Who is Keemstar? Well I'm Keemstar and this is my story. Back in 2009 I was in my seventh or eighth year working at the attorney's office and I started getting into Halo 3. I had my own Xbox and I had a gamer tag called DJ Keemstar and the reason why I came up with that gamer tag is because on the weekends I would DJ weddings. So I worked at the attorney's office and on the weekends I would DJ weddings and events and I was making a killing and I was doing really good for myself and I just found out that I was about to be a father. All this happened at the same time. One night I was out drinking with some friends and I came home and I was a little drunk and the thing that I loved about Halo is the social aspect of the game right right before the match would start you would tell the other team I'm gonna own you I'm gonna do this I'm gonna do that I'm gonna kick your butt and I became in love with the trash talk as much as I became in love with the actual game in fact more in love with the trash talk but anyhow one night I came home from the bar like I said a little drunk and I started really reaming into the other team. I didn't think much of it and then the next day I got online and I got a couple messages and the next day more messages and finally a week later I realized that there was some video of me up on YouTube somewhere now I never inspired to be a YouTuber or a gaming entertainer it just happened this guy called Duranker recorded me and put me online when I saw the video it had 20,000 views and I was shocked I was a little embarrassed about some of the trash talk that I was saying but it was funny it was comedic um at least some people thought it was you know comedy is a weird thing not everyone thinks things are funny but 20,000 people did and I got contacted by the guy that uploaded the video his name was Duranker and he told me that you know a group of people just got together and they created this thing called F-A-G not Fag F-A-G the Federation of asshole gamers and they asked me if I wanted to be a part of it and I was like I don't know he explained to me that you know they got together and they would make videos on Halo 3 you know they'd capture trash talk and they'd pull pranks and do all kinds of different stuff like get people to betray you and then boot them out and just you know funny little pranks and said what the hell why not so I started making videos with them and I decided at some point that I wanted to make my own channel so I made my own channel and fast fast fast like super fast I got up to 3,000 subscribers now at that time I didn't know how to run a capture card I didn't know how to edit a video I didn't know how to do any of this stuff in fact how I made all my videos was I had a guy in the lobby with me that would always record me I called him my cameraman he would make the videos for me and then upload them to my channel he had the password the thing took off at 3,000 subscribers I got a message from Machinima and they invited me to be a director on their channel I didn't know what that was started looking into it and I was like super super happy so I put together a video and I sent it to him but again I was about to be a parent my child was about to be born and I remember I woke up one morning and one afternoon and Melissa spent the night in the hospital because there were some complications or whatever and I had to go home to take care of some work again I was still working at the attorney's office I went home hurried up had like a cat nap I woke up like in the afternoon and CNN was on the background and I saw that Michael Jackson just passed away at that time they said you know he's on the way the hospital they believe he passed away it's pretty scary I was like wow the king of pop dead then I walked over to my computer and I went to my channel and my channel had 300 new subscribers now that might seem a lot like in today's day and age but back in 2009 that was huge I'm like what's going on and then I realized my first video went up on Machinima and then the phone rang I answered the phone it was Melissa she said I'm having the baby now so I rushed down to the hospital I became a father and all this happened in one day and then from there we started getting a lot of comments on our videos I started getting comments that you know these trolls were fake and all this stuff was set up and staged we were the first of its kind you know before there were trolling videos all over YouTube there was FAG we kind of started the trend there were a few trolling videos prior to uh to us back in 2009 in late 2008 but uh nothing organized no group no actual channel dedicated to this type of content we were trend setters but we started getting all these comments like I was saying that it was staged it was fake it was fake it wasn't real so I wanted to prove to everyone that we were actually doing this so I started streaming on JustinTV at the time and then we went to Ustream and then finally I found my home on blog tv and I had a very successful stream back in 2010 there was like 3,000 people watching me every single night live um and I was making so much money and I was doing so well for myself because even then gaming channels couldn't get partnered but my gaming channel with FAG Halo A-holes got partnered and it was the fifth gaming channel to ever get partnered so that was a huge deal so we started making money from that I was making money from my stream and I became the number one most subscribed person beating like Shay Carl and and Philip DeFranco and all these guys on blog tv which was huge I made enough money where I was able to quit my job at the attorney's office and pursue whatever this was gaming entertainment at the course of that summer in 2010 um the Xbox live enforcement team really started cracking down on me and they started banning my consoles over and over and over again to the point where I couldn't uh make trolling videos anymore I just couldn't like every time I would stream they would just ban my oxbox so I started going over to another website called Battlecam and Battlecam was like a live streaming uh website where you would talk trash to each other and battle it out and see who can stay on the longest and I became friends with the owner of the website which is Elkie David who was a billionaire and at the same time this was going on um I stumbled across I was dabbling into Minecraft I had a Minecraft server um you know back at late 2010 early 2011 and you know that was doing very successful so everything was going good but I was kind of leaning away from trolling you know F.A.G ran its course for those two years and somebody sent me a video and they said look Minecraft is coming to Xbox live but it wasn't Minecraft it was actually uh small developer that was creating a game called Fortress Craft and I knew with the popularity that I had at the time that I could make this game huge I could make sure that Katuku and Machinima and all these big gaming companies journalist if you will would write stories about this if I could just spread the word so I contacted the indie developer made a deal with him took ownership uh part ownership over Fortress Craft and I started promoting it and Fortress Craft became this big thing and sold two million copies on Xbox Live so then I was set I was set but the way Microsoft pays is they only pay quarterly and the Xbox Live enforcement team was really crushing down on me to the point where I couldn't make revenue anymore I couldn't stream gameplay because they were banning my Xbox I couldn't do make videos because they were banning my Xbox and my gamer tags so I was to the point where everything started really slowing down and I had no income the only thing I was doing every day is like going on battle cam so I was waiting for this big check I mean a really big check life changing money but I had to wait for Microsoft to pass so all throughout 2011 I was just making it by now you gotta understand that I'm a family or I have a family that I have a child I have a girlfriend you know everyone's needs to eat everyone needs to have gas electric shelter everything needs to be taken care of and I'm the man I have to provide for my family so I was contacting the attorney's office and I was about ready to go back to work all right because I was so hard up when an opportunity came knocking at my door a gentleman contacted me and said that he owned a YouTube network and he wanted me to have half of the YouTube network and all I had to do promote it now you gotta understand I just came out of like promoting fortress crafting and being very successful and I had big money that was going to be paid out to me soon so this was another thing that I knew I could do I knew I could promote I was very successful in marketing that game there would be really easy for me to promote a network so this guy went as far as said we can even call it the Keemstar network I was super excited he told me that he was worried that if we just partner everyone all right that someone would like you know upload offensive content like you know pornography or something like that and get the whole network shut down it was like a standard MCN again I knew nothing about networks you gotta understand like eight months ago like we were the fifth like gaming channel to ever get partnered machinima just started partnering gaming channels this is way before gaming channels could even get partnered there weren't really like networks there was machinima there was like maker there was the game station and and that was it there was a few other the collective maybe there was a few other things out there but this partnering on youtube thing was brand new I didn't really know how it all worked but this guy that contacted me did apparently and he told me that we needed to take a $50 security deposit from each person before we partner to them so we have insurance that they want to get the network shut down so I'll I started promoting it I was super excited super happy start promoting promoting the Keemstar network I even uploaded a video on Halo A-holes saying hey look we'll partner anyone we just need to take a $50 deposit this is an opportunity for anyone to get partnered and to make money on youtube now at that time you got to understand that you couldn't even have a youtube banner unless you were partnered like only people that were partnered had a youtube banner so this was a big deal like close to like 50 people jumped on it right away at that time my channel was partnered with the game station which is maker which recently got purchased by disney and the CEO of maker sent me an email and he said we're unpartnering Halo A-holes right now we're we're we're getting away from your channel what you just did with that video with the $50 deposit that's clearly against youtube rules and I started freaking out I had no idea what I just got myself into so I hurried up and deleted the video and then I went to the guy that was running the PayPal the guy that contacted me the guy that actually had the network and I told him what was said to me by maker and he said ah no we can do that it's fine I checked it and everything but I didn't know what was going on and I said well can we refund everyone can we at least refund everyone because it wasn't my PayPal it was his and he said no it's fine we don't have to do that we don't have to do that the next morning I woke up and my channel was terminated the channel that I worked for like this whole time with with my friends robber robot uh two bucks and drink it was just gone youtube found out and they shut me down I'm like what did I do what did I get involved in so naturally I wanted to refund everyone the guy that contacted me said uh yeah we're not going to refund anyone and I'm going to get the channel back and I'm going to get the the network back up but at this point there were so many people I mean the CEO of maker was telling me that we were in the wrong there were so many people that I just didn't believe this guy anymore and then I found out that this guy purchased this mcn this network off of hack forms that it wasn't even his to begin with I didn't make any money from this in fact I had to borrow money from my parents at at the time because of this and none of those people got refunded because I didn't control the PayPal it was his PayPal and it was just horrible absolutely horrible and long story short I just had to keep moving on the money from fortress craft finally came in I was wealthy and you know I purchased a house in cash and I purchased a brand new car in cash and I purchased everything that my family ever needed hot tub a segue I I I was happy but I had this cloud over me this whole time of what happened with that network thing and getting that channel down that mistake that I made that that ignorance that has cost me all all of my work up to that point so I contact a lot of people at YouTube I try to get it back I had no luck I talked to people that interned at YouTube I had a pretty much a team built of trying to fix this problem that I had nothing worked I tried throwing money at it I tried to get an attorney involved nothing worked there was no way I could get out of this horrible thing that I've done and I just said I got to rebuild I got to just continue doing what I've done this whole time and that's make people laugh that's make you know people feel entertained you know I would get emails from kids that would be like I want to kill myself my life was so bad my parents abused me I get bullied at school but every day I would come home and watch your trolling videos and laugh and it's the one thing that left up my spirits and it's it's emails like that and it's the love and stuff that I got from from making people laugh that made me say no matter what I'm not quitting you know I was already set like I didn't need money anymore it wasn't like I was working for money and I wasn't working for money before I actually just loved doing this I loved entertaining people so I wanted to get back into it at that time I started talking to Elkie David which is the owner of Battlecam the billionaire and I was trying to put together a tv show and the tv show would be big youtubers competing and call it duty and you know the grand prize would be like 10 grand or whatever and you know eventually we'd set it up or it would be like pay per view or something like that we ended up calling it billionaires challenge and I got white boy seven street I got what is gamertag xjaws only use me blade wings redemption and freddy w all together to compete for a ten thousand dollar prize and it took off it was the first call of duty event to get a hundred thousand concurrent viewers it was huge and people loved it so this was my new thing this is this is the thing that I was doing now you know I was creating tv shows like it was awesome and I was entertaining people again and it was it was it was amazing but then there was controversies when we tried to do it the second time we we tried to involve more youtubers and elkie david tried to pull some prank or whatever where he said hey we're gonna have an assistant suicide on the stream and the the community really attacked that and they they really were turned off by billionaires challenge and we ended up having a second one and it was a pretty good success in fact nade shot you know I think that was like his first big break to quit mcdonald's he won five thousand dollars and it and it was like online I had holiday dock there we try to set up a third one but at that time billionaires challenge was just done it was over with but from doing billionaires challenge I had a new friend like I had a guy that I really liked a lot and I became friends with him and his name was only use me blade and he lived in Seattle so I contacted him and I just wanted to do something different than trolling I I know I was like really good and I and I know I'm still good and I can pull off amazing pranks um but I wanted to just talk like I'm talking to you right now that's what I wanted to do I wanted to have a podcast and as I'm looking through these youtubers and I'm trying to find the perfect person I stumble on my friend that I'm already friends with his his Sunday chill commentaries and I was like this is the guy that I need to be the host of my podcast so I put a lot of pressure on him and he kept saying no I don't know no no and then finally one day I said listen I'll do all the work we'll split everything 50 50 any profits that come from this thing but I'll do all the work all right you don't have to do anything all you have to do is show up that's a deal I made him and I only use me blade wouldn't care if I said this about him but he's a little bit lazy right no so he that's that's what got him he was like yes let's do it so we started doing this audio podcast and we had you know gas come in and it was a hit it was a hit and I decided I had this weird thing where I wanted to make a music video for some reason so what I did is uh I went to school with this guy Scott Kenmartin and he's a youtuber and he's friends with all these big youtubers like good friends with like Charles Trippie and the Shea Tards and like all these giant like vlogger youtubers he's like good friends with them and I went to high school with this kid and he's really he went to school for like taking photos and stuff video photography I'm murdering that word but you know what I mean all right so I contact him and he's in Florida at the time and again I have this fortress craft money I'm like look I'm gonna fly you up here to shoot this music video it's just gonna be fun I don't care how much money I waste on this it's just gonna be something fun that we do and a contact blade I'm like I'm flying you up as well so I fly up blade and I fly up uh Scott Kenmartin and we create this music video but while we that while we're there I had season tickets to the bills game and I decided let's do a podcast like at the bills game but let's actually film it and we got the footage we edited it and we uploaded it to YouTube and we're down in my basement theater and we're sitting in these big leather couches or chairs or whatever that recline and everything and I got a nice 50 inch TV downstairs in the basement and we're sitting there and we're watching this and something clicks like this is much bigger than we ever thought you know not only did me and blade have an amazing conversation not only where we in the front of this stadium where people are tailgating all around us and we have professional mics on and cameras but we have Scott Kenmartin who's a professional editor who like turned this thing into a TV show and we're watching this and it's magic before our eyes blade comes up with the idea he's like what if I moved a buffalo what if we just do this what if we do this TV show thing so we did it I went to Pax West we hung out with like syndicate and like foyers and a couple other people and while we're there in Seattle we packed up blade we rented a U-Haul and we moved blade all the way across the country me blade and Scott Kenmartin and we came here and we started making this high production podcast known as the bad kid cast and somebody for some reason the channel just disappeared and my happy happy grief day or something like that just disappeared I had a channel with videos of my family of Mia and it just disappeared all my channels just disappeared and we couldn't figure out why and this guy contacted us and he said that he was taking us down if you have a youtube channel that gets suspended or shut down you can't have another one and this person was contacting youtube saying hey look keemstar has another channels he has this bad kid cast he has this other thing going on so we're like oh no what do we do we made another channel we talked to the guy we pleaded with him we begged him just please leave us alone made another channel that got taken down in the middle of this I was doing this thing on twitter which was like a troll I was basically like when people were fighting I was shoutcasting it on twitter I'd be like so-and-so is fighting with so-and-so hashtag drama alert and I decided to like turn it into videos and make videos of it and it was retardately successful it was like it was amazing like I created this channel drama alert nation and it got a million views in the first month and 30,000 subscribers but it just got shut down so I made another channel and it got 10,000 subscribers in the first like two days and that one got shut down so all this stuff was happening where I was really excited about and passionate about but it just kept getting shut down so I got together another team and we really really tried to get in contact with youtube which is impossible and we tried to get halo a-holes back because I knew all my channels were gonna be taken down if I did not get halo a-holes back and finally we got through to youtube and this is 18 months later my youtube channel halo a-holes that got shut down for apparently selling partnerships which was not the case it was uh supposed to be a you know a reserve or whatever but that channel came back youtube freed up the channel and I was cleared on youtube and this is early 2013 and I remember I kind of held a party at PAX east in Boston like you know we rented a mansion and you know we had like uh the phase guys phase temper x-jaws and a few other people uh there and I remember like a bunch of these bigger youtubers like telling me like how f-a-g like inspired them I remember like phase Tommy said that he used to do graphics for them before he blew up and now phase is like the biggest clan in all of youtube I mean and he used to do graphics for me I didn't even know that so these other youtubers inspired me to get back into my roots and to do trolling and halo a-holes just came back so I was freed on youtube so I launched killer keemstar and on that channel in 2013 I pulled off some of the greatest pranks ever I mean I really showed this new generation of trolls like what it's like to to pull off a good prank a legit troll and uh we had the fake nuke uh series we had a bunch of stuff up there and it was amazing and it really took off at the same time I launched the drum alert um which was like the fifth drummer channel and that thing started taken off we launched a new bad kid cast and we got all this studio equipment and we had a camera on us and the bad kid cast the third bad kids cast channel was taken off and the new drummer channel was taken off and my personal channel was taken off and everything was amazing at this time I created another game called amputee through uh my gaming company and the game was successful pewdiepie played my game yugs class uh yugs cast played my game all these people played my game like so and then it got on steam and like I had all this great stuff going for me again and then all my channels got shut down halo a-holes got reshot down drum alert got reshot down the bad kid cast got reshot down my personal channel got reshot down I even had like a clan channel uh the thrust clan and we competed at an mlg event and that got shut down as well this mistake that I made you know with you know taking the reserve for partnerships or whatever um has haunted me I don't know why youtube cleared me on youtube and then took it back but this thing has been haunting me forever but I just can't give up like I've already been infected with you like I've already been infected with entertaining people and you know people enjoying what I what I produce and what I make I've already been infected like it doesn't matter who says I can't and I'm not allowed to be here like I'm just gonna make another channel like I'm just like I know I fucked up and I believe that I've paid I've lost years of work um everything I've ever created is gone and I feel like I'm being punished for for that but to just walk away and stop making videos I can't now we're in a situation where drum alert's been shut down like so many times but I just keep creating new channels in fact I've hit a hundred thousand subscribers three different times this year that's that's right you heard me right three channels that have reached a hundred thousand channels and then been shut down a hundred thousand subscribers and then but shut down and you know that's that's proven fact that people want the content that I'm producing and that they love enjoy it otherwise I wouldn't be able to get hit a hundred thousand subs three times this year um and the situation is now is I don't even log into the youtube channel like I don't own the youtube channel there's a loophole in the system um where it says that I can't log into a a channel and I can't own a channel and I can't even profit from a channel which I don't do any of that stuff um I have other people run the channel for me and I'm a contracted worker um and and that's how I'm able to be on youtube but still people are finding a way to shut me down and shut down my channels but there's so much um stuff that's set about me because of the the character that I've played and there's so much misconceptions of me um but I wanted you to hear it from me first that my main objective is just to entertain people that's what I care about more than anything I care about reading comments of people saying that they really enjoyed you know what I've done and and tweets that people that love my stuff like that's that's my drug and I'm never going to rehab that's my story thanks


afternoon everyone. How are you? Are we okay at the back? Everyone's okay. Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen thank you for being here this afternoon. Obviously the FUD commission of inquiry interim report has been released this morning. The Premier has already given a whole of government response but I'm certainly happy to talk about those recommendations which may relate to the Queensland Police Service. As you know there's about 104 of the recommendations of a total of about 175 that relate to the state government and a number of those do relate to us in the Queensland Police Service. In particular there is a recommendation in relation to better training for our call takers in in the Police Communications Centre role particularly to do with triple O calls and we accept that we have work to do in that area and we have been working on that issue and will continue to develop up the appropriate training mechanisms. But these were extraordinary times that we all faced and certainly I think the report also highlights that there was significant and very professional work done by emergency services generally. I'm happy to take any of your comments in relation to the the comments in the report. I'm sorry could you? What is Senior Constable Wheeler doing? Senior Constable Wheeler is performing duties in the Thornborough area. These are administrative mainly in nature and he will continue to do that until such time as the disciplinary investigation is completed. That call was probably one of the most distressing elements of the entire flood inquiry process came from that. Are you concerned about what that has done in that one instance to the reputation of Queensland Police? Certainly the very vast majority of our officers go to work every day simply to do they're very very best for the community of Queensland. Sometimes we don't get it quite right and yes a single incident can impact on the reputation of our organization and we understand that and that's why we have processes in place to deal with that. We have a discipline process which is currently underway and that's and it is underway meaning that it is the investigation is still ongoing. So it's hard for me to comment on the specifics of the Wheeler matter in that regard but certainly we are taking action as the Commission of Inquiry has recommended to train all of our call takers perhaps more appropriately in dealing with those sorts of instances. I will also say though and I'll clarify that I understand the Commission of Inquiry did accept that that the nature of the call that was taken by Mr Wheeler was in extraordinary circumstances and they and that was accepted but I noticed that the Inquiry report does say that it that the response did not meet the standard that even we would expect. What changes to the training program around the way? The focus of the recommendation is for better and consistent training of call takers understanding the situation perhaps even better. Obviously our officers do undertake some training but the inquiry certainly demonstrated that there were variations in that training across the state and we need to be more consistent in that regard. Absolutely well I think part of it is assisting our officers to understand perhaps better the significant stress that individual callers are often under and and then a process that we can elicit more information from those people that is relevant to the particular case. Do you have the resources needed to do this new training? No we have a very large training organization within our within the Queensland Police Service and I am sure that we can cope with the type of training that's required. There is a time issue in in relation to this obviously and we will look at that in the coming weeks. Well that's going to be a critical time frame for us to achieve this outcome. When you look at some of the recommendations in relation to things specific councils might have to do and then their level of organisation. Presumably that's going to put a significant additional burden on policing resources in some of those locations. My understanding of most of those recommendations that relate to local government will require significant work by our DDCs in particular so our district disaster coordinators these are the people who are officers in charge of the local districts. Certainly there is that issue but as a result of the review of disaster management arrangements in Queensland that occurred some two years ago now and of course we know that the legislation changed last year. There was also the requirement for executive officers these are police officers who assist the district officer. We have numerous of those in place now as as we have moved through and implemented the review recommendations. They specifically will be tasked with many of these tasks of dealing with those recommendations in conjunction with their local their local disaster management group arrangements. Have you spoken with John Tyson about what you're doing in terms of police training? Certainly there was a number of discussions with Mr Tyson early in early in the events. I can't advise you whether or not we've been back to him of recent times bearing in mind that the report was embargoed until today and was only released today but there are there is the opportunity for us now to have that conversation. Do you intend to do that? I'll certainly be talking to the local assistant commissioner in relation to that. What would you say in this conversation? I think it's appropriate that he be made aware of exactly what we are going to do to try and improve our systems and processes. What's your personal view on that call? I have many personal views on many things but as I said to you earlier there is an ongoing discipline investigation. I may be one of the decision makers in that process. It is possible and therefore I don't intend to comment further on that process today. More broadly what do you hope comes out of this report and how it can improve relations between police and the other emergency authorities? I actually think we have probably the best relationships we could hope for with the other emergency services. I think there's a lot more work to be done in relation to intraoperability. Communication flows that sort of thing and whilst the Commissioner of Inquiry recommendations haven't specifically looked at that on this occasion that may be the focus into the future because as you know they have some months to run yet but the relationship the trust relationships that have built up between ourselves and the other emergency services I think were fundamental and basic to the successes that we had in managing the response and the recovery phases to the flooding and cyclone events of Christmas. Will you change the police boundaries to a lot more administrative? We have a project underway in relation to exactly that. As many of you know a couple of years ago the many of the councils were amalgamated and that has caused some changes in the boundaries that we deal with but at the end of the day our operational boundaries in other words our district and regional boundaries in particular are fundamental to providing appropriate policing services. The legislation change that occurred after the 2009 review for the Disaster Management Act has also given us the ability to be flexible with a boundary for a disaster so if it occurs in a defined area it doesn't matter where the disaster district boundary is we can actually draw a line around it and have that approved and that becomes the disaster area so there is great flexibility with the with the disaster area but we see some benefit in wherever it is appropriate to align our district boundaries with current LGA local government boundaries as well. No it's well sorry it depends which which we're told you're talking about I think the toll is 35 overall. No it doesn't there's still not declared deceased. Certainly there are processes for that to go through I will not give you an end date I'm sorry in relation to that investigation but it is ongoing. The report found that the isolated communities didn't have trouble sourcing supplies but are there better procedures now in place or will there be better procedures to resupply people? One of the concepts that was looked into by the Commission of Inquiry and in fact became obvious through the debriefs that were undertaken by the various agencies involved was this idea of potentially having stockpiles of equipment up and down the coast so that we had you know for instance in the far north we would have a significant stockpile central region a significant stockpile down here in the southeast that's being examined and my understanding is that the facility in Townsville as I understand it is being supplied for just that eventuality but these things do take a little time to organize and the logistics behind that are quite incredible so when you think about what has to be there or not there the evacuation centers are totally different circumstance in many respects and there is a working party that's been looking at those through emergency services and perhaps you could see comment from them but we have been involved on that working party to try and enhance safety shelters evacuation centers the guidelines that sit around those folks that looks like it thank you very much for being here today nothing else that you wish to discuss no thank you


Alrighty, the announcement has dropped. I'm so excited. I was pretty spot-on. Okay, you gotta give it to me. I was pretty spot-on. I just got the manufacturer wrong for the flat ride. I wasn't expecting a first-of-a-kind. To be honest, when I was predicting which flat ride would go in this plot of land that we knew where it was going, I just assumed we were gonna get one of what Carowinds was getting and even possibly two, because those ones were a lot cheaper. But Wonderland went full-out and invested in a first-of-a-kind in the world from what we've been told. Okay, we've got a little more information for you on a lot of things, including the water park, by the way. So stay tuned. And we're gonna talk about the double-launched coaster with two show buildings. So that's pretty exciting. A lot of people don't know a lot about this coaster, but I'm gonna give you a lot of information. So this flat ride is gonna rotate at pretty much every axis. It's gonna spin on the... I don't know the axis and all that, but it's gonna spin as you see in the picture, like through the structure. It's gonna rotate circular and the gondolas are gonna spin as well. So it's a lot of spinning. It's a really high-intense ride. First-of-a-kind in the world, located right next to Yukon Stryker, the drink stand building and the funnel cake building, is getting removed by the looks of it and lots of just really cute theming added into the area. I really love the color scheme, but that brings me to this new double-launched coaster coming to Canada's Wonderland. I assumed it was gonna be a junior coaster. I was not expecting a family coaster this soon after Yukon Stryker, to be honest. This does concern me now in terms of our next big coasters lineup. So we were hoping for 2024-2025. That's definitely not gonna be 2024. So we could be looking at 2025 and that's like... That's like 2026 could be the year 2027 even if this is a pretty high investment. But it's gonna have two show buildings. So you're gonna have the first show building and the station there, the red barn, and then it's gonna launch. And the second show building where you're gonna take a little break is that blue barn over there and then it's gonna launch you again. So this is a really exciting addition to Canada's Wonderland, to be honest. It's packed with theming. It's gonna be the most themed ride at Canada's Wonderland. I am a little shocked at the concept of putting kind of a family coaster right in Planet Snoopy.  So I'm a little shocked. That's why I wasn't expecting a family coaster, the concept of drawing others. We don't know if there's gonna be a minimum height requirement now or a maximum height requirement, I should say, sorry. But with it being a family coaster and they are labeling it a family coaster, I don't think there will be a max height requirement. But who knows, who knows. It is a Planet Snoopy ride, so it could go either way. From my understanding, it is a Gertzlauer. I could be incorrect about that, so please take that tidbit with a grain of salt. And this is part of a phased expansion into Dinosaur's Alive, so there will be more coming. There also could be another restaurant coming to Canada's Wonderland next year that wasn't announced. There is a lot of insulation sitting in the parking lot, enough for an entire new building. So again, that could be for this new roller coaster. It is winterfest proof. It will run during winterfest. That is the reason they went with launched. The whole reason you can't really run a lift hill roller coaster is it comes down to the grease for the lift chain.  So these are really exciting additions. I'm super excited that we were pretty accurate. I mean, that was pretty darn close. No one else was guessing what we were guessing, so I'm going to give it to myself. You know, got the wrong manufacturer for the flat ride, but we guessed the coaster in Dinosaur's Alive. Again, there could be more coming into Dinosaur's Alive. They don't always announce everything if it's just a restaurant and a building. You can actually see a mini food service station in the renderings here. But I'm super excited. What do you guys think about all these additions coming? These are pretty good investments, especially if you look at some of the other parks investments as well. I'm pretty happy that Wonderland built a family coaster and then also gave the thrills out of the park a flat ride. That's pretty rare that we see that. So those are some heavy investments. Wonderland's had a really intense year in terms of attendance, so it's definitely paying off and there's more investments coming in 2024. Let me tell you. Definitely some more flat rides and Super Soaker and the Plunge. Yeah, they'll be operational in 2023 from what we're hearing through the rumor mill. Replacement parts have finally been ordered, so that should be up and running in 2023 as well. So don't fret, everything's looking good. Wonderland's got some great additions for 2023. I'm so hyped. This is so well themed. It's really going to suit the park's direction in terms of becoming a theme park really well. Thanks so much for watching, guys. Have a good one. Bye.


You realize I said, what percentage of modern women are fit for marriage? 90% of men said, of the 15,000 men said, 90% of you are not. Mm-hmm. Of women in general or black women? Black women? Black women. Black women. 90%. And they want to ask women the same question. 82% of women said they're not. Of black women? Yes. 82% of women said black women are not suitable for marriage? Wow. If so, if you, OK, take yourself out of it. But if you thought that the majority of sisters were fit for marriage, why can one in four of you assume to marry anybody? Black women were taught to be independent.  Why? I guess I cut off the engagement. I was in college when I got engaged. I guess I later decided maybe he's just not for me. So I cut off the engagement. But that could have been me being psychologically whatever at the time and thinking I'd, I don't know, I could have did better than him or whatever the case is. But he really wasn't the one. Was he in college? Maybe it was something that it maybe was something. Was he in college? Yes, he was in college as well. He was in grad school at that time. I was still in undergrad. What's he doing? I want to say he's a kinesiotherapist. I think he just became a kinesiotherapist just now. Well, I'll just say for the ranking file, it is a lot of black men's sentiment is the average black woman thinks she's better than the average black man. So there's a low grade. There's a low grade. There's a low level contempt and lack of respect for the average black man. This is why you can have women who are 20-some-odd years old like that other person coming in and acting the way she did with a 50-year-old man. Right, yeah, I don't know what the problem is. But here's the problem. The overall contempt for men and lack of respect for men while it may be directed to black men, other men also get it too. See, brothers, even though they're that the lowest of the totem pole above Hispanic men, below it and everybody else socioeconomically, black men still have can still date out far easier than black women. It's not as though what black women are doing is working for you. Nobody's marrying black women in masses. And the problem is what? Too big for me to fix, but I've Well, the thing is, the thing is, at 26 years old, you've been engaged and all these things, man, time is ticking. Yes. And the chances of you finding a high-value man, a man that's making the kind of money you're talking about, is negligible. Negligible. Negligible. I mean, in fact, it's easy.  You're single right now. But you meet high-value women right now at your age that are single, right? And they're of your age, I'm assuming. Maybe they could be a little bit younger, a little bit older than me. Sure, I mean, high-value women of all ages, yeah. But you know what? You're not marrying them. But that's not, but you can see the difference is, I've been married twice. You've been in that area already. And the difference, but see the difference is, if I want to be married, I can be married in six months.  Yeah, she got frozen or something, guys.


But the Pyroos, how does that start? It started, uh, I was in prison when actually we've come in. There's a different place. Okay. They're 10 square miles. We're all like, we're all together different than LA, a long beach. And it's just us against everybody. Yeah, we on boss talk. Ask you this.  Um, when you first come up, how do you? How does the blood? How does the Pyroos? I ain't gonna say the blood of the Pyroos. How does that start? It started, uh, I was in prison when actually we've Compton is a different place. Okay. They're 10 square miles. We're all like, we're all together different than LA, a long beach and it's just us against everybody. Okay. And, um, Pyroos started defending themselves from, uh, outside is coming in, the Crips were coming in, taking over neighborhoods and, and, uh, seven brothers stood up like, no, you ain't coming. Pyroos Street is one of the, they have more boys on their street than like any neighborhood that street is just Compton. All the, it's the, uh, you had the, uh, the boy and family Mickey blue. He was the, he's kind of like the Godfather in my eye. He was a bank robber back in the sixties. Okay. Those are the original Pyro boys.  No, no, this is the sixties. Okay. This is the sixties. Okay. This is, this is the dudes. I come, you came abundant. Okay. Those were, they was real bank robbers. Okay. They, they was real, they was real. And they lived on Pirou Street. They stayed on Pirou. Okay. I got you. I stayed on Elm Street. We used to come over and play football against them. Okay. My neighborhood was tree tops at that time. Okay. You know what I said? And our neighborhood would come play the Pirou boys because they had a street. They had, they had, um, the Nelson family, the Leonard family, um, Puddin's family, Puddin's, well, it was before Puddin and moved over there though. The Johnson's and they had a whole football team on the street, you know. So we used to come and play with them. And one day it's 63 Mickey blue was first time I'd seen him and this is, uh, Terry born. This is his older brother. Okay. Terry born. Um, and we, we plan to do come up in a brand new Cadillac and that's Mickey blue. He jumps out the car with a shark skin suit on. Got his hair in a Marcel long toe shoes and he go up in the house. He comes out. We looking comes out of the house when he comes out of the house comes out.   Bumped out a gang of silver dollars and we y'all get him and we put money in our pockets, right? Yeah. And he opens a trunk of a Cadillac in order Cadillac got a big old trunk. He opens a truck of Cadillac and he got a suitcase big old suitcase and he opens it up and it's all hundred dollar bills in there. Little faces.  And we miss born Mickey you stop giving all them kids and money like them boys long. I say I want to be just like him when I grow man. I want to be like him. So it is Harold Terry Terry born him and Jerry Nelson. They knocked off the first armored car truck in California in 1968 and got a hundred and eighty thousand dollars was one of the biggest licks ever at that time. Wow. Then his brother Dennis they robbed capital bank and they the boys was bank robbers. That's by rules and then I and that's how the power rule and they just stuck together and just they just got a close tight and when the Crips came in and he wasn't having it. This is pyro street. It's don't be done. Don't play that game. So they start calling pyro's call them roosters. Roosters are red. Okay. Assignment the roosters and next day was bloods and bam. And now it's history. So the OK. So pyro became roosters and then they start calling everything else bloods. Well the bloods start five nine brands was the first blood set. Okay. So I came before bloods. Uh-huh. Paroo came first. No no no in gang banging bloods in the L.A. Crips then bloods then pyro. Okay. Man that's wild but it started a long time ago. We've been gang banging every so what man and the red the red come from the roosters. That's what made y'all wear red right. It didn't affiliate with the bloods right off. It was just the red from the roosters. Right. Wow. I didn't know that.


Hi everyone, Joe for jaspyscasebrakes.com coming at you with 2022 Panini National Treasures Baseball 4 box pick your team number 8 What a great new release that this might be our last NT break of the night If you're watching live unless that random number block full case number block sells out. We'll go a little over. We'll do it I'm down. I'm down if you are if you dig deep. I'll dig deep. We'll get that break done But for now pick your team eight. Let's put our attention here Full case real nice stuff big. Thanks to this group for making it happen appreciate it appreciate Appreciate it. Let's pick your teammate Good one Joe Chris Butler with Cubs and Mets double-ass FOD mojo. He's got some other teams too. Thanks, Tim We pulled some teams out for that random number block And we did that in a separate randomizer right there featuring those teams Thanks to those who filled that part up as well. So let's pop this open. Let's see what we got Pick your team fans. We got another pick your team loaded up right now if you're watching live Get your teams before someone else does Someone else will don't let him don't let him take your hits Good luck. Now Brian Peebles is in need of a a Padres case here Let's see what we could get for him and everyone. All right. We got Trevor Rogers 94 at 99 mr. Rogers going out to a number block team. So that we go by that digit right there So 94 out of 99 is going to go to number four. Miami for is for chat boba shut 55 out of 99 Toronto it's going to be another number block team So it goes to Toronto five It's for Kevin 16 out of 25 Johnny Mays Hall of Fame materials that is for John and the Cardinals st. Louis And we got Patrick Sandoval jersey and autograph for the Angels 39 out of 64 Chris Butler with the halos Cody Ponce 7 out of 25 the legacy signatures pirates Chris Butler with another one. He's heating up. He's on fire from downtown We got Jordan a luller 92 out of 99 Kevin M with the snakes. He's a cold hearted snake And a one-of-one Seth beer Laundry tag and autograph for Kevin and the diamond backs Mmm beer and all aboard the big hit express whoo-hoo. I got Ted Simmons 18 out of 25 Cardinals it's gonna be for John Hey, you're welcome Kevin. I know you've been chipping away at those diamond backs for a little bit got rewarded How do we have here? supposed to go This way All right now what do we have here? We have 23 out of 49 triple materials signature Bobby Whit jr. two-color triple relic and autograph Royals picked up straight up by dy dy with KC It's just box one Nice start Next box Got a legendary signatures out of ten on the bottom Tanner Scott four out of 99 Miami number four is Chad D Gordon 41 out of 49 piece of his jersey for Washington Jason K with the Nats live grow junior 56 out of 99 Toronto six Will be for Chad drew Ellis 21 out of 99 jersey and autograph for Seattle Jason K with the Mariners Colton Couser 21 out of 25 Century signatures for the O's Jorge with the Orioles 46 out of 99 Adelaus Garcia Texas Kevin with the Rangers Say a Suzuki 10 out of 25 nice patch nice auto to 25 Chris Butler cubbies Last spot mojo strikes again And we got Edgar Martinez Hall of Fame signatures jersey and autograph 41 out of 49 Jason K J K with the M's And we got Taylor walls 21 out of 99 jersey and autograph for Tampa Bay And that's for Tony and Tampa and the book legendary signatures awards two out of ten and It is Harmon kill a brew 13 time all-star and some say He's the he's the the logo and that will be for Minnesota. That is gonna go to Incoot with the twins another box We've got more in the storage ask these case breaks calm if you're watching live I promise that if we get that full case number block done We'll stay late. We'll do it, but it's still holding at seven if you want to get that done start buying spots now If not, we'll do it tomorrow. I'll be back three o'clock Pacific six o'clock Eastern Colossal Jersey Yon Gomes 73 out of 99 Chris in the Cubs Field gear 38 out of 49 Eugenio Suarez for the M's J K Trey Turner 26 out of 99 Dodgers edition Chris Butler Rodolfo Castro dual relic and autographs nice color there 10 out of 25 Pirates Chris Butler with the buckos Andrey Jackson 45 out of 99 rookie auto for Chris Butler I'm sorry miss Jackson. Oh, I am for me. I might see him more in action this year five out of five Royce Lewis Incoot twins Out of five You know what that means All aboard the big hit express Big patch and all hay siry 33 out of 99. Hey Siri show me an RPA Out of NT baseball dude, dude Houston's a number block team. So Houston 3 Chad with Houston 3 16 out of 25 Cal Ripken Jr. On-card autograph for Jorge and the O's strong the book Hall of Fame materials four out of five for the twins Another one for in coup all aboard Nice break for the twins Game more material nice nice nice And back here is Abyssal Garcia 44 out of 99 And that is Chad Cromwell with the number four that is for you. All right final box coming up It's the final and T-Box It's the final and T-Box Like we have a redemption in the mix down there. Let's see what we got fingers crossed everybody. Good luck. Thanks for the film Great new release day. Appreciate it. It's Eric Fetty 76 out of 99 That will be for JK and the Nats And got Kyle Tucker 46 out of 99 That's for Houston. It's gonna go to Houston 6 And that will be for Chad Rod Karoo 7 out of 10 another piece of Well a piece of his lumber this time that goes to in coup and the twins Biography materials Cole Tucker 12 out of 25 legacy synchers for Kevin in the diamond bags Nice break for the snakes Plate plate and on plate autograph Jared Walsh Chris Butler with the angels nice I'm not too much of I've said I've said this before I'll say it again I'm not too much of a stickler for stickers But I am when it would when it comes to a printing plate So I'm glad this is an on-plate autograph One-of-one Jared Walsh. Maybe he'll get back to his all-star ways this year Chris And all aboard the big hit Express Nice next up die-cut Jersey and autograph Ryan Mount Castle 33 out of 49 Jorge with the O's There he is Chris nice one Nice stars and stripes patch auto Jake Berger 12 out of 25. Mmm. That is a tasty burger So this might not fit into a 180 top loader white socks Jason K. We'll test here No, actually it might I don't know if I'm happy with that a little too much of a bulge there Slide that out. Let's put into a slider box instead. All right. Hopefully he has a good year this year All right, just a few more to go in this case Thanks, everybody for watching for breaking with us for helping up fill these breaks all day long 47 out of 49 Paul Molliter brew crew Brewers are a number block team. So that goes to brewers seven and that will be for Jason K. Milwaukee seven the redemption is Mark McGuire jumbo materials signature booklet to the checklist. What team what team is that mark McGuire gonna be? Mark McGuire auto prime pairings. No auto relic No timeless treasures or materials. No Mark McGuire cardinals Auto relic treasure material signatures. No, this is a jumbo. Oh Jumbo material there you go auto relic jumbo material signature book plus parallels a's Card number 15 A's on the checklist a's are a number block team. So that goes to number zero Jason K and the last one. Good luck, everybody. It's gonna be a Ty Cobb card treasured stat 26 out of 99 Tigers Chris Butler There you go gang another excellent case of NT baseball in the books Let's do some more Jaspies case breaks calm. I'm Joe. I'll see you next time for the next one. Bye. Bye


I'm happy to see everybody. This is the Vermont Institute of Community and International Involvement. And tonight we're talking about the very controversial subject of Elon Musk versus, I guess, censorship or the new Ministry of Truth that appears to have been appointed by President Biden. It's really called the Board of Governance of Disinformation. And we have with us tonight to talk about this, Pete Garitano and hopefully other members of the community might chime in, including an old colleague of mine, Mark Estrin. And so this will be recorded. And so let's start with a few words from Pete if we can get him to unmute. Okay, so take it away. Pete will be talking about the recent controversy around Elon Musk and his takeover of Twitter, whatever that is. Okay, Pete. Whatever that is, right? I am not currently on Twitter or have, I have not been on Twitter, but I did, you can look on Twitter briefly just by punching in somebody's name like Elon Musk and Twitter. And I read probably, what? Nothing, go ahead. I read many, many, many tweets back and forth between Elon Musk and other people. I guess anybody can get on there. There's just a character limit of I think 150 characters.  You're muted, Mark, Mark. That's okay. So yeah. And so that's really what makes it unique compared to some of the other social media platforms. But I mean, what happened was allegedly, I mean, what Elon Musk is saying is he wants to turn it back into a free speech platform. And a lot of the uproar obviously has been because, which I don't really understand is this billionaire has bought Twitter. But what I pointed out to some people that were kind of upset about this is that almost all the media is controlled by some billionaire right now. I mean, Rupert Murdoch runs Fox and I think some big newspapers in England and Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. And so they're all, they're all in some kind of control of probably wealthy people or powerful people. But so the big outrage supposedly was because of all the censorship in the last year and most of it has been directed at, I would say the right, you know, and people that are opposed to government policies which the past year has been COVID, but now we have it possibly the next topic could be Roe versus Wade, who knows. And so... Well, the next topic appears to be the war in Ukraine, right? That's why I said the war in Ukraine, you know, to go against whatever the current narrative is, is bad. And I haven't seen any censorship yet, but there might be some rules like, yeah, I mean, I don't know how many people knew that there were COVID rules for publishing even in our local papers that were passed down from somebody in the government. I don't know who I tried to find out many times. So seven days in Vermont and Vermont Digger were not allowed to publish certain things that they violated the COVID publishing rules. So this is one of the things, and it turns out many of these things that were restricted the past two years turned out to be facts, not really false statements. And that's the big question is, what does this information mean? And so far, what it has meant is if you're going against whatever the narrative is that the government chooses at that time, which brings up 1984 and many other things with censorship. And so it can continue after this, certainly when the COVID, if we're moving into the war thing, and this could be something that goes on. So the whole idea was to make Twitter once again, if I don't mean must have once been pretty much censorship-free, they're gonna change the algorithms supposedly that do this, I mean, time will tell what will really happen with it, but that's what's going on right now. Mainly the Democrats and the left, the liberals. You're frozen again. Could be prevalent. And once again, I was never on it, so I don't know what kind of stuff went back and forth, but obviously there will have to be some kind of rules on it, but- Why?  There was an article about some mass murderer that was pointing, had YouTube videos on, they had this guy off of there, right? So maybe we'll see what the limits are, but so that's the fear. What are the limits gonna be? What? Sandy, I think your question is a little naive. Oh, I'm very naive. We all know that, right, Mark? No, what I mean is the answer is somewhat predictable.   And it takes over far more quickly than any substantive argumentation and especially argumentation that's built on clearly annotated and respected references or not respected whether, at least you know where the information is coming from. So I would expect if nothing, it happens and the must goes ahead with complete openness that we will see the disintegration of that platform according to the rules of shit rises to the top. Okay, well, could I say something first before we ask Pete to respond to that? The United States for all of its faults does have a bill of rights and the bill of rights, the very first amendment is freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press. And those bills of rights, those rights, as we all know, I know I'm speaking to a very sophisticated bunch, but those bill of rights were put into place as restrictions against government tyranny, okay? So I do have a couple of problems with what you've said and what Pete has said and even what Elon Musk has done. Censorship cannot be done by the government, period. That is the rule in the constitution. A private company like Elon Musk can say, can do whatever it wants with a speech, with anything, because it's a private company, it's not the government. And so a private company can decide what speech is allowed on its private platforms and what speech is not allowed. So in a sense what you're saying, I mean, in a sense when Elon Musk announces that he's gonna take over this company, it's no guarantee of free speech for sure, because he's gonna own that company and he can decide. The difference is between Elon Musk and what's happening at the federal level is that Elon Musk says that he's gonna devote Twitter now to free speech. And he's saying that because the prior Twitter was engaged in heavy duty censorship. And maybe the private thing called Twitter had the right to do that. However, the censorship was encouraged by the federal government and by President Biden. And so the disinformation got defined by the government. And then it communicated to Twitter. And so they were removing stuff that was unfavorable to the Biden administration and the Democratic Party. Just as an example, they removed the president of the United States, Donald Trump. How does a Twitter company have more power than the president of the United States? I mean, a lot of us don't like a lot of stuff that Trump said, but you really think that the president of the United States should be simply taken off Twitter. And that's what happened. That's I think that kind of action is what led Elon Musk to say, well, I'm gonna take over Twitter because I'm gonna have free speech. I don't know if I trust him. However, that's apparently what happened. And censorship can only be prevented by the exercise of free speech, but that is against government censorship. When you're a private company, you can do whatever you want.  Well, no, I mean, I kind of agree with both of you, but I mean, what was going on? Many people didn't realize, I mean, even if these companies were private companies, the government was forcing their hand in one way, right? And so they were putting out these directives, whether they were legal or not, if they're threatening enough, just like they did with doctors who were trying to promote early treatment for COVID, they would send the message to the doctor, you're gonna lose your license. So whatever they did, maybe Zuckberg and the owner of Twitter, they were okay with this, maybe they weren't, but if they were threatened with whatever they were, you know, I mean, right before all this started, they were in big trouble with antitrust thing. So who knows what threats were made to have them censor all this material or change their algorithms. And I mean, he says he's gonna have an open source algorithms where everything's gonna be out in the open as to what the algorithm is filtering exactly. I tried to look up some of the stuff I wasn't really, he's gonna get rid of spam bots. So in other words, apparently tens of thousands or even millions of people are not have fake Twitter accounts and they throw stuff out there that's doesn't, so I think he's gonna try to make it more like, I wanna say Facebook marketplace, where you have to have an identity with your Twitter or something. And once again, I mean, this all seems pretty crazy, how's he gonna do it? But I mean, on the surface, he says he's gonna try to clean it up and make it more of a free speech platform, but we'll see. But I mean, this is also a guy.  And, you know. Yeah, but what is transhumanism? A lot of people don't know that. People have to blend in with machines. Machines have to become part of people or we will be eliminated. So we have to, you know, there's two schools of thoughts that basically that AIs are gonna take over and that's what he says he's trying to fight, because when the AIs get smarter than us, they're just gonna kill us all or that we need to blend in with the machines and become one organism. Now, how do you know that? Do you, this guy really pushes that? Yeah, no, it's a big topic among the wealthy science people is this transhumanism. And in fact, that's part of the great reset agenda, which is another thing that's been out there for the last couple of years. And, you know, they've announced that humans are hackable and it's time to do something to make human race, you know, their ideas, they want to make it a better human race, but there's a lot for what to be said for what their ideas are about this too, you know. Okay, I wanna give an example though from Burlington history about this idea of censorship and Mark, maybe you were involved in this, I don't know. A number of years ago, Burlington Telecom was a public government municipally owned utility, right? Do we all remember when Burlington telecom before it got sold that Burlington Telecom was a municipally owned internet, right? And Burlington then had the exceptional ability to show Al Jazeera English on its Burlington Telecom network. You remember that Mark? Yes. Okay, it was called Al Jazeera English. And there was a group in this town who wanted to eliminate Al Jazeera English because they said it was a terrorist network and that it was anti-Israel and that it was anti-U.S. And I got involved, I don't even know how, I began to learn that there was a group here connected with one of the temples in town in South Burlington, Temple Sinai, that had formed a group to pressure to take Al Jazeera English off the air. Al Jazeera English was only available in two cities in the whole United States, Burlington, Vermont and Buckeye, Ohio. Did you all know that? And Buckeye, Ohio I think had Al Jazeera English because it has a large Arabic speaking network. All right, so I got involved and we were successfully able to keep Al Jazeera English on the air because we said if the government takes it off, that's government censorship and that's a violation of free speech. And that was true, we could have sued to keep it on the air. And we did, we didn't have to sue because we had so many public hearings in which we said this is a constitutional violation if the city does this. And we won that and Al Jazeera English remained on the air. Subsequently though, when Mayor Merle Weinberger came into power in Burlington, he sold Burlington Telecom as we all know to a private company, which now they can do whatever they want. They can do whatever they want. And one of the things that I understand that they did was to remove the Canadian stations. Isn't that true? They removed the Canadian stations and there are none that are shown now, which they can censor. Private companies can censor and determine what's on their networks or platforms where the government, that would be a constitutional violation. And in fact, probably when the government was pressing Twitter, that was probably a constitutional violation on the part of the government. But the government right now in my mind is so out of control with a need for power that nobody even cares anymore, but I do. And so when Elon Musk did this, even though I don't love billionaires, few of us do, I thought, gee, that's interesting. And maybe his promises will mean something.  When it's a private company, Elon Musk now can do whatever he wants, right? You remember that struggle though, Bark about Al Jazeera? Yes. Yeah. Okay, so go ahead. What were you gonna say as well? Anybody? No? Okay, cause so why don't we then comment? So Pete, you made the description of what Musk is doing. Two days later, the president announced a new department, right? What is that called? And does anybody, do you have a comment about that? Yeah, I forgot the name of it. Something disinformation. Now it's the Board of Disinformation Governance or the Board of the Governance of Disinformation. And it is within the Department of Homeland Security. Right. So what is it? Well, yeah, it's basically to do what's been done the last couple of years anyway, but now to have somebody in charge of it. So instead of going behind people's back, I guess they're gonna tell us right up front, this is what's happening, I don't know. But everybody at this point has read about the lady they put in charge who was responsible for a lot of disinformation aimed at once again, at Trump. And Russia. What? And Russia. Yeah. And Russia, right. Well, correct. The whole Russia gate thing that they pounded for four years which never happened really. And then the Hunter Biden laptop, this lady was in on both of these basically disinformation campaigns by the government too, which many people felt probably helped sway the election towards Biden. And the only thing that I could find that she's worked on is this quote, disinformation putatively coming from Russia. Nothing else as a topic. Right. Say a little bit more about that. William Mark, what do you mean coming from Russia? Because I think she, what was the deal with the Russia as the critics call it? What was the deal with the Russia hoax, for instance? All I'm saying that is that everything that she has worked on has had as its objective to accuse Russia of trying to take over information in the United States with disinformation. It's not that she's been talking about Israel or anything else, right? She's a Russia disinformation expert. Well, expert or monotone. I mean, that's what she does is Russia. Okay, so her name is, I think Nina Jankiewicz, by the way, Jankiewicz is her last name, yeah. So what you're saying is what about Russia? She puts out disinformation about Russia? She, her objective, professional objective seems to be limited to putting Russian information under the magnifying glass of disinformation. That's what she looks at. She doesn't look at disinformation in general, at least according to her record, is that all she looks at is Russia and whether what they're saying is disinformation or not, that's all. You could call her a Russian specialist or you could call her an anti-Russian propagandist. Well, she describes herself as a disinformation expert. That's what she describes herself as. And only one dimension, right? Well, I don't know, she disputed. She was the one who said that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, right? Right. Okay, so why don't you say what that was, the Hunter Biden thing? I think Pete's frozen again, right? Hunter Biden's laptop apparently included lots of damning information about him and the whole Biden family. It exposed connections between, I'm saying allegedly, because it has not been proven in court. It created the idea that Hunter Biden, the president's son had lots of financial benefits from dealing actually in Ukraine and in China, maybe in Russia as well. She, Janka, was put out this idea that that was Russian disinformation and that it was not to be believed. And based on a lot of that, the major newspapers did not cover that story. And there are a lot of people saying that if that story had been covered, we might have had a different result in the elections, which I don't know. Well, the only newspaper that covered that at all was the New York Post, right? Right, everybody else was told not to cover it. But right now, what she would be doing, which has been done for the last couple of months with the war is to make sure that... You're gone again. Make sure what? Maybe, Mark, what is... I'm gonna stop my video. Maybe that'll clear things up if you can't look at me. Oh, but we like to look at you. Too bad. Okay, all right, thank you. No, you're not. It's not my name. Okay. All right, so do you know what Pete was gonna say about that, I guess the... What's happening in terms of the war and disinformation, or is it... I mean, is anything happening in terms of censorship about this war in Ukraine and Russia? No? Well, it's hard to speak for everything that's out there because we only see what we see, but I can say that in general, there's very little historical political background to it. I mean, it's been reduced to the monster of Putin, and that he's somehow without any cause out to take over whatever he's out to take over, et cetera, et cetera. So, the any kind of understanding of this conflict in the context of NATO or post-1917 anti-communism is invisible. So to that degree, I consider it censored, but it's not, I don't think it's censored as much, it's at a normal level of speaking to American historical ignorance. And in a sense, also historical, who cares? It's history. Right. So... I mean, I think at this point, I'm not certain that it's disinformation that's being put out. What I see in the press right now is propaganda. 24 hours a day from all of the cable networks is propaganda, propaganda, propaganda. Putin, the madman, the resistant Ukrainians, and the humanitarian crisis. It seems to me no analysis of the history of this war at all. But that's slightly different.  Disinformation can also be lack of information. Right, of course, yeah. Well, can everybody hear me? Yes. So, one of the things that's already been a disinformation camp. Pete, you're frozen again. I think you should, you know, forget about this video and then be on video. Yeah. Can you just get yourself on audio only, Pete? No, okay. What were you gonna say? Anybody, Mark, about the lack of information? Well, that the intentional lack of information is a very effective technique of disinformation. So, that's all.  In other words, if you go into a, you know, a German speaking country or, you know, any kind of quote, foreign language country, then you try to deal with that language, with its situation and understanding and using its vocabulary and all of that. But, so in, if you are putting out information in current American society, part of the language of current American society is illiteracy and a historical consciousness and all of that. So, to do something a historically is really not much more than speaking the language, which involves not talking about stuff that wouldn't be understood anyway. But do you think that that is deliberate on the part of the government and the media to erase history? Or do you just think that people don't know anything about history? No, I think it's gonna become a broadcaster in the foreign language culture. You've got to speak that language. And they're speaking the language that they think is of broad understanding and broad not understanding in American, contemporary American culture.  Yes, sir. You're muted. Can you hear me? No, because you're muted. Yeah, but the problem is if I speak, if you don't mute it, then I won't be able to, so you have to mute yourself before I, I mean, I'm able to mute yourself. Mm-hmm. I don't see, okay. Yes, I'm fine. All right, so I just wanna point out that the US, there's a problem. So, can, oh, okay. Come out here, Eric. I just wanted to let you guys know that, you know, the US is ranked 42 by reporters without border when it comes to freedom of press. And, you know, and way behind Burkina Faso and Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica. Cuba? No. But here, what I've seen is that people, I mean, they are journalists. They are, you know, news outlets, but is it really information? Because I watched a documentary that shows that, for example, CNN won't cover a story if there's no way for them to make money out of the story. So, we have that illusion of having freedom of press because people can say whatever they want, for example, on their channel and we take that for freedom of speech. I mean, freedom of press. Quality of press also is very much important when we have to measure, you know, how much a country is free when it comes to freedom of press. I don't know if the fact that you have Twitter and you were able to say whatever you want on Twitter means that you have also freedom of press or freedom of speech. But to me, it's important, even though there is availability of news outlet, there needs to be quality when it comes to, you know, to what is on TVs or radios or, you know, being carried by the newspapers. Okay, thank you. Okay, I also want to talk a little bit tonight about this new so-called Ministry of Disinformation or the Board of Governance of Misinformation. So, what do you make of that?  Okay, great. So, how do I do that? Jenna. She just needs to unmute herself and speak. Okay, okay, Nancy, is that Nancy Rice? Yes. Okay, what's up, Nancy? Good evening. Good evening.  And so then you're more easily influenced by propaganda, which I agree, that's 24 hours a day. And... Relentless, it's relentless. Yes, and so people think Russia's totally bad and the US is okay, I guess, and Ukraine is good, and it's good that people have empathy for the people, but I worry about weapons, nuclear weapons. If you have too much of this gung-ho, well, it's propaganda and I think it's really dangerous. Well, I note that from the beginning, the war in the Ukraine was positive, posited as a war against a madman. And I called it the madman theory of history and it was perceived as a war against a monster. And what else could you do except try to strike him down and get rid of him, given that narrative? But I am at least an amateur historian. I looked at other sources and you quickly could discover that Putin for maybe all his faults was following kind of traditional Russian foreign policy, which is one to build buffer states in Eastern Europe that would buffer Russia against aggressive powers in the West like Germany and even France under Napoleon and also to seek warm water ports. And if you think about what Putin was doing, is that what he was doing? And that was a traditional foreign policy of Russia. The traditional foreign policy of the US, also I examined in that traditional foreign policy since 1917 has been really against Russia. As Mark would point out probably since 1905 in the first revolution in Russia, which was to exploit Russia, to destroy Russia by powers of the West and gain Russia's resources. So in a sense, what I always saw this war as is a proxy war fought in the Ukraine between Russia and the United States to the death of every single Ukrainian, unfortunately. But that was never ever in any press coverage of this war that I saw, except sometimes among some of the pundits, frankly on Fox, but most of the networks, most of cable were portrayed this war as a war between the good guys here in the United States and NATO versus the monstrous war criminal Putin, which has only led to increased war. And so what Nancy is saying, I think, and Eric, both is that we might have something approaching a varied press, but the press, it appears to me is very uninformed. But before we continue, I really want to explore the whole notion that what the government is trying, maybe, what the government, what is the government trying to do with this governance of disinformation? Who's gonna control misinformation? And is this more or less like the totalitarian efforts of the 30s, actually? So Mark, you're gonna, I hope, say a few words about, or maybe Pete, about George Orwell's work in the 30s. Is that right? Well, yeah, I mean, I'm no expert on Orwell. He wrote 1984 in 1948. So post World War II, it was published in 49, but it was called 1984 exactly because it was written in 48. He wanted to... Oh, I didn't know that. The parallels. And I think there's a lot of that book that is, and I don't know how familiar people are with the details, but there are a lot of details that are quite interesting. And also where it differs from what's going on now. So, for instance, there are four ministries in the book, and there's a Ministry of Truth. And that's, of course, now paralleled by this Ministry of Disinformation. Presumably disinformation is the opposite of truth, but in the sense of how ironic the titles are, it's the same thing. The Ministry of Truth is the Ministry of Laws or the Ministry of Disinformation. There's a Ministry of Peace. And of course we have the Defense Department, which uses this Newspeak where our Ministry of War is called the Ministry of Peace. And that's exactly what Orwell's criticism about Newspeak is. And then he has a Ministry of Plenty, which is our economic departments. But what's interesting, why I bring this up, is that Orwell talked about the Ministry of Love. And we have nothing in America. We have nothing that pretends to be that, either ironically or straightforwardly, that that concept is entirely out of the range of our vocabulary and thought. And- What love is, are you talking about? Are you saying? Yes, as a government ministry. He talked, Orwell talked about the Ministry of Love. And what was the Ministry of Love was the operation of Room 101, right? Which is what? Room 101 is great. Oh yeah?  And there's enough information about you and your inner life that the government can choose, what exactly it is if you are arrested and sent to Room 101, what exactly your experience would be. And in 1984, it's a little bit silly, but Winston Smith, the main character, has this great fear of rats eating his face. So naturally, that's what the torture is to get him to speak out against his beloved and then there's a little love plot. And at the end, they both, he and I think Julia, her name is, turn against their beloved and equip the government to torture them. So they both, what do you call it? I've just lost the word when you- Aquias? Not Aquias, but they turn, anyway, they turn each other in. So the Ministry of Information and the Ministry of Love, we don't have that. And that always struck me as really interesting about Orwell, he's, he got it right three out of four and does he have it right in the sense of we really have that and I haven't understood what's going on in US reality well enough to understand their Ministry of Love or was he just, did he just get that one wrong? And of course, it's the Ministry of Love is the operator of Room 101 and the tortures and having people, what are they trying to do is to get people to believe in Big Brother and really give up their all beliefs and turn around. And that's what happens in the book is both Julia and Winston become acolytes of Big Brother because of Room 101. And so when people describe particularly, there are people that are very opposed to this new Board of Governance. And so when they just described that as Orwellian. Orwell was a socialist and he was writing kind of standard socialist literature in the 30s and he was on the right side of all this stuff and he is tagged entirely by this, his last work. So there's a lot Orwellian and then it sounds like Orwellian is bad and in fact, what Orwellian is about is exposing the structures of evil in society. So it's an unfortunate diminution of his work. And if for people who are entirely ignorant, it might sound like it's a hitlerian or some terrible thing when he was really on the other side of stuff.  He was very much involved in the Spanish Civil War in the 30s, wasn't he? Yes. Yeah, right. And he was a reporter at that time? Yes, a reporter. Yeah, right. And what I think he was describing was totalitarianism, right? And in the 30s being a socialist, he probably thought that that kind of totalitarianism was, as you say, hitlerian or from the Nazis. Was he also describing something you think that arose in Russia with the USSR, do you suppose? Because that was at that time under Joseph Stalin. Or was he merely commenting on the Germans and the German Nazis? I think he was an anti-fascist. That was the major thing he was doing and publishing right after the war and also having all of these references to ministries. We don't really have ministries in the United States. I mean, we don't call them ministries. So I think he was basically an anti-fascist, writing anti-fascist material in that time when that was very, very important to understand and had he stayed alive. You know, he would be, and it is as we're looking at him now. I mean, here we are, what is it? 60 years later, trying to interpret these literary gestures that he made in terms of contemporary American society. And the fact that they work 75% of the time is very interesting that we have continued although calling it the opposite. We have continued all these trends of fascism that he was pointing out in the 30s. Okay, Pete, I have a different question. What is, who gets to within current American with this new board, who gets to decide what is information and what is disinformation? Pete, have you gone somewhere? Okay, well, Mark, anyone else have an opinion on that? Who gets to define the disinformation? It's pretty clear that it's basically an average, over averaging over the normal sort of ignorance and prejudice of contemporary America. And anything that's on the bad side is disinformation and that's what we, if Putin says anything, for instance, no matter what he says, it's disinformation. So we've discouraged any possibility of looking for truth on sides of arguments that we don't make on other side. Everything on the other side is disinformation and fraud. Right. And we don't look at ourselves. All right, what do you mean by that? So I'll give you an example though. Today from an old friend of mine, I told her there was a very interesting article on Counterpunch today by one of our neighbors, Ron Jacobs, who's at the, who works at the Burlington library. And he was contending that when, first there's no anti-war movement at all anymore. And second, that if there was an anti-war movement and what it would be doing is calling, of course, for truce fire, truce in this war in Ukraine and a negotiated settlement. And that that's what people who are interested in ending the war should be doing versus the argument that the war will never be stopped because we have to get rid of this madman Putin. Those are the two sides. And he was remarking in this article that there basically is no anti-war movement. And I believe that that's true. And that I think it's true because it has been perceived to be a war against one person rather than an examination of all the facts. Now, is that deliberate misinformation or is that propaganda or a little bit of both? Anybody have a thought on that? And I guess we lost Pete, right? Pete's gone somehow? Yes. All right, so Nancy, anybody else have any thoughts about that? Is that, and the last thing I wanted to say about that. So I suggested to some of my friends who are usually anti-war, that they should look up the Ron Jacobi article, Ron Jacobs, excuse me, in Counterpunch. And she said, well, you should read the other article that describes Putin as a war criminal. So that's the narrative that seems to have been accepted. Putin is the war criminal, which I think means that the war continues and will escalate. Anyway, anybody have any other questions or thoughts on this? Well, the war is being won by the defense industries, by the war industries. And keeping the war going is partially has to do with ideologies, but as most other military activities has to do with how many weapons we can sell to how many places. And so we don't want it to stop or we, the we, I don't know who we is, the controlling aspects of the economy. If I may, I also have a question. The question is how the American people become so much, easy to fool by the media or by, I don't know, maybe it has to do with mass media. Hollywood and cinema also shape the way a country think about what's going on abroad. I've seen recently some series on the internet that have some kind of party pre when it comes to other places of the world, the way that depict Arab, I mean, Arabs, the way a French citizen will be depicted on a movie. Sometimes those cliches shape also the way the people react to world actualities. And I also looked at the schools. I have hardly seen in the schools here when I went to the university here to all my papers, I was spelling my papers because I was into thesis, antithesis and synthesis. That's Marxism. I was always told, no Eric, you have to take a stand.  And there's more, there's no debate. I had the chance to travel recently with a young guy who was on the debate team, but I had the feeling that his team was going to war, you know, because a debate here in our, I mean, the culture here in the US is something that you have to win, no matter the quality of your arguments. I mean, so all this is also cultural. So in shaping the opinions here, mass media and all these are important. And we know how much some movie directors or the industry has been close to the government. Will it still be, will it be, I mean, will there be an independent movie, a real independent movie industry? All these questions have to be, you know, tackled when we talk about freedom of speech and quality of information and how we shape opinions here. Okay, anyone else? I'm wondering if I can ask Eric a question. So in your country, which is Ivy Coast or in other countries of the world, are there the traditions of the Bill of Rights? Do they exist, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of worship, or is that unique to the US world? No, but today, if you look at what is going on, even Ivy Coast is leading the US when it comes to freedom of speech. Why?  Because other countries do their homework. Maybe I remember when I was a journalist in Ivy Coast who were all getting our classes, lessons and all these trainings by the US Embassy. The US are always been also regarded as a beacon of freedom of speech. But I came to the US and I realized it's just like a cacophony. Freedom of press or quality of press is reduced to who's the loudest person in the room. In these countries, they are evolving because it was imposed by the international community as a rule. So every day, every year, Human Rights Watch reporter without border, they insist that this country abide by these rules. And especially the US is always giving the lessons, the lessons in Africa, but the reality here is, how can the US still give lessons out there when here there's no real freedom of speech? If you say that Putin is not a war criminal, not only you have the press against you, but you have the whole citizens that can lynch you. I know. So I don't know. The countries in the third world, I think also are making progress because with freedom of speech or freedom of press, is freedom of press is also linked to the fight for democracy. You know, the moral countries involved in that fight and keeping the democracy a light alive, you have some kind of freedom of speech. But when the people give up, like it is the case here, because I haven't seen even among the liberals or the progressives here, a sense of, you know, listen, we can have gray zones, we can have thesis, and synthesis is no, but this guy listened to Fox News, I don't talk to him. Or this guy is like a Democrat, I don't talk to him, you know? So there's a problem. I think the downfall of freedom of press here is equal to that of democracy. It's because there's an erosion of democracy that all this is happening so much so that the government can come and say we're gonna have, you know, the ministry of the truth. I know. I'm sorry, Mark. Yeah, the question shows really how radical Marx was, and before Marx-Hagel, I mean, Hagel and the whole question of dialectic is, was a very important and radical response to the kind of languages that were being enforced in feudal society, even up to the 18th century. And then Hagel comes along with this idea of dialectic and Marx interprets it in terms of dialectical materialism. And the power of that to change thought and language was so much that it had to be destroyed because if you're going to admit the truth of thesis, okay, and then antithesis, all right, and then what do you do between the two of them? Okay, you have another, and then this evolution of theses and synthesis that that really provides opportunity for people to critique the power as it stands. And it had to be in norm, it had to be fiercely both recognized as such as very powerful and stamped out because we cannot have that kind of or power cannot have admit that kind of dialectic. That kind of even dialogue either or as our debate or a debate or fact-finding. But dialogue is not the same thing as dialogue. I know, I know. I mean, not just technically. We've always had dialogue. Sort of, I don't think we do that much nowadays. We don't even have real conversations. I was yelling at one another and you have people calling each other names and you have people going on television like this, going on video, and it's dialogue. You can write all that stuff down, but it isn't formally related in terms of arguments that are given legitimacy and in their structures. So anyway, I think we need to understand the decay of language as being supportive of the decay of thought and culture. One of the things, and I think maybe we should converse about this again next week, but one of the things that is important is that I believe critical thinking is no longer even being taught or valued in the present educational system. And one of the things that I've been anxious to do and as a person is to kind of reinvent debate and argument. And that's one of the reasons that we do these Wednesday night series. And I'm certainly hoping that they can continue and that people like yourselves can chime in again. But does anybody have any final thoughts or comments about the whole idea of what's happening in the media and with freedom of speech or any of that? Anybody, or should we call it a day and then meet again next week? Okay, so does somebody have, Nancy again, Nancy? Well, you mentioned earlier not having good understanding of history. I think that's quite a bit of the reason that people all for this propaganda. And I mean, they're empathetic toward Ukraine, but not thinking about maybe Russians are suffering even though it doesn't look like that on the surface. But if you have this propaganda against Russia, it just influences people not to empathize generally. Yeah, I totally agree with that. And how can you empathize? Okay, so to me, this war has been put forth as a war against a monster, Vladimir Putin. How can you really even debate that subject? Is somebody gonna really say, well, no, he's not a monster? I mean, as Eric was stating, you can't do that in present day parlance at all. You can't even suggest that the guy might be sane. So in this particular case, there's been no attempt at reason, no attempt at a knowledge of history. It is complete 100% blockage of any kind of understanding of this war. And so the war I think will continue until people start demanding, well, demanding some kind of truth. I don't know if it's the ministry of truth, but some kind of truth, but anyway. So next week, I think we'll be back and we're gonna be discussing, which is a subject also of some of the stuff we've been talking tonight. We're gonna be talking about what's happening at the Burlington Airport with the F-35s, the big fighters, planes that are in Germany. I wanna ask what is going on? Why are they there? And what does that mean for the state of Vermont? So please join us at that time. And thank you so much for being here tonight. Thank you.


When you ask me, what do I believe about these social media people? I'm more of a go straight to the source kind of guy. For example, when I go to make money, I'm like, how can I emulate and learn from Steve Balmer? That's the richest guy I've ever been. One-on-one kind of mentor conversation. He made $100 billion. He built Microsoft with Bill Gates. He was the CEO for 20 years. I can trust his opinion. I asked him hard questions like, how can I have kids and I'm a busy entrepreneur? He told me he managed his time with an Excel spreadsheet to always be sure he had time for his son even though he was the CEO of the largest company in the world. And so I like learning from that guy.