ah, oil and gas manufacturing, electricity, telecom, transportation, all of them now have i a t type of infrastructure connected to the internet. so clearly realizing there's disruptive potential so that those countries can't ignore it because it threatens national security issues. but if we take the nato n e u countries, virtually all of them subscribed to certain doctrines and maintains selling but task forces. they are a cyber army on behalf of a country. that's their job. ah, ah.

hello and welcome to cross stock. we're all things considered. i'm peter labelle. how should we describe our times? what is the zeitgeist, as they say? do we have a sense of direction and purpose? we also hear a lot about the desire to return to normal. what does that mean? now? are we actually living in the new normal? ah, to discuss these issues and more, i'm joined by my guess, lionel in new york. he is a legal in media analyst. and in paris we crossed to john laughlin. he is a university lecture in history and political philosophy, right, gentlemen. crosstalk rules that affect, that means you can jump in in time you want, and i always appreciate it. okay, let's start with john. what is our zeitgeist today? because it seems to me we're in a transition at our transistor, dora period right now. certainly we've left something behind. i have no idea where

we're going, but i also have a difficult time describing where we are your thoughts? well, to be honest, it feels like wherein the end times pizza, because so much seems to be going wrong. both in internal politics across the world . and of course, in the international situation. it internal politics. i'm referring of course to the sanitary dictatorship, which just gets worse and worse. we've seen a number of red lines crossed in britain, in austria, in france, in greece, in germany. where all kinds of fundamental rights and liberties have been brushed aside. i know they were brushed aside originally in 2020, but it's now clear that we are living through a, a sort of ratchet effect, where each new restriction paved the way the restriction paper, the way for a new one. and on the international level, we obviously have this again,

rather unreal world, just as the cobit world is so unreal and doesn't make sense and doesn't, doesn't that out we have this, you know, within a few months of the defeat of the united states and its allies, after a 20 year, not even war, but a 20 year sort of anti insurgency operation, which failed. we see nato carrying on as if nothing has happened later in the united states. and they've just changed the name of the city they want to defend. it's not cannibal anymore, but tears and their ratcheting out tensions at a time when it's obvious that they can't win any was anywhere. whether they're in the hindu kush or in the pine plains of central europe. so i have to say, i'm very, very despondent. i feel it all kinds of values because i'm a conservative, so i think values are in decline, but i don't think even i and i don't very other conservatives expected the massive

unraveling. but the collapse really of all the sort of basic tennis of civilization which we have observed in the last year and a half. and that's what fills me with grateful boating. why? basically the same question you, because kind of what john was saying here, i guess what really disappoints me not surprising, but this disappoints me. how so many people who are willing to give up their rights very easily and, and continue down the slippery well, because, you know, john mentioned it's like a cult and every one. 0, you know, they're playing out their own little melodrama. and it empowers them, you know, they get to shame people, you know, you're back, you know, and get another was there. i mean, it seems to me that, you know, replaced at least in the western world we have, you know, millions of little tyrants out there. just regarding the rights of others,

you're flying. well, i just agree with both of you. i think things have never been better. i think it's so much easier to be a citizen of the world now because we have fewer rights to worry about and keep track of. so actually it's better because i don't have to worry about all of those pesky bill of rights provisions and freedom of speech and keeping the government off. that's all gone. i say that not even mockingly. you know, i'm, i'm trying to answer the questions accurately and not provide somebody that makes a great sound bite. but i've got to tell you something. i'm sure everybody in every iteration of history always said, this is the worst time and i'm sure during the black death and world war 2, people said, it can't get worse than this. i see myself or an us in almost like a parallel universe. i'm. i'm trying to think of some weird kind of way of, of showing this. here's the world, here's this,

this shadow government. and i can't figure it up. but you said something, peter was very, very good. i believe that coven is a religion. the vaccine or boosters order of vaccine is the sacrament found. she is the pope, and the cdc is the vatican. and i'm trying to be a good i'm, i'm, i'm serious. this gives people something to believe in something to fear. a sense of belonging who has the latest, boucher, who has the latest vaccine document in new york right now people are running, running to 2 vaccine testing sites to see whether they have the micron variant, which i heard is basically less. we're now in an end demik versus a pandemic. but nobody wants to hear the good news, because they are so caught up in the almost sexual fetishistic titillation of

fear and dread it. i'm not exaggerating. that wasn't meant to be a cute, pithy answer. i mean it in the nick, let me, let me go back to john. yeah, me m c u n t. echo what you said an answer. your 1st question. yeah, this is re put this, this melodrama that it's being played out. this is, this is a really poor thing gruel substitute for rights because in, if you're part of the cult than you know, the terms and conditions. but if you disagree with it, then you're in a pastime that we can continue with the metaphor here. that means there's no place for you in their church and that is a fundamental difference because and i think you're the end times is a very appropriate one. i you know, how do you, how do you get no returned to communion? they don't want you in that church, and i think that this is a, i don't like sacrificing my rights to leave in someone else's quasi faith. go ahead, john. yeah, well, i don't agree with lionel at all. i think it's

a very important point to refute that at all times in history. people have thought that it was that things were going badly. that is, i'm afraid, quite wrong. there have been many times of history, including recent history, when people believed very strongly in progress, they believed that the golden age was in the future. they believed that technology would help people to live longer and have be happier and all rest of it. so it's just not true to say that people have always thought that things are getting worse . and as for the sense of belonging, i really don't understand what you're saying like well, because well, maybe people who have cobit or who have tested negative or whatever, have a sense of belonging. i don't really know what it is you're referring to, but i can assure you that people who don't have a vaccine passport and who are excluded from ordinary life. they certainly don't have a sense of belonging. how could they,

they are victims of apartheid. there's no sense of belonging told on the country. as peter said in his introduction, there's an army now of people denouncing their fellow citizens, but they saw that minor infraction. so what, what depresses me is not just what you referred to peter just now as my rights and my liberties. yes, that also depresses me. but what i find, the reason why i think we are in sort of n times, is that the value itself of freedom is no longer appreciate it. it's not that i demand my rights. it's that the freedom itself has a social value. it has a social value, it is good for all of us. if we are free, we all know those of us who experience soviet russia, how bad it is socially. if people are not free, it is bad for the whole of society. freedom is good for the whole of society, it is a positive value. and yet we are now in

a situation in which freedom is regarded as not only unnecessary but the bubble as dangerous. and that is why i think we have indeed trust watershed and are living in very, very bad times in a line of the given that they, they the thrust of our conversation here. i would say i'm going to handle another let layer of depression, of the people that are governing over us. ok. i mean i, i've never seen in my, my time this level of incompetence that john, when the guy gave a litany of policies. but he and we, you know, i just don't see these people is competent and i think it's on both sides of the atlantic. and i, i look at them the, by the administration. i look at what is really turned into a person. it's turned into political buffoon boris johnson. i mean, why should we have faith in these people because they invoke something called science. now science has been negated. it's been deleted as something that we can make a common preference to go ahead while. now in,

i'll speak just as far as this country goes. i i'm waiting for somebody to tell me at somebody to get a point that this is a joke that they've been pulling this off just to for me. we have a president and enough can't be said who is absolutely he is sun setting and and, and he is going to be speaking about something. he knows nothing about. he comes out, he is pushed out and i'm not trying to be a cute about this. he literally actually and truly does not know where he is and what he's saying. and at every level, we have some new iteration of this. we have another example. we have lost the ability to show any kind of critical thinking whatsoever. nobody seems to want to understand the bear rudiments of how vaccine transmission or shoot me a, a virus transmission works. you have groups of people who are saying that whatever we're doing right now. as an example,

we have 2 senators who just had all of the vaccines and i would venture to say they probably had the best available and the boosters, and yet they have quote tested positive. and instead of people saying, wait a minute, there was something wrong with the system. this is like a car where the brakes don't work or something where the, where there is some product liability. instead of people saying that they just said back as they do whenever they hear something like for example, inclement weather innocent. wow, that's really interesting. and there's this sense of acceptance. nobody cares nobody, nobody is repelling this. nobody says way them. and i want my freedom back. this doesn't make any sense. we're not, i'm going to go elsewhere. i don't think the people tell me what's going on, but lena, what they're talking about. and this, this insouciance is his intellectual torpor, whatever you want to call it. but it see idea that my biggest problem, yes, i understand the politicians that they're corrupt. i understand it, but my fellow citizens,

there are the people i have. the biggest gripe begins because i'm in this prison ready to escape. i see the door open, i'm say come on, let's go. and nobody wants to leave. they seem in a very strange way. not only accepting of this, but, but almost not even in the slightest bit. many of them, not all, but not even bothered by them. they're saying, well, this is the way goes and if you want me to go inside, i will, if you want me to wear a chip on my skin, which we are going to go do next. as you're doing in sweden, if you want me to walk around with a tattoo, a, q r code in my, for it, i'll do whatever, because whatever to will to resist that people normally had. it's been lost as a version of this, or as a consequence, been your gentlemen and the 1st part of the program in a very depressed. now we'll see if we can pick it up as a 2nd now or a gentleman. i'm going to jump in. we're going to go to a short break, and after that short break, we'll continue our discussion on site guide state with r t. ah,

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ah, welcome back to crossed up. were all things are considered? i'm peter bell. this is the home addition to minute we're discussing site guys. ah. okay, let's go back to john in france. i'm gonna use another extended metaphor for our program here. you know, looking for the root origins of something is very, very difficult as academics, it's kind of, it's very important exercise. when you know,

where are we in the way the way you see change going about, or are these tremors were feeling right now? have we already had the earthquake? are we feeling the aftershocks of origins? we could look at like briggs in the advent of trump. ok, because we've seen so much reaction to both here because i'm trying to get a field where we're going that you can, you tipped your hand in the very beginning. the problem my saying is in times which i think is a very good description. but i mean, is, are we going into a more massive change or we are feeling the after effects of a huge change. it's happened in the last almost 24 months. i call it i call 202020 . and 2021 is the long 2020. and a lot of things have happened in that time. but it's the same as i dice as i say, the name of this program. go ahead john. well, i think i, unfortunately, what the coven crisis shows is the very debased sense of freedom, which many citizens had up perhaps on noticed. certainly on notice by me at the

time when the 1st to lockdown measures were taken back in the spring of 2020 and everything else has confirmed that all the subsequent events have confirmed that what i mean is that people, as lionel said, in the 1st part people regard it as a liberation to be full, to have a vaccine which allows them to go up to a nightclub. well, if your vision of liberty is to go out to an is the right to go out to a nightclub, then you have or possible whatever. then you have a very debased version of liberty, its infant tile and almost animalistic notion of liberty. it's a very long way from the proper notions of political liberty that we, that we used to hold death. so i think there's been a long decline upstream as it were. and then we had these extraordinary measures announced which seem not to be going the way because

a number of countries are now getting more and more vicious. i mentioned australia already britain. the netherlands is just come back into lockdown. and all these things i think, show they bring to the surface trends, which perhaps we haven't a properly taken account of before. and one of those trends, there are many of them. one of them is short termism. you mentioned in competence peter, in one of your questions, i think that's a very big problem. i think we are governed by, by fools, by chances, by opportunists, by people who are come into power without having any real sense of the responsibilities. and these people have been kicking the can down the road for very long time. as we all know, all our states, all our countries are heavily indebted. and yet they, the repayment is always, as i say, kicked down the line. so all these things have been building up slightly under the surface, but with this sudden explosion of totalitarianism, that i think is,

is a watershed because it shows the extent of our decline, it brings it into focus. it brings into focus the fact that what people want now is not a freedom. they don't want or they don't want freedom. they don't want to be able to do what they want, at least not in a noble sense. they may want to have very sort of basic freedoms like to go out to a restaurant. they don't want freedom in any noble sense. instead, they are afraid of freedom. and that is the beginning of totalitarianism. it is precisely when people are afraid of freedom and when they actually don't want it. they don't want it to themselves in a bubble. they don't want it for all the people. because these to tell a tarion states that we need, we are, we saw in the 20th century, they didn't come from no where of course there were dictators and police and everything. but there was a substantial level of political support. and when you have citizens denouncing

each other as you do now, only this morning i went to buy some milk and they are the at the farm. and the woman was afraid of being denounced for not wearing a mask. you know, when you have that level of corrosion of society or the soviet experience, i'm sorry to mention it again and again, but that was largely predicated, also on denunciation. that is the social or sociological situation that we have reached and which fills me as i say, with, with a great sense of foreboding. because it's not just a matter of the governments. it's a matter of the society that we live in, or the societies that we live in, which have become deeply, deeply degraded. little it's very interesting if you look at a lot of the poll results over the last couple of years. the public's trust in traditional institutions is eroded away immensely, even in particular, particularly the military. and then we have, we've already mentioned here, this culture snitching and the ation here. i mean,

how can it society be healthy and were born if you have suspicion of the institutions in route over you. and on top of that, you have suspicions of your fellow citizens. you know, i can kind of digressed january sinks, commission, which is looking for scapegoats for all the ills of society. you know, it seems to me that the social fabric is very being torn apart here. and just to reiterate, you know, we sent them this program here. it's really i find it very, very tragic that so many people in great sense because that, you know, john and i, you know, i lived in eastern communist, eastern europe, jonathan, scholar and soviet union at the eco too, are familiar. it's so traveling line. what when physicians sometimes don't know how to explain the death of a loved one, they say oregon failure system failure and we are in the midst of kind of

a system failure. right now i'm seeing our society take on a mutation of variant if you will. there used to be something which i thought human beings inherently felt that is the ability to express themselves. and if you told you told somebody you can't say this, whether you're a child or an adult, you automatically rebel and repelled that. something happened with the advent of social media and other aspects as well. first of all we came in the we were the idea that i can shut you down by claiming that what you're saying is a conspiracy. and before that was a description, but now it is license to stop you. then i can say you are providing this information. what you were doing right now. and there was this idea at one point where what ever you said, if i didn't like it, i just dismissed it. now what's happening is that people are becoming more and more acclimated and habituated and used to, to,

in condition to having certain things shut up. and shut down, especially if they are deemed to be not good for the whole, not good for us misinformation about back of but viruses, misinformation about history. and though ike and also for the 1st time, you mentioned january 6, we're actually suggesting that sometimes speech ideas are so incendiary, by their very nature, which every good idea is that we have the license to shut you down a priori without anybody saying. and in conclusion, we've all said, not anybody here, but too many people have said, well, that's the way it goes. that's the price you pay for orator. for some semblance of order or in com will give up a little bit so long as everything is smooth. whatever our master says, well, that always ends in tragedy. there is a long, a tragic rep,

historical record of that. in it, john went with it. i am glad they know this misinformation thing. i mean, i will express my own humble opinion. it's the mass media, legacy media or the biggest sources of misinformation. and we in part of the, the great liberal project, which i mean with, with as a large l. a. is tolerance, i mean we, it, we have freedom of speech by can use the american example it's, it's an popular speech that needs protections, not popular p i speech. and i think we've lost sight of that. people have lost sight of that. we have a 1st them it protect people that have opinions that are not popular and it's actually a fundamental, it's part of the pillar of, of western civilization. and so many people trivialize it. yeah, i mean, and you know, that's why i say that we are worse off than before because these issues were, for example, well explained and argued in what to me as an irrefutable way by john stewart male,

in his famous essay on liberty in the middle of the 19th century, when he said that even a true opinion needs to be confronted with false hoods in order for that true opinion to be reinvigorated and to be known by the public as a living truth. not just to be, you know, sort of shot away in the cupboard. so john stuart mill argued that full, sued as it were. dialectical strengthens truth if, if of course the truth is allowed to respond as it should be. so we have now lost that understanding or not, not we perhaps here on the show, but many people have lost that understanding. and what i think is even worse is that the narrative about this information means quite simply. this is an obvious point, but it means that your political rival, your political adverse, it is a liar, your political adversary is somebody who is lying. and of course,

that greatly increases the intensity of the political rivalry. and if he is lying your adversary, then indeed you have the right indeed duty to shut him down. and again, that's why i think that this social and political climate is so poisonous because you mentioned the 6th of january and the others. what have we, however, we refer to those events. what those events encapsulate, of course, were a distrust of institutions on the part of the people demonstrating. but the counter reaction demonstrates nothing less than a hatred of those people a hatred of the people who feel distrust in the institutions. and that is the great cleavage of our day between on the one hand these elite soon we rightly denounced as being remote. and those leads whose feelings towards people like us, people like you, peter, and me, or is one of hatred. and that's why the whipping up of hatred and suspicion

in society against, for example, the non vaccinated as, as to been done recently in france and in other countries where they are blame, does it work for the, for the virus. these are anthropological, extremely dangerous passions to unleash and once again. that's why i feel so pessimistic about the times that we live in because when these passions of scapegoating are released and it really is genuinely, i'm not trying to be alarmist, it is genuinely, very difficult to know where they will end. it's right in the wrong leashed, and legitimize by authority, it's almost impossible to make the turn. i want everybody to know my audience. i took the vaccine because i thought it was the right choice for me. and i, i firmly believe in freedom the people should make their own choices and well. coercion always ends badly or a gentleman that's all the time we have want to thank my guest in new york and embarrassed when they were watching us here. he's see you next time. remember

prospect this. oh ah, ah, working room or should never. she popped in. she said, well, i'm getting ready to go shopping for christmas. and we recently was going to buy another shooting another safe part of american life shattered by violence. the gunman was armed with an a ar 15, semi automatic rifle. when the issue comes home, it's time to act when we're silent on this issue, the other side wins. by default, the lady that lived over there. i was walking one of the dogs, which is why you where again, where you skin, nothing, could take it off it. i think the people need to take responsibility in their own

and be prepared. if those kinds of weapons were less available. we wouldn't have a lot of the shootings. we certainly wouldn't have the number of deaths join me every thursday on the alex salmon. sure. but i'll be speaking to guess what the world politics, sport business. i'm sure business. i'll see you then. ah, european gas prices surged you all time records as the continent faces a double whammy of power shortages and freezing temperatures. totally sure police would. the current tension in europe is the united states, fulls. bratia had to respond that every step. that's every step the situation was getting worse and worse. president putin criticizes america and nato's eastward expansion, noting that moscow.