Wow, what a day!
Now we're continuing and the next person speaking to us is also an educational giant and
the next section will concentrate on the conflict in the Middle East.
We have the privilege to ask our questions to an educational giant who lives in Japan.
Our fantastic KLATV correspondent Dan from the US is interviewing him.
So we're in Japan, US, Switzerland. We have a time difference of 15 hours between these two men and 7
and 8 hours of time shift to us here in Switzerland.
So we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your valuable services and first look at the biography of whom?
James Corbett!
James we need you!
James Corbett was born and raised in Canada.
He graduated with a Master of Philosophy from Trinity College, Dublin.
After moving to Japan, James Corbett started „The Corbett Report“ website in 2007 as an outlet for independent critical
analysis of politics, society, history, and economics.
At the time, he ran the website alongside his job of teaching English.
About 4 years later, he became a full-time investigative journalist.
Since then, he has won awards for his journalistic work and held speeches at various Universities, at TEDx
Groningen and at independent investivation commitees like the National Citizens Inquiry of Canada.
Over the years, James Corbett has released many eye-opening documentaries, such as: „911 Suspects“ „Century of Enslavement –
The History of the Federal Reserve“ and „Who is Bill Gates?“
Today his in-depth research reaches more than 300.000 followers and can be found on his website in hundreds
of episodes of podcasts, interviews and other formats.
In 2018, he created the Annual Fake News Awards, documenting dozens of the system
media’s fakest stories of the year. Today
James Corbett will be talking to us about: Middle East conflict and central bank digital
currencies: an absolute horror scenario!
James Corbett, thank you for coming on again.
No problem.
So today we're going to be talking about war in the Middle East and CBDCs.
So if you're ready and our listeners are ready, we'll get right into it.
Listeners, are you ready?
Yeah! Yeah! Let's start off with this. You have called October 7th Israel's 9 -11.
How so? How do these two things line up?
Well, obviously, it's not just me who has called that, who has used that phrase.
In fact, the mainstream establishment media was using that phrase in the immediate wake of the October 7th attacks.
And of course, they mean it in the context of a spectacular large-scale terror attack that was exactly as
we were told it was, which justifies an ongoing, presumably never -ending war on terror.
I use it in a very different way because of, people who are familiar with my work will know, I have deconstructed the 9 -11
false flag terror events from many different angles, including looking at the money trail, looking
at the war games that were operative on 9-11,
looking at some of the suspects and characters surrounding 9 -11, the intelligence operatives and agencies that
were actively working with, collaborating, creating, in many senses, Al -CIAda, aka Al -Qaeda.
So from that perspective, when I say October 7th, was Israel's 9 -11, I mean it in that context, as in a staged or provocateured
false flag event that has been used as a justification for a military/political agenda that was already there in advance.
Now, when you say never-ending, the way I see it is that Israel certainly does have motives in Gaza.
Do you foresee some way to end this war in Gaza?
How does it end? Is it supposed to end?
I mean, the never-ending part is like if they can continue having enemies surrounding them, then they will continually tap
into the U. S. Treasury to keep the arms shipments going.
But speaking of Gaza alone, do you foresee an end to this?
I unfortunately do see how it could come to an end.
And unfortunately, most of the alternatives for that are not pleasant
ones. They involve the eradication of the Palestinian people from Gaza. And in fact, that
is something that has been alluded to by numerous ministers in the Israeli parliament who have talked about erasing
Gaza or talked about eliminating the Palestinian people.
And unfortunately, these people are, of course, dismissed as, oh, those are the extreme fringe far-right people.
They don't represent the majority of the Israeli government.
But it is interesting to note that Netanyahu's political coalition depends on precisely those types of people
at the moment. So it's not such a fringe idea in Israeli politics that this does end with
actually the ethnic cleansing of Gaza in particular.
And of course, then there's the question of the West Bank, which for years, it has been the open and
concerted policy of much of the Israeli political class to continue and expand the illegal settlements
that are happening in the West Bank.
And in fact, just recently, just in the past week, the ICJ, the International Court of Justice, has ruled, has come up
with its provisional ruling saying that Israeli occupation of the occupied Palestinian territories is illegal.
Confirming once again, yes, this is an illegal occupation that is going on and that Israel must make every
effort to stop what they are doing as soon as possible.
But what does that look like?
And unfortunately, as I say,
I can see many ways that this could end in Gaza
in particular, say, with the complete eradication of the Palestinian people, or at least the displacement of enough people
to make continued Palestinian survival in Gaza untenable, or at the very least, to open up new avenues and
new territory for settlement by Israelis in the Gaza
Strip. But from anything resembling a military perspective, as if Hamas was really fighting in a war against the Israeli
government and that there really are two forces that are lined up battling each other and it could go either way, I
think that's a false narrative that's been implanted.
What is happening there is not a war.
It is a slaughter, a wholesale slaughter that is taking place right now.
Yeah. Yeah, indeed, indeed. And if we're going to extrapolate beyond Gaza and go to the West Bank, we could say, you
know, Jerusalem, Golan Heights, each one of these places.
So, we could extrapolate and say that possibly the goal is the eradication of the
Palestinians from all of Israel, could we
not? As I say, this is not an extrapolation or a theory.
This is something that has been actively and openly talked about, at least by certain members of the Israeli parliament.
And when they do this, when those ministers come out and mouth these statements, Netanyahu generally will come
out and make some sort of statement, „oh, that's too far, oh, we don't support that idea“.
But of course, as I say, the political coalition that is holding Netanyahu's government together actually depends
on the very ministers making these types of statements.
And there are numerous of them.
In fact, I'm working on documenting that for an upcoming podcast episode
right now. So, I'm just looking at this data right now and I can say there are numerous documented evidence
statements of numerous Israeli politicians calling for the eradication of the Palestinian people.
So, this is not some sort of fringe idea that's just floated by a few people. This is
floated by people in positions of power.
And it is, as I say, at least one way we could imagine this conflict coming to an end, but in the worst way
imaginable. Yes. Well, and Netanyahu will moderate his statements depending on who's listening.
I mean, he might try to downplay the idea, but then on another day, he may equate the people
in Gaza to Amalek, who need to be eliminated.
Yes. And of course, this does have to do with Israeli internal politics and political cycles.
And there is a documented pattern in Netanyahu's career where he will make the most provocative and most forthright statements
about the most hawkish policy towards the Palestinians in times of tightly contested political elections.
He'll be essentially campaigning for that right-wing vote that is keeping him in office.
But then we also run into the risk of blaming this all on Netanyahu. Certainly,
he is a dominant force in Israeli politics and has been for decades
now. But he's not the only force.
And we run the risk of assuming that, oh, well, if we could just get a more level-headed Israeli prime minister in, like
Naftali Bennett or Ehud Barak, Jeffrey Epstein associate, or someone else like that, well, then things would just be fine.
But I think that's a false narrative that's been implanted in this conversation.
It is a fundamental question that is at the heart of Israeli politics right now and has been since the
foundation of the Israeli state in the terrorist attacks that formed the Israeli state
that we know about.
Again, this is not conspiracy theories. This is documented history.
For example, the attack on the King David Hotel back in 1946, which was at the time the largest terror attack in history and
something that absolutely shocked the conscience of the world, killing dozens, hundreds of people, injuring many, many more.
It was an absolutely brazen attack,
and it was specifically a terrorist attack committed by what would become the Israeli, essentially political establishment,
as part of their ploy to get the British out of Palestine.
And unfortunately, it was very successful.
So right from the very beginning, the foundations of the Israeli state have been predicated on
terrorism and violence against Palestinians.
And unfortunately, nothing has changed in the last 75 years.
When you say that this terrorist group became the political establishment, are you referring to the Irgun?
Yes. And in fact, the name is going to escape me.
But I did document this in my recent podcast episode about „Meet Benjamin Netanyahu, War
Criminal“, where the particular Irgun leader who was
in charge of the King David Hotel operation, and was responsible for that terrorist atrocity, was not only lauded by
Netanyahu as an exemplar of the foundation of the Israeli state, he was one of the founding fathers of the Israeli state.
But in fact, in 2006, on the 60th anniversary of that deadly terrorist bombing, not only was a plaque
commemorating the event unveiled by the Israeli government,
which even at the time, the British ambassador said it was absolutely remarkable to have a free, liberal,
democratic state, literally putting up a monument to a horrible, deadly terrorist attack.
But who was there to unveil the plaque and to, once again, commemorate the Irgun for and commend the Irgun for
their part in founding Israel on this deadly event?
None other than Benjamin Netanyahu.
Is the Netanyahu government connected to Hamas
somehow? Yes, they are.
And once again, I've documented this in my work.
I wrote an article a few months ago called „The Secret History of Hamas“ that goes into the founding of Hamas, what it is, where
it came from, and the extensive Israeli government and intelligence connections
between the Israeli government and Hamas.
And I think it would be too simplistic to say that simply Hamas is a complete fabrication,
a total puppet of the Israeli government.
But demonstrably so, it has been propped up, aided, funded and abetted by the Israeli government.
And in fact, in a 2019 Likud party meeting, Benjamin Netanyahu explicitly said that his strategy was to prop up Hamas in order
to keep the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip separated politically and ideologically from the Palestinians in the West Bank
in order to make sure that they could never unite and never form a real threat of actually succeeding in creating a
two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
So, this is, again, out in the open, we don't have to speculate about this.
James, speaking of the need to keep wars going
in general. I watched maybe your most recent video, and you mentioned an article on Covert Action magazine.
And I went to Covert Action magazine.
I don't know if I read the correct article, but it was by a guy who said that that's been the United States
memo from the very beginning, to keep the wars going.
Would you say, generally speaking, that's the case in the Middle East, and that's the case in Ukraine
today, and that's the case for the United States?
I would say, as a general modus operandi, that is the way that the military -industrial complex that was identified by
Eisenhower on his way out of the U. S. presidential office back in 1960, and that is even
more in force than it was at that time.
That has been the modus operandi of that military-industrial complex for, well, since its inception.
War is the health of the state, but war is also the health of every industry and ancillary body and intelligence
agency and all of these other organs of the larger deep state that is actually governing politics.
And because of that, they have not just a vested interest, not just a hidden interest , their interest is, it
is equal to the interest of warfare, and continually generating reasons for military action.
So yes, absolutely this is part of the strategy.
I think it holds more true in certain times and certain places for specific strategic reasons
— and we can look at that historically,
for example, in the 1980s, the explicit reason for funding — in fact, the largest (at least admitted) CIA operation in
history was the funding of the Taliban in Afghanistan in the 1980s as part of their war jihad against the Soviets
was specifically and precisely because the, well, the Carter administration deep state back in the late 1970s decided
that the best way to drain the blood of the Soviets was to put them in a meat grinder, give them their own Vietnam.
So that was specifically and explicitly what they did.
And they tried to keep that war going for as long as they possibly
could. That was the strategy behind it.
In the same way, you could see, for example, the conflict in Ukraine is, I think, an exact parallel because in this
case, I think the target is clearly Russia and the United States is happy to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian
and will continue sending money and aid and weapons to enable that conflict to go on as long, as it
possibly can to drain the Russians. Yeah. Wow.
Applause... Well, I think Trump has recently said that he intends to stop this war.
If he stopped the war, then the meat grinder would stop, too.
But I think he has other reasons for stopping the war.
We'd like to hear a little bit about your thoughts on the current state of the NATO proxy war in Ukraine
and let's think of the prime movers for going to and continuing the war against Russia.
What is it that people like Victoria Nuland and Anthony Blinken, our secretary of state, what do they want?
What is their goal over there?
You know, this is a good question.
And I guess it's a question of how far back into geopolitical history you want to go, because certainly
I think that this strategy of empire, The British Empire at the end of the 19th century, the American Empire as it became in
the 20th century, has been for a very long time to keep the Russians and the Germans
separated and to keep them at war with each other,
essentially. Because, of course, if they were to unite, even not politically, not economically, but just to have good
relations with each other, that would be a serious threat to the ability of, say, the British or the
Americans to come in and control the European continent.
And as has been pointed out since the times of Mackinder and all of the formation of geopolitics as we know it today
over a century ago, that area of the global chessboard,
as it's been called, is the heartland over which whatever ruling power happens to have control
will have essentially control. of the planet.
And that has been understood for over a century, which is precisely why there has always been the need to drive a wedge
in between Russians and Germans or Europeans generally.
And I think that's still operative today.
That's still a part of the strategy.
Yes, I was doing an interview with, who's the anti -war
guy? He does the, great. Anti -war podcast.
Horton, Scott Horton. Horton? Yeah, Scott Horton.
And he said, he said, the last thing the West wants is German -Russian unity.
And he says, then again, the worst possible thing is that Germany and Russia would ever
go back to war against each other again.
And we've seen what happens when that takes place.
Yeah. Yes, we have.
Back to Trump saying he's going to stop this war.
What do you know about his good friend, Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, who happens to be working as an
advisory role on reconstruction efforts in Ukraine, and he's in charge of the Ukraine Development Fund?
Yes. So as you exactly outlined there, BlackRock, and
specifically Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, which, by the way, is the largest investment firm in the world, which
has a, if not a plurality, at least a large portion of the shares in basically every Fortune 500 company,
is also heavily invested in the Ukrainian reconstruction, which, of course, has been put
in the context of a digital transformation.
This process, in fact, was in place even before the current conflict started, but it's certainly been ramped
up. And Larry Fink has openly talked about how this provides a perfect opportunity for the complete
digital transformation of a government and economy.
So that is exactly what they are attempting to do.
And, of course, this is a boon and a boondoggle in the terms of billions of euros, billions of dollars for whoever can get their
snoot in this particular pie and drink the most from it.
And Larry Fink is definitely positioned to be that blood -sucking vampire on the face of humanity
right now. I was looking into the background of Larry Fink and his involvement in Ukraine and his meddling over
there, and I found out about a conference that occurred in New York City a couple of years ago.
Have you ever heard of the New York Times-sponsored Dealbook Summit?
I have heard of it, yes, but I was not following its proceedings.
Right. Well, I read the fine print.
It said, Prime Minister -designate Benjamin Netanyahu, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, META CEO Mark
Zuckerberg, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink will also address the summit.
All those people together at a New York summit.
Any thoughts on that?
Only that it doesn't surprise me in the least.
I would say that's exactly who we would expect to be gathering to talk about this and to, again, try to
profit from this in every way, monetarily as well as geopolitically. As well as militarily.
And, of course, every player at that table has their own reason for being at that table,
but they can certainly unite on the agenda of using up the lifeblood of Ukraine to fight the Russians
is something that a lot of different people at the table are happy to do right now.
Okay. Well, James, you didn't seem very sanguine about the possible outcomes of the current crisis in Israel.
What's a semi-reasonable best-case scenario for the war in Ukraine to end without BlackRock taking over the country?
Yes. Well, again, that is exceptionally difficult now.
And I think everyone has played their hands to the point where it's difficult to imagine that
there would be a way to step back from that brink
right now. Because, of course, I think the Russians cannot back off at this point without having achieved at
least some sort of face-saving measure over the Donbass and it's supposed geopolitical objectives there.
But at the same time, Ukraine has been committed now quite firmly onto a path that is towards
Western integration, including NATO membership,
which at the most recent NATO conference, it was assured that Ukraine's NATO membership path is irreversible.
It's not going to happen tomorrow, but it's going to
happen, which, of course, was the red line that the Russians have set for a very, very long time. Even pre-Putin.
The idea of NATO in Ukraine has been that red line.
So it is, again, it's difficult to imagine a face-saving measure that would be possible at this
point that wouldn't, at the very least, as you say,
even if it were all to end, even if the conflict were to end tomorrow, clearly we have ensconced in Kiev right now a
government that is committed towards this digital transformation, BlackRock takeover, Palantir, and other
companies like that that are getting into this game
right now, it's difficult to imagine how they would be kicked out of any concievable
government that's taking place in Kiev
right now. Okay. Well, James, we're going to move on to our second topic here, CBDCs.
And I'd like to open this with a little news just from this weekend, I guess, beginning on Thursday.
You know, I've had my head down, just work a day and haven't been thinking about stuff and haven't really
been researching or looking much at my Twitter feed.
So I didn't know much about this whole CrowdStrike affair.
In fact, I didn't even know what CrowdStrike was until I asked someone today that it's a software security company.
But something happened on Friday, I think it was, and that was for some reason I couldn't
access any sort of digital records at my bank.
I have an app on my phone which allows me to see my bank account and, you know, my
transactions. And they said, „down for the weekend“.
And then my buddy said, yeah, that might be, could very well possibly be because of the CrowdStrike thing.
He mentioned hundreds of flights being canceled.
He mentioned YouTube being down this morning for three hours, banks closing, et cetera.
And my thought was, as we get into this talk about CBDCs, my thought was, this should be a black eye
to the idea of changing everything to digital.
Don't you think people might be concerned about being able to access cash and spending and not depending
100% on this digital money that they're trying to roll
out? You know, I'm glad that you put this discussion in that context,
because right now, at least at this very moment, there are tens of thousands, maybe more, who have had their travels
disrupted, their bank account disrupted, et cetera, because of this, Wow, „this once in a lifetime, this
is a horrible glitch that has just taken hold“.
But it should, at the very least, be at the forefront of people's minds right now whether it is a good idea to actually
put our entire lives, our economic existence on the line of this digital technology that, at the very least, is susceptible to
random glitches and false updates, let alone actual attacks, whether real from actual outside boogeymen or a false flag attack
that's generated in some way, or maybe just an act of God.
We know:
The EMF, the solar radiation, the Carrington event.
We know the types of things that could come along to destroy and disrupt our
electronic lives as we know them at a moment's
notice. So, in a sense, what I saw taking place recently with that CrowdStrike problem was almost hardening to
see paper boarding passes being written out for passengers because they couldn't print the electronic
boarding passes. They couldn't use the QR codes.
They were literally handwriting them.
And it does, at the very least, it does make you think just how far we have been steeped into this digital
matrix that seeing a handwritten boarding pass is somewhat shocking in this day and age.
But, yes, people used to keep track of things with pen and paper.
Why have we abandoned that?
What pressing, urgent problems have we solved by putting our entire lives into this digital matrix?
Yes, Applause. I think you could say that for so many things that they come up with a new solution to
something. And the first question we should be asking is: „well what's wrong with what we have here?
Like I get pretty good reception, at least when I was back in Japan, on the old 3G network.
Why 4G, Why 5G?
They keep ramping it up, telling us that this is absolutely necessary for our continued existence.
But I don't need to download a movie in 19 seconds instead of 53 seconds.
Allow me to insert a reference here to Neil Postman, who was the author of books like „Amusing Ourselves to Death“.
He was a very interesting and very foresightful author who was productive and active in the 1980s and 1990s.
He was writing about the internet as that was coming into existence.
And he delivered a series of speeches on questions about technology. And
I can't remember the name that that speech is under. But if you look up „Neil Postman
questions about technology“, you will find it.
And he, I believe, came up with four questions that we should ask about any new technology that is being proposed.
One of which is, „what is the problem to which this proffered technology is purportedly the solution?“
And „is it really a problem?“
And „is it really a solution?“
And he breaks that down in an excellent way that I think is even more relevant now than it was when
he was delivering that speech three decades ago.
Now, that sounds interesting.
James, I know we covered this on our last interview, but we have a lot more new
viewers watching this in the AZK conference.
And I think some people still need to know, what is the difference between CBDCs and, for
example, Apple Pay or other digital payment systems?
And why are 93% of all central banks suddenly actively involved in developing these CBDCs?
The digital payment infrastructure as it exists right now that you tap into right now is predicated
on the form of money that we have become used to.
Which is to say the retail money in the retail banking circuit.
Now, what we have to understand, there's a lot to understand with regards to monetary jiggery -pokery and nonsense that the
woul-be wizards of Wall Street have pulled, the wool that they've pulled over the eyes of
the general public for many, many centuries
now. But the idea is there is a two-track monetary system
in most countries today. One is the wholesale monetary system, which is for the banks themselves the commercial banks they
themselves have reserve accounts at the central bank and whether that's the ECB or the Bank of Japan or the Federal Reserve in the
United States. Those commercial banks store reserves and transact with each other within that wholesale banking circuit.
We, you and I and everyone else listening to this we have our funds at those commercial
banks and that is the retail monetary circuit
those are two completely separate things. The money that the banks are using in the wholesale circuit is
technically a different thing than the money that we use in the day-to-day retail
banking circuit. And so when we're paying with apple pay or what have you we are using retail banking money.
That is money that is created through the retail bank
the commercial banking system generally speaking
money most of it at any rate is created out of debt that's owed back to the commercial banks.
They by the magic of their bank charter have the right to create that money into
existence when they loan it out to you.
They're not going into the bank vault and taking out a stack of cash every time they loan you money they are creating
that money that then you owe back to them with interest. A wonderful idea if you happen to be a banker. At any rate,
now what CBDC is, is the idea that we will have access, really for the first time, directly to central bank issued money.
Well of course there is central bank issued
money. If you take out one of the bills, whatever country you happen to be residing in, if you take out one of the paper bills
if you happen to have any left in your wallet because most people are going cashless, it will say something like here in Japan it
says Bank of Japan on it in the United States it says Federal Reserve note, because that is
an expression of central bank liability.
That bill is actually issued by the central bank itself
and so that is the only way that the central bank has for putting money directly into the economy at
this point and it's just a fraction of the economy
at this point. However in the CBDC universe they will be able to put their expressions of central bank liability directly into
your digital wallet, because you will now have an account, well depending how they set it up, but in some way or other
you will have an account with the central bank itself.
And they will be able to not only of course verify and look over your transactions but of course look into your transactions
and potentially as has been pointed out by many including politicians in the UK and elsewhere who are very
very excited about this possibility: they can program what can and cannot happen with that money.
So for example if they put a restriction: „you are only allowed a certain amount of meat that can be
purchased this month because we know eating meat is bad, it angers the weather gods“.
If they put a restriction on it they will be able to enforce that restriction by stopping you from purchasing over your
allotment of meat with their central bank digital currency.
And that will be an automatic thing that will not be bypassable by you if they choose to implement it that way
or any other number of restrictions that one could imagine could be enacted in real time with the flip of a digital
switch which presents an absolutely nightmarish amount of control over the economy directly by central bankers
Yep, I mean you just you just answered my next question which was: What would you say would
be the most attractive thing for the state
and I would say it's the ability to accurately monitor our wealth and spending and if need be control how we spend.
Absolutely and I should make the distinction, because it is as i have laid out, as the banking system
exists right now the commercial banks are our go-between between the central bank and ourselves.
So the commercial banks have been an important part of that and they obviously wield an incredible
amount of control over the economy right now. They are
not going to give up that control very easily.
So we can imagine many ways that the CBDC system will be set
up, one of which could be that the central bank will delegate its ability to host and to verify accounts to commercial
banks or at least verified financial institutions.
So they will act, again, as the middlemen in
this. And that will put the central banks at something at least looking like an arm's length remove from
the process. Oh, we're not controlling all of this. This is done by the commercial banks.
However, given, again, the political and the economic realities of the way the banking system is structured,
of course, who is it that regulates those commercial banks and tells them what they can and cannot do?
It is the central bank regulators and the government
regulators. And we have seen how that power has been abused in the past.
For example, under the Obama administration, the Department of Justice leaned on the commercial banks in the United States to
debank people who were engaged in completely legal, if disreputable services, porn stars, ammo
dealers, payday lenders, other people in the parts of the economy that the government wasn't
so happy with. They were leaning on those banks to debank
those customers. The banks themselves were the ones complying.
They were the ones debanking those customers, but they were doing it because the FDIC in the United States,
one of the regulators of the banking system, was saying, „we won't insure your deposits.
We might delist you if you don't comply with our demands to get rid of these people“.
So we can see how this type of system can be erected. That will,
again, not look exactly like that most nightmarish scenario of central bankers directly controlling your
your wallet, but it will amount to pretty much the same
thing. Yes, I can see how they're going to try to make it palatable.
And this is one of those, you know, „first they came for the communists“ things.
First, they came for the money lenders down on Skid Row.
Well, we don't like those people.
We don't like the porn stars. They're
going to make it attractive.
So how close are we to a CBDC system?
And does this mean the end of cash?
They can certainly coexist and presumably will coexist for some time.
It doesn't necessarily mean that there will be no such thing as cash.
However, however, we have seen already the moves towards cashless society and how quickly that has happened.
To the point where in Japan, still a largely cash based economy, although that is changing.
But I remember last year I was in England attending a conference and it was genuinely shocking, although I consciously
know this and have researched this and talked about it,
but it was genuinely shocking to walk into numerous cafes and restaurants and retail
outlets that literally did not accept cash.
It was literally cashless
only. And again, that was something of a shock to my system, but it is already happening.
So one could imagine when CBDCs are introduced, yes, there will be a period of coexistence,
but one could very much imagine that given some false flag monetary event or other as a presumed
emergency justification, you could get rid of cash
and most people in this day and age probably wouldn't bat an eyelid.
Right. Well, when you visit the local convenience store, how many people do you see paying with these with their
iPhone, with a card, with an easy pay card rather than cash?
I mean, is it pretty common?
Unfortunately, so.
And I say unfortunately, because again, I have very much delighted in the fact that Japan was very much, still is, largely
a cash based economy to the point where you could go in and buy a car with cash and it
wouldn't even be a surprising event. However,
that genuinely is changing and it's changing very quickly over here as the cashless payment systems are not
just rolled out, but actively promoted more and more.
And unfortunately, now it is becoming a much, much more common occurrence to see people paying with their
phones, paying with their cards than it was in the past.
So even here in Japan, which has been one of the few holdouts in the developed world in terms of
being a cash based economy, that is changing.
And I could imagine within a few short years, we will probably see the tip over point where cashless
payments will become more common than cash payments.
What can we do besides make sure we pay with cash whenever possible?
What other things are in our quiver?
Well, I would say that is a very, very good place to start.
And I think this is one of those problems that is clearly it's a societal issue that no one person can solve
for themselves, but we all have our part to play in it.
And our part consists in boycotts and buycotts. As
in not only to avoid stores that go cashless,
but then, of course, to support those stores or businesses or retailers or people that you know who are willing to provide
services not only for cash, precious metals, crypto, LETS system or other versions of community currencies, whatever it is,
I'm not here to adjudicate on what system people should be using.
I think: use everything other than
the CBDCs. And it is one of those things
where as long as we flex that muscle and continue to build a community that at the very least will be supported in the event
of this changeover so that when as as the cashless rollout happens and as more and more people go down that road, if there
are still people who are willing to go even out of their way, inconvenience themselves, if need be, in order to
pay with cash or precious metals or something else, well, then that that economy can at least continue.
And certainly most people will probably go along to get along, but the avenue for people
to support that community will be there.
But if we don't flex that muscle, if we just, „oh, well, it's kind of inconvenient, I just want to go
down to the convenience store and buy that thing.
I guess I'll have to go cashless this time“,
the more that we do that, the more we are literally buying into that cashless world.
So it does come down to a a system of habits and we have to get used to being inconvenienced if need be in order to support
the world we want in order to avoid the world we don't want.
Amen to that James.
Applause Well we're nearing the end of our time
and I like to, when I can. throw in something that's off script and and something personal that I come up came
up with myself. I want to describe a hypothetical situation to you James and see how you would react in this situation.
I know this is being bantered about so much and there's rampant speculation and in ways that kind of
bothers you when we get off track and go rabbit holes
but I have to ask you something about the alleged July 13th assassination attempt. Would that be okay?
Sure yeah.
So let's say you're leading a conference and the question of the July 13th alleged assassination attempt comes up,
people get excited, there's all kinds of speculation about what really happened and you kind of get off track.
You take your gavel you knock it down.
What do you do to keep people focused and on the right track in such a situation? What would you say?
Yeah, I think at the point at which the people have expressed their interest in that it's probably
already too late to simply gavel down, gavel it away.
I would never presume to tell people what they should be thinking about or what they should be devoting their time
or attention to, or at least telling them that they can't devote their time or attention to this or that thing.
And even if i did who would listen to me and why.
However I could certainly suggest that what the significance of an event like that to me as someone who does not believe in
the political system and process that we've been given, the slave suggestion box that comes along every four years, that means
nothing with regards to the overarching problems of central bank digital currencies and the conflict in Israel and Ukraine
and other things that we've been talking about today.
The real meaning of this is not about this or that political candidate,
it's about what the people who control this system want us to believe about what took
place and why they want us to believe that.
So I if I could in such an imaginary situation, gavel down one way or another, I would simply say: it might be more useful to
look at what does this mean why are we being propagandized to think and talk about this this event in a
certain way? whose interest does this redound to?
If we accept this narrative as it is being shoved down our throats where does that lead us and to what end?
And if for no other reason, then perhaps just to draw us back into the political discussion and to make it again
about which side of this controlled left-right bird of prey do you want to support politically.
If only to draw people back into that sideshow circus. That might be the actual real meaning of an event
like this. And so I would at least put that out on the table for discussion
Very good, very good.
Okay final question James. Final question:
were you surprised when Julian Assange was freed?
I suppose so, if only because I think that the long-term narrative - like in a Ukraine
conflict or an Afghanistan conflict or what
have you, it seems like just keeping it in that process in that state almost seemed like it would become the
point at a certain point. Certainly it would, I don't want
to say this, it would be interesting to have seen how that would have played out judicially. But I'm not sure I
would want to have seen how that played out judicially.
At any rate it certainly took me
by surprise, I was not expecting that.
I don't take it as an a wonderful win for free speech, if only because, again, all that was really decided
was that, „yes, guilty, I'm guilty, now let me out“.
And that doesn't really help the fundamental problems of setting this precedent that
normal journalistic practices are illegal.
And that's essentially what has been determined here.
Now, luckily, it could have been worse, because
they could have actually had an actual judicial verdict that what he did was illegal,
which would have set a worse precedent.
But it certainly could have been better,
as in finding someone who was just doing a journalistic job,
innocent of the charges would have been much better. Absolutely, absolutely.
We could say that maybe, I mean, we should celebrate that he's free, but our celebrations should be somewhat
muted, given that it came about because of a plea deal.
We should, as always, we should continue to point out the facts and the issues surrounding this case, rather
than dwelling on the personalities of people involved
in them. Agreed, agreed.
Well, AZK conference attendees, how about a nice round of applause for James Corbett?
Applause Wonderful thank. You've brought these deep connections to the table.
We value and we love you.
Thank you Dan for guiding this so fantastically.
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