Felly, mae'n gwybod a'r cymdeithasol o'i ddweud y Chyfbryd, ein gwybod i'r cadw'r gweithlach, yw Sarah Worthington, ac rwy'n ddod i'n gwybod i'n gwybod i'n ddiweddiol i'r Ffwrdd Llywodraeth Cymru gyda'r Llywodraeth Cymru. Ychydig, mae'n ddwy'r llwydd yn ei ddim yn gyflwyddol ac mae'r Cyfryd Llywodraeth Cymru gyda'r Llywodraeth Cymru. One of the Centre's ambitions has been to facilitate informed and challenging public debate about some of the fundamental and significant legal issues we face. So tonight's lecture, given by Anthony Parry, really fits the bill. I'm not doing formal introduction, that will be done by Nigel Rodding, a partner at Freshfields, and a keen supporter of the faculty's various endeavours. But it is my place to welcome both Anthony and Nigel to the faculty, back to the faculty for both of them tonight. Before I hand over to the main event, there are a few housekeeping matters, but very few. Anthony will speak for about 40 minutes, maybe slightly longer, so there will be time for questions at the end, and then even more time for questions over drinks after the lecture, and you are all invited to drinks. So without more ado, I'll hand over to Nigel Rodding, but welcome. Thank you very much indeed, Sarah, and welcome from me too to everybody to this fourth annual private law centre lecture, which we have sponsored. I've got the great privilege and pleasure of introducing this year's speaker, and I'm delighted to say at the outset that after three false starts, where the apologies to Lord Newburger Wood Hoffman and the Honourable Michael Kirby, Sarah and I have now been able to find a speaker who studied law at Cambridge. So we're off to a good start already, I'm sure. Anthony is not only a Cambridge graduate, in fact, he also grew up in Cambridge. His father, Clive Parry, was a professor of international law here. Anthony tells me that Clive was something of a Eurosceptic, and father and son would often engage in fierce debates about the merits or otherwise of membership of what was then called the common market or the EEC, and from the sound of it there was a bit of thrust as well as parry in the household on those occasions. Now that was a ffensing joke, by the way, and you don't hear many of those, and there's probably a good reason for that. Thus, those early encounters didn't dissuade or deter Anthony from writing with Stephen Hardy, one of the first textbooks on EEC law. Then, after taking a master's degree in that subject at Brussels University, Anthony joined the legal advisers team at the Foreign Office where he worked for a number of years on European law issues. Anthony subsequently joined British Aerospace, as it was then called now BAE Systems, as its European director working on BAE's programme of mergers and acquisitions as well as on trade law issues for the Airbus partnership, of which BAE was then the UK member. Until the summer of last year, Anthony was the focal point for legal advice on how much this treasury on European law and trade law issues. He also led for HM Treasury on judicial review cases and European court cases. He undoubtedly has a unique combination of government and private sector experience when it comes to European law issues. At this point, I should declare an interest. As the event sponsor, you may think it comes a little late for the business of declaring interest, but I should say that Anthony is now also a colleague having joined Freshfields immediately after he left the treasury in the summer of last year. He works with us as a consultant on Brexit and trade issues amongst other things. As I hope you are about to discover for yourselves, we are very fortunate indeed to have him. What could be more fitting than a discourse on Brexit taking place on Pancake Day or Shroff Tuesday, as it used to be called and by some still is? This, of course, is an important day in the Christian calendar. An opportunity to feast on ingredients thought to represent the virtues of creation, purity, nourishment and wholesomeness, I have informed myself, before giving up such things and many others for Lent. Those of other faiths and those of no faith at all may also welcome the opportunity to give up talking about Brexit for the next 40 days. Just imagine that for a moment. What on earth would we talk about? Either way, I have no doubt Anthony will send us on our way looking for new subjects of conversation over dinner in the pub, elsewhere no alcohol or chocolate either during the period of Lent with plenty to digest in the meantime. Anthony's chosen title is Under Threat, which has a question mark. I know you can't see that, but it has a question mark under threat. Safeguarding the future of English law and the English courts after Brexit. Please join me in welcoming Anthony. Thank you. Thank you very much, Nigel Sir. Thank you very much for these kind introductions. Just before we came in here, I was speaking to Professor Tensman and that really made me realise that what I'm going to talk about is about the future fundamentally of this law faculty and young people who come out of this law faculty, many of whom 75% I believe go into the legal profession once they graduate. Most of them go into become solicitors although about 10% I believe go to the bar. Not to say there aren't other career opportunities using your law degree. That includes government service like myself going to the foreign office or the home office. There are opportunities also in international organisations, maybe the EU not so much anymore after Brexit. And the third sector as well seems to be popular, charities and voluntary organisations. But of course you don't have to use a law degree directly. You can go on to be, I think we all used to laugh about this but you can go on to be an accountant or a banker or a journalist or a teacher. It says on your website that you would be following in the footsteps of many other Cambridge law graduates and following that sort of career path. So I wanted to colour these options a bit by telling you a bit about my own career path which Nigel has sketched in a little bit already. It wasn't so much that these options I've just referred to were alternatives, it was more the case that they were cumulative and I think that fits in very well with our understanding these days that you have to think about changing a career every five years in this modern world. A bit like software really. My career really has spanned the whole arc of the European community membership of the UK. I wasn't perhaps exactly there present at the curation but near enough to that. When I read law at Cambridge I didn't think anybody knew what the common market was and most people confused it with the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. I suspect that confusion still continues for some people. On graduating I was fortunate enough to be offered a Wiener and Sparks scholarship. Highly recommended, very valuable to study at Brussels University studying European law and that was to some extent my ticket to the foreign office where I worked with a bill team that was working on what became the European Communities Act 1972. Then, as Nigel says, I spent some time at British Aerospace, some time at the Treasury and then press fields were kind enough to invite me to join them to work on the future of I suppose nothing less than the UK legal profession in a post Brexit environment. I really want to talk about the future of English law, the future of the legal profession and also about English courts after Brexit and to some extent these things interweave with each other. So you'll forgive me if there's an element of coming back to some of the same issues there. I want to start though by talking about the issue of sovereignty because I think that says a great deal about the role of our courts and our future relations with other nations. I want to start though with an anecdote. Recently, I watched the television series The Tudors, I don't know whether any of you saw that. I thought it was a fantastic mixture of costume drama and potted history. There was also a fair bit of sex in it but then that's not very surprising because basically what it was about was the story of England's King Henry VIII and as everybody knows he had six wives, divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived as the rhyme goes. But the underlying theme throughout Great Harry's reign on television and in reality was the shifting alliances between England, France, the Empire and other European powers always with the Pope, the vicar of Rome in the background. So one year there was a dynastic alliance with France as being the objective. The next year it was well let's challenge Spain and rely ourselves with France and then back again. Now it's this iterative pattern of relations between states which remains central today. I don't think that has really changed. Actually you should be forgiven for thinking that perhaps there are parallels between Henry's experiences with the papacy, with the reformation and Britain's uneasy post-war relationship with Europe and with the European Union. After Brexit we are told by the Prime Minister that the UK will have an equal partnership between an independent self-governing global Britain and our friends and allies in the EU. So what is the basis for the new relationship? Well I suppose it will be some kind of agreement. What the Prime Minister has said is that she wants a bold and ambitious free trade agreement. So this is another in the series of international alliances. I thought a bit about what the International Court and before it the permanent Court of International Justice had said about the sources of law and international relations. First and foremost the statute of the court says you apply international conventions provided they're expressly recognised by the contesting states. There are other sources of international law but they probably pale into insignificance when you set it against the tidal wave of what Manly Hudson referred to as international legislation. I.e. all these treaties which have poured out of international organisations as part of what you could almost describe as the post-World War II settlement. Now what was it that underpinned this system of international relations? I'm fairly persuaded that what it is is an understanding about principles of justice as fairness. There are philosophers who subscribe to what I believe is referred to as the Rawlsian principles of justice as fairness and that seemed to need to be a fairly good description. But this compact really, the post-war understanding here seems to be breaking down in much the same way as it broke down it has to be said in the run-up to the First World War and we seem to be shifting back away from globalisation and towards de-globalisation. This is really led by the new United States President who is widely described as taking a transactional approach to international relations. He says he intends a certain realignment at the geo-strategic level. He's ordered the United States to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and he's questioned the United States commitment to NATO, the WTO and other multilateral institutions which the United States has underwritten for the past 70 years. On the other hand, you can see how Britain's decision to withdraw from the EU really has echoes in other member states of the European Union referring only to those who have got elections in 2017, the Netherlands, Italy, France, Germany and others that I could prefer to the visa-grad group as well. So you have to ask yourself whether there isn't a bit of a shift in the meaning and practice of international law. From a general code, we now seem to be looking at it not so much as a framework for fair contact as an arena in which the great actors stake their contending claims. Whatever the case, much of the Brexit debate was about taking back the UK's parliamentary sovereignty. Theresa May in her Lancashire House speech referred to the principle of parliamentary sovereignty as the basis of our constitutional settlement and says that supranational institutions, as long as those created by the EU sit very uneasily with this. Now I have to say that the doctrine of supremacy of European law long predates the UK's accession to the common market. In your EU law 101 class you must remember the Van Gent and Loos case which said that member states had limited their sovereign rights in favour of the EU. So you'll also remember that that case dates not from 1983 or 73 but from 1963. All of this was very well understood by the Labour government which started accession negotiations in 1967 and by the Conservative government which took the UK into the common market in 1973. In fact I suppose I must have made these very points to the government when I was a junior member of the Bill team back in 1972. Whatever the case, there's been a tendency laterally in the Brexit argument to say oh yeah but we never, we didn't sign up for supranational organisation as it has emerged on the back of the Siegel European Act which was in 1986 and the Maastricht Treaty 1992 and this is where the UK is now drawing a line in the sand. Well I think you can argue about that and also I think it's interesting to look here at the judgments in the Miller case, the Supreme Court, a recent Supreme Court decision. I've said something about this in the paper which I imagine may appear after this evening on your website. So I won't go into that beyond saying that the majority of the court took the view that the 1972 act was unprecedented and unique in its effects and this could only be dealt with by action of parliament which in fact is taking the form of I think one of the shortest bills on record to give Parliament's consent to the issuance of the article 50 notice. Of course Lord Reed dissented from the view taken by the majority and I think that really it's beyond my remit to debate with you which is the better view there but probably you'll come back to that in later courses here. Certainly the proper construction of the 72 act remain interesting questions for debate. Let me go on then to look at the consequences of leaving the EU for our domestic legal system and specifically the consequences for the provision of legal services, choice of law and the choice of English courts to resolve disputes. Of course there's a huge internal market for legal services in the UK but this is driven by people going about their everyday business of living, working, buying property, renting houses and dying as well. There's also a huge commercial component with a purely domestic content, sales of goods and services, commercial leases and so forth as well as a big component of government regulation of one kind or another. None of this activity has to do with Europe in any direct sense but equally across very wide ranges of activity both private and commercial and regulatory the relevant law will be European law or based on European law or influenced by European law and that European law as you know has effect in the UK by virtue of the European Communities Act 1972 or by instruments adopted under it or in some cases by certain discrete statutes all of which provides the conduit pipe in the words of the Supreme Court in the Miller case through which EU law became part of our UK domestic system. Not to suggest though that the influence of European law on domestic law began in 1972 as Lord Newberger pointed out when he delivered his lecture on the British and Europe to this very audience in 2014 there's been a long and fruitful history of cross-fertilisation between common law and the continental legal systems which predates our membership of the European community by several hundred years. As Lord Newberger said, our legal history should be viewed not as one of splendid isolation from the continent but rather one of splendid synthesis. The full extent of the EU's contribution to that synthesis in recent years is shown by a House of Commons study which shows that there was something like 19,000 legislative acts currently in force including some 5,000 regulations. Now I think this figure is actually somewhat exaggerated because it includes quite a lot of amending legislation but you're still left with around a thousand pieces of substantive legislation which apply in the UK. The government has announced that it will introduce a great repeal bill this summer to repeal the 1972 act and to make provision for the EU ache that is the body of existing EU law and obligations to be converted into UK law wherever practical and appropriate I believe they're referring to this as on-shoring in a nice bit of modern jargon. So European law will become UK law not just in its effect but in fact as well. There's going to be a whole question about how our courts will view this law in the light of the jurisprudence of the European court. The government has been very clear that post Brexit the UK would no longer be subject to the jurisdiction of the court but beyond that we don't know exactly how the courts in the UK will take account of existing or future European jurisprudence but in short all of existing European legislation will either be domesticated or repealed so far so good. My immediate concern is with the use of English law internationally I said something about how English law had its separate existence from European law and how European law overlays it and how the new act will in effect assimilate all that European law into UK law. What happens to international parties choosing English law to govern their contracts and using the English courts to resolve their disputes? There's been a huge expansion of this activity I've experienced this personally since Big Bang in 1986 this was when the financial institutions were liberated from hitherto very restrictive legislation. The reasons for the choice of English law have little to do with the membership of the EU so one could expect that the choice of English law and English courts by international parties should not be affected by Brexit. Nevertheless there has been an attempt in sub quarters to suggest that Brexit may undermine the future attractiveness of English law and of this jurisdiction as a forum for resolving disputes. There are a number of steps that can and should be taken to mitigate that perception and it's those that I want to try and explore further today. One obvious measure of the popularity of English law and the English courts system in general is the success of the UK legal services industry. Lot of statistics here. Three billion trade surplus in 2015 1.6% of GDP is provided by legal services in the UK that compares with a mere 7% accounted for by the national health. I'm not sure how I correlate those two figures almost as many lawyers as doctors does that mean? I'm not quite sure. Nevertheless all of this potentially is put at risk by Brexit. What could this mean for lawyers and for provision of legal services? At the moment the EU single market gives UK qualified lawyers who are also EU nationals near complete freedom to provide legal services in other member states. Without this framework UK lawyers and that means you as future graduates I expect seeking to work in the EU would need to comply with local rules governing access to the legal professions. These differ from member state to member state. This access is crucial to the UK legal services sector's future success. Let me say something about the basis for the single market and legal services. It's founded on three key lawyer specific rights derived from the treaties and from directives. First of all the free movement of legal services laid down in certain inner directive. The right of establishment for lawyers and the mutual recognition of professional qualifications. In a scenario where the EU rules cease to apply we'd be thrown back on the WTO rules. Well but what are they? The WTO rules are something called the general agreement on trade in services and that says almost nothing about freedom to provide legal services. And it is essentially a matter of concession by individual parties to the WTO what restrictions they are prepared to waive. Concentrating on the loss of the rights which are provided under those three headings by EU law in a worst case scenario we would see UK lawyers as being able to provide advice only on UK law and public international law via telephone and teleconference and not by way of visits to clients on the continent. They would no longer be able to give advice on EU law to clients based in mainland Europe. They would lose their rights of establishment in some jurisdictions in mainland Europe. They would not be able to practice EU or local law unless established in mainland Europe and UK and continental firms would find it significantly more difficult and less attractive to con lawyers in and out of the UK. In consequence we would see London as losing its position as the EU legal services capital which it is today. It would be a less attractive location for non-EU firms to establish their European operations and the quality and experience of UK-qualified lawyers could decline in consequence. At the moment what I think is referred to is the Republic of Ireland get out of jail card at the moment that there is some question as to whether Irish might be moved to close that particular loophole. Possibly the simplest way to retain access to the directives would be by way of amending them as to refer to the UK in addition to the member states of the European Union. If that weren't an option then possibly a separate bilateral agreement of some thought covering similar principles but for example limiting registration requirements in EU member states. Generally countries take a protectionist approach towards their local legal services sectors as opposed to that sort of negotiation would be easy. I don't think one can put much faith in the possibility that a standard form free trade agreement with the EU would provide freedom, provide legal services. Certainly the recent agreement concluded with Canada is not much of a precedent there. So I've painted rather a gloomy picture of what could happen to the provision of legal services without an agreement with the EU on continued access to the European market. I want to say now something about choice of English law to govern business relationships between parties from outside the UK. This has been going on for a very long time. A recent Singapore Academy of Law survey said that 48% of their respondents identified English law as their preferred choice of governing law in contracts. Well that sounds very good. Certainly this is consistent with a survey that fresh fields themselves conducted on trying to identify in effect why it was that clients were using English law, particularly where there was little or no nexus to England in the mandate. I will leave you to read the very long list of examples given in the printed text of this paper, but the examples that I particularly liked were private placings by Russian companies and debt restructurings of non-English companies, property deals outside the United States, and lastly disputes between oligarchs. So actually what's motivating all these commercial parties to select English law? Now again another survey this time by the British Institute of International and Comparative Law. The main reason they found that commercial parties choose English law is due to the perceived quality, certainty, clarity, and predictability of our law, as well as its efficiency in commercial disputes. The Bickel survey also identified some of the substantive features of English law which make it attractive, and these included unequivocal recognition of freedom to contract, availability of commercially oriented remedies, and I liked the last bit, reluctance of courts to rewrite commercial contracts. Another important theme to emerge was the possibility of combining a choice of English law clause with an English litigation clause. Perhaps I should turn now to the impact of Brexit on the private international law rules governing choice of law. Again back to your EU law 101 class you'll remember that the Rome 1 regulation governs choice of law in respect of contractual obligations and wait for it Rome 2 governs non contractual obligations. Most significantly for present purposes both of these regulations recognise the principle of universal application. That is to say that if you choose the law of a particular jurisdiction then the courts will recognise that and if you choose New York law rather than law, the law of a member state of the European Union then they will still recognise it. In other words an express choice of English law to govern contractual or non contractual obligations ought to be effective throughout the EU when the UK ceases to be a member of the EU. I've mentioned also that the body of European law will be turned into UK law when the 1972 act is repealed. That suggests that Rome 1 and Rome 2 should continue to apply since they will be part of that body of law. There may be some controversy about that but all will be revealed I expect when the government gets round to publishing its bill. Now some questions about the courts in relation to Rome 1 and Rome 2. At the moment it's not the UK courts but it is the European court in Luxembourg which is the final article of how Rome 1 and Rome 2 are applied. Going forward it could be that British courts need only to take due account of rulings by the European courts relating to the regulations. That means to be clarified. The objective of the regulations is to ensure that courts across the different EU jurisdictions take a consistent approach and surely this objective of harmonisation will remain desirable following Brexit but we will be in a situation where courts are not required to apply European jurisprudence directly so there's a risk that over time a consistent approach to conflict of law rules between the UK and member states could be on the mind. Let me turn now to the reasons parties have turned to UK courts for the resolution of their disputes. According to a report by the commercial bar association something like 80% of all cases for the English commercial court involve at least one foreign party. My Bickel survey again this comes down to parties identifying the reputation and experiences of English judges and the ability to combine choice of clauses with choice of law clauses all favouring English law. This latter point underscores the symbiotic relationship between choice of law and choice of jurisdiction. There is a message here that businesses are sending out which is that British courts are an excellent forum for resolving disputes. The reasons which made them attractive options before the referendum vote ought not to disappear with Brexit. But there is a potential issue around the future and forcibility of UK court judgments that needs to be resolved. I could make this very long or I could make this very short. To know I think that this next part I shall make quite short. At the moment the EU wide system of allocating jurisdiction among EU member state courts and for the recognition and enforcement of judgments is based on something called the Brussels Recast Regulation. The difficulty here is again well if we are outside the EU can we rely on the recast regulation for recognition and enforcement of judgments. Well no probably not simply incorporating the Brussels Regulation into English law will not have the effect of ensuring that other member states give effect to judgments delivered by the UK courts. So what is to be done we think that there are tiered options here the most obvious one would be to say ok well why don't we have a convention with the EU which says the Brussels Regulation will recast regulation will apply between the UK and the EU are you will say but doesn't this terrible problem of the jurisdiction of the European Court come up yet again will you accept the jurisdiction of the European Court or what will your courts do about this to which the answer is aha you say well the Danes thought about this when they opted out of this area of European law some years ago and they agreed that while they would track the reverse version of the recast regulation in effect the Brussels one regulation they would also undertake to accept future amendments and while they wouldn't accept the jurisdiction of the European Court directly they would have regard to the jurisprudence of the court and this in all areas where other member states refer cases to the European Court so with adaptations perhaps that seems a rather attractive solution to the problem of the continuous in effect of the Brussels Regulation for the UK that's a big ask in a negotiation with the other member states and until recently people were saying that perhaps there was a middle solution which would consist in adopting the well really horning in on the convention which the EU has agreed with the after countries for a similar purpose of giving effect to the earlier iterations of the Brussels Recast Regulation I won't go into the merits of the substance of the Lugano Convention as against the Brussels Recast Regulation however there is the rather obvious problem that in order to participate in the Lugano Convention it would be necessary not only to secure the agreement of all of the member states of the European Union same problem as with the Recast Regulation but it would also be necessary to obtain the agreement of all of the after members so while I'm not suggesting that's an insuperable hurdle there is a major practical problem there in order to get to what is fundamentally a less attractive solution than finding a way of incorporating the Brussels Recast Regulation third option is for the UK to seek to exceed to the Hague Convention on Recognition of Judgments now the UK is already a party to this convention by virtue of its membership with the EU and the EU has acceded to that convention so in principle there is no difficulty about the substance however the Hague Convention is by way of being a bit of a backstop the remedies which it provides and the the streamlining that the Brussels Regulation has introduced are not really present in the Hague Convention and our recommendation to government really would be yes yes yes go ahead ratify the Hague Convention obviously you should do that but that shouldn't deter you from working towards incorporation of the Brussels Recast Regulation as best you can that kind of brings me to an end of what I have to say about the law briefly I wanted to say something about what the justice system can do to help itself Lord Thomas, the Chief Justice has recognised he recognised in quite an important speech he gave last year than his Bailey lecture that English courts are facing competition from international arbitral tribunals and also from courts in other countries and he said in a recent presentation that he gave at Freshfield's actually on 19 January that work was in progress to develop proposals that maintain the preeminence of our legal system we have in place he said a reform programme for the courts and tribunals which is the most ambitious in terms of modernisation in the world I thought that was a pretty big claim actually nevertheless this is all dependent I think on having the appropriate judiciary in place Lord Newberger referred to earlier was reported only last week as saying that lack of judges was a risk in the post-Brexit world apparently because there's not enough money in the justice department's kitty lastly what about arbitration what about London's seated arbitration isn't this a solution to any potential uncertainty around the future of enforceability of UK court judgments well yes we think that it is to some extent and another survey London is currently the most widely used and preferred seat for international arbitration ahead of all rivals and Brexit should not impact significantly on any of the factors which make it attractive and more importantly we don't think that there are any enforcement issues that arrive with London arbitral awards and this is because enforcement depends on the 1968 New York Convention which is independent of membership of the European Union so from a practical viewpoint certainly an interim solution for international parties particularly concerned about enforceability of UK judgments could be to agree to London arbitration as an alternative to the solicitation before English courts but of course not every transaction is suitable for arbitration or is not always a natural choice there and where preference remains for litigation an alternative option would be parties to agree to refer disputes to the exclusive jurisdiction of English courts subject to a carve out to the effect that if there is no treaty or other instrument enforced by which a judgment of a UK court could automatically be enforced as at the date of legal proceedings the dispute should be referred instead to arbitration so although Brexit bought them to have too much of an effect on London led arbitrations it remains possible that any potential concerns could have a future impact on its uses and underpinning governing law and the choice of London as a seat of arbitration and this could have a knock on effect on UK based lawyers and law firms and on the courts before I stop some conclusions I think we are entering on some troubled waters I'm conscious in speaking overly long this evening that there are an awful lot of issues here which are raised by Brexit and I think that although government has looked at some of these issues in isolation I don't think that it has that good an overall picture of it and I'm certainly not conscious that the government has said oh yeah we've taken all that on board we've stuck it all above our red line and we'll ensure we'll be absolutely certain that it's included in any agreement that we reach with the EU regarding exit or our future relationship I don't think that's happening at the moment and we are leading the safety of an international order guaranteed by the post war settlement based on fairness and reciprocity into something I'm not quite sure what really certainly a more transactional approach to international relations in Brexit negotiations we clearly need to look for mutual advantage but at the moment the signs are not very promising there is a risk that there will be no agreement and that we will default to the WTO option which is no option at all nevertheless on the assumption that there will be a mutually beneficial negotiation I suggest that the legal profession is pretty united in calling on government to include in its red lines continuance of the principles of Rome 1 and 2 regulations and an agreement with the EU on continuance of Brussels's recast along the lines of the Danish model and I hope this doesn't fail over quibbles about jurisdiction of the European Court but that won't be enough on its own in a legally competitive environment the UK needs to work hard at modernising and streamlining the machinery of justice and I'm glad that there are signs that this is in hand I'm told I might answer questions if I can


It's Wednesday, October the 27th, 2021. Welcome to What Now America. I'm Tim Apachele, your host. And today's title is Facebook Papers. Will Congress break them up? Back in February of 2019, the Pew Research Organization, which is a renowned polling research entity, estimated that 54% of Americans get their news from social media, either sometimes or often. And their social media platform of choice is Facebook. Now, let's overlay the testimony from Francine Haugen in front of Congress in this week, most recently in the United Kingdom. And basically what she has testified with thousands of papers from Facebook, internal documents, is that Facebook, as a profit model, a profit scheme, takes a well-meaning audience and takes a mainstream audience on the internet and pushes them to the extremes of different messages, messages that polarize Americans. And again, the more polarization, the more clicks, the more clicks, the more views, the more views. That's where advertisers like to put their ads. It's all about viewership. So guess what? Extremism, misinformation, and polarization has worked out quite well for Facebook, and it seems to be a profit model, which leads us to our question. Will Congress do something about it? And here to discuss that is Jay Fiedel, Winston Welch, and Cynthia Sinclair. Good morning, everyone. Good morning, Kim. Serious times and serious topics. Jay, how does Congress begin to scratch the surface of either regulating or breaking up a huge company like Facebook? Specifically, how do they regulate an algorithm or how do they begin to try to limit content if they do? Well, the first thing they do is they understand what's going on. They understand what the algorithm is. They're not going to be able to regulate it very well unless they understand it. And algorithms are not easy to understand. You have to sort of decompress them and look at the individual coding, which is going to be proprietary. So it's not easy, but Amy Klobuchar is the chair of the committee that's looking into this, and she swears she's going to do something about it.  A year or two ago, when Congress looked into what was going on in the big tech companies, they got nowhere because they didn't understand, and their staffers didn't understand, and they never really drafted any bills. But now I think it's different. They've had some time to study it. They've had a lot of press about it lately, and I think Amy will do something. But to go to the bottom line of your question, okay, this is going to have to go through the Senate. Remember them, and they always vote in self-interest. So let's see. Zuckerberg and Facebook likes division. Well, the Republicans like division. Zuckerberg and Facebook did some awful things in the elections, various elections, including the Brexit election, and believe it or not, the Haiti election years ago that didn't do them any good. And arguably, maybe more than arguably, some evidence from Algin and the like, that Facebook was doing stuff in the 2016 election and the 2020 election, and it was wrong. It was not just dividing the country. It was pushing voters one way or the other, which is hideous and horrendous in a democracy, and they haven't fixed it. They haven't spent the time, money, resources to fix it. They've been too busy raking in the coins. Okay, so now you ask, you must ask, what the Republicans are going to do? And they're going to do it as a block. They're going to say, we like what happened with Cambridge Analytica. We like division. We pray on that. We enjoy that. That is mainstream for us. We want that. Do you think for a moment they're going to vote to regulate or dismember Facebook? So is Amy Klobuchar, is she kind of in fantasy land when she says she believes she has bipartisan support for a bill that is either going to look into Facebook as a monopoly or look into restricting content and or the algorithms? Ask Mitch McConnell. I don't think this bipartisan support that's going to carry the United States Senate, which is completely dysfunctional. Okay. Winston, I'm going to read a quote from Mark Zuckerberg that responded to the most recent trove of documents that have come to light in the media. And here's this quote, good faith criticism helps us get better. But my view is we are seeing a coordinated effort to selectively leak documents and paint a false picture of our company. Is Mark Zuckerberg the right person to have in front of the camera and address this serious hole in the boat, this public relations nightmare that they're now dealing with? Is he the right guy? Because I hear a lot of people say he may know things on a technical basis, but he is not the should not be in front of a camera. He comes off as insincere and at times snarky. And what are they going to do about it? Is he the right guy? He's the main shareholder. He is the main shareholder. Yeah. What's his shareholding? This is very important because the question has arisen as to whether he should be CEO. If he controls the board, he can stay as CEO. If he doesn't, the board can get rid of him. What's his shareholding? I don't know the answer to that question, but it's interesting to watch this. We've had, after Cambridge Analytica, you would have thought that there would have been a whole bunch of changes that came down the pike. But we have seeded so much control. People worry about the mainstream media, Fox. That's all true. But when we ourselves, now, of course, our cable provider is knowing every time we flip the channel too, and I'm sure they sell that information wherever they can. Google knows everything that we search. If you go into your where you've been setting, whoa, they know exactly where you were, how long you were there. They put every picture and person together, every query you ever made. And to extricate yourself from this is extremely difficult. Amazon, same thing.  I wanted another one. What was that tea that I bought?  So we've traded this convenience and laziness. But as far as Facebook goes and the specific algorithms that they have used designed to divide the public, designed to foment animosity, it does need to be regulated. I don't think we need an actor of Congress for this. I don't think we should expect one. We have something called the Department of Justice, last time I checked. And there are laws that they can probably go back to, to the big oil trust when they broke that up and said this is an antitrust, plain and simple. These people have too much control over, too much information, information being the product.  And so when you have a tiny handful of companies, and when Instagram is owned by Facebook, that's even, that's even more insidious, because it just dives right into whatever you're doing. They're collecting every click. They're selling it. They're manipulating us still, no matter what they say. He goes before Congress. He looks like boy wonder still. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm totally to blame for this. Has anything changed? I don't think so. And as far as Jay's point, if I were a Republican or Democrat, who knows what Zuckerberg is? Maybe he'll, he's, his job, remember, is to make money for his shareholders. But as far as the Republicans go, they don't know when that click is, they always talk about the anti Republican bias in tech. So what's to keep them from thinking that Facebook next time around wouldn't be much more so. I want to go back to his quote, if I may, Winston. I want to go back to his quote, because he said, this is a coordinated effort to selectively leak documents. In Zuckerberg's mind, who's coordinating this? Is this some proactive attack on Facebook? Is that what he's trying to imply? And then of course, he's saying it's a false picture of our company. So out of a thousand documents that seem to be pretty damning, how could that possibly be false? Is this a bad PR statement that he's put out, or is this further just, you know, amplified that he's incapable of addressing the problem? Maybe both. Just because someone says something doesn't make it true. And he says, oh, look, they're so mean to us. Oh, that lady so mean she left the company and she's exposing what we, we did something bad a couple years ago, but we're not doing it. Everybody knows Facebook is still doing it. Google is still doing it.  I think their new motto is can't make money at all cost. And we're all part of it. And we're too small to even barely have control over clicking off the buttons. Does Google any article on how to reset your privacy settings on Amazon, Facebook, Google? It's exhausting to go through everything.  And it's even collecting when it says it's not collecting or it's collecting in ways that we don't even know or understand. It does take the Department of Justice. It may take an act of Congress, Jay, just to be fair, but I'm not expecting a lot out of the Congress. Department of Justice, they go in with some antitrust technology. Well, I think A.B. Klobuchar cited the FTC as the agency that would handle that task. And I think they are. But okay, let me move on to Cynthia here. Cynthia, I want you to tell me what you think is the most egregious aspect that's come to light from these papers and the most egregious policy or procedure that Facebook is conducting, because it's not just about polarizing Americans. It's also about the kids and the things that the kids are tuning in on. And even kids under 13 are getting into Facebook, even though there's a 13-age age limit, they're still getting in. And so there's content that could be potentially harmful and not helpful. Cynthia, in your opinion, what is the most egregious thing that Facebook's up to? Oh gosh, well it's hard to pick one specific thing because there are so many. Right now, out of the Facebook papers as they're calling them, there are eight complaints to the SEC about misleading investors, misleading the public. When it comes to the kids, I believe that we are going to keep this bipartisan sort of approach to dealing with Facebook until we get to the Kate speech. We'll keep that when it's talking about the kids, because everybody wants to protect the kids. But I'm along the same lines as Jay that once they start attacking hate speech, it's really going to curtail the ability for the Republicans to spread misinformation like they have been. And that's going to attack their personal way of doing things in politics. So I think they're going to... Let me interrupt that point. You said when they start attacking hate speech, is they meaning government agencies? Well, yeah, when the investigation starts to go after that and not after what's happening with the children. I have an example that I think speaks to the egregious nature of Facebook. Period end. First off, Facebook is used by more than 3.6 billion people worldwide. That's how huge it is. Now, from the papers, we got this one of the things that has been stated by Hagan, the former Facebook product manager. She left in May and she took a lot of the documents with her and that has become what we now call the Facebook papers. And it's important to remember though, there was a second whistleblower that came out on Friday. And we don't really know what they're saying yet. But this was the specific thing that I took out. Vietnam, okay, told Facebook that if they didn't curtail their anti-government posts, they would get kicked out of the country. So did they say, well, no, we're not going to do that. We're going to do whatever we want. No, they didn't want to get kicked out of the country. So it turns out that there were five times the amount of anti-government posts that were censored and taken out during the last few months for this big thing that was happening for them over there. So we know he doesn't care. He does not care. This is the first time we really see evidence of something that is completely below the ethics line when it comes to that we have proof of, right?  Well, he takes that away as soon as it changes his position in business. So we can see that from the Vietnam papers. That is hard evidence of just how much we can trust whatever Mark Zuckerberg decides to say. Okay. You had mentioned that there was a second whistleblower that's come out. Now, I guess my question is, given this quotation that Mark Zuckerberg gave during a third quarter investors meeting, how does that sit with employees? All the thousands of employees they have, do you think there's people just steaming going, I know the truth? And besides Francine Haugen, I have a different set of papers or I have a different set of knowledge. And do you expect to see more people come out, more employees? I do. I absolutely do, because they're not treated really well either. I mean, they might as well go to the job at Amazon for the amount of money they're making, yet they're having to really compromise their ethics. They have to really look inside themselves and say, do I want to be part of somebody that is going to, you know, curtail speech, anti-government speech, just so that they can stay there? Do I want to be part of a company that puts kids at risk? There's a Washington Post article that starts with the fact that they're subsidizing hate. And that is exactly right. You know, we know now from the papers that they make more money when people are fighting and going back and forth. And I have seen in my own experience with Facebook that they send me stuff just to see if I'll respond when they know full well that I'm not a Republican. I don't agree with that stuff, but they send it to me anyway, from obscure friends just to see if I'll get a reaction. And I try to approach that. And that's what I say to everybody out there. If you use Facebook, when you see these kinds of things happening, don't just use Facebook blindly anymore. We know what they're about. So it's great to be able to contact your friends and all that stuff, but it's also important to watch what they're doing and don't just throw yourself over and trust completely. Okay. Well, I recall in the 60s there was something called the Good Seal of Broadcasting. Doesn't sound like Facebook is following those guidelines anymore. All right, we're going to switch direction here, Jay. And I want to ask you about a civil trial that's recently started to take place. They're in jury selection. It's the Charlottesville Nine, if you will. It's those who have been identified as organizing the Charlottesville protests, which of course led to a death and many people injured in that protest. And again, it was a protest to basically say we don't like Jews, we don't like anybody. This is a different strategy. This is not a criminal trial. This is a civil trial. And what I've gathered up to this point is it's effective because it's bankrupting these organizations that are that perpetrate hate. The leaders of these organizations are now paying thousands of dollars for a defense attorney and it's draining the bank accounts. Your thoughts about this pending trial and the strategy of using civil lawsuits to undermine white supremacist groups? I like the idea of using civil lawsuits because in effect, the victims have greater control with the prosecutor. The prosecutor may or may not do anything. That's his choice. And if the prosecutor is a Republican, he won't do anything.  Number one is three years. It's a long time. Our courts are too slow. Sorry. That's one of the problems in the country is our courts are just as delayed as justice denied. Why did it take three years to get to a jury? That's terrible. The other interesting point about this trial is a number of the defendants who were named and sued have defaulted. And judgments have been entered already against them. I don't know if the dollar amount of those judgments is settled, but they have defaulted and they are liable for whatever ultimately it is. What happened to the prosecution anyway? What happened to the criminal prosecutors? What happened? I mean, does it really have to go this way? And finally, finally this, the notion that it's been in all the papers, you know, that you're going to bankrupt these organizations. They won't be able to function anymore. Really? In what world do that conclusion live? Because they drop out of the one organization, sure, it's bankrupt. That's fine. And 24 hours later, they form another, even a non-profit tax-exempt organization where the mission statement is a lie. And bingo, you got a replacement organization that quick. So the bankruptcy of these organizations is, it's not really effective. I'm sorry. You have to go after the individuals. And I don't know in the Charlottesville trial, whether they're doing that, they should be hitting on every single officer and every single director of these organizations and bankrupting them individually. The organization. Isn't that what the FBI did in the 1930s and made these cockroaches scatter for cover?  But didn't the United States government take a very aggressive stand against white supremacist groups, the KKK and others? Yeah, in the thirties. But in the thirties, there weren't an awful lot of them. And in the thirties, it's hard to say that the FBI was all that effective. And it's hard to say that the FBI and other prosecuting organizations are being effective now. And maybe the civilian trials would be a solution, because you don't have to rely on governmental institutions and prosecutors who could be politicized. You go against the individuals, though, that means a lot more than going against the organizations. Organizations can be recreated overnight. Yeah. All right, thanks, Jay. Winston, to you, almost on the same line here is, you know, Christopher Ray, the FBI director, spent an hour or so in front of Congress basically noting the threat of domestic terrorism. And certainly white supremacist groups is a huge element of that. Do you agree with Jay that really these organizations can fold and start up again? And the United States government, specifically the FBI, is helpless in how they try to tackle and prosecute those that are trying to create insurrection and racial crimes, hate crimes? Other governments not helpless at all. It's maybe lacking in some willpower or I don't think manpower. But they're tracking tens of thousands of people, I'm sure, probably hundreds, maybe more groups domestically. And I think they're assisted by other groups like the ACLU or the Southern Poverty and Law Center, Vice-President of Law and Poverty Center. They track these extremist groups. And I think a lot of the time, they're preventing stuff that we don't even know they're preventing. It's just happening. And that's, you know, it's a byproduct of our monitored society. And one way that they're communicating is on these groups like Facebook, you know, or Parler or something. So there's something to be said for having them be more organized than secretive for being in a 501C3 or whatever they are, rather than just people that meet down at the river. Like they used to in the old days, are you going to get rid of this? I mean, my question is, is like, what happened to our nation? What are just common values where we have to rely on these things? You know, and just back to Facebook for a second, this is a very confusing issue because Facebook went out a week ago for a worldwide outage. And I missed it. But apparently a lot of people did it. Like, didn't you hear? I said, what? Facebook was down for 12 hours. And you would have thought the world would come to an end. But for many people, it did because their businesses rely on it. And they do their meetings on it. And they have their very good organizations on it. And that's the primary method of communication for a lot of these things. How we're going to break this up, how we navigate this very complex system, not to mention the white supremacists and all of that. These are really advanced questions. And I hesitate, you know, we don't have speech loss in this country. We have a free speech loss. In fact, it's enshrined in our Constitution. People can say, in a sense, whatever they want to say, however they want to say it.  We're banning you for this. I know I posted some things on Facebook where I got put in little Facebook jail. And when I said, hey, this is not, it's not anything, it's not, it's not hate speech. It's not political speech. It was just for an organization that automatically gets flagged for everything they put up. What about if, you know, someone decides that think tech is, you know, had a shell one that they didn't agree with, and then suddenly it gets... Well, that would be this one. It would be this one. But they ban all think tech. And then they ban, and then they'd say, Google, you two, you've got to disappear the words think tech from your search algorithms and, you know, Tim's name and all of that. So we can't, we can't be found anymore. That's what Cynthia was talking about in Vietnam. They do it in China. They do it in Russia. You know, they've just blanked out entire types of groups. And that's the real danger that we run when we're trying to say the government needs to step in here and say, oh, this is hate speech or this group is a hate group. I mean, the NRA might be declared it one day and the, you know, the think tech show on what's next America might be declared the next day. And that's not the society that we want. So we've got to navigate very carefully here how we go about this. I'm sure. Okay. So I'm opining. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Winston, very much. We're almost out of time. I did want to get to this and Cynthia, you're going to have the last probably word on this. You know, the FDA has just one of their committees has okayed a vaccine for five year old to 11 year olds. But do you think parents are on board with that? Some are and some aren't, you know, even people that aren't anti-vax are nervous and afraid. It's all seem so new, you know, to people. They were nervous and afraid to even get it for themselves. So, you know, of course, they're going to be nervous and afraid about further kids. And it's just going to take some time. It's going to take a lot of PR. It's going to talk, you know, a lot of positive results. And I think it's important for people to, to remember that, you know, 800 kids have died since the beginning of this. That's a lot of kids. And we say that it doesn't affect the kids, but it does. And I wish I could remember the number, but it was the exact number. But I know it's five times the amount of kids were hospitalized through this pandemic from COVID, then are normally hospitalized in a year from just regular flu and other things. So five times more, we know that they are affected.  It doesn't hurt kids. Well, you know what it does? In my mind, one kid is too many. So, you know, what can we do to stop that? And I think that's where our scientist minds are, is that one kid is too many. What can we do to stop it? And I think that's really important. And, and I just need to say one thing about where we were before in regards to this whole trial for the nine, that on the nine that were injured in Charlottesville. And I think something that they're trying to do is establish the difference and get it in, you know, in court. So that's legal jargon even separates that free speech from, from planned encouraged violence, right? And, and it needs to go through court to be able to get that. And it's precedent that we can use for January six people also. And I'm pretty sure the Supreme Court in the 1960s came up with many cases that did limit free speech from destructive speech. And I'm pretty sure those are, those cases are still, still on the books. They are, and hopefully they will come into play during this trial, because it really does set a precedent for some of the January six cases going forward. Alrighty. Well, I want to go around the horn, we're out of time, but I want to go around the horn and get everyone's last thoughts and opinions about either what's transpired this week or what's coming up here in the next few days or in the next week. Jay, to you. Didn't start right now, but it, but it is accelerating right now. And that is the possibility that our, that our First Amendment will degrade is degrading. And the hard to say how it's going to come out, but if you regulate the algorithm, if you regulate Facebook, if you try to regulate speech in general, it will be regulated. And the First Amendment will be undermined. And I can't say exactly how, but I just feel that we're on, we're on a sea change there. And the change is little by little, free speech is going away. So get used to it. Get used to it in Facebook, get used to it in, in all manner of things. And before you know it, we'll be in 1984 where it's, it's not so much that you will feel a lack of freedom to speak, but that other people will have freedom to take draconian steps against you for what you have said. And fear will be the central point there. People will be afraid of exercising, expressing their views. And I think that's already happening in some ways. How would you like to be a member of that jury in Charlottesville?  It's not so easy to, to speak out anymore. And it's going to be less easy going forward, no matter what Amy Klobuchar does. And in fact, maybe it's part of what she does. So I agree with you, Jay. Ask anyone in Congress that dare speaks out about the dear Donald Trump. So I agree. Winston, your last thoughts. Jay just left me demoralized, but I think he's true. You know, what he's saying, and it was, it's what I was getting at too, is when we get on the slippery slope, of course you can't incite people to violence. You can't yell, don't fire in a crowd at theater. That's true. But when we start going down the slope of, this speech is okay and that speech isn't. And where that line is drawn, when it may be unpopular speech, you know, of course these, many people are absolutely just reprehensible in their speech. And we know that and we understand that. And ideally, the sun shining on them has the purifying factor. It puts them out there and they go into the pillory, the hall of public shame. Unfortunately, our hall of public shame is not the same as it used to be. And people have a different set of values that are somehow we just diverged. Facebook was part of that. It exacerbates it. It'll be an interesting thing to see where all of that goes and how they break it up and how it comes into pieces. Because unless we all stop using it and go back to the Stone Age of communications, it's going to be around. So a lot of very complex issues. Ones that we tackle here on think tech, which is a free speech zone, we can save what we want. And that is a precious thing of not only for our viewers, but for our nation and for us as individuals. Well said. Cynthia, your last thoughts? I agree with Winston. That was very well said. I agree. I have a quote, but I want to say something real quick about that. I think that one of the things that this Charlottesville trial can show is that they're looking to show that the violence was planned and encouraged, that weapons were used. They dissect the coded language and the cloaked language, which is the most important thing I think here. They hide their plans under just joking, right? And there was a precedent that's already been set in regards to that for Taylor Dumpson.  He said, go give her a warm welcome when everybody knew what they meant. And the same... Sarcasm, Sarcasm, as Donald Trump did a lot of that during his presidency. To your quote, please. We've got a time. I was done. It is from Robert Kennedy. And it's every time we turn our heads, the other way when we see the law flouted, when we tolerate what we know to be wrong, when we close our eyes and ears to the corrupt, because we are too busy or too frightened, when we fail to speak up and speak out, we strike a blow against freedom, decency, and justice. Robert Kennedy. All right, that's a great way to end the show. And that's a great quote, and it's true, full true. I'd like to thank everyone who joined us today, Jay Fidel, Winston Welch, and you, Cynthia Lees and Claire. Thanks for joining us on What Now America. Please join us next Wednesday at 11 o'clock. I'm Tim Appichelle, your host, and we'll see you then. Aloha.


Hi guys, have you ever heard of Dendera Temple? Known as the Sixth Gnome of Upper Egypt, it is one of the best preserved ancient temple complexes on earth, and it bears the scars of what must have been the most frightening and destructive of events. An event that is ignored by the majority of modern academia, the complex spans some 40,000 square feet, and within the temple is some of the most well preserved ancient artworks of anywhere in Egypt. Along with preserving the exquisite art and decorations, the temple also preserved evidence of something we were not taught about in history class. Upon the granite steps, which still lead to the temple's roof, indirect alignment with a small window cut into the thick stone wall is evidence of severe melting. At one time in the temple's long life, the steps within were turned into liquid magma. What catastrophic event could lead to the melting of granite steps through a small window in the wall? Were such events commonplace, or was it the result of an accident? Is this why the ancient structures were built with such huge blocks of stone? Many have speculated that the Dendera Temple is built upon an even older site. Are the steps surviving remnants of this much earlier complex? Were they part of a structure that once witnessed a solar flare, perhaps? Or maybe a localized supernova? Many who have examined the steps and the surrounding area have speculated that nuclear blasts may have been detonated within ancient Egypt, or even before. The ancient site in India, for example, 10 miles west of Jodhpur, with radiation that was so intense the area is still highly dangerous. An ancient layer of radioactive ash was discovered that covers a 3 square mile area. Scientists investigating the site where a housing development was being built established that there was a very high rate of illnesses in the area. The levels of radiation were so high the Indian government eventually cordoned off the entire area. They later unearthed an ancient city, which shows strong evidence of an atomic blast dating back some 12,000 years, which destroyed most of the buildings and killed an estimated half a million people. Did nuclear war occur in our distant past? Were these ancient structures which have stood the test of time actually built as bunkers? With melted steps in irradiated ancient cities found throughout the world, the evidence is certainly compelling. As always, thanks for watching guys, until next time, take care. Hey guys, so today I wanted to share with you a rather special out of place artifact. It's known as the Fisher Canyon footprint, and it's actually a lump of coal. However, this small lump of coal is something very special. It's an artifact we hold dear to our hearts here at Mystery History. Since its discovery in the early 1900s by a man named John T. Reed, a character we have actually covered in the past, it has been silencing skeptics and evolutionists the world over. John T. Reed was the man responsible for confirming native Indian legends of a race of redheaded giants that once terrorized the American continent some 13,000 years ago. When John found the Fisher Canyon footprint, he reported it to the New York Sunday American. The coal layer in which the fossil was found was dated at over 15 million years ago. Microscopic photography that was carried out by the Rockefeller Institute, presumably attempting to discredit the find, actually confirmed that it was indeed a heel print of a hand-stitched shoe, and that the fossil seemed to show the presence of two rows of stitches along the edge of the sole, with twists of thread clearly visible in the photography. The right side of the shoe also appeared more worn than the left, indicating that it was worn on the right foot. The crystals of mercury sulfide collected during the analysis only confirmed the fossilized shoe prints enormous age. After the test results were in, Samuel Hubbard of the Museum of Archeology in Oakland, California, buckled to the sheer amount of conclusive evidence by telling the press, quote, today's people are not yet able to make this kind of shoe. Facing this kind of evidence indicates that at the time of suspected uncivilized arthropods, millions of years ago people with high intelligence appear to have existed. Detail of the Threads proves that it was the sole of a shoe and was strictly the handiwork of man, end quote. This is why we love the Fisher Canyon footprint so much. It sat in the back of museum collections for years, silently waiting for evolutionists and skeptics alike to stumble upon its existence, only for it to then cast its spell of tremendous doubt upon their way of thinking. They can produce no real explanation for it. The best any mainstream scientist or anthropologist can do is ignore the evidence and conclude it's just a natural formation. Unfortunately, the footprint conveniently went missing a few years ago, even though by all accounts it was just a lump of coal. The story has also been hijacked over the years, with the Rockefeller Institute's test results subsequently vanishing. However, luckily for us, the quotes by Hubbard are in press archives all over the world. This small lump of coal is sure to fuel the argument for years to come. Divers from oil companies located within the North Sea have been discovering the remains of a drowned ancient city, which once spanned from the UK all the way to Denmark. An ancient city so massive its suspected population has been estimated well into the tens of thousands. A team of climatologists, archaeologists, and geophysicists have now successfully mapped the area, which has revealed just how vast and expansive this once lost land once was. Many specialists are now claiming this was once the real heartland of Europe. This enormous civilization is now believed to have dated back to some 8,000 years ago, and that the land mass was submerged over a period of several thousand years, a submersion which began some 20,000 years prior. Dr. Richard Bates of the Department of Earth Sciences at St. Andrews, who organized the Drowned Landscapes exhibit covering the finds within the UK, says the data reveals the human story behind Doggerland, a now submerged city of the North Sea that was once larger than many modern European countries. Could these discoveries reveal Doggerland as the real lost city of Atlantis? Several hypotheses have placed the sunken island of Atlantis within modern Northern Europe. Most noted among such researchers is Olaus Rudbeck, who suspected that Doggerland as well as a Viking Bergen island, which is thought to have been flooded by a mega tsunami following the Storega Slide in 6100 BC is the real location of Atlantis, a proposition he put forward all the way back in the 1600s. Some have proposed the Celtic Shelf as a possible location, and that there is certainly links to Ireland. Many places have been put forward for the possible location of the sunken city throughout the years, yet none have revealed ruins worthy of such claims, many of these areas being too small to have housed such an enormous city. Doggerland, however, fits the bill. Not only could it turn out to be the largest ancient civilization found on Earth, but it also rests in a possible location based on historical research for the city of Atlantis. It was submerged at one point in its history, and it is revealing astonishing ruins of a once great and presently unknown civilization. Dr. Bates, a geophysicist, said Doggerland was the real heartland of Europe until sea levels rose to give us the UK coastline of today. We have speculated for years on the lost land's existence, from bones dredged by fishermen all over the North Sea, but it's only since working with oil companies in the last few years that we have been able to recreate what this lost land looked like. When the data was first being processed, I thought it unlikely to give us any useful information. However, as more area was covered, it revealed a vast and complex landscape. We have now been able to model its flora and fauna, build up a picture of the ancient people that lived there, and begin to understand some of the dramatic events that subsequently changed the land, including the sea rising and a devastating tsunami. The research project is a collaboration between St. Andrews and the Universities of Aberdeen, Birmingham, Dundee and Wales Trinity St. David.  Thanks for watching guys, and until next time, take care. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next video. This is a complete destruction of entire ancient ruins, legacies of long lost civilizations. Thankfully, however, some like the Great Pyramids, the jugs of Laos, the sheer size, age and subsequent concentration of vegetation or strata on a ruin, simply enveloping the relic back to a seeming natural formation. The remoteness of the Moai, all have the ruins saved by jungles or their sheer indestructibility. These relics, specifically, and ultimately created to withstand these man-made or even natural attempts of utter destruction. The megaliths in the Bada Valley, located in the Lore Lindu National Park, Centro Selawesi, Indonesia. The site contains hundreds of megaliths, although dated to the 14th century as mentioned, the collection of natural strata which has accumulated around the bases of these curious statues is indicative of a far greater age and of a culture not only lost and undocumented but seemingly fascinated with tribal phallic artwork. The megaliths in the Bada Valley were first discovered in 1908. Although the explorations have been going on for more than 100 years, conveniently academia has discovered little about the megaliths or indeed their creators as such, including a lack of a forthcoming date of when the stone statues were made. Some have speculated that the stones were carved around 5000 years ago, while others think the megaliths were created around 2000 years ago. It is a site which we find highly compelling.


Well, let's go to this. Let's go to this narrative. This narrative about and it's been an ongoing narrative that the West should have reacted like China that China is a great example of Who's spinning who's spinning this media?  So in North America Let's say Canada the United States pretty much not the same but almost the same type of quote-unquote freedoms, right? I can still practice a religion. I want to practice I can public Can you because the churches are closed now right now, no But but in China, I can't if I'm depending where I am I can't even practice a religion before all this stuff, right?  I'm gone Elise in Canada the United States. I can say well, our president is not good I don't like the policies he suggested so that's suggesting I don't like his cabinet and we should vote if I said that in China. No, I'm gone But I think I think that it you know, it's just a matter of degrees in some way Because ultimately what they want is they want your voice removed from out of the public discourse I've always said and you said this earlier.   It's American Canadian culture. You go to China. You go to Japan They're adopting the the the Millennials are adopting the culture of United States.  So if we go back to 70s 80s 90s and and what has been exported Then I think that you could really say that American culture could be identified right that this came from America But I think that if you look in the last let's say 10 years, but really in the last five years 10 years, especially is The the globalization has happened to such a degree that it's like especially when it comes to pop music I You I dare you to tell it like a brand new artist comes out. I dare you to tell me what country that artist is from I Dare you even just by looking at them, right?  I don't think that anybody 30 years ago would have been like, oh, yeah, Canada these guys looking at these guys on listen and and you know And the weekend is like Ethiopia. Mm-hmm, you know, so it's like The the the hodgepodge the the mix has has done something such that it's It's almost again, it's supernatural like the the culture is supernatural But I think that the culture that China has imported is A is a corporate a corporate culture. There's what is the is it called the factory? There's this Netflix Documentary I'm trying to I don't I if you I'll describe it and you may have seen it But it's yeah, the Chinese billionaire that gets the factory in the United States Factory in the US and then the US people go to China and they see how basically China has penetrated Deep deep in the United States and all levels the Kyle Bass famous investor.  Treats you and how you move through your day how your day is structured in the place that you work and I think that if you look at the essential businesses now and You look at their company policies and you look at how they treat their employees and you look at what's expected of their employees Cogs in a machine It is very much more Chinese than it is what we think of traditionally with America and I mean the the idea of like the union and all of that is really gone You know, like that's that those businesses are going to be put under all of the businesses that that formerly had unions You know, they're furloughing workers and shit from the Government positions that had government unions state workers unions and whatnot We're coming. Yeah, that's what I think is the culture that China brought and it was just a matter of efficiency Right, it's that like well if we want to compete we've got to behave in this way and that's that's really being shown in that documentary, right and It's I do think that that's a much more important aspect of culture Because it's the indoctrination.  We'll just forget but that's normal 89% there My theory of why the bullshit continues state by state is no different than it happening as actually the same as corporation states Hedge funds you name it we'll call them entities all of them realize once the Fed open up the war chest They can get money and so you I look at human beings as incentive-based creatures. We're irrational, but we're very Easy predict predictable. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and so it's like oh money. Okay. How do I get more money? Oh, I have to be more of a victim. Oh, I got to propagate my numbers. I got to get more in debt.  The Fed is billing out states.  Pay attention to the central bankers, you know, we're a part of that group But I think that that's been such esoteric knowledge to most people because those people are like, oh, no, no No, it's like the president It's like Trump and this guy that you elect and it's the prime minister and it's the queen and just No, it hasn't been that for a very very long time.   You want a hundred billion dollars? Sure, you can't pay it back. Well, give me all your water Mm-hmm.  Yeah, and this is a thing that people understand they call them evil, but I'm like they're not I'll tell you why In their mind, they're just it's not like they wake up like oh, I'm dr. Evil I'm gonna know what I'm doing is just and I believe it's for the greater good Well, there's so Robert Hare is the dr. Robert Hare who's the inventor of the hair Psychopathy checklist it's something everybody should know I heard about this before. Yeah. Yeah He's so he's studied Psychopathy which we really don't to be honest. We really we use the term psychopath, but it's really a very understudied thing and one of the reasons why is because The the those in power tend to check off a lot of the things yeah, you don't get a lot of funding for this but it is Thesis after study. He's the foremost expert on psychopathy right and he created what is the diagnostic sort of checklist to check it off But they do for criminals and whatnot his thesis is that it's somewhere between 1% and 7 to 8% of the population are These things psychopaths right born psychopaths and that fundamentally what it is is that they they lack empathy That they are Predators they're basically predators. There's theories though of why they exist in society Well, they're very important. They I mean without psychopaths. I don't they've been a part of the human experience For so long. They're like an Inseparable you could never separate them out Some people are just born that way and these are predators, right? Like we we are the most badass predators that has ever lived on this planet Mm-hmm There were if there had been tyrannosaurus rexes alive when human beings were around they would be gone now because we would have eliminated Like tigers. Have you been next to a tiger? We've we put them in cages You know what?  The only reason we're letting it swim around next to us and not kill it is because it's entertaining Right to tease it But we're not scared at all these this is just like a a Aspect almost like an astrological sign right that like some people are just born and they are just full credit