Shaun Newman Podcast - #1001 - Tom Luongo & Alex Krainer #23

Episode Date: February 16, 2026

We discuss Alberta Independence and the Epstein Files.Tom Luongo is a former research chemist, amateur dairy goat farmer, libertarian, and economist whose work can be found on Zero Hedge and Newsmax Media. He hosts the Gold Goats ‘n Guns Podcast.Alex Krainer is a Croatian national, former hedge fund manager, author and contributing editor at Zero Hedge. Tickets to Cornerstone Forum 26’: https://www.showpass.com/cornerstone26/Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionBitcoin: www.bowvalleycu.com/en/personal/investing-wealth/bitcoin-gatewayEmail: [e-mail] Get your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500

This is Viva Fry. I'm Dr. Peter McCulloch. This is Tom Lomago. This is Chuck Pradnik. This is Alex Krenner. Hey, this is Brad Wall. This is J.P. Sears. Hi, this is Frank Paredi.

This is Tammy Peterson. This is Danielle Smith. This is James Lindsay. Hey, this is Brett Kessel, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Monday. How's everybody doing today? How was the weekend?

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in here in Lightminster and tell them I sent you all right if you're listening or watching on Spotify Apple YouTube RumbleX Facebook Substack make sure to subscribe make sure to leave a review Make sure to share with a friend if you're enjoying it And uh well I guess Let's get on that tale of the tape

Happy Monday everyone I don't know Happy Monday Yep happy Monday That's what I got for you today Tale of the tape let's get it going Our first guest's a former research chemist Amateur Dairy Goat Farmer Liberty and economist whose work can be found on Zero Hedge and Newsmax Media.

He hosts the Gold Goats and Guns podcast, the second of Croatian National, former hedge fund manager, author, and contributing editor at Zero Hedge. I'm talking about Tom Luongo and Alex Kramer. So buckle up, here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Tom Luongo, Alex Kramer. Gentlemen, thanks for hopping on. Hey, Sean, good to be with you.

Hi, Tom. Hi, Alex. How are you? We're all kind of in high Dutch and today. This should be fun. If the pre-roll is anything like the post-roll, the post-roll is anything like the pre-roll, we should have a good time today.

Okay, well, here's where I want to start you guys, okay? There's a lot going on in the world. I'm going to suck you into, oh, and for anyone watching, yes, that's the hospital thing. Don't worry about it. I'm on the end, okay? Alberta, I've been asking this question, and everybody keeps kind of like dodging it,

and they point to Tom and to Alex, as two that would probably be willing to at least discuss it. And that is, okay, Albertans, you're trying to separate from Canada. Okay, you want an independent nation, Martin Armstrong, that makes sense. You know, others, you'd be wealthy, all these different things, right? Oh, right, here we go. And I sit back and I go, wait a second.

Alberta sits on the third largest oil reserve, is got countless minerals, et cetera, et cetera, not to mention the people that live here, the proximity to the U.S., to the this, to that. I'm like, why are we so naive to think the U.S., Europe, China, take your pick, aren't going to come in and influence this thing like crazy?

My direct correlation, gentlemen, was when I went to the Freedom Convoy, right? And for one brief moment in time, that part of the world became center stage for the world. And I look at Alberta and I go, Alberta is about to become or already has become center stage for part of the world. And as it gets closer, let's assume they get the signatures required. Everything is going to heat up. And the thing that heated up, I think it's a couple weeks ago now, is David Eby calling people traders.

Then a new poll came out saying 71% of Canadians agree with BC Premier. And then 56% of those of Albertans agreed that they're traders. right on anyone asking the U.S. for help or even those going down there to make talks with Washington, no matter how many times you point out, Quebec did the same thing with France back in the day in the 90s and theirs. And anyways, I guess the question is, long, round about way. What can Albertans expect in the next, I don't know, less than a year here as this thing continues to heat up? Everything. You're going to get it all.

it's going to be it's going to be Brexit times five because the stakes are higher now than they were during Brexit because during Brexit they didn't think you would actually the UK would actually vote to leave and they thought they had the they had everything ring fenced we also saw the same kind of fake polling I like to say that there are lies damn lies statistics

polling and British polling in that order of accuracy and and then And then there's anything having to do with an election that would threaten the empire, for lack of a better term. So remember, the night before Brexit, it was supposed to lose 55-45, it wound up winning 52-48, and that was with cheating. Okay?

Same thing isn't going to happen to you. I don't discount the idea that 71% of Canadians will call you traders, but I don't believe 56% of Albertans think you're traders. that I don't believe. Not unless it's a either or question. Are they or are they not traders? Right. Remember, polls are, you know, and then the other thing about polls is wording, right?

How the polls are worded. What are the options? Who did they poll? What's the margin for error? What's this? What's that? All of that stuff is shaping operations. Like, polling at this point is polling market.

It's all it is. Like someone goes in to polymarket and puts $5 million on. Will Alberta leave Canada? vote to leave Canada and somebody puts $5 million on it and moves the moves the odds 40 points like we see that we see this every week that the that the the the the scotist says they're going to come out here in the United States says they're going to come out with some opinions on Friday and then somebody bombs the market and says they're going to vote against Trump's tariffs why because the empire doesn't want Trump's tariffs to stand so they if somebody goes in and spends 10 million dollars moves the pole and then see oh look see see see that's a way it's a shaping operation all polls at this point are intelligence operations as far as I'm concerned. So don't, so they're going to do everything imaginable to demoralize you if, um, if anything that they're pulling in America about trying to split MAGA

parts in which they've been doing since July 14th of 2024, right, the day after Trump got shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, they already started the divide and rule stuff that day. You can imagine that whatever we're going through right now, which is really freaking intense, it's going to be 10 times worse for you. Because if you leave, it starts to, it starts a domino effect. For the rest of Western Canada, Canada falls apart. Then you'll start to see this cross the pond over into Europe. And it'll just get worse and worse.

So you guys are going to wind up being the lynchpin. They cannot have the United States win. And Alberta separating from Canada is a massive win for the United States. Even if... So you're going to watch everybody do it. And you're going to watch everybody's going to be in there. The Americans are going to be in there. the British are going to be in there, the Canadians are going to be all over it.

The media is going to be obnoxious to the point of sickening. You know, it's going to be, it's going to be awful. And it's going to be exactly the same kind of operation that they ran against Brexit. And that didn't work. And stand your ground and tell them all, no, I'm not traitor. I'm actually, as Albert and as Albertan can be, we're being, you know, these people hate us. And we don't want to be a part of them anymore. And you just have to, you have to, like, stand your ground on that.

And that's the way it has to be. It's the same thing we're dealing with the United States. Alex. Yeah, well, you know, there's, I would agree with everything you said, Tom. There's also, you know, the fact that Alberta has third largest oil reserves in the world is, I think that it's a massive source of wealth for whoever is drawing it from out of there. Right. will do everything to not let it go. So I think that if Alberta were an independent nation

and it were able to make these arrangements for themselves, you know, in some kind of a genuine democratic way, Alberta would be like an insanely wealthy place. You know, cathedral's high speed railways, flying cars, you name it, you know. Right. Whatever. Alberta has a decent standard of living. It's a beautiful place. People are nice.

Life appears good. So people are probably not, you know, you can't conceive of how much wealth is being stolen from you because you're kind of like, I'm fine. Things are good. But the amount of money that's being stolen from there is absolutely enormous. And it's going somewhere. And I think it's going to Ottawa, but it's probably going to, you know, other places. Wall Street and City of London, for sure.

And so they will not let that go. And so I think you can expect every kind of mischief. that is directed at resource-rich places normally, which can be terrorism, opium wars, all kinds of shit like that. They can destroy completely a perfectly wealthy, civilized, decent place, as it has done so many times in the future. So you have a question of security. you guys don't have much of an army right so seriously defense becomes an issue because you're

porous you're you're full of immigrants and I've I've started to finally wrap my head around what this whole immigrant thing means actually what it what it really is so that's all that's all those are all real risks And so I think that whoever dreams of independence probably can't conceive of everything that can be coming their way from those who don't want you to have your independence. You should expect like pirate raids, terror attacks, all kinds of everything. So I think the question of security then raises the need for,

the real security, which I think where you guys are, can only be had from the United States. And that only if some kind of a Trumpian approach survives. So that provided that you don't get some kind of Obama 4.0 administration in the White House, because they'll sell you out. it's kind of it's kind of a like a tough situation for you guys and of course

you know voicing your desire for independence great awesome but I think it's a fight that's coming your way and I think you're going to have to fight it and some of that fight might be very very unpleasant as well now

I do want to say a word about migrations because it's you know like if you look at the illegal immigrants coming to Europe illegal immigrants coming to the United States it seems to me that these immigrants contain a segment of organized crime and I was just talking about terrorists about jihadis I'm talking about people who are actually prepared and trained to engage in organized crime. Because what you see in European countries, France, Belgium, Sweden, Germany,

places like this, UK and the United States, there's a lot they have in common. And we're learning a lot about it now from the Rupert Lowe's inquiry. And that is that these people come from like, I don't know, Middle East, Afghanistan, in your case from India, right? A lot of them from South America, from Mexico, wherever. But they end up creating these very sophisticated networks that don't just do people smuggling and prostitution and groomed. they engage in VAT fraud, in social benefits fraud, in insurance fraud, car theft, abductions, protection racket. And it seems that they're very, very well networked.

And then they engage in hyper-sophisticated money laundering operations. So how the hell did they learn all this? Where did they learn all this? And so a lot of these Indians are probably going to be activated. I mean, Indians, I mean immigrants. And so that's going to be a problem as well. And then if you look at things that are being uncovered in the UK now, that same.

that same pattern, that same business model can be implemented everywhere. Because what we're discovering in the United States, what we're discovering in the UK and other countries, there's a lot in common, almost as if they go to the same schools. You know, like they're being educated in the same centers. and how personal experiences. And this was probably 20-some years ago. You know, my ex-wife worked for some really wealthy British guy in Monaco, who was married to an Indian woman, and they were extremely weird.

Like, extremely weird. You couldn't quite figure out what the hell the company was doing, but they were, you know, they had lots of money. They were paying people all kinds of salaries, but then they had really weird things like, They were both vegetarians that they would fire people if they caught them eating like a ham sandwich at lunch in the office. And then, you know, it turned out that, you know, what they did with all their wealth is they were funding schools in India. Which, you know, given that this man's wife was Indian, and you thought like, okay, that's weird, but whatever, you know, maybe it's her thing.

And then my ex-wife went to work for a family from New Zealand who were running a really big fund. And they were making incredible amounts of money, like insane returns. It was really very remarkable because those kinds of returns are not, you know, available to normal asset managers. So, you know, there was a suspicion that this guy was somehow connected and he was extremely, extremely reluctant to speak with anybody, to give any interviews. So the whole thing was very mysterious. They were firing people like it's nobody's business because they didn't want anybody to learn much about what they do, you know. So you'd be there a couple of months and they'd sack you. Or if they had any suspicion that you might be, you know, gaining any insights into what they do.

They were firing people a lot. They had a huge turnover. And so then all of a sudden, he went, he goes and sets up in Dubai. And then he works from Dubai. But they're back and forth, Monaco. And so, you know, since they had such turnover, Monaco being a small place, I knew a few people who worked for them. So the whole thing was very weird.

But lo and behold, after Dubai, he too decided to fund schools in India. He has nothing to do with India. Nothing whatsoever. And then all of a sudden, they stopped being discreet. They stopped hiding. So he started giving media interviews and shit like that. Wasn't bothering to hide anymore. It's as if he bought protection of some sort from somewhere.

And then that was 20 years ago. And at that time, I was already kind of like wondering what the hell is going on and what's all this about. And I kind of understood that there was this Western cabal that had more ambitions than troops. And I assumed that given that India is, you know, 1.4 billion people who are English speakers, that they would somehow tap India to form armies. And I assume that these would be real armies and that they would probably go around the world under blue helmets, you know, like UN troops.

Right. And that they would try to ambush us with a one world order in this way, that they would be able to command a very large number of troops that they would recruit from India. And so I thought, maybe that's what these, all these schools are about. Right. Maybe it's not.

Maybe they're bringing them in as migrants. And so, like, in every one million migrants, there might be 10,000 of these schooled, prepared, professional career criminals who already know who are prepared, like, you're going to that country. The weak points in that country are these. You're going to apply for scholarships. You're going to be applying for social benefits or support for this and that. This is how you apply for this form. This is how you get. And then they go and they do that.

So whatever, Somalis, Pakistanis. They buy every 7-Eleven in the United States. And they run all the and they run the food networks and the gasoline networks as well, by the way. Yeah. Yeah, in Croatia, they drive, in Croatia, check this out. So our largest national minority used to be the Serbs. Guess what? It's the Indians and the Nepalese now.

And what they do is they drive, they do the food delivery. You know, this is Israeli company called Walt, W-WL-T. they have these little guys on little motorbikes driving, you know, whatever, pizza and hamburgers and whatever they have all over the place. So kind of a neat way to network all the population centers everywhere. And I don't know what the hell they do with this, but later we find out what they do with it. Like, you know, like the grooming gangs in England. But the group, you know, like the same networks that were doing the grooming and,

the mass rape of English girls, like at least 15,000 of them, they were also engaging in VAT fraud, they were also engaging in benefits fraud, in insurance fraud and so forth. And somehow, they knew exactly what they're doing. And they were super organized across different cities. And they were super sophisticated in terms of, how do you call it, money laundering? How the fact do they know all these things? Oh, look, I'm dropping F-bombs. So it seems to me that this is why this is being Tom to the listeners is saying, Alex dropped the first F-bomb, not me. No, no, this is not my first F-bomb. I think it's the second or something like that. But you know, like it's kind of it's kind of the same thing as the Somalis in Minnesota.

Absolutely. Soda is just, you know, I assume that it's going to be a similar thing in Texas with maybe, you know, Hondurans or Ecuadorians or whatever. It's a hundred times that large in California. And it's, yeah, and they're taking billions upon billions upon billions of dollars everywhere. Apparently, some number of around three. 300 to 350 billion dollars in laundered money is flooding into the city of London every year. Okay? Now, what are they doing? What is the end goal? What is the end goal? The end goal is to basically kill off civilian governments completely and replace them. with private governments, with governments that are completely run by private owners, the,

you know, the private public partnerships. And then, you know, they're doing this, the, the whole infrastructure for this includes these international organizations that Trump just, you know, withdrew from 66 out of 76 of them. Right. And these international organizations control hundreds of NGOs and then they work through charities as well and what they do is they weaponize things like human rights and anti-racism and LGBT shit and stuff like that like what happened in Minnesota ICE does what ICE is supposed to do, as they did under Bush, under Clinton, under Obama. But suddenly, two people get killed.

Everybody knows their name. The footage of them getting killed is played a million times all over the media. And suddenly you have this big push of weaponized human rights trying to force the governments into a retreat. Well, guess what? The same thing happened in 2016 in Mexico. The government of Enrique Pena Nieto went to war against drug cartels. Because drug cartels also launder tens of billions of dollars

into the city of London from their drug sales in the United States, at least $400 million a week. Okay? And so that's a big cash cow. And so when the elected president of Mexico decided, okay, enough is enough, we're going to war against these people, then what happened is that OECD and the IMF, under structural adjustments, in order to provide funding for the government of Mexico, kind of twisted their arm into some kind of education reform.

And so needing money, the government said like, all right, fine, you know, education reform. And when they started to implement these education reform, teachers started to go on strike. Teachers protested. And then these protests got infiltrated by violent people. And they started throwing rocks at the police and started putting up barricades, blocking roads. And, you know, like the destabilization of a country kind of shit. And so there were, you know, like with Alex Prattie, the saint and Renee Good, there was some violent clashes. and I think eight or nine teachers ended up killed.

Now, we're talking 2016. All of a sudden, all of a sudden, the whole society erupts. All these NGOs flood people into the street. They're protesting violent government tactics. And, you know, same as with thing in Minnesota. to force the government into a retreat or to make the government fall. So this is, you know, this whole business is weaponized human rights, which are being promoted by clueless, you know, like you'll have these journalists like

Rania Kaleck and Patrick Henningsen and a whole bunch of them who go, So Alex Prady, Alex Prady, you know, this is all horrible. Nobody mentions the names of tens of thousands of victims of these illegal migrants. Nope, never. But Alex Prattie is now everything stops. And now let's make a human shield protecting these vast organized crime organizations. So this is being done. Okay, why am I saying all this?

because I think that this is a repertoire of shit that might be coming Albertan way. Yes. Without some really, really robust security. Where are you going to get it? My suggestion you'd be apply to become a member of the European Union. Kayakalas will take care of you. I'm joking, of course. I know.

I know you are. It's unfortunately. It's black comedy at this point, Alex. And after all of that, it's really hard to laugh at the joke, but the joke is correct. What I would say is you apply to become a territory of the United States. At that point, you get military and constitutional protection in a way that you don't get otherwise. And that's what I was, that's what I recommended to all the Alberta and Independence guys last year were cornerstone. It's what I'm going to, I will argue for again this year, because it's the easiest and simplest path to get you,

the protection that you need. Now, at the same time, of course, what are they going to do? They're, of course, going to explode this network all across America in every blue city. But the thing I've noticed, Alex, and this is the interesting part about this, is that it looks like Trump

and company have a bit of a handle on what the playbook is. And they push the pace and force them out onto the streets well before they were ready. They were preparing this thing for June and July when it would be right in the middle of the midterm election season and everything else, the 250th anniversary

of the Declaration of Independence and everything else. Trump pushes it on, you know, January 3rd by taking Maduro and going to Davos and declaring globalism over. And Scott Bessent running a massive operation in gold and silver and forcing London onto their back foot and trying to push, try to take all that money

that they're stealing every year from the U.S. taxpayer. Because think about this whole thing. Just think about everything just laid out, Alex. Right. It's fascinating. I didn't know the numbers of what was flowing through city of London. But $300 billion,

it's not like a tenth of, of a European, UK GDP? I don't know, but yeah, it's a lot. I think it was $4 trillion, isn't it? Yeah, okay, so it's about 8 to 10% that we know of, right?

Yeah, yeah. So that money goes through and that's a lot of cash, and that cash is what's used, the flow control to ensure that they have money flowing through the system that they need to have the liquidity to be able to continue to keep the capital markets flush with cash so that they can have the cash necessary to write naked silver future shorts

and yada, yada, and all the stuff that they do, right? So how do you break those guys? Well, you break them by forcing to deliver on, you know, having lost $80 an ounce on silver, right? Because six months ago, they wrote a silver future short at $40 an ounce, and now it's with silver at $100. Well, the other day, it's over at $120. What did they have? You know, they were staring at delivery at, you know, at losing $80 an ounce.

That's, you know, at $800,000 a contract. Yeah. A couple of a million contracts like that, and all of a sudden, they're all broke really fast, right? All of a sudden, you're taking some real money. Yeah, you're talking real money to these people, right? So I agree with everything you're just laying out there. And what I'll tell you is that the way you beat this is by putting them on their back foot and attacking across multiple venues and verticals at the same time,

right, in different areas of the battle space. And this is something that we've talked with Blaine Holt and EM and all the other people about that part of it. And they've brought those things to light. And they've really helped sharpen. I know they sharpen my focus on that aspect of the game as well. Yeah, for Alberta, I mean, if that's what we're still talking about, we're not really just talking about Alberta here.

We're talking about everybody who's trying to wriggle out from underneath this system. And it's the system that we're fighting, right? Yes, yes, exactly. It's the system that we're fighting. It's not the people. I don't get a shit who's in the Epstein files. It's what the Epstein system represents that we're now starting to get a handle on what that is. And a lot of people are beginning to get a handle on.

Oh, that's what we're actually fighting. We're fighting this amorphous thing that survives people. It's multi-generational. It's a, yes, yes, yes, it is. It's organizational. It's all of these things, right? It's AIG, it's Rolls Royce, it's, it's, it's travelers, insurance, it's this, it's that's all of those things, right? That's what, you know, it's Lloyd's of London.

It's those are the systems because those are the contracts and the, God, and the relationships that ensure that, oh, well, I need to move this stuff from this side of the world to the other and I need to buy shipping insurance. and that underwrites this contract and now I can use that, I can monetize that cash flow and go buy commercial real estate in Texas, which that I can draw a thing, you know, I can draw another cash flow stream off of, which I can sell to a German pension fund, and I'm making money on all, I'm making money on every one of the transactions, I'm making money on the whole nine yards,

and it's all part of the same system. And it's all, this is the thing that really pisses me off, is that it's all coming at first from the American freaking taxpayer. Yes. The American taxpayer pays into the system for these NGOs. This money goes from the federal government to the NGOs, the NGOs and to these organizations and then it goes out from there to these other companies and then it goes out. And it's just straight up fucking money laundering.

It's literally, we start to really look at how much of, the American budget is actually just fraud. And then think about this, it's not only that, but we run a deficit. So now we're selling, these people are stealing our money, using it to buy our debt, to then demand a coupon payment off of that debt that they are sitting on in their reserves

and they're using that to then fund the destabilization process of our fucking, of our fucking entire society. Yeah. And by our politicians. and ring our elections and tell us it's democracy. How about you stole the money? Therefore, we don't owe you the debt against stolen assets. You took money and you stole it and you bought debt with it.

Fuck you. You don't get to, we don't have to honor the debt. That's what Trump has been saying, like literally for the last year. Like, how much is this debt do we actually owe? if these people just stole the goddamn money and bought treasuries with it. When you stop to think about the size of it, you're all of a sudden, you're like,

oh, well, let's fix the balance sheet, and then, you know, and we have every got, and if these, and this is one, when they went to Davos, and they were asked directly by the British friggin' press, Scott Besson, does the Europeans have any tools that they can use against the United States financially to hurt the United States?

And he's like that. I'm going, no, and smirked. Why? Because he knows. He knows flat out that if this, when push comes to shove, he's just going to push, he's going to push them into, he's going to push the balance sheet issue on them and they're not going to be able to do anything about it. He knows flat out that they think they have control over us, but they actually don't because we are sitting here not playing the game anymore. When Trump was asked that same question, he said, no, of course not. And you've got to ask yourself, what are they thinking?

I'm thinking along these lines, somewhat along these lines. But then obviously, Besson understands how to manipulate gold, manipulate currencies and everything else. And then we turn around and we back, freaking Takehiishi in Japan. You see what happened to Japan this weekend? Japan just declared independence. The princes of the yen, you know, Richard Werner's great documentary about Japan, is no longer valid anymore. Like Japan just declared independence. Within six months, they're going to like end World War II, finally, open up trade relations and profits.

probable diplomatic relations with the Russians for the first time in 85 freaking years, and rewrite the Constitution of Japan. They're an independent country. You know who's the happiest man on the planet? About that. Donald Trump. Because he set it up. Because he wants that.

And the Japanese are now going to use, and the bank of Japan, I'm telling me, I know, Alex, you and you and I have had differing opinions about, you know, Japan's fiscal situation. I'm not going to tell you right now, with the Niki of 57,000, and, rising towards 60 because of political certainty and the Bank of Japan having done both QE and QQE, so they have a massive portfolio of now very, very, very high-priced stocks. They can allow the long end of the yield curve if you go up because they can sell stocks at a massive profit and get out from underneath a lot of their balance sheet problem because they just gave themselves the kind of political stability that countries only dream up. They have a two-thirds majority in the lower

House and they can literally neuter the upper house because of the upper house like vetoes any of the any of the legislation that comes out of the lower house but the two-thirds majority in the lower house they can tell the upper house to go fuck themselves and no it's basically it's the equivalent of you know it's equivalent of our house and senate you know vetoing you know overriding a presidential veto it's the exact same mechanism they have a two-thirds majority in the lower house they can tell the upper house is to go scratch and unilaterally move stuff over now constitutional amendments are going to be a lot harder than that, but for legislative purposes and for remaking Japan's fiscal situation, no, no, no, she has what Trump could only dream of having.

Right? And so it's a very, very interesting situation in Japan. And I want you to understand that the empire just lost a major node of instability that they can propagate around the world, because you can now bet your bottom dollar, the yen carry trade is over. If the yen carry trade is over, and U.S. and Japan, you know, bring interest rates somewhere near each other. I'm roughly, I'm thinking it's roughly around 2%. All of a sudden, Japan and the United States are now present a unified front, and there's a whole lot less flow going through city of London. Because the yen carry trade is also part of that fuel,

is also part of that flow and fuel for how London manipulates currency, or manipulates currency rates, bond yields, and everything else. So once that arbitrage between the U.S. dollar and the Japanese yen goes away and the interest rates on those two goes away, it's a different world. That's another angle on this. And I don't mean to override to bring all that stuff in and override what Alex is talking about. Alex is talking about is incredibly important because we're still very, very vulnerable to that here in the United States. I think Alberta is absolutely vulnerable to that as well. And I, of course, think that, you know, all of anybody in Europe, I mean, anybody in Europe is, is, that's, that wants to move against these people is, um, it's vulnerable to this as well. I mean, the Milan Olympics open and they start blowing up freaking trains.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, are you kidding me? Like, what am I, what am I 12? I don't, I can't fucking see this. Like, I can't see the, you know what I mean? Like, it's ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, it's everywhere. And then the, and then the, in, in, in, in London, the chief of. new new head of MI6, you know, the granddaughter of a Ukrainian Nazi guy from S.Galicia, I think. She actually said that now, with respect to Russia, that now they start to export chaos to Russia. Okay. So if you can export chaos to Russia, where else can you export chaos to? We would like to know more. Yeah. Well, and what I would my answer to her is don't think that we can't export chaos to you. Yeah, exactly. And I don't think we can't see you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think it's really, really interesting that all of this coming out with, uh, with Jeffrey Epstein is kind of has a lot of money, uh, pointers involved.

You know, that you say like, okay, so he was a bastard. He was a monster. But, you know, that's, you know, that's like if you if you catch a hitman well isn't it important to figure out who was paying the hitman so we have now we have who was paying uh yeah Jeffrey Epstein yeah so that's that's where it's at that's where it's at what's interesting also Alex it just it's really it's been interesting to me for me just one one last point real quick on it because I need to shit on Steve Bannon it makes it makes me happy um which which is that note that the entire quote unquote MAGA split, the guys who've been trying to split the MAGA coalition within MAGA,

the quote unquote true MAGA guys, the Robert Barnes and the Rich Ferris is and the Steve Bannon. Everybody in Steve Bannon's orbit are now tainted with Steve Bannon's deep relationship to Jeffrey Epstein and the fact that Bannon, from the moment he entered the White House in Trump's first term, thought Trump was an idiot and was doing everything to undermine him because he's not the real. dude. I'm like, no, Steve Bannon is just, if you look at Steve Bannon's resume, and you forget everything you think you know about Steve Bannon, and you take the name off of the, the

resume, you just look at the resume, you go, oh, that guy's an intelligence asset. All you got to do is just remove the name and then those look at his resume. And he, I like, anybody with who's been doing what we do for more than 20 minutes or go, oh, wow, that guy's, that guy's clearly somebody's intelligence asset. You know, like, all right, who, probably in his case, everyone's. Yeah. I feel like people can resonate with this if you've seen the movie 28 days later where the guys walking down the street, Sillion Murphy, walking down the street in his gown. And he's like, what happened to the world?

That's how I kind of feel right now because I've been like in basically, not a coma, folks, not that bad. But I've been out of this space for several, several days where, you know, I still got it. I'm still going. You mentioned we know who's paying Epstein. I'm like, okay, I've missed a lot. Who's paying Epstein? And then I have a question for Tom as well. Alex, go ahead.

Yeah, so there was, there's a number of names, but not a very long number of names. But to my mind, a very, very important name is Ariane de Rothschild. So she's a widow of Benjamin Rothschild from Geneva. So that's like an important part of the family. And I think that they probably act as proxies for the London branch of the Rothschild. And so that's, you know, that's one of the rare glades. Because, you know, like we know that Jacob Rothschild was backing people like Oleg Deripaska and Mikhail Kodorkovsky in Russia and so forth. But you know, you could say that that was investment.

You know, he was trying to get gas prom. He was trying to get Luke oil. He was trying to get money, you know, business, business. And it's, you know, oil, energy. That's kind of a different category of business than raping and eating children. Just a little bit. Yes. But this is different.

And then, you know, you kind of, wait, wait, wait, wait. where did this guy even come from? How did he come into, you know, why him? Why did they pick him? And then you kind of reconstruct the whole history of it and you get to Donald Barr, right? Yep. And Donald Barr was a veteran of the OSS,

the predecessor of the CIA. Where, yeah. And so Donald Barr somehow came upon Jeffrey Epstein, right? And he hired him as a teacher at the school that he was managing. And then from there he goes to Bear Stearns. But then Donald Bart also introduces Epstein to Galane Maxwell, who's the daughter of Robert Maxwell, who also was a veteran of the OSS, right?

And then it turns out that the Rothschilds, since for very very long time, have maintained their own private intelligence agency, which whatever the hell it's called today, I think in World War II period, it was known as the Z-network or something like that. I have it somewhere. I think it's called the Z-network.

So it seems that he was their own private intelligence assets. And then, obviously, he will be accommodated by the Mossad, by the MI6, by the CIA, by the whole everything. But this one is special. You know, this one is special because it's not under any civilian authority. This is private. Again, you know, we're going back to their agenda of restructuring the world, human societies under private governments. So, yeah, there was Les Wexner who put up more money. But that would be, you know, that would be like Mikal Khodorkovsky giving them more money than Arianda Rothschild. It's still their money.

it was just a friend trustee. You don't become less Wexner unless, you know, like you can become less Wexner or or Eric Schmidt or Michael Dell or Jeff Bezos unless they say, okay, or Elon Musk even, even though I'm not putting Elon Musk in this same, in this same basket, but you don't You don't become one of these oligarchs unless they designate you and then you become the recipient not only of insane amounts of credit and investment assets, but also you're first in line for all the government contracts. So you already know that you're going to have a business that functions.

And then you also get technologies developed by DARPA, by the CIA, by whoever paid for by US taxpayer. and you get it for free. Yep. And now, you know, like you have the best technology, you have money, you have, you have markets, how are you going to fail? You're not going to fail. But the price is that when they tell you, hey, give $175 million to Jeffrey Epstein, they say, yes, sir, and you give 170, give me your townhouse in New York.

Yes, sir. Give me your island for $1, yes, sir. So that's how you get Jeffrey Epstein. scene. Yeah, no, absolutely. And, you know, effectively it's like it's same group, different department, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, and it reminds me, it reminds you in the end of the day, like, it's funny how how well I was trained by some of the things I've watched over the years is that great moment in the end of the end of season three of Babylon 5 when Sheridan goes to the, to the shadows home world, the shadows home world, right? And he says, and he's like,

who are you? And talking to the shadows interlocutor, and it's just his old man. He said, who decides when the workday will be from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Who decides how short the hem, the skirts will be knee high this year and above the knee the next year? Who? I'm with them. Same group, different department.

It's a great, great. It's a great scene. Look it up on YouTube. And I'm with them. Same group, different department. And that's what we're dealing. with here and and and and and and and that's and and and interestingly that story is a great metaphor for everything we're dealing with today it's like you're watching be watching people

finally level up into understanding and nois or an understanding of what what the real war is actually about as opposed to all the border skirmishes and the and the triangulation and the setting each other against each other and all this stuff and the sewing in the chaos and you're like oh it's just the old old families fighting it out amongst themselves for control over who wants to be right while we're all their playthings. And at some point, we all have to turn around like John Sheridan and say, get the hell out of our galaxy. It's time for you to move on now. We don't want you here anymore. And again, let's go back to what you and I talked about when we were around with Crypto Rich the other day, Alex, which was the Epstein files, I think, were Trump's, Trump saying no, let's not,

let's just put this to bed, let's just put this to bed, let's just put this to bed. kind of his way of saying, here's our peace offering before we go to total war. And, you know, and they turned him down. And he said, okay, fine, we're going to war. And now we're, and now we're at war with them. And I think it's, I think the band-aids been lifted off. And I think that that's what Davos was metaphorically and explicitly. They said, look, we're going to war with you. You guys are over, you're done. We understand what your game is. And we're not going to let you do it anymore. And I have, and this is, they always, they always assume that they can get the Americans, the Russians, and the Chinese to be angry with each other and fight

and said each other against each other, right? Or they like they do with the Israelis and the, okay, so what happens when America, Russian, China all turn to them and go, fuck off? Yeah, exactly. And you know, something I, yeah, I agree, you're right. And I, you know, like yesterday I was looking at, on the 30th of January, Ben Stiller posted something on X against Trump and ICE and in favor of these protesters against ICE. And obviously, Ben Stiller is one of their, like, let's call it social authorities, like a celebrity influencer. And obviously, they tap him, yeah, Clooney and Jamie Lee Curtis and all of these. clowns there to kind of try to influence people like, oh, look, poor Alex Freddie, these are the

bad guys. Let's all, you know, come. I mean, Cassie Griffin was even talking about, well, we have to organize. We have to do something, you know, kind of like insinuating that we need to overthrow this government basically. Right. But let's get, let's get busy. Let's get doing stuff.

And so, you know, I was not interested in Ben Stiller's post. I was interested in the comment. He got over 8,000 comments. And I think I won't exaggerate that 95% of them, at least, are completely rejecting their nonsense. You know, people are saying outright, this is why I voted for Trump. He's doing what we demanded. So I'm with them. And then poo-pooing on celebrity opinions and then telling him,

just freaking do your acting and leave the rest of us in peace. And, you know, stuff like that. And then there's a certain, there's a certain intensity to those opinions. Whereas when you scroll page after page after page after page to find somebody who is like, oh, Ben, thank you for standing up. There's no intensity of that. There's no, it's like, oh, maybe Ben Stiller will notice me. So I'll just kiss ass a little bit and see, you know.

Or it's a bot or it's a, you know, I mean, that's 90. Or it's a Brigade 77 or 8200, whatever, you know. Right, right, right, right. But basically, it's almost, it's almost like there's like a complete agreement. It's like a tsunami moving in one direction. And I think, you know, at this very moment, at this very moment, I know that Trump is listening to our podcast, so I'm going to go out with this. I know he's listening to this, to Sean Newman's podcast. If you want to win the midterm elections, if you want to win with a landslide,

freaking give Benjamin Netanyahu the same treatment as what's his face, Zelensky. toss him under the bus. Tell him it's over. It's finished. You're done. You're dead. Because this whole tsunami is going to be behind you. Yes. Stop kowtowing to these freaking Zionist baby eaters. Maybe I shouldn't have said that.

But I did, didn't I? Yeah, he did. You did. You know. It's why I love you, Alex. That's why I love you, Alex. I can't say it now. I wish I could.

I'm coming out of my coma. I get on my phone, right? I'm starting to feel a little better. I hop on X. Everybody's talking about the Epstein files. I'm like, oh, okay. You know, you're scrolling through. You see something on Trump.

Then you see something on banning. And you see something on somebody else. And it becomes banning and Trump. So my question, Tom, is on the people on the Epstein list, right? Or the Epstein files, whatever. Forget me, folks. It's been a long, it's been a long week. No worries.

Trump Bannon. Let's just focus on those two people. Because I knew who Bannon was before and obviously everybody has this show and we all know who Trump is. What is the difference of what was found in the file? Maybe you two can tell me me. You can't. I have no idea. It's really, it's really easy.

We found out exactly what we thought we were going to find out about Trump, which is that he was the guy trying to get Epstein put behind bars the entire time. Trump's in the in the Epstein files thousands of times. Yeah, it's all about throwing him out, helping Alex Acosta put a, make a case against him, throwing him out of Maralago, all of this stuff. That's all we found out about Trump.

And what do we find out about Epstein? About Bannon? Bannon was working to undermine Trump the entire time and that he was working with Epstein, you know, all of it. Like, we need to get rid of Powell back in 2018 because, you know, Powell was going to, you know, they were trying to implement.

So for like, there's all sorts of this, all this stuff was happening. And I'm like, the minute I saw the Bannon, Epstein email about Powell, somebody, I, like 16 people sent it to me. So it wasn't hard for me to miss it, right? Because I wasn't going to miss it because no one was going to let me miss it, right? I saw it and I went, oh, look, that's all I need to know about this. I literally, after that, I just kind of checked out. I wasn't going to sit there and scroll through like a billion documents. Like, give it down. All I need to know is, oh, that's who St. Nick Bannon is,

that, that's that, okay, got it, done, we're good. Like, right then and there. And, you know, Trump is going, Trump's going to wind up coming out of Epstein looking exactly like we expected him to look, which is that he was, as this goes along, you're going to be like, oh, there's nothing here about Trump other than he was trying to do away with Epstein. But why was he trying to block the files then? Maybe it was because it was, this is where Alex and I,

this is why it's important why we do these podcasts to give people the opportunity to think differently about what these things mean strategically. Like a lot of people, like Steve Bannon's biggest problem is that he thinks Trump is an idiot. He says it, like flat out. He thinks Trump is an idiot and that he's the real keeper of MAGA. And if you want to be generous to Steve Bannon, the slovenly pricked that he is. And I say that being me, right?

Like, Jesus Christ, I mean, do dress is worse than I do. That if he's, to be generous to Steve Bannon, he thinks he's the smartest guy in the room and he understands how to be the the real keeper of the MAGA movement to restore America. And, you know, without, but Donald Trump isn't. Like, really? Okay. That doesn't seem to track because you're an idiot because it's not working. But notice how he brought all these people around him to continually push Trump is making this

mistake, Trump's making this mistake and that mistake and that mistake and this mistake and that mistake. And it's the same thing over and over and over again. And all it is is, all it is authority through repetition. Right? So if Robert Barnes is going to get it done, then you bring out Rich Barris. When he's done with Rich Barris, you bring on Mark Mitchell, and then we've got two pollsters. Now you bring on this guy, and then you bring on this guy, and then you bring on that guy.

And that's all he does over and over and over again. And it's authority by repetition. And what I realized about Bannon a while ago was that Bannon was, I think, This is my personal opinion. So, salt at the taste, folks. But that key was city of London slash CIA, MI6, whatever you want to call it, the intelligence asset that was out there in this public zeitgeist, once he was thrown out of the Trump administration, to be the guy to catch all of us who jacked out of the Russia, Russia,

Russia, Russia, nonsense about Trump and say, well, I need to catch those people and divert them to, no, it's really China. So, Russia is not the enemy. Oh, everybody wakes up and goes, whoa, they've been lying to us about Russia. Russia's not really our enemy. Doesn't make any sense, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, and then there's Bannon. And then those people go, okay, so who do I listen to next?

And there's Steve Bannon with a pre-made narrative to say, oh, no, the real problem is China. And you even have a lot of, you know, mainstream, all the other mainstream conservatives, the Megan Kelly's and the Cocker Carlson's and Steve Bannons and all the rest of them all saying the same thing. No, move to China. Now, I'm not going to, I'm not trying to throw Megan or talking. under the bus because I'm not really sure that they're they're compromised in that way. I just think that they may be just who they are. I don't know yet.

I haven't, I don't have a good read in that respect, and I'm not going to, I'm not trying to throw shade on them. But Bannon in particular has always been on this fight. And with Bannon's resume, it's really hard for me and with his history and with the people he has around him, the Jack Bissobics and all the rest of them. And I've known Jack Bersobics a fucking fraud since 2016. Because I remember Jack Bissobic being the stunt when he was. He was a nobody doing stunt periscope journalism during the Trump first, the 2016 campaign.

I was there, folks. I was doing this shit back then. So I was on Periscope. I was part of that whole group. I was part of him and Adam Gingrich and others and all those guys that went to deplorable. If you remember what the poro ball was because they called us deporables. And then they, right after the election, they all held a big thing over in D.C. called Deporeal.

Put on by Jeff Giscia, by the way, who was the who was the, who's the, who was the, who's financial backer for Mike Cernovich, oh, by the way, just throwing it out there. Like, all of these guys were all fucking horseshit. I also knew that Pesobic was full of shit because he was watching my stuff. And me and Halsie used to, ages ago, back in 2016, 2017, we were doing what we do now, right? We were doing this then. And Pesopic was feeling our stuff, and then he was given a job at OANN, like immediately, right after the election.

He was given a job at OANN, and then he was here, and then he was there. And he climbed right up the ladder, and he was using every, and he was, and he was, He was scraping everybody else's stuff and calling it his own work. So I knew that. And he's also, by the way, Navy intelligence, former Navy intelligence. So, like, I know, like, this whole network of people really, really, really, really sketch. They're all sketchbacks. Every goddamn one of them.

Okay, go ahead, Alex. I have a question, if you know all this. Do you happen to know what the deal is with Michael Tracy? I don't. He was one of the young Turks originally, right? So now let's look at what Chank and Anna Kasparian are doing. I haven't had a chance to work. Yeah, they're frauds.

I know. I know about them. I know they're fraud. We thought Michael Tracy was cool, but this is like, this is like the most spectacular series of own goals that, you know, he practically buried himself that I think I've ever seen. He was the first one to jack out. So if in this kind of scenario, like when they realize that the grift isn't working anymore,

the young Turks grip isn't working anymore, then he has to be the guy who leaves, catch. the people who were leaving the young Turks and put them in their no orbit you know i mean like that would make sense like and i and i and you know in the in the in the years when you and i first met back remember when we were put together by we were put together the first time by lee strandahan i used to do the show with uh lee and garland on sputnik radio every week before lee and i had a falling out over covid um lee and i had a lot of conversations about all of this stuff was going on lee was on top of all these people back then and to and that's

all to least credit. So whatever happened between Lee and I during COVID, I will not take any of the work that he did for 2017 to 2020 up until he lost his mind over COVID. All that work was outstanding. He lost his mind and he lost his health. Yeah, he really did. Because he took the jab and he had like a series of strokes. Oh God, I didn't know that. Oh yeah. He had three and then he was still okay. You could tell he was slurring. But then I think, that just a few months ago he had another one and now I think he's in a hospital well last I heard well it doesn't sound like he's uh going to recover or at least you know it's it's sounds like shit actually last and that's really sad to hear because well i have my you know

while Lee and i had our had our problems and you know and i am who i am and i'm not particularly good at forgiveness folks um i never would wish ill on anyone like that. No, no. Terrible. And when people do good work, regardless of what your personal opinion is of them now, then they, Lee did excellent work back then. And I remember chatting with Garland.

And he said, you know, it's really sad that, you know, Lee just kind of lost it and he destroyed our show. And we had such a great thing going. And it was, you know, we were all very wistful about it. We weren't angry. We were wistful and sad that it didn't, it didn't. You know what I mean? So.

Yes. I think, yeah, for viewers, for viewers who don't know who Lee Stranahan is, because I think that's going to, he's not a household name. No. He was a great, great investigative journalist and if you want to see Lee at his best watch Ukraine on fire. Because in that whole documentary film by Oliver Stone, interview with Lee Stranahan is probably the punchiest bit. that's like him at his best. It really was. And Lee deserves the credit today.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He really does. And I'll be happy to give it to him. So just to remind everybody that, you know, what you, you know, this may be the first or the second or third time. You may interact with myself and Alex or whatever. Understand that we've been doing this a very, very long time. And we've been around the block a few times on this stuff.

And I find it really funny now in 2026, how a lot of this stuff in 2016, 2017, 2018, is all starting to come right back around. That's all relevant. I'm like, I almost have to go back and review my old podcasts that I, the conversations that I had with people about stuff and,

you know, and just to like remind my gray matter of what it is that we actually talked about back then. Because, you know, once it gets seven, eight years old, like everything just starts to become a jumble, right? So. What, not to go too far into it with,

with Lee, but you're talking about an investigative reporter. Yeah. Who can see Ukraine for what it. is yeah oh yeah what was it about COVID that he just couldn't get past it was it was the health lockdowns and everything else he's not the only one he's not the only one I think a lot of people failed the the pandemic IQ test because I think I think that first I think it was very hard for people to imagine the level of evil that you know like the government the people

that you thought were doing their jobs for the protection of public health, we're actually doing the opposite. So that's like a hard bridge to cross. And then also, you know, if you allow the fear of the virus to cloud your judgment, you're not doing your best thinking. You know, like fear doesn't help your judgment. So I think that, you know, George Galloway was good Lord. I couldn't listen to him during the pandemic because he was aggressively,

aggressively in the pandemic camp and against conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer. And he was like fulminating against everybody on a regular basis. And I kind of thought like, okay, this guy is an idiot. They're not idiots. They just, I think that the virus, the pandemic, introduced a different level of fear into some people. And so they kind of failed that. George Galloway, just for a quick second,

because I get sent his videos all the time right now. You're telling me in the middle of COVID, he would have wanted me arrested, throwing somewhere, and maybe some more things. Well, actually, I can't say that. I don't remember whether he wanted people arrested, like, you know, like some, but he didn't. But he definitely was lambasting conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxers, for sure.

Lee and I had the falling out over shutting down the economy. And I kept saying the only way to protect the vulnerable is to keep the economy running so we can produce the things necessary to help the people who are most vulnerable to the disease. You can't shut down the economy. It doesn't work. That's the wrong, you have to face the fear of this and you have to be brave. But this is the time when we have to be brave. And, you know, what happened to me was that, you know, Lee came in deciding to sandbag me

and interrogate me on fault lines. And I just, I got 20 seconds into it. I knew he was going to do it because I'd seen some of his videos earlier in the week about how he was going to. I'm like, I got 20 seconds into it. I just hung up on him. And I just walked up the show. I literally hung up. It's the only time I've ever walked off of anything.

I just hung up the phone in mid-ran. Well, I'm done. Sit, done, over. I'm not going to be treated like that in public. And I have a hard limit, and that's one of them. And it's part of the reason why I don't, this, I am now, since then, I don't want to do adversarial podcasts with people. Like, I don't want to do debates or any of that,

because I think that's all dodged. I think that's all all nonsense. I don't want to get into the situation where, you know, people are trying to feed their ego to one up each other. I would much rather just have a civil conversation, even if we disagree on certain things, and that's fine. But let's have a civil conversation between people who relatively respect each other and move forward. And if we can't do that, then I'm good.

We don't need to talk. I'm going to say my thing. You say your thing. And I'll let the audience and the respective audiences of each thing decide on who's right and who's wrong. Well, then one, if I bring this conversation full circle back to Alberta. Sure. There's two things you said right off the hop that I found interesting. One, this territory.

of the United States. Sorry, I'm talking Alberta. You know, a territory that you could have, we were talking about security, just to refresh everybody. The one thing that I remember getting brought up to me is that territories don't have voting rights, et cetera, et cetera.

Your thoughts on that? I assume that's true. Yeah, that is true. And the point of that is, you get to vote, right? Like Guam gets to vote for president, but it doesn't matter because we don't run a popular. The popular vote doesn't.

matter. You can express your opinion, but at the end of the day, your votes don't count as to who's going to elect the president. But that's actually the, that's actually an advantage to Albertans. In the short term, you're then, you get to be, you get all the benefits of being a member, being part of the United States, the legal system, the corporate law, the, the military protection and everything else, the hair-free movement of goods and services and everything else, and you don't have to be anybody's political football until we have settled. are, we're in a state of civil war, Sean. I don't want, I don't want Albertans to have to walk into

and be somebody's pawn in somebody else's civil war. I'm actually saying the territory thing is this is to protect Albertans as much as possible to give you all the advantages and none of the disadvantages. And then when we're at a state as a country that we can afford to absorb the parts of Western Canada would like to become a part of the United States,

as a political unit that works and is stable, then yes, then absolutely, you know, make however many states we have to, depending on how many, Alberta, Saskatchewan, if Manitoba and BC want to come. Like, I'm good with all of that. I mean, I'd love to welcome all of Western Canada into the United States, except for Vancouver,

Vancouver, of course, and move it forward. But it's the point of that is to protect y'all while you integrate, while you change, because remember, Crown law is much different than American law. You have a lot of work to do to train the lawyers and to train the people and everything else. There's a lot of work that needs to be done.

And that's always been the path to statehood in the United States. It's first your territory, then you become a state at a time when the... And eventually you'll be somebody's political football, but hopefully it will be such that it won't be destabilizing. Like, we can go back over the history of the United States and how the various states were added.

You sit on the different side of the pond. You're sitting there. Once again, this is all to Albertan's listening. I just, I love, I'm curious. You got an American. Says you just, you know, territory, 51st day. Simple. Alex, you're sitting on the other side.

You've witnessed, or I mean, relatively close to you, you've seen different independence movements. Yes. Do you agree with Tom's? I've been part of an independence movement. I've fought in a war. I know. Yeah, this is why, you know, I have, you know, if I don't have a very passionate attachment to states, you know.

So if somebody would say like, no, we got to be Alberta, independent, you know. I think that doesn't mean anything. You know, somebody's going to be ruling over you. Somebody's going to be in charge. So, you know, like Croatia. So I, you know, we had a war of

secession in the early 1990s. And we all wanted to be an independent country because we were part of former Yugoslavia that consisted of six republics. And the capital was in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. And over time, we grew resentful of Belgrade's hegemony,

because they did have a sort of hegemony. And then, you know, it wasn't a nationalism problem, you know, that we had problem with them being Serbs or that they had problems without being Croats. is that the state budget was being sucked out from everywhere to go to Belgrade, and Belgrade had disproportionate power over the budget, so things were getting done and built and maintained where they wanted and not where we wanted. So that's kind of similar to Calgary-Ottawa relationship.

So we wanted to have an independence. Well, first it was, okay, let's have a confederation of independent republics. So we'll share defense and fiscal system, monetary system, but not the fiscal system and these other things. And that was rejected by Belgrade. They wouldn't have it. They wanted to, you know, dominate. And then we went and declared independence. And then when we declared independence, they went to try to.

squash it by force. And that's how we ended up having the war. So we ended up kind of winning that war. So Croatia now is independent, except it's not. Because these security issues that I told you are a real thing. So we ended up gravitating towards NATO and the EU. So we are now part of NATO for security reason and a member of the EU. And I can tell you that Brussels as the hegemon is far, far worse than Belgrade ever was. So we are much worse off now than we were today. And the independence was illusory because, like Alberta, Croatia would be extremely difficult to defend by Croatians. You guys are landlocked. We're not landlocked, but we have like 10,000 kilometers of border and there's only 4 million Croatians.

You know, very, very hard as a defense challenge. You guys are landlocked, and then you have British Columbia, which is not landlocked, which means that if ever there was, if ever somebody wanted to subdue Alberta, it would be relatively easy, okay, because you guys would run out of supplies very quickly. and you'd be at the mercy of people with ports to your west and to your east. So then you need to enter into some kind of a security arrangement with somebody who, you know, not the Inuit, it's going to have to be the United States. So that's, but you know, I thought this was funny that I found today on which is, which is not a security issue, but it's a governance issue. I can't believe I found this.

Canada Minister Mark Miller has like a new bill where he can void federal laws at his discretion. So the, you know, like the democratic process passes a law. And then he says like, yeah, well, you know, we won't apply this law against these people because I say so. And then he's sitting there and he's actually defending it. Yeah, he's acting quite smug. Because he's not applied judiciously and responsibly. Correct. In other words, it's up to him.

It's in his discretion. Which means that in other words, that if somebody who broke the law pays him enough money, they're off the hook, which is again, private governance. for the benefit of private, of the owners, of the ownership class. For real. It's not even a conspiracy anymore. It's real. It's just, I can't believe this. I'm like shocked. Oh, the state of Canada, Alex. You guys are going to be here March 28th. And as we sit here, I think we got 41 tickets left.

Wow. How many? 41. 41 tickets left. Hey, Neil Oliver is coming, isn't he? Neil Oliver is coming. coming. Very cool. That's very, that is very cool. Who else is, is the, is, is Martin Armstrong coming again? Martin Armstrong will be there. Oh, cool.

Uh, Premier Daniel Smith will be speaking somewhere around lunchtime. And then, uh, some familiar favorites. You're you two, Matt Erritt, uh, Vince Lanchi is going to make it this time. So that's, that's going to be a lot of fun. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there's going to be a, it's going to be a fun action-pack day and it is going to be full. It is going to be a full show. Very cool. I'm really, I'm, I'm quite pleased for you, Sean. I really am.

I know how, I know how hard you work to put Cornerstone on every year. And, you know, because you and I, we chat outside of this as we get all this together. And I know back in December, you were a little worried about things and now we're. Well, I'm still a little worried about things because now I got different problems, right? You got empty seats. There's, there's problems. Now I'm going to have other problems and making sure the show goes. go smooth and blah, blah, blah, all the things that come with putting things on.

But yeah, appreciate you guys hopping on the show. Tom, do you got any final thoughts? I don't mean to cut you off. I just want to make sure I get everybody out in the timeline. I know. I want to reiterate what I said to Albertans. I want the best for you all in this. I really do.

And if we can help here south of the 49th parallel, then that's what we can do. and, you know, I make the points that I've made about the path for Albertan's independence, especially taking into consideration all the things that Alex just said, which are very, very, very, very salient. And then looking at the political situation here for the United States. I mean, you know, we're talking about Alberta independence six, eight years from now, and Trump runs the table on these people and everything else. And the United States is stable. Now, you guys come in this state, we don't give a shit.

But in 2026, 2027, 2028, things are going to be very much up in the area. here we have all we have a lot of work to do what Alex you know just described with the Serbs and the Croats we're gonna be fighting here between the red states and the blue states again and I think everybody needs to get that you know it can fight its way it's gonna fight its way out in a variety of ways it could go in a variety of different directions but the empire's not gonna let us leave cleanly they fought how many wars in the 19th century I just watched some stuff this morning about the war of 1812 and the Civil War. And I've been trying to mainline some American history that I didn't quite, that I knew, but I didn't quite know.

And you're just watching it all. And you're like, oh, these people are going to do terrible things to us in order to leave. And they're going to do the same thing to you. And they know that you're important. Because honestly, Alberta is the jewel of Canada. And it's the reason why Mark Carney is installed. It's the reason why, you know, Europe thinks that they're going to be able to. to continue using Canada as a means by which to not just destabilize the United States from the

North, but also stabilize Europe to the east across the pond. And all of that, and Alberta is right in the middle of all that. And it makes you both very valuable and very vulnerable. And so, you know, from my perspective, as an American, I know y'all are an asset, a massive asset. And I want that asset to have the best chance of having a, being a part of the future that I can see coming and that I can see that Trump and his team wants for North America. And you're in many ways the linchpin of it. It means you have a tremendous amount of power. But also, with that, with, you know, great power comes great responsibility and all that happy jazz.

So we just have to, like, play it. I have to, like, be flexible and our thinking, as Alex pointed. it out and just go, look, you know, independence is an illusion unless you've got, you know, somebody who can really help you. And it's clear that from a strategic standpoint, Alberta being part of the United States in some way is the right path. And I just don't want you guys be in a political football while you're trying to, you know, while you're trying to learn how to be an independent nation, you know, an independently governed people. And I think that it would be good for Alberta to define what it's to really define its identity as a thing because I mean look in

in the United States people don't realize this but Floridians are different than Tennesseans who are different than Texans who are different than New Yorkers who are different than people from Idaho or from California we it really is a connoiration of 50 different countries and you know a lot of people that idea is really lost some people who are not American and and and uh and uh It's important to realize that. And I want Albertans to have their own identity that way. And if they're going to be a part of the United States, then it should be in a way that maximizes that for them.

And that's what I'm hoping for. So that's going to be, that's my schick. That's my feeling on this. I've given this a tremendous amount of thought. And I think that that would be the best path for you all. And I'm happy to do whatever part I can to make that happen. So, Alex? Yeah, same here.

you know, I really, this is, is this going to be the fourth or? It's the third, third cornerstone, but it's the fourth time you guys have been to Canada. To Alberta. Yeah. I'm just hoping that I'm going to be a lot out of Canada. I'm sure that they'll be ready to kick you out, Tom. I am absolutely sure of that. So I'm watching the next six weeks with a, with a weather eye, my friend.

Let me just put it to you that way. So, yeah. Yeah, yeah, for me, you know, I really came to be very fond of Alberta and the people I meet there, you know, because they're like salt of the earth, like the real deal, you know, the real deal. And so I think that you guys deserve the best that the future can hold. but it's going to be an obstacle course for sure because as as Tom said you know you're an asset it's a very very valuable piece of real estate and there are two sides fighting for it and one side is extremely and completely aggressive unscrupulous and evil full stop yeah

that's a shitty word to end the podcast with so let me think a good one unicorns yes unicorns rainbows

gentlemen gentlemen thanks for hopping on and look forward to the next time gentlemen always fun I'm absolutely

Sean Alex be well my friends We'll talk. We'll talk soon.