hello and welcome to cross talk where all babies are considered i'm peter lavelle 2020 has been a year like no other how has the crisis changed our lives how will that continue to shape our lives moving forward and what have we lost things and ideas that may never return. to discuss this and more i'm joined by my guest marcus papadopoulos in london he's a historian analyst and author of the forthcoming book a rise rosia the return of russia to world politics in oxford we have mark allman

he is director of the prices research institute and in budapest we crossed to george samueli he's an arthur and a you tuber at the gaggle are across the uk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate it let's go to mark here you know mark in preparing for this program he's just jotting down some notes about how i reflect upon this year let me just read you a couple of bullet points health dictatorship through fear has become central to our lives we go from one crisis to the next crisis it isn't authoritarians dream come true. good faith thinking is gone social media using censorship and that science which has been completely discredited there's no such thing as the science the media will tell you otherwise and probably most importantly what has happened to the social contract now i just read you 123-4567 things take one of the. well i think we could begin really with as you say the

science in a sense human experience if we think back to 100 years ago when the great spanish flu epidemic or even 60 years ago and so hong kong flu. the extraordinary thing is the degree to which the current epidemic has led to huge social changes and if you like social disciplinary changes that those didn't have and in a sense also they didn't really have a legacy did they they were huge events catastrophic events but they cost. us in the ability interesting thing here and it comes to hope social discipline question if the culture changes is that across the world certainly across the northern hemisphere in which they australasia people are adapting to a whole new set of behavioral rules which have come into force very quickly social distancing how you manage your life the economic activities social activities cultural activities and seem to accept that in the extraordinary way and it in a sense i don't myself subscribe to the idea that it was

a pre-planned or thought through but it has revealed us for instance one of our chief expose of advising the government yes said yesterday. the chinese in a sense pioneered a way of showing how easy it was to get people to conform to extraordinary restrictions with very very little resistance and this may be necessary to control a contagious disease what else could it in a sense set off that's the real danger in the future i think you know you know mark it's not i'm also a scribe you know i don't believe this is a tensional but obviously for many in power and in the business world and in social media this is an opportunity they just can't let pass go ahead as well in a sense need to be it's once it's when seen as being it's really hard long. occupation in the united states although we have seen the british government's refused sort of measures to protect its livelihoods and as a result in science its friends. close to 1000000

a british who has lost their jobs so from all we have witnessed the british government's systematically erodes civil liberties in its some current finds against what is known as 9 st compare and contrast the how the british parties have responded to cope that night and seeing how the russian authorities have responded it's a quite benign seeing in russia devotion government has made its a very clear there will be no restrictions on civil liberties concerns him into its inmates it's also abundantly clear that if russians want to have the massing they made if they do not want to have it's been there will be no notification is placed on their lives that is not what we are seeing in britain the british government is toying with the idea of on the one hand making that same mandatory oh that's on the other hand they might not make it mandatory however what they are implying is that

if you do not have a vaccine you may be refused entry city education hospitals and what places but i also want to add that in 2020 it is also being business as usual so to speak to some countries so for example america has continued to consider it's an economic war against iraq america has a tendency to weaken the russian federation in your by for example henson's instigates occur in belorussia and by redeploying american forces from germany to poland which is a flagrant violation of the nato russian pounding that's all 997 so yes 2020 has been a shock and they are calling it some countries have continued to add attempts to achieve our objectives in the most milliken it's a matter as there will never never let a crisis go to waste that's what we learned in 2. 20 you know george you night on

the gaggle were talking about this phenomenon of how except in. western apologies have been to these restrictions here and i'd like to throw into it is that you know that the media is playing a very. negative role through all of this because when i when i see the media questioning authority saying why didn't you instituted earlier what why was it more stringent i mean it's a there's no questioning about you know is this miss make any sense because this woman in california has an outdoor campaign but she can operate it but within a stone's throw away of the hollywood production company has this almost the identical campaign but they can operate you know that only a very small number of people in the media have looked at the glaring contradiction here but media for the most part and is just you know saluting and doing what they're told because it's the science go ahead george oh that's absolutely right and mock directive ones do that if i have

a meeting interview with the professor neil ferguson in which he's saying that the idea of a lockdown is really came from china and while the chinese were doing it people thought of ferguson been really believe you could do this in the west. great idea but of course they were in the west because we're also used to democracy in for me them and we wouldn't tolerate government spending us what was there what he found out that the western public was very follower of. and that i think is really the most shocking development because. the science underlying cope with is very very questionable i mean everything we've known about the disease suggests that the lock downs the economic dislocations and everything has been wildly disproportionate to the threat of the disease actually proses i mean we know the average age of the beds of these we know that. most. the public overwhelming majority of the public if

they get the virus they will make a full speedy recovery from it yet as i do all of that there is no with russia well these most draconian measures and that's why it is very reasonable to speculate well in the public be prepared for something else this is now going to be the new normal draconian social reorganization all the desired goals were growth and of course i mean i talked about in there also here about the great reset and i hope you see that means different things to different people well what do you think western remembrance of public service of clients saw all of this should and i don't know if there's a real answer for it yet ok because all of us are shocked by it you know him well time will tell if they remain plan but i think it's worth thinking about in the context even all of the types of mass casualty incident to use as horrible phrases western countries not least in my states have become very risk averse to casualties

in war for their own side so we have massive bombardment bombing and cruise missiles and so on and we have 0 casualties on our side perhaps tens of thousands on the other and in a sense we're now seeing this as an epidemiological phenomenon that we don't feel able to sustain a loss of life in the way that previous flu pandemics caused in the 20th century now this may be in a certain way a good sign that we're becoming more humane but it's also if you like the me generation to isn't it it's because they still threat to me that therefore i demand that everybody conform to very strict conditions of behavior which may in fact cause collateral damage on a huge scale to use military term because we may see people forced into unemployment to destitution despair and suicide and so the downsides of law. can then become more apparent and then we'll have to ask is this culture of lucia what we think we've been saying all apes sati that is pliable to the fear of an invisible enemy with. actually remain passive and to be doomed if you really have

a very low scale of unemployment in particular affecting a lot of younger people who are already entering a very precarious economic system already and then find that they don't even it went to the economic system of the baltimore rungs because the bottom rungs of the whole service sector all those who do things that student age and young twenty's people who have been kicked away. this mantra also of safety 1st which on its face i think obviously makes sense you should he care but also when it does is in the way that is being propounded is that you there is no risk taking take and you kind of about your absolved of any kind of personal responsibility of your behavior i think this is one of the think the miscalculations of these lockdowns in the west is that you know you know be responsible take care of your health and be aware of other people's health care you know their weight the way they've done it is that you know you know forcing

a self induced coma for the economy that's not safety 1st is markets 40 point now we have substance abuse we have suicide we have families being broken up and then the despair of the economic situation and so this mantra of safety 1st has been taken to bars an overreach in my opinion because it takes responsibility for away from the individual go ahead marcus and i say 1st of all that professor knew ferguson who is being decided in this program already by children and lot has been a sin for us support of lockdowns if he did not say it's here so the sons in law himself and i would also say that new focus and gives a whole new meaning to the well it's incompetence now let's recall it's the british people the british people paid as a whole lost the ability to think by for independently and critically many is a go and i would launch an aid. put that down to the diabolical effects off

of neo liberal economics and neo liberal cultural values and i use the word cultural in a very loose way the average british passenger today peter is more interested in reality television in supply pretty culture in the sexuality of people on television as opposed to what is going on around them in society indeed the average british person hates us is prepared to listen to simpletons like piers morgan and phillip schofield who know that nothing about international relations they know nothing about politics they know nothing about viola g. but they want someone like pace who can some know about syria to know about any other aspects of international affairs as opposed to listen it's a real it's a real expert market i would posit that why these people have their jobs ok i mean

that it's no mistake ok i mean maybe this is who the elites turn to to. explain and expand their agenda. i'm a societal wide basis here i gentleman wait i'm going to jump in here we're going to go to a short break and after that short break well can you our discussion on the kobe crisis and its legacy stay with r.t. . for all those drowned out.

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this is nothing like football. league it's not a money spinner but it is expensive. to end its troops. this is the speedway. and they have no brakes it's a. start up the cut some people. welcome back to crossfire all things are considered i'm peter about to remind you we're talking about the impact of the kobe crisis.

well i was going to back to georgia in budapest there's already been mentioned in this program here and something i want to talk about is the absolute incompetence of the elites that have been making decisions about how we live and how we should live into the future and and then the way i look at it is that these decisions for us are very self-serving all these people that talk about the science on cable they all got a paycheck uninterrupted during all of this ok uninterrupted ok but then let's see the down side i mean the way i look at it is that is working people in the bus families and middle class values i would even go 'd as far as say the i've been crushed during all this and on top in some of the most basic things that of bringing us all together that prior to this we had even if we're on the left or the right we believe in freedom of speech freedom of assembly breed him of worship and

all these things are being put to a test and and there's not enough bush back as far as i'm concerned because you take these things away they're very hard to get back go ahead george well that's exactly right that's. right near all but 2 is the biggest blunder i think that has emerged in the during the cope with crisis is that the elite as you bully and coercion against the public is really it's like everything is the public the public isn't being kept in the know where we mock the question we're going out socializing without maintaining the. people the terrible great war. that i'll be behaving the more and then we see the with the environment his burial the global warming it will be on it that terrible people are being punished well

they're. way 4 ways but excessive addiction to car dishwashers washing machines. you will live thought and they must be punished and that really was the whole parable about this a lot of what is the public of the ball the bill of goods they were resistant to the environmental coercion i have been resistant to this because they got really bad that this is going to be a horrific laying waste 'd. to the nation to the well and then they broke into that and as you say once you give up the reason they're able to get them back because the government are in love with betty live from the rollout of the vaccine but nothing is going to change that it is good that you know you think you're going to get the vaccine and you know you won't be able to do anything without the vaccine but you're still going to have to make days go who doesn't think you will have to go around wearing a mosque and just to keep a lockdown no prospect of any opening of lockdown so. things like the government

have the power and they are going to give it up without you know mark a cynic would say and i'm saying that this is a template for whatever is the term determined to be next. the climate crisis ok we have to be we have to deal with the name the movement climate crisis i'm not here to discuss the you know made climate crisis on its own but it's you know people are being conditioned there is a paradigm out there there's the jews and the job don't and there's the power of the state and again the media shoring up the state and its agenda and its ideology is mark has already pointed out here to me it does not worry you you know if you know it's it's a form of social control because you know you know these people think they're doing the right thing i mean just like when george said you know we were going to get rid of your carbon footprint and not a good idea well i mean if you're a truck driver you're going to have to. well you know sense what we've seen in the

last 20 or 30 years is the emergence of a new cureton ism which has nothing to do with classic characters in terms of regulating people's morality or sexuality indeed it is very almost it of that but on all these other issues it is very stripped and it's good for your soul that you would discipline the new pay attention to the rules and that any breach of the rule needs you to complete social ostracism and so in that sense we see a kind of midst 16th century kill christmas because it's wicked stop above 80 not because you want help but because you want to stop the people enjoying it that kind of mentality that kind of psychology has come back with a vengeance through these processes and there's enough problem calls by covered or there's enough. also billeted all environmental problems caused by changes in the climate to give to people who have without perhaps realizing it as you say deep cycle to motivation to control and discipline and even punishment and so on to say

to make them feel that they are doing the right thing the anybody who opposes them doesn't need to listen to and i think this is the problem coming to a point about the science science has advanced through the dissident galileo would never been allowed to be published in and learned journal today because the ptolemaic consensus would have said but he's outside all consensus same with einstein's are in fact it's always the oddballs lunatics are the ones who make progress and then they become the orthodoxy of their ideas become ill took c.m.l. quite off my right but at a certain point as we saw with newton's physics it turns out not to be adequate and einstein can replace it and einstein now is seen as a bit old hat too and this is i think the great danger of the people latching on to something that gives them a talisman it used to be a religious thing but now it's science science is the totems science has become a mock to everything must be sacrificed by people who have the slightest idea actually what is science. made the big thing that's absolutely right marcus i mean this is one of the great tragedies of this year is age the signs as people like to say has been politicized i mean you can. if you can you serve science in the

service of your agenda i mean and i mean it in so many different ways and this is this is this illusion many people have has been where is the science where you know you still have your elite fighting on their private jets but i'm i'm not supposed to drive my car from this hour to this hour i mean i mean it's so glaring for some people here and it does go back down to where this sense of social control that and they truly believe it's a positive impairment and i think that's i think that's what really scares me because these are like ideologically possessed people that really really think that they're really close to helping you but it doesn't change their lifestyles back to rich people in this world that got a far more richer during this crisis here is really one of the great oddities of this crisis as well go ahead mark marcus it sets a major case needs about for the last 20 years and sorry the parties will british establishment people after it's has been the shooter in

a hell it's in fact it's agenda and i would consent that's once in 20 has been canceled for the british establishment and it's all for this agenda and i believe that mainstream rejecting the. has really that message is very very clear to those of us in the u.k. who shrink person independent read and critically because what we have seen are brits and friends and trends is the major to not buy a platform to x. its investments who has a difference of opinion on what is known as quote benign seem to have a distance opinion on a lot downs on social distance in and the way in the halls trace mosques now peet's are whenever the major niamh platform needs an expert it's a nasty words the a lot of bells go off in my. hence and it doesn't matter what the subject sentry is

it could be russia it could be syria it could be north korea it could be iran it could be the british major wasted not a platform and indeed batesville us why anyone who challenges the british on countries such as russia or iraq that should be most discounts in its nonsense and people who think independently and critically and that's what we have seen in 2020 brits in concert in what is now in its current night saying if you have a difference of opinion on the virus you have been demonized you have been cinephiles you are choose the being mentally ill you aren't choose or endangered the lives of tens of millions of brits and even people like hillary johnson professor new socks and broke the lock downs which states are often the cool sport now if that is not consent some people then i submit that you can see these people

doing also you can have a single brain so between now you know george you and i you know we have been talked about the passing of the great stephen cohen here and i think all of us would agree and most of our audience if not all of our audience. think i'm stephen cohen is one of the great russianness of our time but how much time did he get on the airwaves preciously little though you have other people that have no idea where russia is fighting up on and on on twitter all the time george in one of the things because we're rapidly running on time here is that a lot of these elites they presume wars in the name of democracy here but where has been the democracy in all of these shutdowns and lock downs i mean you have to scare any of the executive and there's been a little bit of pushback on that and i'm. glad to see it but it's only happening after almost a year of this year but at the end of the day it's not what the people want it's

what. they are told and george and i know the you know american experience the best mean you have these. governors that are essentially up unction ing as dictators i mean an executive order can can't doesn't necessarily make it constitutional and this is something that's being challenge go ahead george. exactly and what we normally think of in the practice of democracies is negative ration elected representatives the blade and pall mall but instead what we have in the united states or the united kingdom is the big government big that which from one day to the leg becomes more and the police. or with some brutality and protests are and 7 the gloves on and with the goal posts of constantly being moved. exactly and that's what we've been talking about the strong i think well what is the science there is extensive a disagreement about coded as the weather really. hot with the air is

there's a group of coronaviruses of the been around forever that the debate about them often about whether the mafia use i'm one of the scientists say that camp would meet with going like that people are suffering from all kinds of. psychological problems something to be increasing also is fine but with people it brian but i mean the scientists who then have you know all the sciences who are presenting a very different view about the enable the coercion to take place and i was going to budget in the mainstream media for. all of the social media which was supposed to provide a little girl as it were for a vehicle was in the name of you know whatever is the reigning ideology well it's in preparing interesting gentlemen i hope you'll join me here on cross not exactly

one year from now and we'll find out if what we've been talking about was a bad year or just the beginning of a trend that none of that have any control over here i want to thank my guests in london up started in budapest know one thing our viewers are watching us here are the be an experiment remember.

an entire village in alaska has had to move if another country trying to wipe out an american town. we do everything in our power to protect the. water the escaping the climate change is the same threat right now alaska seems some of the fastest coastal erosion in the world we lost about 30 feet. 35 feet of ground in just about 3 months while we were measuring. is fast and the river is. closer to the power that was near or were a part of america 1st from. the

headlines on r.t. international as intensive care units in california fill up during at the pandemic clinics are forced to set up a makeshift wards outside one nurse tells us of just how bad the situation has become. we're stuck now we were running low on oxygen on supplies to be have patients in overflow over for. overflow areas. and in russia people 60 and over start receiving the sputnik vicodin vaccine after the health ministry said it was safe to do so. and vaccinations are rolling out across europe as well but people are divided on the issue.