Latest / UK Column Radio / Switch the Stories To Find the Truth — with Katharine Gun | UK Column Interviews

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Switch the Stories To Find the Truth — with Katharine Gun | UK Column Interviews · UK Column Radio

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Hello everyone. This is Diana Rasmissing with UK Column and
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: I'm really happy to have back on our channel today
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Catherine Gunn, who has been interviewed by Charles Mallett in
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty five and also was one of our featured
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: speakers at our Cheltenham event last year, which was amazing
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: because we met directly across the street from GCHQ and
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Cheltenham and Catherine Gunn, as we'll hear about today, it
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: was of course a former employee of UCHQ and has
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: amazing stories to tell about the incredibly brave and courageous
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: and i'm sure terrifying whistle blowing she did back in
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: two thousand and three in defense of the British people
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: and indeed worldwide. So Catherine, thanks again for joining us
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: in a UK column again today. It's great to have
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: you here.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: Thank you. Ian.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: It's just great to see you. We's such a big
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: part of us over the years, and you've created such
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: interest amongst our community of UK column members and supporters
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: that I thought it would just be great to have
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: you on again and again talk about what you've done.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: But also as you and I have had lots of
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: conversations over the past several months about a range of things.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: I just thought it would be great to have some
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: conversation about what's going on in the world and our
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: shared thoughts about things that we've shared over lots of chats,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: and just kind of give people some I guess, some
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: hope and some perspective on some things that I think
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: you can certainly bring to us. So I'm not sure
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: you would like to start from here, but if you
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: want to, maybe just for those of us in the
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: audience who might not know your story, I will put
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: a link to the previous interview that you did with
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Charles Mallett last year. But if maybe you just want
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: to summarize quickly the courageous event that or range of
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: events that started back up in two thousand and three.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. So I was working at GHQ in two
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: thousand and three. I was twenty five, twenty six, and
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: i'd only been there for two years, and the war
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: on Iraq was very much in the news, and I
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: saw an email while I was at work on a
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Friday morning, which basically was a request from the American
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: version of GCHQ NSAY to intercept the secure communications of
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: diplomatic members of the UN, the UN Security Council members,
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: to essentially bribe them or even blackmail them into supporting
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: the US invasion of Iraq because they wanted a legal
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: cover for it, and they they were desperate to get
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: the UN to authorize the invasion. And so when I
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: saw the email, I leaked it, and eventually I was prosecuted,
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: and yeah, they dropped the They eventually dropped the charges
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: against me. So that all happened in two thousand and three.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: In two thousand and four, which feels like a lifetime ago,
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: and you had.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: A film made about you. I believe kre Knightley played
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: you in a film as it.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: Was very surreal, very surreal experience. Yeah, I mean that
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: that all came about much much later. You know, I
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: had no intention of any of that ever happening, but eventually,
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: you know, it did. In two thousand and nine it
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: was released, sorry twenty nineteen, rather it was released, and
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: I'm very pleased with how it was made. I mean,
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: actually the director, Gavin Hood, he came to meet me
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: personally and actually pretty much rewrote the script based on
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: interviews with me and also interviews with the journalists involved
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: and interviews with the lawyers. Involved, and so the whole
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: thing was very much based on fact and reality. And yeah,
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: I'm really pleased with how it turned out.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: That's really good to hear because there are so many
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: stories that get told in films that are supposedly based
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: on true stories that are actually not.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: So oh yeah, I mean it could have turned out wild.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: It could have turned out wild because the first iteration
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: of that script was nothing like, nothing at all like
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: what really happened. So this is why I say Gavin Could,
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: who had basically rewrote it, because you know, when he
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: saw that the script, the original script didn't align with
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: the fact, he said, well, I really need from his
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: point of view as well, he wanted to tell the
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: truthful story. So credit to him as well as the producer.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: They really wanted it to be a truthful account.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: That's great, I mean, because your story is based on
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: telling the truth and getting the truth out there. For
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: them to have fictionalized the story would have been particular hypocrisy.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: And I mean the first installment, you know, it was
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: so bizarre. It was obviously they were trying to Hollywood
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: eye it or whatever. They had sort of these scenes
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: where there was some sort of sexual tension between me
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: and the journalist, which is just absurd and obscene, you know.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: And I because at the time, actually I was newly married,
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: you know, we'd only been married about six months when
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: the whole when I leaked this this email, So the
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: idea that I would be yeah, it's just.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: You know, I guess as well. You know, I'm really
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: happy that you've contributed to our new magazine, the Column.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: The first issue will be out by the time this
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: interview is aired, and I have to say it's available
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: in the UK column Shop for those who would like
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: to buy a copy. And you know, we decided that
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: for each issue of the Column, because this is a
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: brand new magazine and we started completely from scratch for
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: UK column It's an interesting thing because it's a return
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: to print. Actually UK Columns started when Brian Gersh created
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: the Devonport Column back in two thousand and six. Oh
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: and it was originally printed on a four paper and
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: distributed as a newsletter. And so for us to come
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: back to or for Brian, I guess, to come back
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: to print after these years of evolving into video and
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: live news and interviews like this one and all of
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: the sort of podcasts that we're doing now. It's a
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: return to print, but it also I think is safety
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: in a way because if the regulator is of Offcom,
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: if anyone decides, you know, because we're constantly facing these
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: bands and shadow bands and restrictions that if they were
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: eventually to say no, that can't be streamed across the
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: internet anymore, we still have a way to get messages
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: out to our members and subscribers.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and having a hard copy print of something, it's
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: definitely you know, you can share it with other people
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: easily within the family, can pass it on to neighbors,
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: you can keep it hopefully and you know, let your
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: children or anybody else you know, read it in the future.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: And it's it can't be edited, you know, it can't
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: be changed like even digital copies can be altered exactly.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: And we're seeing that in print.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: It's in print, yeah, yeah, And we're seeing that with
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: you know, Amazon Kindle and other things where they are
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: literally going back and changing things that were written one way,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: and it's easy for them to just go in and edit,
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: copy paste something that they don't like and change it
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: to something else. So of course, as viewers who know
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: me know I'm a librarian, originally and still will always
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: will be at heart that that breaks my heart when
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: they decide to go in and change something that should
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: be preserved for the future. And you know, it council
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: ties into our first theme because every issue is going
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: to have a theme, but with other articles included. But
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: the theme for issue one just happened to be war,
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: which we decided last year before the recent breakout of
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: things involving Iran. And it's interesting looking back now. I
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: know at this point you haven't seen the articles from
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: the other authors, but it is interesting to look at
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: how we planned it last year to say, Okay, here
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: are the issues, here's what's going on with war, the
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: case for war, like in your article, the propaganda that
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: all of the things that come out, and how these
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: things are orchestrated, and ultimately the toll on lives and
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: people and societies. I think what we see, including your work,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: which I'd love to hear you talk about your work
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: as well, but what I'm seeing overall is that it
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: is a system and it is kind of a repetition
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: that is put in place to convince the public that
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: we actually should be going in and killing people. And
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: the propaganda, of course as you know very well, and
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: all of the things behind what leads us into these
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: situations are absolutely essential to understanding how the things are
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: orchestrated of ours. Yeah, so if you maybe want to
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: talk about your article, your contribution in your words, I
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: think that would be really helpful for people.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean really, looking back, you know, over the
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: last twenty five years, there is a pattern and what
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: really always blows my mind is that for a lot
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: of people, including journalists who were involved in my initial
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: case who blew you know, who covered my leak, and
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: a lot of the people that I thought were anti
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: the Iraq War ended up being pro most of the
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: other wars. And it was just really including actually the
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: person who I passed the leak to, the sort of
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: intermediary person who passed it on to a journalist. They
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: they were full on supportive of regime change in Syria,
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: and many, many people were all for regime change in Syria.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: And it's because, I think, you know, from the Iraq
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: War propaganda advantage point, they realized that it's very hard
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: to prosecute a war based on allegations of weapons of
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: mass destruction, and so you know, these people they learn
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: they're constantly evaluating how they've managed to get where they
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: need to go and the successors and the failures, and
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: so they have to change things if they realize there
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: was massive opposition to the Iraq War, you know, but
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: they still managed to bulldoze their way through it, and
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: so they had to come up with something else for
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: all these various other countries that they'd already planned, you know,
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: the seven countries in five years that they'd already planned
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: to take out and disrupt. And so with Libya there
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: was all this crazy stuff about you know, the using
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: giving viagra to to the soldiers so that they would
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: rape people, and so, I mean, it was just insane
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: kind of narrative building, just as it was with Syria,
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: you know. I mean, Pierce Robinson and various others have
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: done amazing work unpicking all the lies they told about Syria,
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: and they're still you know, unpicking those lies. And it
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: goes to the point where the OPCW, the Organization for
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and so on. You know,
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: they they themselves became politicized, a very young international organization
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: that was meant to be doing good work and was
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: doing good work originally on Iraq, for example. But it
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: got politicized, and you know, it got infiltrated, basically, and
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: to the point where it was peddling lies on Syria
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: and about you know, use the use of seren gas
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: and other chemicals by the Asset government on its own people.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: And why would they, Why on earth would why why
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: on earth would they do such a thing. And there
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: was no evidence of it. And so but those lies,
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: they they spread around the world rapidly. Everybody is incensed
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: and you know, up in arms about it, and before
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: anybody's had time to actually check, they've rolled in with
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: their agenda. And we see this over and over and
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: over again. The forty you know, beheaded babies in Israel.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: Obviously that was all a lie. Then I still hear
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: people touting the three hundred thousand people killed by the
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: Iranian you know, regime, when there's no evidence of three
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: hundred thousand people. That's another lie, you know, And it's
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: easily proven because or disproven really because just by sheer numbers,
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: it's very difficult, difficult to kill three hundred thousand people,
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: you know, in Gaza, even with the exten bombardment of
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: entire densely populated areas, within you know, the first three
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: months of bombardment. I'm saying they only I mean, it's
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: a terrible thing. They killed sixty thousand people within the
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: first three to four months of the intensive, extremely intensive
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: bombardment to Gaza. So how on the world could Iranian government,
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: how did they physically kill three hundred thousand people in
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: a matter of a couple of weeks. You know, they
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: don't even they can't tell you how it happened. What
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: happened was around three thousand people were killed, which the
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: Iranian authorities themselves have admitted to. But then, you know,
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: Trump recently admitted that they actually armed these people who
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: were causing chaos on the streets of Iran. So these
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: are not you know, they may have started off as
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: people with genuine concerns about cost of living and the
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: way things were going in the country, and they came
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: out to protest, but as soon as there were people
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: on the streets, the agent provocateurs immediately jump into action
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: and they blow the thing out of all proportion and
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: cause absolute mayhem, you know, and are setting fire to
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: shops and homes and burning people alive in mosques. I mean,
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: these are not your average protesters. Clearly. And so when
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: the authorities come in and try to bring about calm,
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: they kill people. Other people got killed. You know, It's
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: imagine what happened, you know in the Ice protests in
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: the US. You know, imagine if those protesters were armed
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: and we're shooting at people. Can you imagine what the
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: US authorities would do. So, yeah, the last twenty five years,
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: for me, it's just been case after case of switching
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: the story slightly in order to achieve regime change. And
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: they've managed to do this in six of the cases
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: that they wanted to in six countries. Well, Lebanon, they're
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: still trying. Well Lebanon, I mean, Vanessa knows a lot,
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: Vanessa Bili knows a lot more about what's going on there.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: But I mean, so now we're at the final, the
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: final country that they wanted to take down, which was Iran,
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: and it's not going well for them clearly. And I
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: think they suspected that's why they left it to the last,
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: because they knew they had to take out all the
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: other supporting pillars around Iran so that they could successfully
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: take down Iran. But I fear, like people like Brian
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: Bletick as well, fears that this is going to be
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: another one of these long drawn out processes, which is
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: you know what Syria had to go through, very long
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: drawn out process to the point where eventually the people
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: were so worn down, so impoverished, so susceptible to corruption
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: because they were so impoverished, that eventually they could undermine
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: the structure through bribery and so on and get people
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: to switch sides and top of it. Now, whether this
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: is going to be successful in Iran, I hope not,
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: but I suspect this is how they're also going to
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: try and do it with it.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: I remember so clearly. Now it sticks with you, I
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: think for those of us who we're paying attention during
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: nine to eleven. And you know, sometimes when I talk
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: to people and I say, well, what woke you up
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: to what's happening in the world. Some people will say
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: it was twenty twenty. Some people will say it was
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: the moon landings. Some people will say other things that
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: have happened over the past several decades. For me, it
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: was nine to eleven, and it was because I guess
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: at that point I had remembered as well, growing up
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: in America, I remembered the first go War in sort
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety, and I remember the fear then I
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: was in eeteen ninety, I was fifteen, and I remember
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: that fear of watching the coverage on CNN and that
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: they were apparently the scene and journalists standing in Rio
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: with wearing the gas masks and hearing the air raid sirens,
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: and at that age I was terrified. And I also
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: saw it affecting my family because my parents were arguing
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: about the reasons for it, where my father was saying
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: it was for the freedom of the American people, my
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: mother was saying it's about oil and money. And all
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: I knew was I didn't like the fact that my
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: parents were fighting and that I was terrified and I
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: couldn't sleep at night. So at that point, obviously the
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: fear was still affecting me. But by the time nine
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: to eleven happened, and again the fear took over again.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: But then you start to watch what happened over time,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: and you start I was really at that point getting
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: very interested in global events and politics and US politics,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: and probably even more than like you, I guess the
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: average twenty five year old would have been, you know,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: at that time in two thousand and one and I
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: was listening to a lot of different radio shows and realizing, maybe,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: you know, why are we going into Iraq If they're
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: saying that Osama bin Laden this was the story, right,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Sam bin Laden and his affiliates were the ones who
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: took down the World Trade Center. Going by the official narrative,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: why are we going into Iraq? And what does this
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: have to do with Saddam Hussein? And it really people
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: were just accepting that as fact because it was just
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: out there. Well, you know, the Twin Towers were taken down,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: so therefore we now have to go and look for
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: these weapons of mass destruction.
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: And so it was.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: Interesting to me at that point. And I'm mentioning this
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: because you said in your interview with Charles Mallett that
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: that nine to eleven was one of the things that
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: started to make you look at what was actually happening,
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: and then that leading into this case for war in
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: two thousand and three. It is interesting to see how
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: those patterns were established back then, and as you've said,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: the past twenty five years, we're still living in it,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: and now we're at the twenty fifth anniversary of nine
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: to eleven this year in twenty twenty six, and I
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: also remember thinking about the axis of evil. If you
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: remember George Bush saying the access of evil, which was
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: the apparently the countries that were part of this para network,
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: which included Iran and lots of countries in the Middle
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: of East, as you've discussed. So I'm not sure what
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: you think about that, but it's my observation that this
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: was being set up even back then to say, well,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: people are going to remembering, well, twenty five years ago
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: they said, well, this is the access of evil. Iran
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: is involved, we now need to take them down. And
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: now Trump is just following everything that they've been.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean Iran, you know, since since nineteen seventy nine,
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: since the Iranian Revolution, has been basically a target, right
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: because obviously, I mean you can go back even further,
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: because you know it in nineteen fifty four, the British
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: and the American overthrew the democratically elected government in Iran
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: in order to install a more pliable shah, the son
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: of the original Shah, because they just wanted to take
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: the oil. I mean, this is what it's all about.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: They want the oil and they don't want to give
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: a fair price for it, you know, I mean, I
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: think when they said at the time in nineteen fifty four,
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: they tried to, I mean they did. They Basically there
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: was a lot of propaganda about the President of Iran
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: then saying he was a communist. Dute, he wasn't. He
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: was far far away from being a communist. I mean,
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: he was a nationalist and perhaps center left slightly, you know,
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: but he simply wanted the Ranians to be able to
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: invest in the country using the oil wealth, and he
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: wanted bp in these big corporations to pay reasonable price
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: for it, you know, like a fifty to fifty deal
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: or a sixty to forty deal. But no, they don't
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: want to do that. They want an eighty or twenty deal.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: They want Iran getting twenty percent of the profits and
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: then creaming eighty percent of the profits. And this is
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: what you see in other countries, like in Venezuela, when
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: the US goes in, it's like, now we take the
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: vast majority of the profits. You get left with the crumbs.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: And so again, you know, this is what Iran is.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: They're trying to keep the oil wealth for themselves so
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: that they can continue to support their nations, support their people,
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: keep building infrastructure and renewing. I mean, because these things
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: cost money, as we can see with our own crumbling
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: infrastructure in our own countries. If all the profits are
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: creamed off to the shareholders, none of it is invested
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: back into this, you know a lot, Especially the UK,
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: we've got extremely old infrastructure from the Victorian age, and
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: you know, they've got to keep upgrading it to keep
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: up with the increase in volume and increase in population.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: But they don't. That they haven't been doing for a
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: long time because the shareholders keep taking all the profits. Anyway,
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: I'm on a rant.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: That's okay, it's understandable, you know, and it's kind of
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: what she said in your interview with Charles as well.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: And I completely agree with you that they will. That
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: they're good at taking an important cause, let's say the environment,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: and making it into something that they can profit from,
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: which is interesting when you see what's happening locally here
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: in the UK with things that being funded properly. Potholes
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: all over the roads. I keep doing one and more
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: about this, you know, tires being destroyed, wheels being destroyed
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: because that they can't maintain the roads.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: And the water, you know, water pipes bursting everywhere, and
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: just the rivers being polluted because they're not dredging them
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: properly and they're not keeping them waterways clear and that's
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: causing floods and yeah, it just goes on and on there.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah it does.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: And then we're seeing well climate finances is that's where
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: we're taking money, funneling it through the City of London
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: and wherever it's being funneled through to other places. That is,
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: you know, British taxpayer money going into supporting these things
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: which are not actually beneficial and really not helpful, truly
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: helpful the environment in ways that could be meaningful, but
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: they're not because they're going to wherever the money is
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: going to, and it's disgraceful. But that you know, there
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: are a lot of things as we could, We could
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: talk about a lot of things going on locally in
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: this country. But because I have you here with me today,
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: I think one of the things that I wanted to
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: hear you talk about. As you know, I'm sure one
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: of the topics that Brian gerrishnein in particular cover are
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: issues around child safeguarding and child trafficking and child abuse.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: And this leads me to I would like to hear
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: you tell a story about what happened to you and
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: your daughter at an airport just a few months ago.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: I will leave you to tell the story.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: That's okay, oh gosh, yeah, well, I mean really, it
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: was just the most bizarre experience. It was the end
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: of January, and that's when, you know, because I'm normally
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: based in Turkey. Turkey year and so they don't get
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: Christmas holiday, they don't get New Year's holiday, they get
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: their end of first term is end of January, and
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: they get a two week winter holiday. So normally what
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: we've done is go back to the UK to visit
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: family around that time. So you know, it's something we've
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: done routinely, and so this year we went back exactly
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: as we normally do. It's used just me and my
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: daughter and yeah, so we got this flight. It was
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: with Jet two and and the flight was delayed by
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: two hours, so by the time we got on the
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: plane we were quite tired. It was a evening flight,
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: so you know, we were hungry, we were tired. We
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: got on the flight with all of our bags and
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: of course we tried not to take check bags because
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: of course check bags cost an extra you know, fifty pounds.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: So we were like bugging our two weeks worth of
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: winter clothing and to carry on luggages. So we were
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: struggling with backpacks and carry on luggage. And we got
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: on this flight and the stewardess she sort of looked
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: at me, and I know, they've done an outbound journey already,
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: and they'd probably had they'd obviously had to wait the
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: two hours delay and then they were going back. So
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: these people worked quite a long shift already. But nevertheless,
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: she wasn't at all welcoming. She didn't say like, oh,
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: you know, welcome, or how do you do or how
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: are you or anything like that. She just said boarding cards.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: And I was holding both of our boarding cards, because
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: you know, normally I do, even though my daughter's seventeen,
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: someone's got to hold the boarding cards, and to be honest,
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: I don't really trust her to not lose that little stub.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: So I was holding both the boarding cards and I
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: passed it to her and then she said, so my
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: daughter was behind me. She said, is that young lady
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: traveling with you? And I was like, yes, uh, you know,
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: why else would I give you her boarding card? Anyway,
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: I let that go, because I just thought, whatever, weird
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: And we struggled down to the back of the plane
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: with our bags and got ourselves seated and comfortable, and
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: my daughter was sat on the aisle seat. I was
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: sat in the middle, and there was a bloke, an
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: individual bloke on his own by the window, and you know,
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: we just we were minding our own business through the flight.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: My daughter put her headphones on, she was listening to
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: her music. And it's a four hour flight. We got
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: to the UK. At one point my daughter Now remember this,
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: my daughter got up and went to the loop by
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: herself and came back and sat down. So then we
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: land at the airport in the UK and we go
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: to the exit and as we're at the exit, I
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: look up and see there are three police officers. At
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: first I don't notice them, but then when they said
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: is your name Catherine Gunn, I went yes, and and
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: so we were like what anyway, They said, please follow
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: us down the stairs and we like to have a
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: word with you on the tarmac. So we go down
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: the stairs and a female officer takes my daughter to
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: one side and I get taken to the other side
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: with two male officers. Meanwhile, the rest of the plane
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: is disembarking, and there are shuttle buses and they're all
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: piling into the shuttle buses and kind of looking at
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: us like what's going on there? And so the police
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: officer says to me, do you understand why you're being detained?
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: I said no, and then he said, well, someone on
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: the plane reported you about child's safeguarding concerns. And I
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: was like what. And I couldn't understand what they were
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: talking about, because at first I was like child safeguarding,
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: So did somebody did somebody report me for abusing my daughter?
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Like what?
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: So then I got really indignant and I was like,
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: how what on earth are you talking about. I'm the
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: best mum in the world, is right, And then they
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: were like, we're not disputing that. But then they said, well,
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: the one of the air hostesses believed that your child
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: was a victim, or that they didn't say your child,
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: that young person was a victim because they didn't make
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: eye contact. Hello what. I was apoplectic. I was furious.
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: I could not believe what they were saying. It eventually
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: clicked that they suspected I was trafficking someone a young person.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: Now my daughter is taller than me, she has darker
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: complexion than me. She looks like my death, my husband,
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: she looks like her father, and she had a head covering,
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: so you know, we don't really look like we're related.
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: But all you need to do is check our passports.
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: You know, they didn't do that. They didn't do any
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: sort of checks, not on the flight. Nobody on the
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: flight had asked me or her any questions. They had
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: plenty of opportunities to ask her if she was all right.
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: They just suspected, I think, on the basis that she
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: looked different to me, and that she was very quiet,
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: and she was, you know, not really interacting with me
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: all that much. But they thought they just got it
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: into their head for whatever reason, they thought she was
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: being trafficked. And I was just furious. I was absolutely
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: outraged that they didn't. There was no due diligence. I
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: don't think they followed their own kind of guidelines on
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: what what are the red flags for trafficking, because I've
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: actually looked up what are the sort of institute authorities
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: for you know, trafficking on airlines what those guidelines are,
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: And yes, not making eye contact is one is one
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: of many as is not holding onto their own boarding card.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: That's also a potential red flag. But I don't believe
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: you can go off just two red flags, you know,
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: because there were no other issues. And like I said,
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: if I had been actually trafficking her, heaven forbid, I
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: would have put her in the middle seat, not the
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: aisle seat. I would have gone with her to the
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: toilet and made sure she didn't talk to anybody, you know.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: But no, because obviously I'm just a normal person traveling
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: with my daughter on a flight. Of course jet too.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: They refused to take They refused to acknowledge that they
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: made a mistake. I've complained and complained and complained. I've
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: written letter after letter demanding that I see their internal guidelines,
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: what they use for their basis in assessing whether someone
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: is being trafficked. I've even asked for their internal policies
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: on complaints, and they refuse to give me either of
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: those things. They basically just said, we apologize, and that's it.
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: It's disgusting, frankly, because it caused a lot of distress.
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: You know, we had three hundred people watching us throughout
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: this whole entire ordeal. The taxi was delayed he was
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: trying to get in touch with me, and you know,
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: I couldn't tell him that I was being questioned by police.
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: In the end, they just left us. They just walked away.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: Actually at the end, they just turned around and walked
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: off the police. And my daughter said, because as she
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: was supposedly the victim, the female police officer was very
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: nice to her and said sort of did you want
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: to come to this country? And she was like, yes,
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: you know, we come every year, and I'm the one
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: who wants to come. Oh, who are you visiting? My granddad?
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: And what's his address? You know, And then the female
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: police officer said to my daughter, why do you think
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: your mother is so angry? My daughter was, I think
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: there's been a miscommunication or a misunderstanding, and the police officer,
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: the lady police officer, said, yes, I can see there's
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: been definitely a misunderstanding. It's not good enough. You know,
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: you don't just rock up to a plane on the
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: basis that the host air hostess decided that she doesn't
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: like the look of this. These two people sat there.
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: She thinks they're fishy. You know, you can't do that.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: And so many assumptions and it almost it feels like
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: there's almost a racist element to me that they're just.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: I think so. I thought so at the time. I
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: was like, is it if she hadn't been any job,
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: do you think they would have stopped us?
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: I don't think so, right, because they could have looked
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: at your boarding cards and your passports and seen, well, yes,
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: these people are related, but no, they're just making assumptions
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: based on appearance and able assumptions. It's it's really wear well,
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: and you know, I'm really sorry for what you went through.
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: I can't imagine what that would feel like. Being stopped
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: by police for any reason whatsoever at the airport must
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: be terrif.
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: Wow, and I found it extremely triggering.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: Of course you would, of course you you have this
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: experience that as you would. But you know, I hope
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: that there's something that I know you said. I think
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: when we spoke last week that you're still trying to
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: pursue this and you have a bit more time to
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: to get a complete through. Is that correct or wow?
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: I was thinking of pursuing it through the small court
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: and basically on the grounds that I believe it was discriminate,
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: discriminatory racial discrimination. Yeah, yeah, we'll see we'll.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: See and and and you know, again we're talking about distractions, systems,
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: things that distract from what's actually happening. And so if
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: if we want to think about safeguarding and child abuse
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: and what things that are real problems. I know something
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: that you have been interested in as well as a
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: mother is the things that I talk about on You
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: can column a lot of ends contents of books, children's books, sexual,
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: violent content being placed in front of children. And I
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: know you've sent me something recently that caused additional alarm
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: for you. If you maybe want to share with the
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: audience what it was that you found that was very interesting.
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, so I'm careful about, you know, what content
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: my daughter has access to, although I'm you can't control everything.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: But while when she was younger and was an avid reader,
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: I signed up to a clean, clean books list or
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: something like that. So basically it's yeah, so they sent
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: out regular emails about new books or books or books
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: that are basically clean. They don't have a lot of
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: they don't have foul language, they don't have violence, they
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: don't have sexual content, and so on. So recently I
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: got one of these emails and at the bottom of
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: the email, the author had put a big signage saying
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: please read. Please take note. She'd recently been contacted by
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: an author of young adult fiction who well, this was
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: back in November twenty twenty five. This young adult fiction
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: writer had attended a sort of gathering of publishers and
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: so on, and at that sort of annual gathering of publishers,
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: they had stated that by twenty twenty seven, they wanted
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: all young adult fiction to contain on page sexual content,
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: So not just references to it behind closed doors, or
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: not just people discussing it as a topic, but graphic
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: descriptions of sex, and you know, for young adults, which,
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: as this author had pointed out, often is accessed by
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: children as young as eight or nine. You know, so
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: anywhere between eight to twelve year old or fourteen year
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: old children. From twenty twenty seven onwards, all books published
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: from twenty twenty seven, according to this author, will all
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: have every single book will have graphic sexual content. And
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: you got to ask yourself, why why is that necessary?
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: To sell boat?
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I can share one thing is I
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: have a source who has leaked to me that publishers
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: are basically requiring it already and I know this from
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: kind of a different channel, which is publishers that are
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: announcing or looking for commissioning books, that it's actually part
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: of their requirements when you submit a proposal or a
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: manuscript for a child's book, young adult book, that there's
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: some element of sexual content of if you want to
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: call it LGBTQ, you know these general themes and basically
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: the publishers will not accept it unless it's got some
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: elements of this in it. The work that I've done
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: on this did a talk for the Hope Sussex event
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: that UK column did it last year at a festival
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: that sounds beautiful festival, No, that sounds beautiful, Hope Sussex
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: Katie Joe Murfphin's event, where I called it how to
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: be a Globalist librarian. And one of the things that
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: they're looking for is that they have signed agreements with
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: the UN even you know, World Health Organization policies that
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: are saying that basically, this is what they call the
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: UN Rights of the Child, and what this means is
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: that children have the same rights as adults and therefore
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: have the right to read about sex, to consent to
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: sex too. And they're using this some people are saying
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: as a gateway to pedophelia to you know, early sexualization
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: of you know, that is not appropriate. And so the
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: publishers have signed agreements with the un which then all
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: just gets filtered down into the bookshops and to the
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: libraries and two of us stocking and selling this content.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: So it starts at the top and filters down. So unfortunately,
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: what you're hearing is consistent with other reports that I've
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: been receiving and what I've been finding myself. There is
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: again going back to safeguarding. One thing that can happen is,
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: of course, as a social worker said to me, if
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: one of the ways that they used to look for
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: indications of actual child safeguarding issues, not what happened to
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: you and your daughter, but actual issues, is that children
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: know about sex, they know about violence, they know about
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: things that they shouldn't know about at their age, which
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: means that they have been already been indoctrinated or exposed
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: to something. But if all children get it because it's
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: part of the curriculum at schools or it's in the
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: library books, then they can't differentiate, because all children know
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: things that they should know that you and I wouldn't
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: have known about it there, and so it makes it
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: more difficult for them to pick out those who are
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: being great upon or other things happening to them if
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: they're all exposed to the same content. So it is very,
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: very evil in my opinion.
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean I discussed it with my daughter actually,
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: and she was shocked when I pointed that out, that
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: you know that it as you just say that it
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: was blurring the line so that it would be harder
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: to detect. But I mean, we know from all sorts
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: of research that porn is addictive and and that these
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: sort of things. I mean, children who have access to
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: the Internet already have access to pawn. So I mean
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: this has been discussed endlessly. So all this stuff about
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: protecting children online, you know, there's a lot of conflicting
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: the whole. Every all their narratives just kind of bounce
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: off each other because they don't they're not coherent in
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: any way, shape or form. So when they talk about, oh,
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: you know, we must censor online content to protect children.
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: On the one hand, bringing in digital id for everybody,
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: because in order to access the Internet, you have to
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: give your digital ideas. How they're obviously trying to push this.
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: But then on the other hand, you've got all these
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: books out in the library and in the bookshops which
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: are essentially tantamount to porn, you know, in many respects.
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: And then yeah, I mean, when they when they talk
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: about children have on the one hand, all these freedoms
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: supposedly they have, well not freedoms, but all these rights,
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: they don't extend the same rights to them, for instance,
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: to drive, because it's not safe for a child to drive.
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: It's not safe for a child to drink alcohol. You know,
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: it's not safe for a child to go off and
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: live on their own, you know. So the right thing
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: is also a very muddy area because they say, on
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: the one hand, children have the right, based on Gillick
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: competencies to decide whether they should have contraception, whether they
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: should get the covid JAB convid JAB as I call it,
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: and you know, whether they should have cross sex hormone
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: or hormone blockers and all this kind of things. So
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: that's all based on Gillick competencies supposedly, So they pick
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: and choose what children have the right to and not
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: have the right to, in a kind of pick a
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: mix bag of assorted suite, and I think it's it
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: would be wise to maybe point that out in a
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: way to MPs and others who who don't seem to
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: really get the issues, you know, because they're so confused
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: and they can't understand what all the fuss is about,
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: when clearly on nine harms and all of this thing
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: is a means of censoring people from accessing the sort
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: of information that goes against official narratives that are pumped
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: out by the legacy media. Yes, and meanwhile, they don't
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: give a toss about our children. Obviously, the whole point
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: is to ensure that the children will grow up believing
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: the narratives that they pump out, and that the children
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: will grow up accepting that they need to be led
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: and guided by the official authorities with the blue tick,
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: you know, right.
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: And you know it's interesting when you talk about the
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: books because and the online issues, because you can go
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: into any high street Waterstones in the UK and go
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: into the children's section and find these books. There's certainly
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: no ID required. You certainly don't have to scan your
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: face or give biometric ID to open up a book
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: sitting on a shelf in your local library or in
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: your bookshop.
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: It's all right there, right exactly.
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: But then they're using it for these requirements that they're
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: putting in and starting and I think Australia has done
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: this recently and it's going to be spreading more and more.
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: To get on the internet, you have to provide id
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: even if you are our age, whereas any child could
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: walk into a library in some cases, you don't have
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: to be I think maybe over the age of eight
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: to walk into a library without parents, without any supervision
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: and grab anything off the shelves anywhere. Yeah, So again
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: we can see there that clearly they're using this as
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: excuses for the sort of digital control and the technocracy
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: and the things that they're that they're placing upon us,
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: which they are using these narratives over the past few
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: years to now make us believe that we're doing this
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: to keep everyone safe and the Online Safety Act, which
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: Mike Probinson has covered extensively on UK column. Yeah, that
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: that they're using these narratives as methods of control and that.
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: And they always and this goes back to the fabricating
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: cases for war, and it's not just for war. They
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: always have to fabricate a case for the measures that
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: they want to roll out to curtail our individual freedoms
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: and rights because they know they can't get away with
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: it on the face value of it, because we wouldn't
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: accept it on the face value of it. So they
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: always they always have to concoct something, and I mean
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: even when people say they will. A lot of people
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: are home educating because they don't like what's happening in
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: the schools and so on. But I mean in certain countries,
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: educating at home is illegal, so you know, they like to.
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: In Germany, I think it's illegal to home educing. In Turkey,
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: it's illegal to home educate unless there are some really
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: special circumstances. So I think, ironically, no matter how bad
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: the UK is and how evil our establishment actually is,
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: and in spite of the fact that we don't have
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: like the US Bill of Rights in Europe to some extent,
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: the UK still has a slight degree more freedom. And
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: so for that reason, I think people might be a
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: little bit complacent, possibly thinking that it couldn't possibly happen,
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: you know, various extremely authored authoritarian measures, and I think
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: we need to be very wary of that sort of
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: complacency because ultimately I'm sure they would love, absolutely love
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: to crack down and squeeze everyone as much as possible
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: to comply.
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: So yeah, so you just said that it's illegal to
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: homeschool in Turkey where you are, So what would you
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: your daughter being seventeen, What have you found that she
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: has been exposed to in the schools. Is it similar
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: to the Western curriculum where they're kind of putting all
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: this indoctrination in front of children, or have you had
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: more of a say over what she learns in school
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: or is this even.
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: They certainly don't have the LGBTQ stuff here in the
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: education system at all, not at all. And I think
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: the people who curate these policies and push them out globally,
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: they're well aware that each country is at different stages
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: and its social acceptance of various agendas, so they tailor
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: it to each country to make it palatable for them.
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: So here in Turkey, it's very much only in the
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: sort of entertainment industries, you know, So if you watch TV,
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: we don't actually have a TV at home, which is
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: a double edged kind of sword because actually, although there's
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: a ton of crap on TV, and that's one of
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: the main reasons I didn't want to have a TV
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: is just it's just so utter mind rot so much
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: of it. Yes, but on the other hand, you know,
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: my Turkish, my Turkish would have been absolutely perfect by
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: now if we'd had a TV in the house and
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: I was watching it and my daughter. My husband said,
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: my daughter's Turkish language, although she's bilingual, but he said
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: her Turkish isn't as high as standard at it as
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: it would have been if if she'd been watching TV regularly.
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: So because actually in Turkey there is I'm not sure
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: there's the same sort of dumbing down as there is
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: in the UK, to the extent that media. The language
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: that you use on media platforms is not the same
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: language you use with your friends in a conversational tone,
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: so you know, the yeah, like you'd get, but a
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: much more varied vocabulary and understanding of different ways of
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: phrasing things. However, Yeah, they do cover the whole climate stuff,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: that's definitely, and they're woven into all of their textbooks
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: and so on, and they and ever since she was little,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: you know, the teachers will bang on about oh, how
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: we have to switch to electric They don't, but they
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: never really drill into any of this stuff. It's just
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: so none of the kids really understand it or buy
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: into it really. So, Yeah, the LGBTQ plus stuff is
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: even though her friends joke about it, I mean they're
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: aware of it. They're obviously aware of it, and they
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: they joke amongst themselves like oh, I'm by or I'm
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: gay or whatever. But as far as I know, I mean,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: they even have most of her Yeah, all of her friends,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: they think it's they think it's ridiculous that you should
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: say that you're a boy if you're a girl, and
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: vice versa.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, that's interesting. When I went to RIAD
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen, for when I was still in the
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: university system and I was going over there too, I
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: was supervising a female research student based it in Saudi Arabia,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: and I was asked to come over for a visit.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: And when I was going through by process be accused
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: of misgendering and transphobia and all of these things that
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: for people who know my story of why I am
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: no longer in the university system having left as a
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: full professor. But one of the things I was using
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: in my defense when I was going through all of
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: these disciplinary hearings and things. And I said, when I
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: went into Read in twenty and eighteen, and if I
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: had said at the border at the airport that I
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: was identifying as a man and therefore did not have
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: to wear the hijab or the baya, do you think
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: that that would have been okay for me because it's
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: read and it's obviously the strictest. But they said that
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: that was not an inclusive way of looking at things.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: So that was their argument on the Western side. I'm like, well, actually,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: it's more inclusive because I'm in their country and I
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: need to respect their customs and their laws. And it
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: was a comfortable for me. But I did it because
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: I'm a guest in their country, and they don't see
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: it that way. It's interesting to me how they're using
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: this again. They're saying it's inclusive, but actually it's exclusive
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: to people who don't and.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: I mean whole sectors of society, whether they're Conservative Christians
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: or Orthodox or you know, Catholic or I mean I
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: know a large part of the Anglican Church, and even
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: the Catholic Church to some extent, is being gradually pushed
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: in that direction. The Muslim I think the Muslim faith
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: is probably one of the most conservatives in that respect.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: Presumably the Orthodox Jewish faith is is not accepting of
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: it either, because they have very strict gender roles, I
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: think in the Orthodox Jewish Faith.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, So it's interesting to see the Greens, who
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: are experiencing right now a surge in the polls for
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: the elections coming up in me. But it will be
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: interesting to see what happens because they're trying to support
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: the LGBTQ plus as well as the Muslims and those ads. Yeah.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, and you know that everyone is so so heavily propagandized.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: You've got all these young, youthful kids coming out of
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: university who've all watched the genocide and Gaza and so
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: they're all very much anti war, anti genocide. But at
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: the same time they've had all of this programming or
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: propaganda about the yeah, the whole LGBTQ thing and about
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: the climate and all this. So the Greens are being
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: the Green Party, which I think is a I mean basically,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: all the parties that get any airtime are obviously acceptable
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: to the establishment. You know, they the establishment believes they
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: can be used to their own ends. So I'm sure
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: it's and and also that that Polanski guy is extremely,
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: extremely fishy.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: Definitely.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So yeah, as you say it will be, it
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: will be interesting. I think it's it's going to be
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: very hard to ah for for the younger generation to
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: see through those things, because I think.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: When you're.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: When you're very young and that's part of your core education.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: I don't know, maybe they'll come around, maybe you know,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: they'll realize that actually what they learned at school was
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: a load of hogwash.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think one of the things that's happening now
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: just because having been in education for twenty years, something
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: sort of shifted a bit because I was taught, at
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: least it's to some extent, how to think, how to
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: do critical thinking, how to question, But it's now more
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: like here's what to think, and here's what you you know,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: people call it indoctrination, if you want to call it that,
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: for lack of a better term, that it's no longer
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: this is this is the truth, this is what you
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: need to know, and this is rather than let's look
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: at the evidence. Do we agree, do we have a
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: different opinion? Can we talk about it? That has largely
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: gone away and as well, I would say, especially in
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: the past couple of years with the advent of aisay
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: writing an examp, so people are using chet, GPT or
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: whatever tools to write papers rather than coming up with themselves.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: And it was one of the things that I strongly
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: opposed before I exited the matrix, because they thought, you know,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: these students are asking GPT to write their papers, when
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: why should they end up with the same degrees that
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: we did when we actually worked hard for what we have, right,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: and they're you know, they're only hurting their own education
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: and ultimately the ability to apply human thought and consciousness
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: to the world rather than whatever the computer is just
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: generating back to them. Nobody really wins in the end.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: But now now, in fact, it sets people up for failure.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: And as somebody recently I heard in a video recently,
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: the guy said, basically, all l lms and you know
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: ai IS or chat, GPT, those types of apps are
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: any good for is just to facilitate more grifting, enabling
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: more grifting. And we see that in terms of the
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: type of content and the type of you know, even
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: newspaper articles and all sorts of things that are probably
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: all and I see a lot of these stories on
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: Facebook feel good stories, you know, heroic stories, and all
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: of it I believe is or just made up Ai
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: gung and a lot of people resonate with it because
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: they are feel good stories. They are wonderful heroic stories.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: It didn't happen, you know, or maybe it did but
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: nobody recorded it. But I think actually, I mean, I
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: recently watched something where they said that this whole AI
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: thing is a massive bubble. It's an enormous, massive bubble
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: that is being propped up because well it's being propped
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: up at the minute because the companies like n Video
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: and Open Ai and just they're just buying each other's
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: stock and it's going round and round and round. It's
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: like I'll give you this one hundred million and that
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: they'll give it to that person, and that person will
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: give it to that person and they'll give it back
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: to me, and it just goes round and.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: Round and ound.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: So you know, there's no real I mean, there's an
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: AI thing for zoom. I don't want to use it.
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to use it.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah. I was in a getting my eyes
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: examined recently, and the optician who did my exam said, oh,
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: you're a journalist, you must love AI.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: No, Actually I preferred to do my own reporting and research.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: But he said, oh I love it. I talked to
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: it when I'm lonely. It's I love a love Yeah.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: So it was it was just like, just just finish
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: my eye exam. Please, let's let's not go there.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: But how you see how many PEO people would pay
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: two just talk to AI? Is it? Do you think
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: it's a profitable model?
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: It seems like at this point that they are doing so,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: you know, and even looking at it. Remember when I
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: looked at the sort of academic AI. There are levels
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: of output that you can get from these specific like
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: essay writing tools. You can say, well, you can get
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: this essay for free, but if you want to make
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: it sound like it was written by human, or if
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: you are real references, you have to pay.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: I get the ultimate worst rubbish for free. But if
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: you want it to be a little bit more convincing
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: to your lecturer than you have to pay.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah right, Yeah, I mean I don't think. I think
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: that the actual paid usage of AI is very low.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: I think I recently read something like as low as
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: three percent. Yeah, that pay for AI product.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you can get because I've played with them a bit.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: There are things like you can pay for more prompt
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: and responses, you can pay for image generation, you can
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: pay for music generation. It just depends on how much
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: you want to use and what you want to do
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: with it.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean, I think most people, most sane
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: people don't want to see AI, you know, like my
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, my daughter loves art and she can spot
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: AI art in a jiffy because yeah, because she's just
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: looked at so many images that were hand drawn previously
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: compared to what's available now, and it just she hates it,
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 2: you know, she completely wishes it would go away. She
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: doesn't want to interact with the AI apps. She wants
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: to create her own things. She doesn't want to prompt
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: AI to create something for her, you know. And and
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: I would expect most people are like that. They why
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: would you be proud of something that was created based
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: on just you prompting this software program to create for you.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: Right, And there's there's no there's no humanity behind it.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: There's it's just it's reproducing patterns. Yeah, So what it
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: can do is you can prompt it to say, you know,
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: as somebody. Obviously, as an editor and a writer myself,
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: I can say, well, write me a soignet in the
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: style of Shakespeare, so it can follow and look up
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: his patterns and say, okay, here's fourteen lines of pote tre.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: It rhymes and it has the right number of syllables.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: But there's no feeling or anything behind it. It's just reproduction.
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: It can do that. And I think we all we
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: all this is a fact that we all can recognize,
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: and it's all already been recognized h to a large
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: extent in academic material, that we are social beings, you know,
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: and our mental health is based upon being able to
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: interact with other human beings. Yes, I mean that they
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: know this. They know, they know this so well, and
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: so any kind of any kind of narrative that you
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: can have an AI friend or yeah, it's just I
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: think eventually it's a fad. I think it's a fad.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 2: I think people will grow tired of it, and there
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 2: will be a segment made society, maybe some people who,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: for whatever reason, they much rather just interact with this
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: kind of technology because they can't handle other people for
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: whatever reason. But I think on the whole people will
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: just get really tired of this and and just drop it,
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: just not use it. And so these data centers that
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: they claim they're building, they're not building apparently either. So
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: although there are quite a few already there, nowhere near
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: the number of data centers that they've actually said that
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: they will be operating. And as the whole Iran war progresses,
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: you know, the access to all the materials they need
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: to first of all build the data centers, never mind
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: to run them. And it's just not gonna It's not
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: going to happen. So I think it's a huge bubble
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: that eventually is going to implode. And yeah, I mean
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: it's we're just we're living in such turbulent times that
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: most people, you know, we none of us know what's
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: going to happen tomorrow really, and this sense of precariousness
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: has everybody on edge, you know, I think, and we
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: all it was sort of like how Matt, there's a
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: death met you described the psychology of aansformation psychosis. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 2: most people in the UK are not just in the UK,
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: but in a lot of places. You know, they're just
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: sruggling to get by. They're just trying to do all
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: the things they need to do in order to get by,
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: and so they don't want to discuss these issues. They
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 2: don't want to understand them deeply, They don't have the
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 2: time to understand them deeply, and it's very hard to
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: get through to them at this point. I find is
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 2: that they'd rather not know because there's already so much
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: on their plate, you know. And I think people don't
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: really start the people in that kind of frame of mind.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: They don't start to become engaged until it actually impacts them,
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: something actually happens to them, you know, so if the
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: police knock on their door, or if that localized lockdown
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: occurs to them where they're not allowed to go outside
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 2: of their community. So how do we get those sorts
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: of people to engage, I don't know. I think maybe
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 2: we have to just those of us who are already
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: well aware of how this stuff goes on to get
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: to get together, like UK column gets together regularly, and
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: when you meet offline and you start building real relationships,
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: real community, you can start offering solutions to each other
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: workaround you know, for example, well, I know this isn't
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 2: sort of a really big thing where you can really
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 2: push back and change everything, but It's just an example
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 2: of how you can have a different mindset and try
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: and protect everybody, not just yourself. So a lot of
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 2: people are facing job losses, especially in the academic world
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: like you were describing, you know, and so a lot
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: of people are being told, well, you're going you know,
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: we're going to in this section, we're going to act
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 2: this number job. So you're going to have to start
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: preparing for alternatives. And you know, there may be a
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: possibility that you could reapply for the remaining jobs that
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 2: we have in this section, but otherwise you will have
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 2: to look elsewhere. Now, I know this family where a professor,
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: a university professor was in this boat, and he saw
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: other departments where a lot of infighting, a lot of
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: backstabbing was going on because they were under pressure. They
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: knew that the department was acting a number of positions,
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 2: so they were all fighting amongst each other in order
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 2: to be the one that stayed there. And that didn't
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 2: sit right with him. He was I really wish there
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: was another way we could get around this. And he thought, well,
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 2: what if I take a pay cut, and how about
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: my colleagues take a pay cut and then we save
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 2: there's sum of money that they're wishing to save by
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 2: getting rid of us. So he negotiated with his colleagues
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 2: and he talked to them and he was like, look,
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 2: this is what I'm thinking. You know, if I take
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 2: a thirty percent pay cut, then my tax rate goes down,
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 2: and I get some I get an extra day in
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: the week where I don't have to do the admin
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: or the stuff that they currently want me to do,
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 2: so I can do the things that I actually want
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: to do, and we all get to keep our jobs.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: So what do you think about that? And apparently they
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 2: all bought into this idea and they all agreed to
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: do it. So they came up with their proposal and
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 2: they submitted it to the department and to the university,
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 2: and the university accepted and they said, okay, if that's
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: your walk workaround, that's your solution, we can work with that.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 2: They all kept their jobs. They all took a certain
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: amount of a pay cut. Some of them actually that
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 2: benefited or sort of evened everything out because they got
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 2: their tax rate went down, as I said, and they
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: got a few more hours to work on the things
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 2: that they would rather work on. And I think, you
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: know that was an example to me of how within
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 2: the confines of these really negative forces, that if you
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 2: tap into your humanity and you tap into the idea
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 2: that you don't want to do unto others what you
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: don't want them to do unto you. You know, so
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 2: if you try to look at it in a holistic way,
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: you can achieve something that's more beneficial for everybody. And
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: as it happens, it actually boosts department morale because there
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: was no inviting, no backstabbing, and they were like, yeah,
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 2: we've got each other's back, and so it had a
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: unifying effect. And I think even amongst like the whole
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: alternative media, there's there's a way of looking at that
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 2: as an example of also how because even you know,
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: so as each alternative news or podcasting organization or individual
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: suffers some sort of attack, they're not the opposition. You know,
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: you shouldn't look at them as like, oh, well, now
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 2: we're going to get more viewers because they've been taken off,
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 2: so we'll get all their viewers. I mean, that's a
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: that's not the right mental lattitude to have, you know.
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: We should all be aiming towards the same the singles
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: and having the same things that we're trying to get
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: out to the world, and it's very destructive, honestly, and
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: it's difficult to watch for many reasons, and I really
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: wish personally it didn't happen. But I think your comments
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: there are really inspiring way to end because one of
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: the things that I was hoping that we could get
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: out and I think we have in this conversation talked
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: about the importance of humanity and fighting everything that they
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: seem to want to have in store for us. But
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: I think it's going to be this connection, this community,
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: this friendship as you and I have developed the relationships
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: that you can column even has with its own members
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: and on our supporters and.
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 2: The wider world.
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: Hopefully. It's my belief that we start small and grow big.
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: So people, we have our small networks, we have our
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: small groups of friends, we have our small stand in
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: the park groups, whatever it is that we have, and
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: then those little groups network out and become bigger groups,
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: and then that's when we get really able to make
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: a difference because we all do what we can individually.
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: We all do what we can as smaller communities. But
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: if we're all doing our own things and we all
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: join up eventually then that I believe is the way
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: that this is all going to be successful and bring
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: that return back to humanity, to human thought and consciousness,
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: as I said, which does take some effort, but if
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: everyone does something, I think it can right.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't have to be big. Do what you
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: can with what you have.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, So anyways, I hope you agree. That's
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: a great place to end this conversation. Thank you again,
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: Catherine for joining us. I've really enjoyed it. Welcome and
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: thank you for your magazine article, which I hope everyone
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: will read, and issue one of the column which is
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: available now in the shop. And thanks again for your
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: time and for your contributions over the past several months
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: to the UK column. And I hope you will continue
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: to engage with us at some level, whether it's in
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: the column or elsewhere. And and I hope to see
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: you next time you are back visiting up here in
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: the northeast. Yeah, climb that tower there, Well, we'll think
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: about it.
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: It is a beautiful setting of Durham, I would say it.
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an amazing You're the first person to take
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: me there in person, so really really yeah, it just
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: never made it up there at that time, So thank
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: you again, and I have a wonderful springtime and we
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: will see you again sim so thank you again.
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you bye for now bye