x.com/brianoflondon  @brianoflondon
Connect with Hearts of Oak...𝕏                         x.com/HeartsofOakUK @HeartsofOakUKWEBSITE            heartsofoak.orgPODCASTS        heartsofoak.podbean.comSOCIAL MEDIA  heartsofoak.org/connectSHOP                  heartsofoak.org/shop
*Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast.
Check out his art theboschfawstinstore.blogspot.com and follow him on 𝕏 x.com/TheBoschFawstin

Jeff Younger - A Father's Fight: Navigating the Transgender Debate in Custody Battles

Shownotes and Transcript
Join us for an emotionally charged and revealing episode on Hearts of Oak, where we delve into the life of Jeff Younger, a man whose personal battle has become a public spectacle at the heart of the transgender debate. From his roots in Silicon Valley to a contentious family court saga in Texas, Younger shares his journey through advocacy, legal battles, and his unwavering fight for his child's future. This episode not only explores his fight against child gender transition but also touches on the systemic issues within family law, the political divide within America, and how his faith has guided him through chaos. Tune in for an episode that promises to challenge your views on family, identity, and the essence of parental rights.
Jeff Younger, a Texan, has been embroiled in a high-profile legal fight to prevent his son, James, from undergoing transgender medical treatments advocated by his ex-wife, Anne Georgulas. After a move to California, known for its transgender sanctuary laws, Younger faced new challenges when the case was sealed from the public by Judge Michelle Kazadi, sparking outrage over transparency and rights. Despite losing a political bid in Texas, Younger's case continues to draw national attention, highlighting the clash over transgender issues, parental rights, and medical ethics in the U.S.
Connect with Jeff...𝕏                        x.com/JeffYoungerShow  @JeffYoungerShowSUBSTACK        jeffyounger.substack.com
Interview recorded  27.9.24
Connect with Hearts of Oak...𝕏                         x.com/HeartsofOakUKWEBSITE            heartsofoak.org/PODCASTS        heartsofoak.podbean.com/SOCIAL MEDIA  heartsofoak.org/connect/SHOP                  heartsofoak.org/shop/
*Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast.
Check out his art theboschfawstinstore.blogspot.com and follow him on 𝕏 x.com/TheBoschFawstin
Transcript
(Hearts of Oak)
Thank you so much for joining us once again with a brand new guest, and that is Jeff Younger from across the pond.
Jeff, thank you so much for joining us today.
Pleasure to be here, Peter.
Great to have you. And any recommendation from Sam Sorbo is always worth having.
She's the best.
Call out to Sam Sorbo and thank you for making the connection.
I wasn't aware of the work you've done, Jeff, and delving into the fantastic work you've done in campaigning against the trans push, especially, and we'll get on to that.
But people can follow you at Jeff Younger Show on Twitter or X and, of course, jeffyounger.substack.com. Make sure and check that out.
And if you like Jeff by the edge, you may even want to become a paid subscriber.
So, I will leave that to you to make that judgment.
Now, maybe your background, Jeff, before we get on to the topic.
You're there over in Texas.
What's your background?
Well, I have what I would call a typical Silicon Valley sort of career trajectory.
You know, it's funny when you ask an American, tell me your background, we always start with our work.
It's one of the big differences between us and Europeans.
But I think my friends in the UK do the same thing.
It must be an Anglo thing.
I went into the Marine Corps when I was a young man. When I came out of the Marine Corps, I knew how to program because I had done programming in the Marine Corps.
And I began to work with mathematicians in the oil industry doing optimization systems for oil refineries.
And pipeline networks and things like that.
And I got highly involved in operations research, and that led me into applied mathematics, which I did for years until I was 35.
I was living in Hong Kong when I was 35.
My father had two heart attacks, and I had to return to the United States.
And I came to Dallas, Texas to take care of him to the end of his life.
I got a letter from the Marine Corps when I was in Dallas saying that I was going to lose all my educational benefits because they expire.
So, I went to school at the University of Dallas where I began studying linguistics and philosophy.
Linguistics took me into the study of mathematical logic and back into mathematics.
And from there, I had a kind of spiritual journey.
I went from being an atheist to being an Orthodox Christian.
And that was an important part of a shift in my worldview.
And I married in 2010 and had two children about a little bit before my son was two years old.
My then wife began to try to transition one of my twin boys to a girl.
And that set up a huge controversy in the state of Texas.
Eventually I was able to, it took me six years and hundreds of thousands of my own dollars of my own money.
I was finally able to get a law passed in Texas banning these barbaric procedures on children.
But my ex-wife has the courts backing her and the big donor class in America backing her. She was able to move my child to California.
And I'm now in a court in California where I will go to trial on the 28th.
If I lose that trial, my son will be castrated in November.
Wow.
It's a huge issue and one that no parent expects.
And we've had a number of people on talking about the trans agenda.
And, of course, we have had the Tavistock Clinic and the UK and the Netherlands have been the world leaders in some crazy way of pushing this.
But tell me, this happens and then you go public.
What were the first steps?
Obviously, you try and reason with someone.
You try and reason with your wife and try and work this out. And then there became a point, I guess, where you realized, actually reason wasn't getting you anywhere.
Well, what I discovered was massive institutional corruption in the court systems and in the legislature of Texas and all the way up to the governor of Texas.
What I fundamentally find, let me just describe it simply.
It took me almost a decade to figure this out.
So the Republican Party, which is largely thought of as the conservative party in America, has a kind of civil war that's going on inside of it.
The Republican Party donor class are Northeastern liberals.
They're New York, you know, in Texas, we would call them Yankees.
And we would say it exactly in that tone.
So, they're Northeastern Yankees who fund the entire Republican Party.
And they're far left liberals.
They're liberals and they're far left.
They're woke.
And then you have the voting base of the Republican Party, which is, well, in the UK would be probably considered far right.
I mean, you know, center right, you know, center right in the United States is basically a Democrat here.
So, you have a far right elector, you know, a voting base and a far left donor class.
And so there's a war that goes on between them.
And what happened is the case of my son in Texas family courts, kind of like in a rugby match.
You have the offsides rules in rugby, unlike American football, so that all the action funnels towards the guy with the ball because of the offsides rule.
Since I was one of the first cases in America, the donor class zeroed in on my case to make legal precedent, and the conservative electorate zeroed in on my case as one that had to be won. And in the case of my son, the liberal donor class clearly has won.
So when, what date was this and was, why was your case high profile?
Was this something fairly new?
I mean, what kind of dates were these?
So it's 2010.
You know, in 2012, when my son was two, she began to transition him to a girl.
My ex-wife is a pediatrician, a physician, and she used her connections with, you know, psychologists and to push me out of my own home.
I lived a mile from my children.
And the difference between me and some of these other cases is really just simply this. In family court, and I think it's true in the UK as well, parents are put under gag orders, so they can't speak about their case.
Well, I live in the state of Texas, and the state of Texas has better protections for free speech than even America's First Amendment.
So, I was put under an incredibly unconstitutional gag order, which actually makes this very podcast illegal in the state of Texas.
It bans me from speaking on political topics for life.
So, I'm not allowed to speak about transgenderism, cisgender, gender dysphoria, any of this stuff.
And I'm banned permanently from all social media.
I'm not allowed to write newspaper articles.
I'm not allowed to do interviews.
It's completely unconstitutional.
So I'm just the kind of guy that I decided in my life as a young man that I'm never going to follow illegal mandates from the government.
So, I was willing to speak out where I think other parents were not willing to do so.
Also, uh, I had connections with the Texas government and was able to lobby for laws, which a lot of people don't have the time or the money to do.
I've talked to, I mean, there are a whole load of areas I want to unpack here and understand.
I think your story is a warning to many individuals and many parents.
But the family court system, certainly in the UK, you're right, it is a closed box.
There's very little access to what happens.
And I've talked to many who have custody issues and they go through the family courts.
And it is the most horrendous experience that I've ever heard of.
Is it the same in the States where it's a closed system and there's very little understanding of what happens behind those closed doors?
Yes, and it's amazing that the electorate doesn't know more about family court.
It is the it is really the nexus for the reason that we don't have family formation anymore.
It's family courts and the laws that that they interpret and govern marriage under.
So yeah, they're closed in my case they've taken the unprecedented step of actually sealing my case which there is no constitutional precedent for.
But they they are terrified of the facts.
If the general public knew what happened in family courts in the UK and the United States, there really would be since, because it is a system predicated on the abuse of children.
It is the institutional abuse of children. It is also, in many ways, the enslavement of fathers.
For example, one of the issues in my case is I'm required to pay medical child support.
So if my child has a medical procedure, I have to pay for half of it.
Well, I'm an Orthodox Christian.
I can't pay for any amount of money towards the castration of my son.
I can't do that.
So, my future lies in a Texas prison.
I will be going to prison eventually for non-payment of child support.
Okay, I want to pick up on on the spiritual side on you as a Christian, but first of all the political side, again this is an issue in the UK that the conservatives are so afraid of and they don't want to get engaged.
And of course you've got a massive trans lobby and full-on LGBT lobby and so which is well funded and forces the agenda and the media you slot into assisting that side.
But what is the situation then politically?
Whenever you begun to engage with lawmakers, what was the response that you had?
So, the first legislative session that I attended, they threw me out of the legislature.
They were scared of the issue and literally had me thrown out of the legislature, which is illegal in Texas.
The second session, I went armed.
So in Texas, you can carry guns in the Texas legislature.
They were not able to throw me out.
They weren't able to risk it.
So, one of the advantages of having a Second Amendment is that the government fears you as much as you fear the government.
So the second session, a huge full court press from the Texas House especially came into play and they tanked the bill.
They didn't consider it in committee.
It didn't make it out.
And a tremendous amount of money was spent on that.
At that time, a big demonization campaign began against me in the media.
The third session, we made it through committee.
And the reason we made it through committee.
I'm just going to tell you is I gave donations to key people.
I mean, that's how the world works. And we got it through committee.
The other thing I did is I went public and embarrassed a number of public officials.
And I name names.
I don't have a problem naming people's names.
We don't have the libel laws that you have there.
Truth is an absolute defense against libel in America.
And I name names if it's true. And I have a legislative record.
I will name names and I'll take it everywhere.
I also created a huge movement in the rural parts of Texas.
The basic idea was.
If I can get, these are small counties where if I can just move 300 votes, I can switch a, you know, a House seat in the Texas legislature.
And I organized those people.
They actually had to put in a new phone trunk into the Texas Capitol because they kept shutting down their phones.
At one point, the Speaker of the House was recording over 300 lobbyists a day on my bill.
But that's what it took to finally get it passed in the fourth session.
So it took me that long to get this done.
And what is the origin of this resistance?
You would think, my goodness, these are conservative Christian Republicans in the House.
What's going on?
And what it amounts to is the liberal donor class in the Northeast, these New York liberals, particularly Paul Singer, just doesn't want these transgender bills passed.
People don't realize the transgender movement in the United States was started and founded by Republicans, not by Democrats.
It was founded by the Republican donor class.
The human rights campaign, you know, the yellow equal sign, it's the most powerful LGBT lobby group in the world.
That guy is the largest donor to the Republican Party.
And he controls much of the media.
He has what I would call an actual propaganda network in the media, in America at least.
And so that's what I was actually fighting.
And eventually I realized once I got to California, there was an email in my, I have a federal case as well as a state case.
There was an email that was sent to me where they, they accidentally put some of the lawyers names in the CC field instead of the BCC field.
And it was links to lawyers in a number of Paul Singer funded foundations.
So, what I've actually been fighting is a a coalition of well-funded foundations that have been run by large republican donors and that's why republicans are loath to pass these bills and it's why conservatives in the UK are loath to pass these bills their donors are fundamentally left-wing.
I mean, people would think Texas, red state, all good.
And I know it's very different when you break it down to the local level, and I get that.
But that's the prevailing understanding.
But what you're saying is, initially, you could not find Republican legislatures who were ideologically aligned to the issue that you raised.
Impossible.
Even today, I can't.
So, for example, the bill that I authored and I was pushing actually classified these procedures on children as felony child sexual abuse, which in the state of Texas could get you, would get you life in prison and under laws that are being proposed now would get you the death penalty.
So, that would completely prevent parents from taking their children outside of the state to get these procedures done.
Because, you know, you can't take your child to Thailand and abuse them and then come back to Texas.
If you do that, Texas is going to put you in jail for the rest of your life.
It's just that simple.
But they, the Republicans pulled those three sentences that classified it as felony child sexual abuse out of the bill specifically to introduce a loophole.
And so this is basically how it works in the Republican party.
And I'm pretty sure this is how it works in the UK.
You have a liberal donor class.
You have a fairly right-wing electorate.
How does an electorate official split this difference?
What they do is they pass bills that seem conservative.
In Texas, they seem conservative.
They pass the transgender bill, but they put loopholes in it. In this case, you can take your kid to Colorado and castrate your kid and bring him back to Texas.
So, then they can go to the electorate and say, you see how conservative I am?
I've passed this conservative bill.
Vote for me again.
And they can go to their donors and say, do you see those awesome loopholes I left?
You can give me millions of dollars.
That's how the game is played by so-called conservatives in our so-called democratic systems.
Explain to me the federal state response to this.
Because obviously we've seen Roe versus Wade being put back to the state level by the Supreme Court.
Yes.
Because there's nothing in the Constitution that gives you the right to take the life of a child.
So, what about the trans issue that's been rolled out?
Whose responsibility, is there a clash between the federal level and the state level?
There actually isn't.
So, I finally got one of our members of our legislature to request a formal legal opinion from the Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton.
Ken Paxton is the most successful attorney general in United States history.
He's won more lawsuits against the federal government and has restricted the federal government's encroachment on state rights more than anybody else in American history.
He's an amazing person.
And he's an incredibly humble person when you meet him.
You understand exactly why he's so successful.
This opinion, it took him six months to write it.
It's the longest opinion that's ever been issued from the Texas attorney general.
And what it shows is that in both federal law and Texas state law, it has always been illegal to do this to children.
And the reason is under the United States Constitution, there is a fundamental liberty interest.
That means there's a that is the highest level of protection of rights in our law.
There is a fundamental liberty interest in procreation.
You cannot take a child's ability to procreate any more than you can take a child's ability to speak.
To see, to hear, or to eat.
So it is a fundamental right of children to procreate.
If they become adults, they can make decisions.
It could be construed as legal, but it is never legal to sterilize children in the United States or in Texas.
They went so far as to even go back.
We trace our history in Texas through Spain rather than through England.
We fought three wars of independence here.
So, they went back through Spanish juridical law.
I mean I don't it doesn't matter which side you go to you know Anglo common law or you go through Spanish juridical law.
All the way back to the earliest days it's always been illegal to sterilize children.
So the fact that it's being done is a massive human rights scam.
That I can't believe that Americans at Stokemore.
Is one of the issues that no one's ever thought that actually this would become an issue?
Because I can't imagine 50 years ago, 40 years ago, 30 years ago, people sitting, we must pass legislation to protect children from this evil.
It wasn't on anyone's radar. Is that part of the problem?
Yeah, I mean, who could have contemplated that it would have become, that we would have so-called medical experts saying that we can remove the testicles, healthy testicles from young children.
I mean, this is just crazy stuff, right?
This is the stuff that, you know, you read of in the most gruesome, like child murder type stuff. There was no social consensus for this.
So, that's one of the things that I really learned in this, well, if you call it a journey.
It's, you know, it's been more like a war, is that our opponents, on the left, the secular left.
And they're not necessarily far left.
This is a secular left thing.
They have mastered the art of entryism.
Your audience can Google that.
They can subvert any democratically run social process.
And one of the things that they've perfected is how to manufacture scientific facts.
The transgender issue is one of the best illustrations of that.
It started with open source journals where like-minded people got together and they began to look around for marginalized groups.
They chose cross-dressers, probably the smallest and most insignificant marginalized group you can imagine.
They picked cross-dressers.
And then what they do is they began to develop fake scholarship in their open source journal. And what they do is they construct new meta theories in their own discipline.
In this case psychology and they they develop a fairly sizable little open source journal then they eventually convert it to a normal journal in el sevier one of the big publishers, and then all of a sudden they can claim that they have tons of peer-reviewed research to back up their points of view.
Then they go into courts as expert witnesses and they make law in courts.
Because as you know, under the English common law system that we both inhabit, judges make law through precedent.
Through the interpretation of law, it becomes binding on other courts.
And they know this.
So, they go into the family courts, and they use this fake expertise from these fake journals, and they create law from that.
So, they've really perfected.
It's a little bit more complicated than that, but it's a six-step process. and they've perfected the manufacturing of scientific facts.
It makes perfect sense.
If you think about it, science is a social process, and the left has perfected hacking social processes.
Now, you talk about your wife moving to California.
There may be some of the audience who aren't aware why and the reasons why that would be.
Do you want to just open that up and explain a little bit which shows the huge disparity and clash between different states?
Yeah.
What you're seeing here is part of American federalism, where we actually have states, we don't have provinces.
This was understood in the original design of our government to be a bulwark of liberty, because the idea was that you would have people with such different geographical interests that none of them could come together to create a faction to take over the government.
That was the idea.
We're going to see just how wrong that design has turned out to be here.
So California passed a bill.
I call it the transgender kidnapping bill.
They call it the transgender rights bill, child transgender rights bill.
What it amounts to is any child that enters the borders of California; if they are from a state that has outlawed transgender procedures, California will never return that child to that other state.
So, that is the basis on which I went up to the Texas Supreme Court.
To prevent my ex-wife from moving my children to California and my argument was very simple.
It's illegal in Texas.
It's a felony in Texas to perform these procedures, in California it's a right to perform this procedure.
Children can actually consent to these procedures at 12 years old in California.
Okay, without their parents consent. So I argued at the Texas Supreme Court that That this would essentially remove the protections of Texas law for my child and put him into a state that will never return him to the jurisdiction of Texas should the court orders be violated.
The Supreme Court of Texas, under the influence of the big donor class, absurdly claimed that my son was under no more danger in California, where this is an affirmative right of being chemically castrated, than he would be in Texas, where it's totally illegal.
It's a completely ridiculous ruling.
The justice's name that authored the ruling is Justice Blacklock, and the co-author was Justice Young.
And these are the leftist morons that we're basically ruled by.
So, we have a clash in America of values.
Now, what's different between California and Texas is this.
California is perfectly willing to pass a transgender sanctuary law for kids, right?
Texas is completely unwilling to become a sanctuary for children fleeing states where they castrate children.
I have tried to push for a law here in Texas to become a sanctuary state for any parent that can bring their that brings their child within the borders of Texas.
We will never repatriate that child to a state that castrates kids.
Texas will not pass that law because of the liberal donor class in the Republican Party.
So, if a law was passed like that, you would go from the United States to states at war, because if the Texas passed that, then really they would have a duty to go and rescue a child who was going to experience that.
This would turn the whole concept of the United States on its head, wouldn't it?
Well, you know, I'm a Texan, so my concept of what american governance is is very different than the mainstream concept in America.
Let me describe the mainstream concept and then I'll describe what I think is the correct way which is of course always the lone star state way.
In the mainstream american way of thinking the federal government has supremacy over the states, and federal law is always supreme over the states.
So, what would happen is the case would go into a federal court.
Under the full faith and credit doctrine, they would order Texas to return the child, because you have to follow the court order.
You have to honor the court orders of other states, right?
However, under the Texas point of view, there can be no lawful order from the federal government to violate the human rights of any citizen of the United States, in fact, of any person in the United States.
So in Texas, we believe in something called nullification.
The federal government can tell us what to do all they want, but we don't have to do it.
And our question to the federal government is very simple.
How many divisions do you have?
And you don't have enough divisions to make us do it.
And the federal government knows this. So because of that, the federal government has put probably the largest deep state presence in Texas.
The largest fusion center in the world is in San Antonio, Texas.
It's the largest intelligence fusion center.
They control, the federal deep state controls elections all the way down to the county level here.
They put money into them and make sure that they don't get people elected that want to nullify these federal laws.
But there's a huge movement to nullify federal laws in Texas again and to revive the spirit of that.
Polls show that over 80% of Texans would support seceding from, from the United States.
And that's no joke.
The federal government takes that very seriously because Texas is completely independent. You may not know this, but Texas is on its own power grid.
We are not on the American national power grid.
We have our own power grid.
We have our, we have our own army.
We have the Texas has its own air force, its own army. It even has its own coast guard. So we actually could go independent, and they well know that.
So, yeah, there is ultimately going to be a reckoning in the United States.
You know, Europe has typically solved problems like this through expulsion, if you look at its history.
You look at the warring periods, you know, in the 17th century.
America has typically solved its problems by partition.
And that's one of the reasons we have states, not provinces.
So, I think ultimately the peaceful way forward for America on these social issues is going to be something like this.
We're going to have to return to radical federalism.
Where in Texas, we're just going to have to accept that they're going to castrate children in California.
And California is going to have to accept that if you do that in Texas, we're going to give you a lethal injection and execute you.
With the, well after the Roe versus Wade, and then with this extreme, crazy individual called Gavin Newsom in California.
I wonder where it goes because if we get President Trump back in the White House and I've been to three different Trump rallies and and always one of the largest cheers has been for the simple phrase that we will not let men into women's bathrooms and that's a big cheer, but that's simply that issue is such a tiny, tiny part.
That's maybe easier to discuss because what you're discussing is so much deeper and darker.
It's darker.
It's difficult to go at.
But where kind of is it moving? Because I've seen a lot of campaigners being much, much more vocal. And I've got to know Billboard Chris, and he was in London recently, children cannot consent to puberty blockers.
And that phrase is regarded as extremist.
But where do you kind of see this going with more and more campaigners individuals, maybe you've been one of the first or beginning to highlight this.
The message really does have to get through and this has to be an election issue.
Yeah, it definitely is it at the state level.
The reason the bathroom issue resonates, it's not that it's not just the bathroom issue.
It's an emblem of a larger problem in which our elites, our leftist elites, that inhabit the agencies of the united states federal government, similar to to your tab of stock have intentionally undermined traditional social norms and have altered the relationship of parents to their children. I mean think about that.
You, you know, you sire children and nothing is more important to you than your posterity.
And the federal government is using the school system and psychologists and all these things to modify your relationship with your children.
So it's really emblematic of that thing.
And what I, what I think is really happening with Trump.
Look, America has been controlled by financial oligarchs for a long time.
I mean, you can go back into the early part of the 20th century.
I would argue back to the Gilded Age in the late 1800s.
America is completely controlled by plutocrats.
So that's not unsurprising.
I think everybody would probably see a way to find something to agree with there.
What I think has happened is on the west coast of the United States, surprisingly in California, in Silicon Valley, a new plutocratic class has arisen.
And this class doesn't have left-wing ambitions.
It's much more what in America we'd call libertarian ambitions.
And it foresees an economy that isn't run by a federal reserve, but by peer-to-peer blockchains, and where there's private banking and things like this.
So these new elites are, have realized that they can't achieve any of their commercial vision under the social systems that the left has created for them.
And so you see guys like Mark Andreessen, who's a lifelong Democrat is now supporting Trump.
Peter Thiel is supporting Trump.
Elon Musk is supporting Trump.
And so I think one way to interpret what's happening in America is you have a new class of oligarchs who are rising up to take their place and argue for their interests against the existing oligarchy class.
So, if I had to sum it up simply, it would be Silicon Valley oligarchs versus Wall Street oligarchs.
The Wall Street oligarchs have typically been aligned with America's deep state.
And we know that election intelligence services in both of our countries interfere in domestic elections all the time.
Well, the problem is the West Coast elites in Silicon Valley have quite wisely embedded themselves into the deep state.
So Peter Thiel, for example, runs Palantir. And the deep state needs that software for their terrorist and human targeting systems.
And I think this was done intentionally by the West Coast elites in order to make themselves indispensable to the state, so they can't be brushed aside.
And now that they've gained that power, they're going to begin to exercise it.
And I think that's why you saw Trump make a big move to Bitcoin.
He used to talk, talk it down all the time.
And now he doesn't because he's siding with those West Coast oligarchs.
What's happening in America, I think, is essentially you have a war between two social and economic visions among the plutocratic elite.
Can I ask you about, you've obviously, through no choice of your own, been thrown into this dark world of the transgender industry and lobbyists.
Where have you seen the catalyst for this? Because there are only a few that will be absolutely ideologically aligned to think actually this is normal to do to children.
The vast majority won't.
But sadly, just as during COVID, many people do follow blindly to orders and nudging.
But is this also an industry that's beginning to build up, that there is money in this?
Where kind of have you seen the main catalyst for something which is really madness?
Well, one of the ways you can see that this was planned, that the open source journals I talked about earlier were created around 2008.
You see the Obama administration long before anybody even knew what this stuff was.
And even before gender it used to be called gender identity disorder and they reclassified it in the dsm-5 which is our diagnostic manual for psychology as gender dysphoria.
A dysphoria is when you have a perfectly natural human variation but because of your culture you it causes you psychological difficulty, so it's not a disorder.
The Obama administration, before that even happened, forced insurance companies in America to fund transgender surgery, even before it was classified as gender dysphoria.
And this created the opportunity for the financial elites in New York, the Wall Street elites that run these insurance companies, to basically financialize this medical procedure.
In America, all medicine is financialized and securitized even.
In America, if you refuse to take a drug that a doctor prescribes, the doctor will very often fire you as a patient.
They will not treat you, because the insurance companies set specific statistical requirements for how many people have to take this drug given this condition.
And the reason is it's securitized.
The insurance company is making financial bets with the drug company.
So, everything here is a security, a financial security.
So, whenever a child walks into a gender clinic in the United States, they become about a four and a half million lifetime income stream to that gender clinic.
Because once they go on cross-sex hormones, they can't get off of it.
Lupron, the drug that is mainly used to castrate these children, is the most expensive drug sold in the United States.
And the reason is very simple.
The demand for it has skyrocketed.
It's only made in one place in the world.
So, they're making enormous profits.
So, what they've done is essentially, and this won't be surprised to my friends in the UK who have been even remotely politically aware for the last 20 years, they have essentially commoditized human misery.
And then they, once it's made a commodity, they securitize it and they make millions of dollars off it.
Which I've seen even in diabetes drugs, looking at Ozempic, I think the diabetes industry, health industry is worth over 300 billion.
And I only read that this morning, it blew my mind.
But can I ask you, we've seen, I think, six European countries begin to push back on the puberty blockers.
And the issue is zero long-term studies.
And of course, these clinics have been operating on zero data.
There doesn't seem to be the pushback in the States despite there being no data and then how is any medical procedure carried out if there is no data to back it up.
Is that still the case in the US that this has been pushed forward and the wakening up in terms of puberty blockers with no data that hasn't happened yet in the US?
It hasn't happened, it's not going to happen.
There there's a couple of reasons for it, first of all these uses of for example the drug Lupron for puberty blocking these uses are considered experimental uses.
You're not, no physician in America is allowed to prescribe an experimental use of a drug to a child, because experimental uses require informed consent.
That's the first thing.
The FDA issued a letter giving special privileges for the use of these puberty blocking drugs for kids, so that they can use experimental uses on children.
My representatives at the federal level sent a letter to the FDA asking them why they changed their own ethical guidelines for this one use of a drug.
And the FDA wrote a letter back saying that they were going to refuse to respond.
So, one of the problems we have in the United States, and I think it's because, honestly, because we copied the UK in the early part of the 20th century, Wilson and FDR wanted an English-style civil service.
And we have agencies that run the government.
And what I've discovered the hard way with my son, fighting for my son, is that elected officials are not in control of the government.
The government is completely run by unelected bureaucrats who are largely captured by the industries that they regulate.
So in other words, the government is essentially controlled by the Wall Street plutocrats.
And so what you have here is a situation where a big propaganda campaign was initiated by the Paul Singer wing of the plutocracy to make transgender children a kind of liberal shibboleth.
A proposition that defines you as a liberal.
And liberals are uniquely vulnerable in America to this kind of propaganda.
Leftists, the characteristic of the leftist is basically this.
They take their opinions not based on facts or reasoning.
They take their opinions based on what they think other people will think of them if they have that opinion.
And it's what Paul Gerard you know when he diagnoses the results of envy and what he calls mimesis where people copy the desires of other people.
Leftists are uniquely vulnerable to this it's a psychological disposition in the leftist mind and it's exploited heavily in the United States.
So, it's gone so far at this point that California for example has made these transgender procedures enshrined as a right.
Let me say that again, enshrined as a right in their state.
It's been made a formal public policy of the state by the legislature, meaning no court can ever overturn it.
So, it's not going away anytime soon in the United States, no matter what the facts show.
And you're right, there have never been facts that show that these procedures are effective.
In my 2019 trial, where I won 50-50 custody and no child support.
And a check on all medical procedures, and the Texas judges got together and then systematically stripped me of all parental rights instead of giving me 50-50, I brought in a guy named Dr. Levine, who ran the first gender clinic in the 1970s at Johns Hopkins University.
And what he testified to is they shut their own clinic down after four years, because all their data showed they were harming patients.
They knew that this stuff was not only not efficacious, they knew that it was harmful back in the seventies.
This was done as a specifically for social purposes.
This is, this movement is not being run for the benefit of children or some kind of human right.
It's being run because it destroys the traditional family and our traditional notions of sexuality.
No, 100%.
Has the response from media changed?
Have you seen a change in terms of media outlets being willing to engage this or not really?
Not really.
There's a blackout on my case in mainstream media.
It's really showed me the importance of independent media like yourself.
You have the ability, it's kind of like small theaters.
I like live theater.
A small theater can take risks that big theaters just can't take, and you'll get the best and most interesting theater at the small theater houses.
It's similar with independent media.
You can say what you want, you'll be holding to no one, and you can address any issue the way you like.
That is unfortunately not the case in the mainstream media, even mainstream conservative media.
So remember, the big donors are liberal, and they fund Fox News.
They fund all these people.
So there's a blackout on my case, and there always will be.
Can we finish on, you mentioned you're a Christian, and can you let us know kind of how that has affected you?
Because I think if an individual goes through this, and if they have no belief in God actually with them through the process, it could be very difficult, not just on this issue, but any issue.
How has your faith been important to you, essential to you in this fight?
Well, look, I think that, and I spent most of my life as an atheist, so I'm a convert to Christianity.
So for me, this has been a conscious thing.
And I think in some sense, it's easier for converts to talk about it because for us, it was a conscious process that we were not born into it.
When did you become a Christian?
How long ago?
2004.
Okay.
Yeah.
And it creates a way that you can articulate things, maybe, that people who are born into a Christian culture don't understand.
And I also think converts value this because they once didn't have it, and they know what life was.
But I think this is very simple.
Human suffering has no meaning without God.
There is no meaning to human suffering.
You know, if I had to describe it so that secular liberals in the UK could grasp this, I would say imagine a trial, a criminal trial, and let's say Mr Smith is accused of shooting Mr Jones and the prosecutor puts Mr Smith on the stand he's in the dock and he asks him why did you shoot Mr Jones.
And Mr Smith says something like this: well, you know it all It all started with pig farmers up in the north of England.
And I had bangers and mash, and I had a breakfast.
And this, through a long, complicated chemical process, resulted in my brain producing certain kinds of amino acids, which led to electrical connections in my brain, which ultimately culminated in a twitch of my right finger, which again initiated a complex chain of chemical reactions, which led to a piece of metal being expelled from a tube.
Which then entered Mr. Jones's body and interrupted his life processes.
Like that is not what we mean when we say, why did you shoot Mr. Jones?
But that is the secular answer.
That you're just a bundle of chemicals and, you know, vibrating molecules, and that's the only answer you can give.
What we want to know is your motive.
Your end.
Your purpose.
And ends and purposes are dependent on a transcendent God.
There really aren't, without a God, all you're left with is our artificial causes.
And you can't ask questions about human motives, right?
So similarly with human suffering, if I didn't have a belief in God, if I wasn't a Christian, I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't have been able to endure this peacefully.
I remember sitting in a deposition and a carefully crafted series of questions were being used that were actually developed.
I later learned were developed by a psychologist to cause me to act out violently in the deposition.
This is the kind of stuff that's been deployed against me.
And I'm sitting there calmly reciting the Jesus prayer.
And I was able to suffer it simply because I know that there's a transcendent purpose beyond this suffering.
My future is probably in a prison because, as I told you, I'm not going to use any of my resources to fund these medical procedures on my children.
Well, in the United States, medical expenses are considered child support.
And if you don't pay child support, they'll put you in prison.
In Texas, it's a state jail felony.
So my future is in prison, because I'm not going to use any of my resources to hurt my son.
How could someone endure suffering like that or look forward, even look forward to witnessing that they will stand against injustice like that without a belief in a transcendent purpose?
Religion is not some optional thing.
I actually think it further that the propaganda.
That has so destroyed Western countries, this leftist propaganda, is only made possible, because of a lack of a transcendent worldview.
When you strip people of a morality, it turns out that morality, a moral system, is necessary for understanding the physical world.
It's because, it's very simple, you can't understand human motives without reference to a transcendent purpose.
Now they try to use evolution as a transcendent purpose, right?
But that's, that's a purpose which recognizes all sorts of evil things that we all know are wrong.
So, it doesn't work as a transcendent purpose.
And the, the stripping away of the traditional religious cultures in Europe and America have become the basis for the destruction of everything we see.
And the reason I can, I will be able to endure sitting in a prison so that I don't have to harm my son is, because I have prayer.
I can fast. I can still do good works even in prison.
And in the future, I have a future beyond this life that is more important than the one I'm living now.
Jeff, I really do appreciate you sharing your story.
And I wholeheartedly agree with you that the West have rejected any concept of truth. And truth is a person.
His name is Jesus. And when you reject truth, absolute truth, you reject Christ and into that vacuum comes anything and everything.
And that's why we've seen the collapse of societies all across the West.
Jeff, thank you so much.
I'd encourage people to go and sign up.
There was a little quote from one of your sections on your sub stack, and it was, Don't stand on the train tracks of history yelling, stop at the rushing locomotive and modernity.
Hijack the damn thing and take over, subscribe.
and I'll leave that with our viewers that I know them they will have been really interested in your story.
And I know the people will want to go and look at your Substack, Jeff younger.substack.com.
Make sure and click on it follow, Jeff if you aren't already doing.
So, and do you consider subscribing?
So Jeff, thank you for giving me your time today.
Thank you.
Peter has been wonderful talking to you.

The Week According To . . . Leilani Dowding

Dive into this week's episode of our weekly news review where we're joined by the audacious Leilani Dowding, whose X account has become a beacon for candid commentary on today's hottest issues. Today, we're peeling back the layers on some of the most contentious topics straight from Leilani's recent posts. From the spiralling costs of asylum seeker accommodations in the UK to the controversial use of Ozempic for weight loss, Leilani doesn't shy away from the tough questions. We'll also find out if Alex Jones was right, as we venture into the eerie world of genetic engineering with "spider goats" and tackle the shifting sands of UK politics under Two Tier Keir's Labour. Don't miss out on Leilani's sharp insights and our deep dive into the stories that are setting X abuzz. Join us for a session that promises to enlighten, provoke, and challenge your views on the news that shapes our world.
Half-Filipina, half-English, Leilani Dowding is a former Page Three Girl and was crowned Miss Great Britain in 1998, going on to represent her country in the Miss Universe pageant.Leilani had a starring role in The Real Housewives of Cheshire and has appeared on The Big Breakfast, This Morning, Celebrity Wrestling and in numerous national newspapers.She is a proud 'Freedom Fighting Refusnik' and an unmissable commentator on world affairs, with her stance against tyranny and wokeness, Leilani has found a whole new army of fans.
Follow Leilani on 𝕏   x.com/LeilaniDowding @LeilaniDowding
Interview recorded  27.9.24
Connect with Hearts of Oak...𝕏                         x.com/HeartsofOakUKWEBSITE            heartsofoak.org/PODCASTS        heartsofoak.podbean.com/SOCIAL MEDIA  heartsofoak.org/connect/SHOP                  heartsofoak.org/shop/
Links to topics...Cost of housing asylum seekers in Britainhttps://x.com/LeilaniDowding/status/1839421052470083809I’m a Celeb get me Ozempic in here https://x.com/LeilaniDowding/status/1839417103197352284Ozempic https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2024/09/24/novo-nordisk-ceo-defends-ozempic-price-in-senate-testimony/Baroness Warsi https://metro.co.uk/2024/09/26/baroness-warsi-quits-tories-claiming-party-too-far-right-21681202/Alex Jones Spider Goats https://x.com/LeilaniDowding/status/1839115242237771872  VIDEO https://x.com/LeilaniDowding/status/1839195561427096043Phillip Scholfield  https://x.com/LeilaniDowding/status/1838960561389801842Migrant hiding in van https://web.archive.org/web/20240927131613/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/25/bbc-antiques-bidding-room-migrant-fined-border-force/#Echobox=1727273247-1 The state will take back control https://web.archive.org/web/20240924201332/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/09/24/state-will-take-back-control-of-peoples-lives-says-starmer/ Alexis (Lexi) Lorenzehttps://x.com/LeilaniDowding/status/1838648944462827955The old days when Labourhttps://x.com/LeilaniDowding/status/1839359182317003039https://x.com/LeilaniDowding/status/1838908706999636387Return of the sausages https://x.com/LeilaniDowding/status/1838597112595972241

Tom Nelson - Carbon Conundrum: Rethinking CO2 in the Climate Debate

Shownotes and Transcript
Join us as we sit down with Tom Nelson, the provocative force behind "Climate: The Movie." This episode explores Tom's unique journey from a career in electronics to becoming a vocal sceptic of mainstream climate narratives. Discover how a simple hoax about an ivory-billed woodpecker ignited his passion for truth in media, leading him down the path of climate discourse.Tom shares the challenges and triumphs of producing his documentary, revealing how technology has democratized filmmaking. He explains why releasing his film online for free was a choice of impact over income, and delves into the complexities of gathering credible voices in climate science.In our conversation, Tom critiques the portrayal of CO2, questions the use of young activists in climate debates, and examines the discrepancies in climate data. We'll also tackle the broader implications of renewable energy and electric vehicles on our environment and economy.This episode isn't just about climate; it's about questioning what we're told, understanding the science, and discussing the future of environmental policy. Tune in now for an enlightening discussion that might just change how you see the world.
Watch "Climate: The Movie"      climatethemovie.net
Tom Nelson has an MS degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering.He was involved in tech and software for many years. In 2005, as an avid bird-watcher, Tom became heavily involved in debunking a high-profile, but bogus “Ivory-billed Woodpecker” rediscovery that opened his eyes to the problems with blindly trusting “peer-reviewed science”.Jack Hitt of the New York Times then went on to write about Tom's ivory-billed woodpecker work in his book “A Bunch of Amateurs”.A meteorologist pointed out lots of parallels between that woodpecker debate and the climate change debate to him, and Tom has been debunking climate change/energy claims almost daily since 2007. 
Connect with Tom...𝕏                       x.com/TomANelson @TomANelsonSUBSTACK       tomn.substack.comPODCAST         podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thomas-nelson8
Interview recorded  24.9.24
Connect with Hearts of Oak...𝕏                         x.com/HeartsofOakUKWEBSITE            heartsofoak.org/PODCASTS        heartsofoak.podbean.com/SOCIAL MEDIA  heartsofoak.org/connect/SHOP                  heartsofoak.org/shop/⁩
*Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast.
Check out his art theboschfawstinstore.blogspot.com and follow him on 𝕏 x.com/TheBoschFawstin
Transcript
(Hearts of Oak)
And hello, Hearts of Oak.
I'm delighted to have a brand new guest with us today, and that is Tom Nelson, the producer of Climate, the movie.
Tom, thank you so much for your time today.
Yeah, thanks for having me on.
I appreciate it.
Not at all.
I've thoroughly enjoyed the film, and after I got past Greta Thunberg at the beginning, that was the hurdle.
I got past Greta, which I'm sure you've heard many times.
But you can follow, there is Tom's handle on X on Twitter and climatethemovie.net and all that. You can find all the links to everywhere where the film is if you haven't already watched it.
It's been, what, a couple of months just beginning of the summer?
When was it, Tom?
It came out?
Came out at the end of March.
End of March.
It's been a few months.
It's been a few months.
Now, can I ask you how you went from a master's in electronics, all the way to producing a climate change sceptic film.
Just give us that journey to let people know a little bit about you.
Yeah, so the whole journey started in about 20 years ago or so that I considered myself a normie and kind of fat and happy and believing what the media said.
And then in the US over here, there was this release of this ivory-billed woodpecker story.
There was a peer-reviewed paper, 17 authors.
They had rediscovered this huge woodpecker, just a huge deal.
When it came on on public radio, people got so overcome with emotion that they pulled off the side of the road and cried.
There was a lot of stories like that.
But as a bird watcher, I checked into it and the whole thing was a complete crock that they did not discover this woodpecker. And their evidence was just incredibly flimsy.
They heard a few sounds in the woods.
And then they had this picture of this woodpecker that was six pixels.
It was two blacks, two whites, two blacks.
That was supposed to be six pixels. That was their proof. So it blew my mind.
So I did a blog on that. And a lot of people read the blog.
And eventually, Jack Hitt of the New York Times wrote a book called A Bunch of Amateurs.
And he did a whole chapter on this, on how amateurs kind of ripped apart this data and showed that what this alleged science wasn't true.
Then at that time, somebody emailed me and said, you know, you should check out the climate change thing because it's the same deal.
If you look at the evidence for yourself, you're going to find out that that's totally a crock too.
So I did.
And within just a day of looking at that, I could see that the data in so many cases, crop yields, et cetera, just did not back up any of this alarmism.
So then I started blogging about that.
And for close to 20 years now, I've spent most of my time on an average day, like hours, looking at these stories and debunking them and just digging into it.
And I've really, really enjoyed it.
I went from Blogspot to Twitter.
Then I went and I started a podcast about two years ago.
One of my first guests on that podcast was Martin Durkin, who did the great Global Warming Swindle in 2007.
And on that podcast, he said, you know, given what I know now and given more time, I'd like to remake that movie.
I could make a better movie. So that kicked off this whole process where I worked with Martin.
And Martin did almost all of the work from my perspective.
Martin and his team. He did all the interviews.
He did the narration.
He wrote the script of Climate, the movie.
He just did a great job.
He's been involved in maybe 100 documentaries, so he really knows how to make a good documentary.
This is the first one I've been involved in. So anyway, it took about a year to make the movie.
It came out in March of this year, and it's up online for free in over 100 locations.
Lots of copies on YouTube, Bitchute, Rumble, Humble, Substack, Telegram, lots of copies on X, lots of clips everywhere.
And a lot of people have downloaded their own copy of it, and then they put it up on their own social media.
So just loving how it's spread virally.
And it's got way over 10 million views at this point.
And we're very happy with the reception.
And I guess that's how I got to this point.
Well, I certainly had a lot of friends message me and give me details of it.
And I watched it. It was hugely impressed.
How do you, maybe from just, well, jump into it, but you kind of think about getting information out.
You think of putting a film out, you can put it behind a pay wall.
It then doesn't get as much exposure.
The way you've done it has gone far and wide.
How do you think about that?
Making sure you have the finance to make the product well, but also making sure it gets out to the public as wide as possible.
Yeah, it's a great combination of the way that technology has worked, the things have become so cheap to make the movie.
It didn't really cost that much.
We had to spend some money on travel, etc. et cetera.
But with modern technology, it just doesn't take that much, way less expense than the people in the movie.
Of course, when we interviewed Steve Coonan, et cetera, those people didn't charge us. So the talent didn't cost us.
So overall, it was inexpensive to make and then to roll it out.
In the past, you had to convince a TV, whatever, a channel to put it on their channel.
But nowadays, you can just put it up.
So, I don't think we could have done this even a few years ago as successfully as we did now. So, I'm really happy with the way this technology allowed us to do this so cheaply.
And you have a lot of great individuals on it, giving their understanding from a lifetime of expertise and experience in that area.
What was it like?
Maybe it's easier now than it would have been back 20 years ago, but how difficult was it to find the people actually to be on because it is career suicide.
Yeah.
Actually, in this case it was easy and that was one of my major roles as a producer in that just about everybody in the movie has already been on my podcast like I already knew him like Will Happer for example, he's in the movie for a few minutes but he's on my podcast for maybe a couple hours.
He's been on a couple times so that's one thing you can do if you like any particular person what they said in the movie, you can go to my podcast and you can hear them in a long form.
So, I really had the contacts for most of the people.
So that part was easy.
And then most of the people in the movie, they realize how important this whole pushback is.
They realize that this whole climate change thing is being used for so many other purposes to restrict our freedom and power and money and kind of take us over.
So, it was very easy.
These people are motivated to tell the truth.
And that's the thing.
It's so easy to get behind it, because you're on the side of truth. Truth is going to win out.
And the truth is for sure on the side of the people pushing back here.
And I want to point out a lot of the people in the movie are past retirement age.
Will Happer talks about in the movie that if he was 30, it's kind of career suicide if you're 30 right now to speak out against this scam.
So even Will, he's a guy of huge integrity. He was saying even he might not speak out if his career was on the line, if you're paying a mortgage and you have a family.
And it's a pretty big deal if you get cancelled and you lose your job, which you can still to this day if you speak out against it.
So, a lot of the scientists, they wait until they're retired, then they're free to speak out.
That's kind of the same thing with the COVID narrative, that those who are speaking out are free to speak, because they don't have the constraints of needing to work. And that's one way the system, I think, keeps many people quiet.
Can I just, your Substack, so tomn.substack.com, also tomn.substack.com, there are so many places to see your work, Tom.
But you start with Greta.
How is it that we have got to the point where children are the experts?
Because you start with her preaching to us and telling us how dumb we were and how we're destroying the world.
And you're thinking, you're a child.
And this child has become a superstar, the voice of wisdom.
It's a weird way that we find ourselves in these current times, that those who don't know about anything are the ones that do know.
Yeah, you know, I can't get into people's mind, but I think there was a deliberate effort to use a child as a kind of a shield that you could be the face of this movement.
And if you push back against Greta, you're being mean to a kid.
And I think that was a, it sounds crazy, but I think that really was part of the reason why Greta was chosen.
I don't think this was just a grassroots thing that just happened organically.
It sounds like the book that her mom had, it was ready to go like Greta did her.
Her organic thing in 2018. And supposedly someone just happened like a camera crew happened to be there that day.
And then the book was ready to go by that Saturday, like a few days later.
So yeah, I think this was planned in advance.
And I do think that Greta has kind of run her course.
It seems like that now that she's into her twenties, she's can't really sell her as a kid anymore.
And Greta herself seems like she's not into the climate thing as much anymore.
She's diverged into other stuff.
And she was doing this climate strike every Friday, putting up a picture on Twitter, but now she went for eight weeks without putting a picture of herself up on a Friday by a climate sign, because even she might be tiring and the whole thing.
I don't, it's a really odd cult by the way, in that even the believers can't be bothered to behave as if they believe.
I think it's very interesting that there's these people who think that they're trying to sell the idea that CO2 might kill our kids, but almost nobody can be bothered to believe as if they had to live as if they actually believe that.
It's pretty weird.
Well the the CO2 thing and that's something.
I love the film in a way that you've you divide up into chunks without realizing it, that you move from kind of chunk to chunk to chunk and cover so many of the the lies that are part of the the climate alarmism.
And one of them is CO2 and you've got one of the speakers saying well CO2 is literally life.
I mean the plants the world exists this because of CO2.
It is not this evil.
And that's a fascinating concept.
The whole thing talking about CO2 famine and how that can damage us.
And that's a great concept that I think many of us may were not aware of.
Yeah, it's just so odd that we're sold this narrative that CO2 is the demon molecule.
And whatever happened that was bad, the demon molecule caused it. Especially when it is, like you say, it's the gas of life.
It is absolutely critical to life on Earth.
For photosynthesis, you've got to have CO2.
So I think the fight against CO2 is like fighting oxygen or water. It's just completely crazy.
And then, as we point out in the movie, even the CO2 level in the air right now, in the course of the last 600 million years, we've had way more CO2 in the air naturally most of that whole time.
Way more.
Over 5,000 parts per million, where now today we might have maybe 423 parts per million or something.
So we're way closer to not having enough CO2.
Way closer than having too much. And then it's interesting that you may have seen some videos and maybe in the U.S. Congress or something where they're asking people, how much CO2 do you think is in the air?
People who have based their lives on the idea there's too much and they're guessing maybe 5%.
It blows my mind that they're basing their lives on fighting this thing and they have no idea how much is out there.
People think the atmosphere is filling up with CO2. Anyway, it's really 0.04% about.
And if humans caused the CO2 increase since maybe 1850, we added maybe one extra CO2 molecule for every 10,000 atmospheric molecules.
So, getting this excited about one extra for every 10,000 is really off the charts crazy.
Another thing that I came across watching it was the simple way that data is presented and not simple as in not covering the information, but you realize that individuals are overwhelmed with information, especially in today's world.
And I think the climate change alarmists have used that to their advantage to basically say, well, this is so complicated and we'll show you these charts and graphs that you don't understand, but we will tell you what they mean.
And in this film, it was fantastic the way some of the charts that came up and it just explained things so simply in a way that you want the audience to understand, not in a way the other side seems to confuse the audience.
Yeah, that is a great point that the whole thing is based on trusting the experts.
And don't bother your own pretty little head thinking about it yourself because you don't understand atmospheric chemistry.
So, you got to just trust the experts.
And what makes me happy is so many people in recent years have told me that they did trust the experts until COVID.
And then they realized that now we better start thinking for ourselves and sanity check things.
So many people have said that.
And I think that's a big part of why, from my perspective, this whole scare is starting to crumble.
Because it's a mass thing across the world that people are not trusting the experts.
And that's the thing with this whole climate deal. You don't have to trust experts at all.
It's really easy to sanity check these claims over and over.
You're an ordinary person.
You have Google.
You can look at crop yields.
They're trying to scare us.
Oh, no, wheat yields are going to go down.
You can go to Our World and Data.
You can look at wheat yields anywhere you want, and they're just going up and to the right. And it's the same with everything.
You can look at cyclones and floods and droughts.
You can look at the data.
You can look at the temperature records in your local city.
They're constantly saying, oh, it hits 95 in Minnesota.
That must mean that the earth is getting too warm.
But I can look here at the data for Minnesota. It hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit 38 times in two decades back in the 30s and 40s.
And since 1988, it hits that temperature eight times.
It just, for whatever reason, it's not getting anywhere near as warm as often now as it was in the 30s and 40s.
Nobody knows why but the narrative is it's got to be getting way hotter here for sure than it was 80 years ago not happening it's totally not happening.
What was it like looking for the data, because one of the ones you put up is looking at central England temperatures over 400 years.
I think it was 40 years which which is a very long period and quite phenomenal that we have that data and that is fairly unique but can you maybe let us know the the the difficulty of getting data and how you kind of how you presented that?
Yeah, I think Will Happer might call that a treasure.
I think that central England temperature record is a treasure, because we don't have that. You can look at where we have the data.
And even as of 1900, if you look at the map of where we had temperature stations in 1900, it's mostly in the U.S. I think there's some in Australia, but in huge areas of the world for just enormous parts of the world, we got nothing.
No official temperature records for 1900.
So whenever we look, whenever we show data from where we have the temperature records, people say, oh, look, that's just a small portion of the Earth.
The climate crisis must have happened elsewhere where we don't have the data.
And that's definitely the narrative. Patrick Moore talks about this in his book, Fake Invisible Catastrophes, that the catastrophe is always somewhere else.
It's not where you are. It's somewhere else where you can't easily check the data.
So, they're trying to sell us this deal that the catastrophe is at the Great Barrier Reef for those people who don't live near there.
But then I have had Peter Ridd on my podcast a couple of times who does live there and he's an expert on the Great Barrier Reef. He says it's doing fine.
The whole idea that CO2 is bad for the reef is total nonsense.
And also they're trying to sell.
Because we're told it's disappeared.
It's nearly destroyed.
It's gone.
It's history.
Yeah.
And you can believe that maybe if you live 5,000 miles away.
Oh, no, it's going away. way, but it's not.
Again, it is a fake invisible catastrophe.
Another one, polar bears live far away from where most of us are.
So maybe we can believe, oh no, the CO2 is killing them, but it's absolutely not.
I've had Susan Crockford on my podcast a couple of times.
She's an expert in the whole idea that if it gets warmer, polar bears are going to die out.
In the 1970s, when it was cold, it really was a slightly cold period then that we had maybe one fourth as many any polar bears as we have now.
So, it's warmed in those decades and the polar bears have gone up a lot, but it's because CO2 is not the polar bear control knob at all.
There's other factors at work.
And part of it is we don't hunt them as much now as we did, but we're still killing, maybe they're telling us 900 plus polar bears per year still legally.
And if we really want, if we should be that worried about how many polar bears there are, let's stop hunting them first.
Anyway, they're doing fine.
The whole idea that more ice means more polar bears, That's not true either.
They can't hunt seals as easily if there's 10 feet of ice as if there's broken up ice and water.
Susan Crockford does a great job of showing us that some ice is way better than too much ice for them in terms of reproducing and feeding.
But it's true.
The media tell us stuff and we believe because we can't see it.
I mean, I haven't seen any polar bears in my life here in the UK.
So, I don't think they exist anymore. And it kind of you think, oh, yeah, that sounds true.
And the media are experts at playing this game.
Yeah.
Another thing about modern technology is that there's something horrible happening weather-wise everywhere all the time.
And we've got people with cell phone cameras everywhere.
It's a big world.
So if you want to tell people every single day, look how bad the weather was, and look at these buildings blew down and everything, that's available every day.
 
But in 1700, if there was a storm that killed 10% of the people on the other side of the world somewhere, you wouldn't even find out about it ever, or maybe it would take six months or something.
So it's a real-time thing. But the narrative is that bad weather is evidence that CO2 causes bad weather, but that's not how it works.
And I want to give a plug to Tony Heller.
He's at Tony Climate on X. He just does a great job of going through historical data and looking at old newspaper clippings and stuff.
And his message constantly is, look how bad the weather was in the past.
If you realize how bad the weather was in the past and how often there's been just terrible events then you're not going to get all shook every single day when it happens again.
It is always going to happen the whole, I see this on X a lot that vote democratic because otherwise these rainstorms it's going to rain too much still in 2050, but anyway no matter who you vote for it's still going to rain too much it's, and and too little, in the same places.
All this stuff is going to happen and we can't stop it.
At tonyclimate.
Check it out.
I haven't, so I will check it out thanks for that, Tom.
The other thing in the film was about weather stations temperature stations collecting the data and talks about those being built and those are often built just outside towns in more rural areas, because it's a better gauge on temperature.
And a lot of those temperature sensors are now surrounded by urban areas as you get urban urban spread, cities growing.
And again, it talked about looking at these temperature stations that are still in rural areas and aren't in urban areas.
And again, that's something that actually the media don't tell us, but yeah, you've urban sprawl.
And of course, things which are in the country are now in the centre of a city and will give very different readings.
Yeah.
Yeah, that is a huge, this urban heat island effect, or UHI, that is a big effect.
And as Willie Soon says in the movie, in a place like Paris, it might be five degrees centigrade warmer in the middle of the city than it is on the outskirts of the city.
And people are saying that as they're driving around, they have their thermometer in their car.
You can see this as you drive in towards the city, you can see it getting warmer.
And we're supposed to panic over maybe one degree centigrade warming in 150 years or something.
But if you just drive into the center of the city, it might be five degrees warmer.
And Willie Soon has done some papers on this.
And maybe half of the warming that we have seen since 1850 has been caused by this effect.
So it's a big deal. And another person who's done great work on this is Anthony Watts with his surface station project.
He's looked in the U.S. in detail at the stations.
And I don't know what the numbers are. It might be 80% of them are situated in places where this is a big problem.
He's got lots of pictures of official temperature sensors that are right by a Weber grill or by an AC outlet or by hot tarmac or where you can park a car with a hot engine right near there.
And it's very interesting. He was just on my podcast and he was saying our modern temperature stations, some of them are taking the temperature every minute.
Or if there's just a little breeze of hot air just for a minute, bam, that's recorded.
A little spike of temperature is recorded.
This actually happened in the UK in a high profile thing in recent years, that the UK hit 40 degrees centigrade, and that got tons of publicity.
But then Chris Morrison, I believe, filed a FOIA and found out that that temperature was measured by an airport tarmac when fighter jets were landing right by it, and the temperature record lasted for one minute.
It was cooler, and then there was a spike for one minute, and it dropped like 0.6 just in the next minute.
So we're supposed to think that our behaviour in Topeka caused this to happen and CO2 caused it.
But no, it was just a spike of warm air, probably from a jet engine, probably influenced it for that one minute.
It's pretty amazing.
But you don't find out about this from the legacy media won't tell you this, but other reporters, other people that are digging into it are telling us this.
So I'm loving this type of story makes me very interested in coming in every day and looking at it again.
Yeah, I see some temperature readings that we get from heat through and you're thinking if you go to one of the busiest airports in the world it's going to be fairly warm with the amount of people, with the amount of cars, and planes funny enough, so but it's funny around heat through, we now have a 60 mile an hour speed limit and it's for air quality and you're thinking, well you've and I'm a plane buff but then you've got jets landing or taking off every 45 seconds, but hey it's the car going from 70 to 60 that will save the world.
Yeah, I don't know if they have any data that proves this works or not.
I don't know.
I thought there was just some data saying that some of these restrictions in some cities, they took the before and after data and it didn't improve.
I'm not buying it at all.
We used to have this deal in Minnesota where you had to take your car in every year and get it tested.
And it was a huge pain in the butt.
And they eventually took that away.
And I don't think, I think it was all pain and no gain as so many of these environmental things are.
A hundred percent.
There's actually a talking about temperature rises.
Is there was someone in the film talking about then using satellites to measure temperatures, which is something that we can now do that maybe wasn't available even 20 years ago, the amount of satellites there are in orbit.
And that's fascinating, seeing how you can use technology to look at data in a new way or collect data in a new way.
Yeah, I think that is our best recent temperature record, best overall temperature record that we have since 1979 is this satellite data.
It's the Alabama UAH data. Roy Spencer is a guy who blogs about that every month.
He gives us an update on his blog about what the current monthly temperature was.
But yeah, a huge advantage of that is the Weber grills and the tarmac and all that other stuff does not affect the satellite temperatures.
But a disadvantage is it doesn't go back 400 years like central England temperature.
It goes back only to 1979.
And that is kind of good for the people selling warmism because in the 70s, there really was this global cooling scare. And that's when we started measuring.
So, we do have warming since the seventies, but the whole idea that we can just to continue that out and assume it's going to go at the same rate for the next 200 years, it's like, it's like a sine wave.
And if you start measuring at the bottom of a sine wave, you can get all scared that things are going to increase from the bottom to the top forever.
But, I don't know what's going to happen next temperature wise, but, throughout human history, it's always fluctuated up and down.
And after every every upwards fluctuation, it has fluctuated back down.
And I wouldn't doubt that's going to happen again also.
Another one on actually was on CO2 when you overlay maps of temperature change onto events.
So, the Industrial Revolution, the huge rise in CO2 from that progression, you would expect to see maybe three, four or five times the temperature.
And yet we talk about a one degree change over a period of time.
And it's fascinating which the film did to put those graphs on top of one another and realize, hey, there's no correlation here.
Yeah, that's a huge point that even since 1850, even just that short period of geological time, the correlation hasn't been there.
There has been a narrative that we know humans must have caused it, because right when we started emitting CO2 with the Industrial Revolution, that's when temperatures spiked up.
I've heard people say they spiked up then, but they didn't.
I just saw a warmest graph on X a couple of days ago showing that the temperature on that graph from 1850 to 1910, it went down.
So with the Industrial Revolution, it cooled on that graph.
And then, OK, it worked for a while from 1910 to 1940.
Then CO2 went up and warming the earth warm.
So there was a correlation there.
But then from the 1940s, 1970s, again, we emitted enormous amounts of CO2, but the temperature went down and there was a whole scare.
And so then that didn't work.
Also, there was a hiatus after that from maybe 97 to 2014 or so, where we emitted lots of CO2 and temperatures didn't go up.
So the whole idea that CO2 is the climate control knob and that we should see that in the temperature, we don't.
At these timescales, at short ones and at long ones, over 600 million years, we have proxies where we can kind of figure out how warm it was. Doesn't work then either.
One other thing I wanted to mention here is that we have records of where the tree lines were up in the Arctic, maybe 4,000 years ago versus now.
And the tree line was further up north 4,000 years ago.
So, that's an indicator that it was warmer even just 4,000 years ago.
And of course, people were around, the pyramids had already been built 4,000 years ago.
In terms of human history, it wasn't that long ago, but it was warm back then.
And we're told that CO2 was lower, maybe maybe 280 parts per million back then.
So it was warmer, but CO2 was lower.
So again, CO2, a lot of people think CO2 is a result of warming because as the oceans warm, then they CO2 out gases from the ocean.
So, this whole scare might be a confusing cause and effect that CO2 does go up after it warms because the oceans out gas.
There was another part of the film that made me think, I've never heard that before, but that makes absolute sense.
And it is talking about this huge flaming ball of gas in the sky called the sun.
And you refer to it as solar winds.
And you make the point that the sun could actually have an impact in the temperature changes on the earth.
And it's actually not, I'd never kind of thought of solar winds in the sun.
I think that's kind of common sense.
Why haven't I thought of that?
And it's fascinating that those little bits of information that come out, you think that's absolutely on the ball.
And no climate change alarmist has ever talked about the sun providing temperature changes, but you refer to it in the film.
Yeah, again, there's this narrative that the sun is just a constant thing.
It's up there as a constant to any changes we see here couldn't be caused by the sun because the sun is constant, but not true at all.
The sun is going through different cycles.
It's very complicated.
And it's not just like it's getting brighter and dimmer and that's it.
There's other subtle things that are happening, changes in magnetism, extremely complicated.
But Nir Shaviv in the movie does a good job of talking about one theory about how changes in the sun through a complicated mechanism can cause changes in cloudiness on Earth.
And definitely cloudiness is fluctuating and it's incredibly hard to model.
And there's quite a bit of data saying that cloudiness, for whatever reason, has gone down in recent decades.
So it's been brighter and it's been easier for the earth to heat up.
As you can see yourself on a cloudy day, it's not as warm usually.
So, but that's just one of so many things that are affecting the climate there's changes in volcanoes and geologic heat that's coming up and heating the ocean and causing changes in ocean currents so the heat's moving around in the ocean and some you can leave everything else constant but if that changes in heat transport in the ocean bring warm water to the surface we could see a global change just through currents changing.
So it's incredibly complicated and I don't think I don't think we can model it even 50 years from now.
I don't think we're going to be able to fully understand it because it's so complicated.
Even trying to model a roulette wheel probably in Las Vegas, where's that ball going to go? Even that is hard to model.
And so, yeah, the whole idea that we understand climate and grade school kids get it, they understand it, and that's how simple it is.
More CO2 means hotter.
Totally not true.
It could not be farther from the truth.
I think I got how complicated, confusing weather and climate can be since we studied air aerospace, and then you look at weather in link to aviation, and you realize this is not an exact science.
And that phrase, exact science, is used all the time on climate change.
And yet in weather, we are utterly bewildered.
We assume it's going to go this way and that way, but it does the opposite you have the weather for the day for aviation and then that changes in a moment and you realize actually we are we are small parts of this huge world and we are trying to observe and make sense, but yet there's a lot we don't understand and that we don't understand never comes in to this climate debate.
It's assured it's settled accept it and this film provides divides that other side too.
Yeah. One thing that really opened my eyes is this whole climate gate thing that happened 10 plus years ago.
When these emails were released, there's like 200,000 emails from the inside of climate science came out.
I spent enormous amounts of time looking through them and blogging.
I did hundreds of blog posts about them and it showed how different the whole climate science thing is from the inside than from the outside.
From the outside, everybody agrees and science is settled and we know what we're talking about on the inside.
They're scratching their heads and saying, what, why is it cooling?
We, we don't know why it's cooling.
And it's very interesting to see that completely different on the inside than on the outside.
And that, that, that was a huge eye opener for me. And, let's see, I don't know what the second part of your question was.
No, it was just the science being settled. But that's often what it takes.
In effect, whistle-blowers to come out. And if it's a leak of data, whistle-blowers, same difference.
And then you get to see the inside story.
And you realize what we're being told as the public is not what is happening behind the scenes.
Yeah, and actually another big part of this is this whole 97% consensus.
That's the thing that a lot of people lean on is that this must be true because worldwide, wide, 97% of the scientists, they might even be shouting from the rooftops that there's a climate crisis.
Earth is too hot right now, caused by CO2.
And yeah, that's the narrative. But no part of that narrative is true at all, that nobody has even done any survey of all the scientists to find out what they think.
And almost none of them, again, are behaving as if they believe that.
And I personally know that there's tons of scepticism in the science community. John Clouser, he's in our movie.
He was the 2022 Nobel Prize winner in physics.
And he has told me personally that he knows a lot of scientists that privately they're saying we're not buying this.
But again, there's so much of a cost coming out and saying it that a lot of scientists, they know privately it's a crock, but they're not saying it because too much cost.
Yeah.
So that whole consensus there, there is not the consensus that the public thinks there is.
Is is Al Gore the the person that sparked this off because if you're vice president and you put out information then people will follow that.
Has he been the catalyst to spreading this misinformation by the film and then government grants from there?
He has been a major catalyst but it's interesting you bring him up because I just interviewed a guy on my podcast who did a whole almost two-hour movie about Al Gore.
It's coming out in December.
His name is Joel Gilbert.
And I learned a lot about the whole Al Gore thing there.
It's super interesting to me.
There were people before that.
There was Maurice Strong that was pushing this before Al Gore came into the picture.
There's this whole narrative that Al Gore, he was a student of Roger Revelle in maybe the 60s or 70s.
And that's how he learned that CO2 was the demon molecule.
But that part isn't true either.
It sounds like it was kind of a political calculation that Al Gore needed a cause to attach himself to.
And that's when he started pushing the CO2 thing. He had plenty of chances in the 80s to push it, and he barely talked about it at all.
But yes, I do think he was a major catalyst with his movie, Inconvenient Truth.
I think a lot of people I've talked to said that is what first caused me to believe in this thing. So he was treated, they kept saying he's treated like a rock star.
He'd go to these cop meetings back around 2007 or so, and he was a rock star.
He got all this publicity.
The movie got won awards and everything. So that was a major part of this whole thing.
He has kind of faded away in terms of publicity.
You don't hear as much about him anymore.
And then Greta was the icon.
She was a red hot icon.
She was, if you've seen pictures of her with cameras everywhere, I don't know, 40 cameras or something following her every move. So for a while she was the rock star.
And, uh, I don't know if there's going to be a, it seems like no one right now is the rock star of the movement.
Michael Mann still is getting a lot of publicity, climate scientist, Michael Mann, and he has gone heavily political on X talking about, Trump supporters of being like Nazis, et cetera.
So, I don't know if they want him as the face of the movement, but anyway, Anyway, for maybe 10 plus years, Al Gore, he was very successful in pushing this whole thing.
And he had investments in carbon credits.
There was this Chicago Climate Exchange where you could buy and sell these carbon credits.
And for a while, they were selling for real money.
But the whole thing crumbled.
And at the end, they were selling for a nickel a ton.
You could buy.
And that was at the end. And then it just crumbled to dust.
And now it's gone.
But there still is carbon credit trading going on to this day.
Michelle Sterling calls it, what is it, trading of an invisible substance, non-delivery of an invisible substance to no one.
That's what it is. Carbon credit trading.
Yeah.
And, I mean, people are being paid to not cut down trees and they might be selling their promise to not cut down their trees more than once.
It's just amazing.
So even people on the other side are saying this thing is a complete farce.
But again, huge money has been changing hands based on this non-delivery of an invisible substance to no one.
Pretty amazing.
It sounds like you're suggesting this all could be a money thing, making money.
And I guess that starts back from Al Gore, because if you've got a leader, a political leader of that level, issuing government grants and recommending that money goes to people who are pushing this agenda, And you talk about it in the film, then everyone is hands up.
Well, I'll do the paper on that.
I'll be your consultant if you pay me. And money seemed to generate an industry.
Absolutely.
Yeah, there's so much money on the line in so many different ways.
Like you mentioned, if you're doing research on butterflies and you might not get funded, but if you do research on the effect of climate change on butterflies, you might get some funding.
And that's a huge deal that I think enormous amounts of scientific funding has been done on that basis.
And again, we have to fund it because CO2 is the number one thing.
There's a crisis.
So, the money really sucks in the money for sure there.
And then in terms of products that like electric cars and solar panels and wind turbines and so many things are sold on the basis of if you buy this thing, it's going to help prevent this climate crisis.
And maybe a substitute meat by fake meat prevents hurricanes.
And it's just amazing that how many things are sold on this basis.
Again, this thing is starting to crumble, but so much money and then so much power.
There's this whole central bank digital currency thing that some of the parasitic elites want to put on us.
I don't know if you've heard about it.
There's a guy named Simon Goddek that is living in Brazil, and he got a call from his either bank or credit card company saying, you've exceeded your carbon allowance and you want to pay additional money, so you can continue to spend this month because you've gone over your allowance.
It's voluntary for now.
Now, but that's the whole thing.
I think they would like to make this not voluntary and they would on an individual basis, keep track of how much meat you bought and how much dairy and how many times you've flown.
And if you do too many of those things, buy too many of those things, you have to pay additional money.
The thing is a scam.
It is a straight up scam, but that could happen unless we push back on this.
And again, the whole reason they might be able to get by with this is that if they sell it to enough people that we have to do all this crazy stuff.
Otherwise, our kids die from CO2-induced heat or something.
I mean, CBDCs are the biggest element of control that maybe any of us have seen in our lifetime, controlling not just spending.
That's a side part of controlling thinking.
You talked about part of the industry has been developed, and you mentioned solar panels.
And then that connects in with China, because most of these are built in China.
China aren't buying it either.
You refer in the film about them building, what, two coal-fired power stations a week that they know are equal to the rest of the world in actually coal usage.
They're not buying it.
They just seem to be laughing at the West for their utter stupidity as they are powering their way to growth. Right.
I agree.
I think they are laughing at us.
Yeah, they are making a lot of money off of this.
And again, they're not trying to, we're hearing they're putting up some solar panels in China, but they're not trying to power their economy that way.
There are people selling the idea we should power the whole U.S. Economy on wind and sun. Wouldn't that be great?
And it would be great if it worked, but it 100% doesn't work.
But we got crazy things going on here again in my home state where there's dreams of powering Minnesota with wind and sun.
But if we actually did that for a year, a lot of people would straight up die for sure. It gets so cold here.
There's no way we can stay warm enough.
So what's keeping us alive right now is real energy.
And nuclear power could keep us alive because that's baseload energy.
But if we try to use these intermittent sources based on the low angle of a sun and based on wind that might not blow for a week or two, it can kill people for sure.
One other thing I wanted to mention before I forget in terms of this control thing is this whole C40 cities document.
I don't know if you've seen that, but I just looked it up again.
It's still online and it's one of the craziest things I've seen in that I think 99 mayors have signed on to this thing now and it's out there.
It says that their goal for 2030 is we each get an allowance of three new pieces of clothing per year.
That's it.
Three pieces of clothing.
You can't buy number four, because you got to wait until next year and it's to prevent bad weather. And then also in there, it says their goal is no meat, no dairy for all of us.
We're just going to get rid of those.
2030 is coming right up here. It's not that far away.
And they're just going to cut out those two industries. And the bonus is we get less bad weather in 2050.
That's why we're doing it.
So yeah, again, it's amazing that things got, went this far off the rails.
I think people in the future aren't going to think about this a lot, but when they do think about this time and they look back at what's happening right now, climate-wise, they're just going to laugh, and they will not be able to believe how stupid it got.
Well, to think that eating less meat, less cows will save the world, or less cow farts will save the world, it'll be ludicrous.
But, I mean, even if part of this was about industry, building industry, I could see some kind of argument for it.
But I know in the UK, we buy all our windmills from the Netherlands.
I think they're a huge supplier of it.
We buy solar, as you do, in the States from China. It's not even helping the industry in the country.
So that argument isn't there.
They seem to be absolutely against any form of industrial change or any form of progression.
Yeah, I mean, part of the movement is anti-capitalism.
You see them walking around with signs, anti-capitalist signs.
So, yeah, for sure, that is part of the movement. And part of it is such a weird thing, the war on farmers, the war on cows and the war on farmers is so crazy.
But I think there's sinister motives behind that.
Maybe it's a land grab where they're trying to, maybe in the Netherlands, force farmers off their land so that they can take the land.
Again, that sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory.
But the whole idea, I mean, those Netherland farmers, they're so productive.
It's so important that they're producing the food that they are.
The idea that we have to force them to stop doing that.
Again, it's so counterproductive and it's against human flourishing completely.
So we have to fight this hard.
And I hope the bad guys don't win on this one or on any of this stuff.
I mean, it is all about money.
And we've seen that during COVID with the pharmaceutical advertising on TV and media.
It meant you had to agree to that because that's where your money's coming from.
On the climate change agenda, it seems money comes from producing results that fit in with the government.
And if you don't, you will lose funding. You will lose your position.
You kind of see often through history how finance is used to push an agenda which is against any normal thinking.
Yeah, that makes me think of this whole nuclear power thing that one of my guests said the the whole reason that nobody advocates for it, because there's so many less opportunities for grift in the nuclear power industry.
Because in wind and sun, it's kind of like a forever war that they're not going to work.
And then the answer is when they don't work, we just need more of them.
I'm hearing that all the time, that, of course, we don't have enough wind and wind turbines, solar panels up.
And, of course, they didn't work.
We're getting blackouts.
And the answer is let's just put more of them up. So it is a forever war.
Or the money just, the spigot could continue forever until we just turn it off.
Because no matter how many we put up, it's not going to work.
So, yeah, it's important.
I hope rationality comes back.
I think it is coming back, though.
I'm seeing a lot of signs of that really right now.
I think some of it's falling apart.
People not buying into the cost.
I mean, buying electric cars, there is a cost of double the price of anything else.
And sales are collapsing big time.
And it does seem as though people are not willing to actually pay the financial price, even though they may believe it's a good idea.
It seems that it will run out of steam because people are simply not going to pay the cost of it.
Yeah, I mean, I'm hearing people say that I bought an electric car because there were so many subsidies that.
But so basically, the other people are subsidizing your purchase.
And there was this time where electric cars really they had the majority of the market back a long time ago, maybe around 1900 or something.
And then gas powered cars beat them out because there's so many advantages.
The energy density, that's such a huge thing of hydrocarbons that one gallon of gas has so much energy.
And I think the battery on a Tesla can weigh 1,200 pounds, way over 1,000 pounds.
And so then you're hauling this huge battery around everywhere you go.
You've got to haul this battery around.
And the energy density is not there at all. So there's so many advantages for real cars. So I would say, I mean, some people do want an electric car.
I think we should just take off all the subsidies and let them compete in the free market. And whoever wins, wins.
And I think we are going to get back to that.
But so far, all these subsidies, especially in a place like the U.S. where we have such a huge debt anyway, the whole idea that we need to subsidize toys for rich people.
Because generally, these Tesla’s are not bought by the working class people who has their number one car.
They're bought very often as a second car for people who shouldn't be subsidized by the working class.
So one of the recent side effects is the weight, as you talked about, the damage to roads.
But also I think they talk about multi-story car parks whenever they're built in the 60s they were like what 700 kilo cars now it's well some of them are 2.2 tons.
So you fill a multi-story car park with electric vehicles and oh the thing collapses and there are all these issues that are suddenly coming these engineering problems
There's that. And there's the fire danger that some, I think, apartment buildings don't want to park their cars under the building because if your car goes up, it's so hard to put it out.
The whole building can go up. There's been a lot of cases of that.
There's supposed to be these special protocols to fight a fire if it's an electric car, because you might fight it for a while and it might flare up repeatedly after you think it's been out.
So that's a major problem.
And just now you're seeing that even the lithium batteries are in the cars, I believe.
And they're saying that you got to be really careful when you're flying because they don't want your lithium small battery causing a fire on the plane.
So the whole fire danger thing is a big deal.
I think there was a case with a container ship or a ship that had a unbelievable fire caused by one of these batteries.
So people say, oh, well, you can have a battery on a gas powered, you have a fire on a gas powered car, but the fires are easier to put out and it's not as big a danger as it is with these batteries.
We had a huge fire in London Luton Airport in one of the car parks that was shut down with a hybrid and it looks like the fire started in the battery.
But of course, they didn't say it was an electric car.
They said, oh, it's a hybrid petrol car and therefore, oh, it's a petrol vehicle.
You could see the media manipulating the data.
So much of that.
and just final thing. I want to ask you about the how the film has been accepted.
You've talked about some of the numbers.
I certainly saw what just after it came out and was sent a link to say, you need to watch this, and I did.
But what is the reception being like to this at a time where the narrative does seem to be collapsing amongst many people.
What is your experience the last four months?
What has it been like?
Yeah, we're very pleased with their reception that the whole viral thing that it hasn't been a course pushed by the legacy media.
But we thought that the Washington Post and New York Times, the legacy media would push back because in 2007, when the great global warming swindle came out, there was major pushback from the legacy media.
But mostly they haven't talked about it at all.
And it might be that they're hoping if they ignore it, it'll go away.
But yeah, it has not been attacked much at all. And I think it's way easier to speak out against it now than it was in 2007.
I think there's a snowball effect that as more and more people speak out, that more and more people feel free to speak out.
I'm seeing that for sure on social media.
Back in 10 plus years ago, I kind of felt more alone.
There were a few sceptics out there, but not very many.
But now you see it all the time that when there's an article about climate, it very often.
It makes me happy.
I look into the comment section and very often it's like 90% of the people are saying, this is a crock.
It's wrong.
Here's why it's wrong.
It makes me happy.
I'm seeing so much of that.
So people are feeling free to speak out on social media.
People are trying to share the link to the movie on Facebook and Instagram, and you might get a strike or a warning because the movie is supposed to be misinformation still.
So on those platforms still, whatever, they're still trying to defend the narrative.
But on X, et cetera, I think the floodgates are starting to open up, and I think it makes me happy that this thing, it is crumbling right now, even as we speak.
This is what it looks like as it crumbles.
And you've got the Freedom on X, the Freedom on Rumble, on Bitchute, on GETTR, on Truth and other social media platforms that you can share it.
Tom, I really appreciate your time.
It's great that we connected whenever you responded to our interview with Efrat Fenigson and I enjoyed that interviewing.
And it was wonderful that you reached out.
So, really good talking to you really enjoyed the film.
And I know if our audience haven't yet seen it, by the end of this, they will have watched it, and can share it, too.
Thank you so much for your time. Thank you very much, Peter. Really appreciate it.

Claudio Lessa - Twitter vs. Tyranny: Elon Musk and Brazil's Information War

In this compelling episode of Hearts of Oak, we sit down with Claudio Lessa, a journalist with over four decades of experience, to explore the complex landscape of Brazilian politics and media freedom. Claudio shares his journey from Brazil to the U.S. and his return, only to face political persecution. He discusses the temporary freedom during Bolsonaro's presidency, the contentious handling of the pandemic, and the alleged election irregularities leading to Lula's controversial return to power. Dive into the discussion on severe media censorship, the role of social platforms like X in resisting government overreach, and the ongoing struggle for democracy in Brazil. This is an essential listen for insights into the fight for truth in a climate of suppression.
Claudio Lessa, a multifaceted personality with a rich tapestry of experiences, was born in 1955 in the vibrant city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His life, split evenly between Brazil and the United States, has been a journey marked by a relentless pursuit of diverse passions and professional endeavours.Lessa's career in journalism spans several decades, where he has made significant contributions across various media platforms. He has worked with multiple television networks, bringing stories to life with his distinctive flair. His writing, featured in numerous newspapers, magazines, and online platforms, showcases his insightful commentary and provocative style. Lessa's work as a blogger further highlights his commitment to engaging with contemporary issues, often stirring the pot with his observations and analyses.Beyond journalism, Claudio Lessa is an accomplished singer-songwriter. His musical talents led to the creation of a recorded CD, reflecting his deep connection with Brazilian music and culture, while also exploring universal themes through his songs.His adventurous spirit also led him into the high-speed world of auto racing. As a member of the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA), Lessa indulged his love for speed and competition, adding another layer to his already diverse persona.Described as a provocateur and a sometimes "pain-in-the-ass," Lessa is known for his candidness and his ability to find humour in almost any situation, which has endeared him to many while challenging the status quo. This characteristic has made him not just a journalist or a musician, but a cultural figure who provokes thought, discussion, and often, laughter.Claudio Lessa's life story is one of crossing boundaries, both literal and metaphorical, between countries, careers, and personal interests. His ability to excel in journalism, music, and racing, while maintaining a sharp wit and a critical eye, makes him a unique figure in both the Brazilian and American cultural landscapes.
Connect with Claudio...𝕏                         @ClaudioLessa   x.com/ClaudioLessaGETTR               @CLNews   gettr.com/user/clnewsYOUTUBE           @ACLNews8   youtube.com/@ACLNews8
Interview recorded  20.9.24
Connect with Hearts of Oak...𝕏                         @HeartsofOakUK  x.com/HeartsofOakUKWEBSITE            heartsofoak.org/PODCASTS        heartsofoak.podbean.com/SOCIAL MEDIA  heartsofoak.org/connect/SHOP                  heartsofoak.org/shop/
*Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast.
Check out his art theboschfawstinstore.blogspot.com and follow him on 𝕏 x.com/TheBoschFawstin
Transcript
(Hearts of Oak)
And hello, Hearts of Oak.
I'm delighted to have a brand new guest with us today, going to discuss all things Brazil, regarding censorship and politics there, and it's Claudio Lessa.
Claudio, thank you so much for your time today.
Well, thank you, Peter.
Thank you for having me.
I'm delighted to join this live session here, and I'd like to tell you that I'm a journalist since 1976.
I've been working in Brazil for quite a while and then I moved to the United States in 1982 to work for the Voice of America and then I became a freelance journalist.
I worked for CBS.
I worked for many newspapers in Brazil and magazines and stuff.
And then I decided to go back to Brazil because I had some, you know, family problems to take care of there and I decided to you know try to spread the the everything that I had learned here in the United States about democracy and the importance of dialogue and discussion about everything openly.
But unfortunately, things didn't work out for me very well.
And I decided to come back, because I started being severely persecuted politically because when I started my own broadcast about three years ago.
All hell broke loose and I was you know, I suffered all sorts of Intimidations and threats and stuff.
I'm basically now I don't know if the the listeners and the viewers are familiar with the the so-called end of the world inquiry, It's the Brazilian Supreme Court under this proto-dictator that they have there, this bald guy that I don't pronounce his name, you know, because it's kind of contagious, you know.
But anyway, he decided to start this inquiry there that has been lasting for five years.
And I was included in there.
I was forced to go to the federal police and give explanations about my opinions, basically what I was writing on my newscast.
I have a newscast that goes on the air from Monday through Friday, every evening.
And I, you know, mix the news with a little bit of humour and a little bit of the comments and stuff.
But I'm just a newsman. You know, I'm just telling people what's happening and showing them what I think about it sometimes. And they didn't like it.
So, I was persecuted heavily.
And I said, well, it's enough.
Well let's get into all of that and for when you look at Brazil and anyone who's worked for Voice of America, fantastic.
So I can pigeonhole you kind of straight away.
That great and fantastic organization, but I mean in Brazil politically, do you want to to just explain because when Bolsonaro got in and he came in on a huge wave of popularity, was only there four years and then Lula was back in again after being president; what for two terms back 10, 12, years ago?
You had Dilma Rousseff, she was thrown out for whatever activities and then you had other people in for a short period of time.
But what what was that like from your point of view seeing Jair Bolsonaro coming in and being so vocal for common sense and on the right and for freedoms.
What were those four years like for you looking at it as a journalist?
Well Peter it was a a breath of fresh air basically, you know, After living there,
I got the whole Lula period and the bank robber period, too.
Dilma, she's a bank robber, a terrorist.
And I'm serious.
And when Bolsonaro came in, you know, it was a breath of fresh air.
You know, there was no more censorship. professorship.
He didn't prosecute any journalist whatsoever for whatever they, you know, if people told whatever they wanted to tell about him.
He didn't care.
You know, it's a free country.
Go ahead and whatever.
When it came to the issue of inoculations, it was right, you know, during that that presidency, that he got smacked with the inoculation fraud.
He said, well, he was kind of very candid.
He said, listen, I'm not taking it.
I don't want it. I don't think it's right.
But I'm importing this huge amount of vaccines here.
Whoever wants to take it, feel free to do it.
But the left was intent because they were joined by an international syndicate or whatever to force everything and create all sorts of trouble and all those masks and physical separation and whatever, you know, all that fraudulent aspect of the genocidal, you know, intent that they had.
And he just took on the same wave.
There were economic problems.
Brazil was under heavy pressure.
He had the best economy minister of the whole Republican Brazilian history.
His name is Paulo Guedes.
He was considered the best minister in the world. Sometimes, you know, he was awarded some, you know, thing about it.
And he rode that wave of pressure and made Brazil grow and produced surpluses after surpluses every time, economically speaking.
And what do you see now?
Well, what do you see now is, first of all, this man who is in charge right now of the government, you know, it was a fraudulent election.
It was rigged, completely rigged.
You know, proof is starting to appear, you know, little by little on social media with telephone calls and messages and stuff that's being unearthed, you know, about this whole thing.
What happened now?
We have a dictatorship.
The guy is a drunk man who doesn't, you know, he's not able to do anything.
Some people say he's already dead he was killed in November 5th, 2022 and there have been these people these look-alikes who've been filling in for him which is we cannot prove that but that's what they say.
What happened?
We have a judicial dictatorship.
The judicial ever since Bolsonaro was in power.
Well, they did two things.
First of all, they went to the military secretly and they said, can we smash this guy?
The military, well, no, no problem.
Go ahead.
So the military distanced themselves.
So what happened?
It's statistically proven.
Every week or 10 days, at least two instances where the Brazilian Supreme Court would create some sort of trouble regarding Bolsonaro's decisions or actions or whatever.
So, his life was a nightmare.
You know, his government, as far as being an executive, it was a nightmare. So, this happened for the four years.
And then they had the fraudulent elections.
Several things happened in front of everyone.
And I don't know.
Brazil is, for me, it's very disturbing, I think.
Because I don't like to live in a place where everybody pretends that nothing is happening, you know?
And that's what I felt. Because things were happening in front of our eyes.
You know, one of the so-called justice ministers, you know, a man, I mean, I'm not a man, but his name is Barroso, Luis Barroso.
He went to Congress once, and they were on the verge of voting the printed voting machines.
There's going to be a printer right next to the ballot, the electronic ballot box there that would do the following.
Following, you chose a number 28, and then the face of the candidate would appear on the screen.
And you said, well, yes, this is the candidate I want.
Well, before you press the confirm button to finish your choice, a piece of paper would come from a printer, isolated from you.
You could not touch it.
You could not get the paper or anything.
Right?
And you'd say, well, yeah, that's number 28 printed there.
So, I confirm that's 28.
Then you confirm and you leave and you voted for number 28.
Right now, what's happening is there's no printer.
There's no nothing.
So you go there, you choose 28.
The guy, the candidate 28 appears and you say, well, yeah, confirm.
Confirm, the machine will select 33 for you.
And nobody knows.
Nobody will ever know.
There's no way of auditing this thing.
So, this vote was crucial to make sure that the elections would be clean.
This guy crosses the street from the Supreme Court, goes to Congress, and forces the political leaders to change representatives who were voting for the audited vote like this with the printer system and stuff, to change the congressman to people who would vote against it. And then he killed it. This is a crime.
It's written on the Constitution.
And it's written since 1950.
It's a crime of responsibility. He had to be impeached because he committed a crime.
Nothing happened, you know, and so on and so forth.
And then comes along this bald guy, Mr. Alexandre de Moraes.
This guy is a disgrace. grace.
I mean, I've been, ever since August 2022, way before the elections, I used to do some commentary for some people, and I would say, listen, I am not a psychologist.
I'm not a doctor.
I'm not nothing like that. But from my observations, I believe this guy is a psychopath. You know, his actions are completely, you know.
Contrary to common sense or or reasonability or whatever you know the he just, he just, throws it and and everybody gets really afraid and stuff I can tell you right now, because I'm writing my my my newscast for today and I just got the news that says he decided to find X, which is suspended in Brazil right now under his censorship thing, he decided to find them five million Reais because, you know, a few days ago, X was suspended and they changed the provider.
They started using Cloudflare.
And for some reason, X came back on the air again for Brazilians.
And this guy was, you know, really, really mad.
And I'd like to know what kind of scale, what kind of table for fines he has.
You know, he just throws, you know, $5 million, $100,000, $10,000 every day, every 24 hours.
You have two hours to do this.
It's kind of crazy.
And nobody says anything.
Well, I want to delve into that.
But one thing I want to say is, for me, as a Brit, for a lot of our U.S. viewers who may be thinking Brazil, I mean, who cares?
But Brazil is 50% of the population of South America.
And when you look at actually the country that has a good leader, you're looking at Argentina. But that's like a quarter the size.
And Brazil is not a Paraguay or Uruguay or Bolivia.
It is a huge country in size and in population, and therefore it affects things massively.
Sol, I think that's why what's happening in Brazil is really concerning.
But, I mean, was it Bolsonaro?
Was it because, I mean, his bravery, his boldness on going up against the pharmaceutical industry and saying, I'm not having this jab, no way.
That set him apart from nearly every other world leader.
Was that the main reason why he was so targeted and why they couldn't let him?
Because if you've got a president that is against Big Pharma, then there's a problem because Big Pharma want to make a lot of money.
And he was being a bulwark, a stop to that.
But was that the reason why he basically couldn't be allowed to stay because of that?
Or was it other issues also?
Peter, this was one big chunk of the problem.
But that was not the entire problem.
That was not the basic problem.
Bolsonaro, first of all, he comes from the military ranks.
The military have been discredited in Brazil ever since the end of the the you know the the authoritarian period that ended in 1985 I guess or whatever when they had the amnesty and they decided to leave all these crooks come back allow these crooks to come back to Brazil and these communism, all that stuff, and they were assured by the amnesty, was a general and unrestricted amnesty, as it was called at that time, they would not ever be touched.
And what I mean is, during the military regime that lasted from 64 until 85, there were instances where both sides practiced, you know, bad things in terms of violence and killing and everything.
They killed people.
The military also killed people.
The military also tortured people just like the leftists did.
And there's ample proof of that on both sides.
But then when they came back, they said, no, we're not going to be touched anymore.
So, we can do whatever you want, because nobody's going to touch us.
And that's what happened.
And the military got totally discredited.
They went back and, you know, they reaffirmed their lack of credit when the electoral fraud in 2022 happened.
Millions of Literally millions of Brazilians went to the gates of all the military installations all over Brazil, asking them, please do something, you know, have these people sit down and do something about it.
You know, we cannot accept something like this.
Nothing happened.
What was the media?
And people went to jail because of that, you know.
And that is totally unacceptable, totally unacceptable.
How did the media play into it?
Are the media fully controlled? Is there free media?
Obviously, that's why they fear Elon Musk.
No, exactly.
Exactly.
No, no.
The media in Brazil is totally controlled by the left.
Totally, totally, totally controlled by the left.
So, you had this 24 hours, seven days a week, 30 days per month, 365 days a year of people writing and saying and broadcasting, you know, things that were untrue about Bolsonaro and forcing and creating this narrative of lies and lies and lies.
You know, but Bolsonaro allowed them to do this.
He kept telling them his side and they kept telling him their side.
It was a very bad situation in terms of the attempt of controlling the situation. Nobody knew who was going to control the situation.
Bolsonaro, on one hand, I believe, you know, although I am convinced that he was the best president that we had in our Republican history ever since Mr. Fonseca started it way, way back.
But I believe he...
You know, as a human being, was, you know, prone to make mistakes or to overlook whatever.
So, one of the things that I really, you know, miss that he should have done is every, you know, every couple of weeks or every week, basically, he went to the gates of the Alvorada Palace, and he met with the supporters there and stuff.
It was very friendly.
And then he said, well, I'm playing within the four lines, just like he was in a field, you know?
But if my adversaries want to play everything, you know, the go for all or whatever, I'm able to do the same thing too.
He never did.
And it was very clear that these people were not playing or observing the four lines or they were just, you know, screwing everything that they could in order to, you know, to demolish his presidency.
And on top of that, there was the rigged election, the fraudulent process that was horrible, and nobody did anything.
You know, the military were requested to supervise the, you know, part of the election when they were talking about computers, the ballot boxes, the electronic ballot boxes, they had, you know, to insert this, you know, program or whatever is in the software in there.
The military was very, very much capable of doing it and catching all the malign things that were being done to the software.
They were there. They didn't do anything.
They didn't complain.
There was a request later to get the, there's a term in computing that's called for the, it's the basic data that's in a computer.
They requested that thing.
Mr. Alexandre de Moraes said, no, I'm not going to give it.
And that was it.
That was it.
And the dance followed.
Everybody kept watching, you know, football and the soap operas and going to the beach and singing songs and whatever.
That's it.
This is what bothers me very deeply about Brazil.
You know, nobody takes action on something. And now even Bolsonaro is a little bit disappointing because he was the most hurt in all this process.
He was guaranteed a re-election because everybody is with him up to this date.
What does he say now?
You know, a few months ago, I listened to this. Oh, no.
2022 is a turn page.
We don't have to worry about it anymore.
What?
I mean, what does that mean if millions of people were in front of military installations?
Everybody is suffering from the economy.
You know, the economy in Brazil is melting right now.
Deficits on top of deficits you know all sorts of wrong-doings are being made all over the place and it's turned page, you don't get some people and decide why are you afraid of being called a dictator because the international media are going to call: oh, you see, he went and and he crushed the the the democratically elected government blah blah blah blah.
I don't know.
I mean, or is it because his wife is an evangelical woman and decided, oh, we have to turn the other face and, you know, not do anything.
These people, you know, God will punish them, but we will have to.
I don't know what's going on in his head, but Brazil is melting, you know, minute by minute, and nobody does anything.
Well, I'll end discussing kind of the other side effects of having Lulu in charge, but on the issue of censorship, and especially that Elon Musk and Twitter X are in the crosshairs of the government, how did that come about?
Why is Elon Musk suddenly the enemy of the Brazilian government?
Well, Peter, Elon Musk became an enemy of the Brazilian government because he bought X.
While X was under the other, you know, ownership, he was acting just like Facebook and Instagram and everything.
I was cut from Instagram overnight.
I was cut from Vimeo overnight.
I was caught from, there was one in France that I forgot the name, overnight.
And just because, why?
Because Mr. Alexandre de Moraes secretly decided to censor everybody who he does not like. And he issued these orders to these cronies that were totally afraid of saying anything or going against whatever he said.
And I'll give you a good example.
In 2022, I guess, Telegram was suspended in Brazil for several days, and then it returned afterwards.
Well, this Mr. de Moraes, this bald guy, this psychopath, he issued an order and published it everywhere.
All the newspapers saying, well, I'm suspending Telegram because of these nine reasons.
Well, six of the reasons had to do with a guy named Alan dos Santos, who lives here in the United States.
He's an exiled Brazilian journalist, too.
He was severely persecuted by, you know, the gang.
And...
Two other reasons were Bolsonaro, because Bolsonaro said this or that or whatever.
And the ninth reason was yours truly.
I didn't even know what was going on.
I was never told, not by the Supreme Court, not by Telegram, not by anybody.
There was a reason there.
I told Telegram to close Claudio Lessa's channel, and they didn't care about it.
Well, this was one of the reasons.
This is okay.
I mean, as far as censorship goes, that's how it works.
But the funny thing that I want to talk to you about is this.
On the six reasons about Alan DeSantis, he enumerated things there.
And one of the reasons was, I have ordered Telegram several times to talk to me about monetization of his channel, and Telegram never answered.
Well, I believe that a third-grade kid would know that Telegram does not monetize anyone.
So the thing is, why one of the cronies or the guys who are doing whatever they are doing there say, hey, Mr. Justice, please, you know, this one, it shouldn't be on the list because Telegram doesn't do it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
No, nobody said anything.
So, he showed everyone that he's arrogant, stupid, ignorant.
He doesn't know what he's talking about.
He just wants to be the big bully in front of the school, in the schoolyard.
That's what he's doing.
And to my amazement nobody does anything to stop this guy.
I mean I don't know.
Tell me the the this the individual who no one outside Brazil had heard of this that Elon Musk is basically going toe to toe with is he the head of the judicial system in Brazil?
This this guy this this bald head guy no he's not, his one of the 11 justices or so-called just nobody, no one there has been a justice before.
That's to make things worse.
But he's one of the 11, but since he's a bully, and he acts like a pseudo dictator or whatever.
Others are accomplices, others are timid, or they're afraid of going against them.
I don't know.
So he takes the front of the scene, and everybody stays looking.
For example, the situation there, Peter, is so bad. When there was the election, and, you know, these people are all together in the same bag.
They're all criminals. You know, one thing that happened, it was Mr. Barroso, who was the head of the electoral tribunal there, the electoral court, which is completely useless, very expensive.
And he was the guy in charge of that, but he's also a guy from the Supreme Court.
I have this recording with me, because I carried it for my own safety, you know.
He is in a Zoom meeting with the other 10.
He is in the middle of the screen, on the larger screen, and the other 10 are, you know, spread around him.
And he's saying the following lie. Listen, he is the president of the, you know, the utmost tribunal of, you know, taking care about elections in Brazil.
He says, you know, we cannot have at all this, you know, audited elections, this piece of paper coming from the printer because the voter will get this paper and take it to the drug dealer or to the militia, whatever, to show him that he voted for whom the militia guy told him to do, whatever.
Peter, the printer is going to be isolated from the voter.
He has just visual contact with a piece of paper that's coming out of the thing.
Now, you imagine this guy in this level saying this kind of lie.
And the other 10 never, ever uttered a word. Never said, hey, Barroso, hold on.
Things don't work like that.
No, this is not correct.
No, no, just people stay there looking and looking and looking and listening.
So this is the way things are happening in Brazil.
I'm not happy with it, so I left.
Well, how difficult is it for journalists?
You've got Elon Musk, and of course, that is the alternative media.
But yet you've got journalists like yourself.
It's bread and butter, more legacy.
That's your life.
What is it like?
You, I'm sure, talk to colleagues, friends, family back in Brazil.
How difficult is it to be a journalist that seeks truth and seeks to expose lies?
Well, Peter, it's basically an impossible task.
That's why I left Brazil, you know, after a while, after being persecuted in my work at the House of Representatives and outside my work, I came to the conclusion, my family, listen, one of these days, federal police is going to come here at six in the morning, going to arrest me.
I'm going to lose my job. I'm going to be killed, maybe.
I don't know.
So before that kind of thing, you know, happens, I might as well, you know, look for some other way of living and being able to live in peace and, you know, be able to say whatever I want to say without the risk of being punished so stupidly by these people, you know.
But the others who are there, they are all accomplices of this gang that's in power right now, this criminal gang that's in power right now, or they're totally afraid.
They're totally scared.
They don't say anything.
They just, you know, keep to themselves and do whatever, you know, and survive silently, you know.
Tell me what it's like. What else has happened under Lula?
Bolsonaro would seem to be he was more free market, Marcus wanted to encourage people to actually grow the economy, less state subsidies, more incentives to work.
The normal kind of what you have on the right that now Miele is trying to do in Argentina, which really has suffered economic decimation, I think, over decades.
But what's the economic situation like under Lula?
The economic situation under Lula is a tragedy.
We have, after Paulo Guedes, who was the best, as I said, the best minister of the economy in the whole Republican area, we have a basically illiterate man.
His name is Haddad, and I called him an Alfadad, like he was an illiterate man, you know, because in Brazil, the name illiterate, you say an alfabeto.
You don't, you know, so I changed the names and did this.
So this guy, he said it on television one day that he didn't understand diddly about economy.
And he took a three month course about the subject with his friends. And he was cheating on the test that was given, getting answers from his friends to fill the things there.
And that's the guy who is in charge of the economy.
So from there, you can see what's going on.
Now, let's go back a little bit.
Bolsonaro, well, way, way back.
Lula, a long time ago, said, well, I'm going to do the transposition of the San Francisco River to get water to the Northeast and da, da, da.
Good.
Everybody was hopeful that that thing would happen because the dry situation and the drought situation in the Northeast of Brazil is historical, terrible, and everything.
Nothing happened.
When Bolsonaro came in, Bolsonaro said, well, we're going to do the transposition. And he did it. Indeed, he did it.
The water went to the Northeast, to all the states in there and everything, all the ramifications and stuff.
Everything was working just fine.
The Northeasians were happy with that.
Then this guy came back and you can see videos on on maybe YouTube or whatever I got many from social media and stuff trucks full of dirt you know putting that dirt on the channels to stop the water.
They closed all the.
You know.
The valves and stuff.
And the water ended.
Why?
Because there is a mafia in the northeast.
Of trucks that carry water.
You know.
And distribute this water.
And these trucks are paid.
You know, dearly for this water.
And this is controlled by politicians of, you know, the the group of this of this guy.
So he killed everything a bridge in in in the north in the northern region of Brazil and, They made this huge bridge because what was happening at that time, every time you had a car or a truck and you had to go to the other side of the river, you had to pay like, you know, 200 Reais or 300 Reais and wait hours and hours for the, you know.
Well, the then minister Tarcisio Freitas, you know, built a huge bridge, ended up the problem.
The bridge is not working.
Now the ship, you know, you have to take the boat to cross the river again.
And the bridge is right there.
You can see it.
You can see this on social media that the videos are there.
I'm not making this up.
So this is how it is working now in Brazil.
That's what's happening.
This is a tragedy.
And, you know, nobody knows what to do because, because everybody's more concerned with, you know, soap operas, soccer. I don't know.
It's the same the world over.
Where does Lula's support come from?
You mentioned about Bolsonaro's wife being an evangelical Christian.
And you kind of, as a Christian and being to Brazil before to visit churches, and you hear about the large churches in Brazil, as you do in Colombia, be other parts of Almeria, but Brazil is known for having a large evangelical population.
How does kind of the voter breakdown work?
And how did, apart from fraudulent, yes, and I'm, except as I accept on the 2020 election, fraudulent also, but where does the kind of support base for Lula come?
Well, Peter, that's a very, very good question.
That's a $6 million question like they had in those days.
Because you see today, if Lula goes on the street by himself, he's going to be killed.
I'm not wishing that.
I'm just saying, stating as a fact, people hate him, despise him.
You know, he cannot go anywhere.
And if he tries any political whatever he wants to do, nobody shows up.
And this is also on social media everywhere.
Now, if you have Bolsonaro, oh, Bolsonaro landed here and he's going to eat a pizza at whatever.
The whole city goes there to see Bolsonaro and take pictures with him and stuff.
What does that mean?
It means that Bolsonaro has the support and the preference of the people.
So, what happened was a fraudulent process, a rigged election, and the support came from several sides interested in making Brazil a leftist country.
And then you can think of, you know, there is a guy who worked with the Venezuelan government.
He was arrested in Spain, and I believe he was sent to the United States.
His nickname was El Polio, a general there. He said that he has all the paperwork proving that he sent millions and millions and millions of Dollars to the Workers' Party, which is the criminal gang, you know, using a fantasy of a political party.
And that's where this Lula guy is in bed with.
This is a federal crime.
And if that is proven, if that is shown, this Workers' Party has to be cancelled and everything has to be voided and nullified.
I don't know.
I mean, there's this George Soros here in the United States.
I mean, these people, they are all connected.
You know, these people are all together working in the shadows and stuff.
Stuff and but in the practical terms what you can see is this guy as a president does not exist even no was when when you talk about executive decisions who are taking the executive decisions?
The judiciary, by this bald guy who decides to fine people to do this And they decide, oh, we have to work about the drought and the fire.
You know, the guy who was supposed to be doing this is not doing anything.
He's dead. I don't drunk or fooling around with this caretaker or going around visiting other countries or whatever.
I don't know what he's doing.
It is uncanny how Brazil resembles the U.S. in terms of what has happened. Exactly.
Can I finish off by, again, ending with the censorship side?
I think I'd read, well, Elon Musk said they had to close their office in Brazil.
Then there was talk of a daily fine. If you used Twitter, then that seemed to be removed. People obviously can use VPNs.
You can access Twitter or X just on X.com. It doesn't have to be the app.
But kind of there is a game being played here, a very dangerous game, and that's to do with people's access to information.
But what's the current situation?
Are there fines that people use it?
And how do people get around that?
Well, Peter, the thing is, this psychopath, he decided that there would be a 50,000 Reais fine, a daily fine for anyone who was caught using VPN to reach X, the platform.
The problem is this amount, which is equivalent to about $8,000.
The problem is people who understand about computers much more than I do say that it's impossible for you to be caught using VPN because the very basic philosophy and nature of the VPN is exactly to make you invisible.
You know, you start to being, for example, when I wanted, I was living in Brazil sometime, you know, a few years ago, I wanted to try to get a Mac Pro, and I wanted to know more about it.
So I tried getting into Apple and chatting with the lady.
No, no, you cannot do that because you're outside the United States, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Oh, yeah?
Right.
I got into VPN.
I chatted with the lady.
I got all the information that I needed.
Thank you very much.
Period.
Same thing here.
You know, you cannot be caught using that.
So, that's the very bully, you know, proposition that this guy has.
He's always threatening.
He's always intimidating.
He's always, you know, that's how he works.
So, this is what's going on.
Now, the X was suspended. It's not working right now.
For a brief, maybe 24-hour period, it came back because they changed the Cloudflare thing came back, but they already, Cloudflare already isolated their IPs or whatever, and X is already off the air in Brazil again.
Even so, as I told you in the beginning, this guy, the psychopath, he decided to fine X for 5 million Reais because of these 24 hours where X was briefly on the waves again and who decides what kind of money, what kind of fine, how is it done?
Why is it done?
Nobody knows.
The guy just wakes up in the morning, I'm gonna fine and that's it.
There must anger sorry just facial there must be anger in Brazil because, I mean in most countries X is the number one downloaded app and people rely on that to connect with each other exactly what's happening so there must be a lot of anger.
I mean if you ban it's like banning the most popular soap opera or TV program in a country that's going to come back and in a similar way.
I can't imagine this is going to gain Lula the much support.
No, the thing is, Peter, going back to the same thing that I told you, if in Brazil you have a soccer game, Flamengo and Corinthians, you know, two very popular teams in Brazil, and something happened there, the referee was, you know, stealing from one side or whatever, well, there's going to be trouble all over the place.
People are going to be wrecking whatever they find in front of them, Metro buses and attacking people and stuff.
Because anger is genuine.
Now, if this psychopath does something like that, people get angry.
They don't say anything.
They don't.
It's very weird.
I can't understand why, you know.
And these things bother me very, very much.
So I said, well, I have to live my life somewhere else.
Although I care deeply for Brazil, I want to help fix that situation.
I have my own ideas, and many of them I should not be disclosing them here.
But, you know, live like this, you know, swallowing frogs every day.
I don't think that's the way to live, you know.
You're 100%.
Claudio, I really do appreciate you coming on. Obviously, people can follow you on X-Twitter at Claudio Lessa. It's there on the screen.
The links are all below.
And I know the world watched Brazil closely during Bolsonaro's time.
And the focus has been back on Brazil because of this censorship.
So it is an issue which massively concerns all of us, especially because of the size and influence of Brazil. But thank you so much for giving us your time and explaining a little bit of what's happening in Brazil.
Okay, Peter, thank you so much. And if I may, I would like to suggest the viewers to look for me on YouTube, which is @A-C-L-N, oh wait a minute it's @ACLN8 That's basically it.
Okay.
I will put that link in the description so people can just click on that.
ACLN, which is News 8.
The N followed by EWS. ACLN EWS 8. I'm sorry for the confusion, but that's a new channel that I started.
And the other one that I had, like 300,000 people has been cut off from monetization.
So I had to try something else.
As we all try and get around that, but make sure the links will be in the description, as we always put in the description, whether you're watching or listening, a list of all the links for all our guests.
I appreciate that.
You can always find it there.
But Claudio, appreciate your time. It's always good to have someone on brand new.
Get to meet them for the first time.
So, thanks for give us your time today.
Thank you so much, it was an honour, it was a pleasure.
And I appreciate people will get to know a little bit more about Brazil by watching this
Thank you