Shaun Newman Podcast - #587 - Alex Krainer

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

Croatian national, former hedge fund manager, author and contributing editor at Zero Hedge. We discuss Tucker/Putin, protests in Europe and CBDC’s. Let me know what you think. Text me 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcastE-transfer here: [e-mail] Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/ Email: [e-mail] Phone [phone] – general sales line, ask for Grahame and be sure to let us know you’re an SNP listener.

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So buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Alex Craneer. Alex, thanks for hopping on. Always a pleasure, Sean. Good to be with you. Greetings to your viewers and listeners. And a shout out to Tom, because obviously, you know, the last 11 times you've been on the podcast, Tom has been riding shotgun or you've been riding shotgun. I don't know. I don't know who's Sundance.

I don't know who's Butch Cassidy, it doesn't matter. You guys have been on a lot together. But with the Putin-Tucker interview, you know, the audience kept like, get Alex on. Let's hear what his thoughts are because, you know, this being, you know, you. you know, on your side of the world, so to speak. And, and so, you know, I was like, okay, yeah, easy, easy said and done. Easy, easy done. I don't know. I said it that way.

But anyways, I went back to the first time you were on the podcast because I hadn't listened to it. You know, I kind of forgot it was that long ago. It was October 12th, 2022. You came on the podcast and you were talking about Bill Browder. And I was like, I'd never heard this guy. You told me a history of, you know, essentially Russia that I'd, never heard before. And I was like, this is, this is, this is, this is something. Now, obviously,

since then, you've been, you know, a recurring guest once a month, yada, yada, yada, we, you know, I think most people understand that. And then you've been to Canada and you've come and spoke on the stage and, um, you've really grown on the audience, I would say. They, they really enjoy, um, your thoughts. And so here I sit and I, I, I watch Tucker and I'm like, you know, I have my own thoughts and I'm like, but I'm just a guy sitting in. can and I'm being very influenced by, you know, people such as yourself and everything else. And I'm like, like, this is, this is wild. Like, I'm almost waiting for him to say Bill Browder, but he doesn't. And, um, uh, I was like, I wonder what Alex thinks about this. Alex,

what did you think of Tucker Putin? Um, well, you know, for anybody who's been paying close attention, uh, nothing Putin said was particularly, uh, new, you know, so nothing took me a back, because, because he has been very, very consistent in his positions. He hasn't been all over the place, right? But I think it was extremely important for Tucker to do this interview because it's been viewed by so many people that, I don't know, I heard that across all platforms. So he got about 200 million views on X.

Then I don't know how much on Tucker Carlson's website and whatever, I don't know, Rumble, Bichute, Odyssey, wherever this went around, people copied clips and so forth. So I heard estimates that it's been viewed by over a billion people. So it's been an unprecedented event, actually, and has generated a lot of discussion. And I think this is all extremely important because, you know, the Western public has not had a chance to hear from Vladimir Putin unfiltered in his own words. it's usually, you know, people might like Max Boot and Bill Crystal and Bill Browder as well who interpret Putin for us. So, you know, it's like they tell us everything we need to know. But the reality is a lot more nuanced and it's extremely important to understand those nuances

because demonization of a foreign leader is always used as a setup for war. because, you know, if you go back to Noriega and Milosevic and Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad, preparations for war always include relentless demonization of the target leader so that the audiences in the West might think, oh, well, you know, I guess war is a bad thing,

but maybe if we read the point, poor Iraqis of Saddam Hussein. If we read the poor Russians of Vladimir Putin, then everybody will be happier. So, you know, if they don't give consent, then maybe passive acquiescence might do just as well. So I think that this interview brought Putin closer to Western audiences. and I think that it probably had an impact, although I suspect that it's not like we walked out on the street one day and then the world was different. But, you know, same as with Edward Snowden revelations and with, what was that, 2013, and with the WikiLeaks revelations that we had, it's not that something spectacularly changed. overnight. But I think that it kind of blows up Western ruling establishments narrative control. And narrative control is everything to them, you know, because to wage war, they need public consent.

And so I hope, I very much hope that this interview will have had the effect of preempting that consent because we're not out of the woods, you know. The war in Ukraine might be winding down, but that's just the first battle. We are in a global total war. As George Soros told us and other US and NATO officials have said the same thing, it's a clash between two systems of governance. And I always like to underscore the Croatian Admiral characterized the battle as the the clash between Christ and Antichrist.

And, you know, well, you know, Croatia is a member of NATO and he's a retired admiral of the Croatian army, but he said, sorry, but the West is the Antichrist. And so I think we are in trouble. Western oligarchies will not give up. They're not just going to go quietly into the night. So we need to start, you know, thinking and figuring things. out because what happened in Ukraine can happen in Europe and can happen in the United States and Canada. What I mean by that is that they could, you know, war can start. You know, the European government,

Finland, Sweden, Germany, Britain, they're talking about preparations for war against Russia. They're talking about mobilization, conscription and all of these things. And we shouldn't be, complacent about this at all because what happened in Ukraine should be a cold shower to everybody. It should be a wake-up call because the, let's call it that the far-right extremists who were extremely anti-Russian, who were gung-ho on going to war against Russia and killing Russians. They were a very small fringe minority. Okay. And in 2014, right after the coup, they had an election and the two far extreme parties, Swoboda and the right sector, together combined, gained 1.6% of the vote.

So, you know, Ukrainian people were not exactly on board. And then, you know, in 2019, this was recent. Vladimir Zelensky got 74 or 73% of Ukrainian vote because he was promising normalization. with Russia. He was promising peace. He was promising making Russian language legal again and reconciling with eastern, you know, the Donbas, the breakaway regions. And this is why people elected him because that's what they wanted. They want peace. They want normalization. And then, okay, so Zelensky was kind of treading water until Joe Biden gets into the White House. And practically from the day Joe Biden gets into the White House, everything changes.

And he started, you know, the escalation and provocation start. And they knew they knew that they wanted to go to war with Russia. You know, there's a famous interview with his advisor, Arrestovich, who said that we're going to get into NATO, but our price of being accepted into NATO is a major war with Russia. And he said that's 99.9% certain. I'm citing, I'm quoting the man. And so, you know, they knew that we're going to do this. They just didn't have, you know, adequate support from the Trump administration,

but they did from Biden administration. And that's where everything got going. And so when your country gets attacked, all those nuances, we don't want war with Russia, blah, blah, blah. It all gets very tribal. very rapidly. And now even people who didn't want to go to war find themselves where they have to go to war.

You know, men, they're patriotic people. The country's calling, you go to war. And so what? Half a million of them are dead. And now, you know, you have these gangs of extremist stugs going around Ukraine, scooping up, you know, 16 and 17-year-old boys and 60-year-old men.

they're shoving them to the front lines, to the trenches. They, you know, Ministry of Defense of Ukraine just made an order a few weeks ago or 50,000 uniforms for female soldiers, and now you're seeing women in the trenches. And, you know, now they're saying, you know, in Ukraine, they have been quite advanced with these digital ID and CBDC initial. And so they already started creating the infrastructure where all the government services are going through the same gateway that you can use on your phone and so forth. And now they're using this, or maybe they're just talking about it, but they're preparing to use this in order to recruit people into the military. You know, I don't know if it's linked to people's bank accounts yet, you know, but they're talking about computer.

of money, blockages of bank accounts, you know, if they want you in the trenches, they might not, you might lose your electricity or internet service. They wouldn't renew your passport, your car registration, things like that, you know, like there are mechanisms of coercion. And the reason why I'm saying that we have to pay attention to these things is because we're not immune to it. You know, when the British Minister of Defense starts talking about conscription, you have to understand that this is coming for us.

And when you see those graves of Ukrainian youth, like Ukrainian flags as far as the eye can see, tens of thousands of them buried, do we want our children to end up like this with a Canadian flag or Croatian flag or

or whatever, a German flag on top of him. I don't want that. But, you know, they've done it to Ukraine. We should pay attention. We shouldn't allow it to be done to us and our children. And they are preparing to do exactly that. They're not like, oh, well, yeah, maybe. No, they're dead serious.

They want to destroy Russia. They want Russia's resources. They want to unseat Vladimir Putin and put some, you know, whatever, Vladimir Zelensky to run Russia, Alexei Navalny or Juan Guaido is available, I think. They don't care. Just somebody who will rubber stamp everything.

Okay, J.P. Morgan gets the oil. HSBC gets all the natural gas. Halliburton gets all the, you know, development. It's like that. And so they will do anything to achieve that. Russia, by the way, of all countries, of all countries in the world, Russia is by far the richest one with natural resources, about 75 trillion estimated,

which is practically doubled in the next country. So they want it so badly. They want it so badly because all of those trillions could be turned into financialized asset flows controlled by the Western banking cartel. This is, they will secretary. A billion people to get this. Because this is what they were prepared to do. We can get into that.

You know, I started with Tucker and Putin. And, you know, when Alex gets going, I think I'm like everybody else. I just sit back and enjoy the show. Because you get a wealth of knowledge, sir. And every time, you know, you are Tom or by yourself, you know, it's quite evident. you know there was a lot there and i'm going to pull us back to the interview just for a second because you know my thoughts was people were upset and i was i laughed at tucker i said just you're sitting across from putt just let him talk just let him get off he nobody has talked to

this man and he has been provoked and provoked and provoked over and over again and does that make him like the perfect man no it just means we've been talking about this now you've been on the podcast for almost two years. And we've been talking about this on this side for almost two years about like, wow, is Putin a good guy? He's not a good guy. It's like, well, his actions suggest he doesn't want to go to war. That's what his actions suggest.

And then he's provoked to a point where he has to go to war, but he doesn't want to go to war with the entire world. He's trying to say that very clearly. And, you know, the Tucker, you know, a billion people, geez, I hadn't heard that number, but I mean it stands to make sense you know it's over 200 million on Twitter alone right so you know like it's it's an insane amount of people and there are a ton of people who knew pretty much when you say there's nothing new in there I agree but it came from Putin's mouth which makes it new and the way he did it you know all of us out here I think Owen man do we have a leader like

that do we have a leader who sits across from Tucker puts him in his place three times and says, I thought, you know, aren't we going to have a serious conversation? I'm trying to tell you how we get here. And so he gives them like over a thousand years of history. And you're like, oh, what is he doing here? Right. And we don't, we just don't have a, we don't have a leader like that. Like, I don't know of a single leader in Canada that, that sits there like that. And is, what did somebody call him a fox? Like he's, he is, he is playing 3D chess on steroids when he, when he sits across from Tucker. And to see that as, as, uh, as the,

as the Western culture, I think it's really healthy. Like, it doesn't mean you have to agree with everything, but it's like really healthy to, you know, like now I'm like, so is he going to interview China?

Like, is he going to go interview the other ones? Because I'm like, I, at this point, I actually don't know anything anymore. I'm like, I might as well hear it,

you know, have somebody go over and sit and let them talk in a podcast format where you can actually hear what they're trying to say. Now, in saying that, uh, did Tucker go in them? with the game plan. I'm certain he did. He's not a moron. But at the same time, just hearing him talk and

hearing him talk openly about the CIA and different things like that was, was wild from my standpoint, Alex. Yeah, yeah. You know, you wouldn't have Biden or even, you know, I don't know what Trump would say, but like, do they acknowledge the CIA exists at this point? I don't know. Like, it just, to me, it's all shadows and ghosts on this side. And he just called them all Wow. I mean, that's what it seemed like. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And look, you know, Putin has been demonized in the West completely. You know, it's extremely difficult to find any story in any publication that even attempts to be balanced, let alone to presenting him in a positive life.

It's very difficult. I published a book and he got banned. Well, part of the book was about him. I think I asked this the first time around, but can we get the book? I can send you the PDF. Well, actually, you know, there's a red pill press sends it. Red pill press sells it off of their website. So I think they have a PDF format.

They have a... What's the book called again, Alex? Hold on. I'll just show you it. I'll show you it. Grand deception. $10 PDF. I got it. I got it here.

Oh yeah. You're right there. Right there. Right there. Here. And for the folks, here, let's just see. So there's a, there's a chapter about Vladimir Putin because, you know, I was as a, until a certain point in time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

There it is. So if somebody wants to, because I heard you talk about this the first time and I had like the similar thought that I'm like, why haven't I read Alex's book yet? Like, I just, I, you know. It's sitting right there. You can go order the PDF for $10. So. And, okay, so the first two chapters of the books are about, you know, debunking Bill Browder and his tall tale. So if people don't know who Bill Browder is, I did try very hard to make it readable and entertaining.

But it's the next four chapters that are, you know, the real meat and potatoes, the, you know, the context. of the whole story, the history of relations between Russia and the West, Vladimir Putin's role, Vladimir Putin's character, and where the whole ship is sailing. But anyway, you know, what I was saying is that before a certain point in time in 2005, I was one of the unsuspecting consumers of the Western narrative. And I thought Vladimir Putin was just a puppet of the Russian oligarchs. I didn't question that. And then I met this guy, Bill Browder, he was giving a lecture in Monaco and I was invited.

And it was the first time I heard anybody say anything positive about Vladimir Putin. And I was taken aback because it was real stuff. It wasn't just the man speaks languages and he dresses nicely. It was substantive stuff. So Bill Browder ran the largest foreign-owned hedge fund in Russia during the 1990s. you know, the transition from communism to capitalism. And he had a funny business model. Yeah, they would buy undervalued shares of Russian companies.

And they were undervalued because the management of most companies was utterly corrupt. And they were siphoning money out of their money and other kinds of assets, including, including oil and gas fields. They were siphoning it off to their own private companies or into their bank accounts offshore and so forth. And so what Bill Browder and his team would do

is they would investigate the corruption in the companies that they purchased, right? And then they would use the foreign and Russian press to publish their reports of their investigation. and unmasked these corrupt people and their practices. And so in practically every case, Putin's government would come in. They would clean up the corruption. They would replace the management.

They would close the legal loopholes that made the corruption possible. And then the stock shares of these companies would rapidly increase in value. So this was his business model. He was, this is how was, this was in part how he was making money in Russia. And so I thought like, oh, I thought Putin was working for the oligarchs, and now it looks like he is actually working against the oligarchs. So I thought like, okay, interesting. So this is when I started paying attention to what's going on in Russia.

And, you know, in 2014 when the Ukraine coup happened, and then there was the downing of that, Malaysian Airlines flight over Ukraine, the demonization of Putin just went into an overdrive. It was just insane. It was wall-to-wall non-stop all the time, Putin bad. And so I thought, okay, I kind of expect politicians to be bad and corrupt and sleazy. But now I was curious, who is this man? And so I started kind of looking into it.

I started watching many documentaries about him. Most of them are unflattering, but there's a few flattering ones out there. I started kind of watching his speeches and interviews, reading his articles and transcripts. I started looking up people who knew him personally. You know, people who have dealt with him. And lo and behold, the portrait of the man that emerges is completely the diametric opposite of what you would call a thug or, you know, killer, KGB, you know, whatever they sling in his direction. I would say from sitting here, from thinking back to what I thought five years ago before I ever met you was,

or started looking into any of this, it isn't just you, would be KJUB, you know, essentially power hungry, willing to do whatever to keep it. That would be my thought process on Putin. Yeah, and it turns out it's not exactly like that. Although, you know, it's very difficult to judge a person who is managing a country of 150 million people and the country is under siege. And then to judge him against the standards that we all have innately because we judge people by how we relate to them, you know, one-on-one or, you know, in small groups.

This is a man who's responsible for 150 million Russians, right? So, you know, you can't go around giving hugs to everybody and giving them candy, right? That's not a way to be nice. but I looked into his scorecard of how he transformed Russia and it's absolutely spectacular and not only in terms of GDPs up countries return to law and order clean city streets are cleaned

construction is going on industries growing you know all these things it's not just that is that when he took over Russia in 1999 Well, it was Christmas, New Year's Eve, 1999. When he became the active president up until now in the past 24 years, he transformed it radically. And when he took it over, Russia was one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Russian oligarchs had their gangs, you know, have car chases and shootouts on the streets of Moscow in St. Petersburg. everything was in disarray, the economy was shot.

Everything was basically shit. And now Russia has a power to be reckoned with. And then you also have these so-called misery statistics, you know, meaning abortions, suicides, alcohol poisoning, and murders. And so when he took over Russia, those figures were staggeringly high. I mean staggeringly high. And

since he took over, they all declined by, I don't know, I looked at the statistics when I published the book. So my figures are up to day until 2017. I haven't looked at them since. But basically, they went down by 80 to 90%. Okay. So just sorry,

just so I'm clear on this. When you're talking misery statistics, you know, you're saying, and I'm just reiterating what he said, folks, but I want to make sure I'm clear on this. Once upon a time, things are not well in Russia, so suicides are up, which makes sense. You got lots of drug overdoses, which makes sense. You got murder and crime and everything and all that makes sense. And all I think of is Canada right now and how things are just like, you know, under the leadership of our current government, you know, what was the stat the other day in BC? seven deaths a day from overdose every single day for the year of 20,

was it 2023 folks? 2020. It's one of the two, Alex, it's high. You're like, seven people. Holy crap. And what you're saying is over his up to the point you wrote the book, now all like instead of having, you know, seven deaths a day, I'm just going to pick on BC for a second, you're down to one death a day.

Roughly. from just drugs i'm picking on drugs so i'll uh i'll just look at here where where i have these sure yeah and for the listener he's he's got alex has pulled his book up yeah numbers because i didn't know them of the top of my head so uh there's the the statistic is incidents per 100 000 residents so in 1994 suicides were 42.1 in 2014 so it wasn't 2,000 They were 18.4. So a decline of 56% in suicides. In 20 years.

Yep. Yeah. No, in 20 years. Sorry. Then homicides from 32.6 to 8.7, a 73% decline. Alcohol poisonings from 37.8 per 100,000 to 6.5 per 100,000. So 83% decline. And now the abortions.

but, oh damn, where is it? Yeah, it's in the text. I don't have a... You know, all I think of

while you say that, you know, is you judge, you know, judge a tree by the fruit, it bears. Exactly. And so you go like,

everybody, you know, the haters of, and I don't know, do I love Donald Trump? No, I don't really love any one politician.

I feel like they're all in this shady game and they don't all work for, you know, like I just, I'm not, I'm not a big fan of. any one politician. But you judge by the fruit of bears because that game is is narratives. It's slander. It's, it's, you know, it's all these different media agencies, you know, putting their

spin on things. And if you don't look through it and just see, well, what is actually going on? What's what is happening? And when you say those things, it sounds like society improved under Putin. That's what you're telling me. Radically. Radically. And so another few stats I have here is that life expectancy went from just over. 64 years, spectacularly low in the mid-1990s, to almost 72 years in 2014. So that's, you know, people gained an extra eight years of life. That's something. Fertility rate for women went from below 1.2 in 1990.

98 to 1.7 in 2014. When you say fertility rate, are you meaning, like, how many kids they're having? How many kids per woman, yeah. So it went from below 1.2 to 1.7. Can we? So that, yeah. Why would, is that because things are safer and people are like, oh, maybe we should have some kids? Yeah, exactly.

Because people think, like, everything's shit. I have no money. I have no prospects. I have no future. if I have a child, what am I going to do? And then so the abortions, I don't have a graph for abortion, so I can't find it now, but abortions drop dramatically, but they were sky high. And so, you know, all of these things, every suicide, every alcohol poisoning,

every abortion is a personal tragedy. Women who had abortion have a sixfold risk of committing suicide. So these are all personal tragedies in the millions. which have now been reduced dramatically. So has he done better than, you know, correcting people, oh, let's not say mankind, let's say people kind, oh, aren't I nice, you know? Or is it better what Vladimir Putin is doing because, you know, now people are better off. There are fewer personal tragedies that afflict people, and people's lives are better and they're happier.

You know, there's statistics of that, you know, like there's, there's, there's, all these agencies like Gallup and Ipsos and, you know, we have you, Russian ones as well, that in Russia ask people, are you happy? You know, and then they give you definitely happy, happy, not happy, definitely not happy. And then they score where people are. Well, that statistic increased like severalfold in the time that Putin has been president of Russia. So, you know, I do agree with you completely that we have to judge people by their fruits, by their deeds. And, you know, his deeds, the way he turned Russia around has been nothing short of remarkable and extraordinary.

And at the same time, what we see in the West is that we're going back to Victorian England, you know, the Dickensian world of misery, overdoses, suicide. drugs addiction, alcohol addiction, infrastructure crumbling. It's just not necessarily talking about Alberta. And, you know, you had one leader in your studio recently. Daniel Smith, yeah, Premier Daniel Smith. Yeah, who struck me. She struck me because I got unaccustomed to any Western leader talking sense. You know, they all come with slogans and ideologies.

and talking points and no clue about the details and no ideas about how to run the place. And she was just there, fully at ease, talking numbers, talking figures out of her head, talking initiatives and ideas, and everything kind of geared towards making life better for people and businesses in Alberta. And I thought, oh my God, this is what I see when I go, you know, when I go to these Eurasian integration conferences, And it all feels so exotic because nobody's talking about LGBT and climate change. People are talking about infrastructure and business and trade and making life better. Exactly.

And you don't hear that ever in the West anymore. So, you know, like when I go there, I have a culture shock. And then when I watch Daniel Smith on your podcast, I thought, this is what we're missing. This is exactly what we're missing. And it's so rare that when you hear it, you go like, oh my God, who is this woman? I want to marry her, you know? It's funny because there's lots of people.

So, you know, I've got some interviews coming up after you where people are upset with her because she, instead of just calling the green agenda for what it is, instead of going, you know, like we got give all. I mean, like, what did he just say the other day? I should pull it up for you. He doesn't want to build roads anymore. He figures we got enough roads.

and you know and and like it's just he wants to phase out all fossil fuels and he wants it on on on and on I just like how is this guy in our federal government it just makes zero say

it makes my head hurt yeah but it's it's standard now yes it is it is and so people people are like and myself included you know it's like like do we do we want to do we want to do we want to do some things with EVs okay

but like do we have to have a date where if we're not by if we're not, if we don't do it by this day. So people are, you know, there's levels of upset with Daniel Smith. There's people who just love having everything you just said. They're like, yes. Like I sit and listen to and go,

holy crap, this is, this is unreal. And then there's levels of upset because here in the West, you got to deal with the LGBTQ issue because it is being thrust down our throat. I love it. I love it. And, and you know, and people just want somebody to say, no, no, we're not. doing that. Nope. And just next question. Nope. And she's come out and done something close.

You know, it's like, I don't know what I was hoping, but it's close. She's kind of ignored it, didn't she? Well, no, she came out with a, she came out with a palsy saying, you know, like, if you're under a certain age, there's a no-go. Oh, right. Parents are allowed to know every time sex is being talked about and blah, blah, blah. But then she also said she's going to hire a doctor to do the surgeries and why? Why? It doesn't make any sense to me. But I mean, some days, I, you know, I'm a hard, you know, maybe I'm a little bit like rock, a head under the rock. But it's just, to me, it doesn't make any sense.

And the green thing doesn't make any sense. So she taught, and she's using the language and that pisses people off. It's like, stop talking about 2035 or stop talking about 2050. We're going to go carbon neutral. It, you know, just start talking, just like stop it. And that's what people want. Well, I shouldn't say all people want, right? Because when I listen to you, I'm like, yeah, like, I, I find it fascinating.

because politics is like that. No matter how good of a speaker you get, somebody's always going to hate it and wish they said something else. But Sean, you know, if these things did make sense, we wouldn't be talking about them. People would just be doing them. You know, people would be pursuing entrepreneurial opportunities

if it made sense. No, we have to force everybody. We have to invent all these systems of incentives and disincentives to make everybody do something that doesn't make sense. And everybody is like, why is this being done? Like, what's the point? And if you point out that it doesn't make, you know, like, if you know, the last time you were on, you brought up Kingdom of Heaven, right?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Speak the truth or at least do not lie, essentially. No, no, that's not the exact. That's Jordan Peterson. It was, it was tell the truth even if it leads to your death. Oh, that's right. That's what it was. Jordan Peterson is tell the truth or at least don't lie. Yes, even if it leads to your death.

And at times, I think, actually, I think I think this more, I ever, I think we need more of that, not less of it. Like, we need more and more and more of it. It's actually extremely important. And people don't like to hear the word death in the sentence. But, you know, it's not about making ourselves martyrs for trivial things. It's, you know, telling the truth is not always obvious because many, many times we're dealing with personal interpretations of what we think is true, which might be correct or not correct. Sometimes we use humor where you deliberately say things that are not true because you want

to shock and make people laugh. But it's the actual, when you set out to deceive somebody, somebody for whatever reason, that's where I think telling the truth is extremely important. And I think that it's already enough for people to make the commitment to be truthful. Because what happens then is that you find yourself where, you know, if you're going to do something that you might have to lie about later, then you're going to say, okay, I'm not going to do this because I don't want to lie about it later. you might choose to not defraud your neighbor

or sleep with your neighbor's wife or things like this you know it might just be a better version of yourself so just making that commitment might keep you doing things you'd have to lie about and so that's already an improvement

on an individual level which then if you multiply it by millions and hundreds of millions then you know we're better people we're better collective So I think that's, for that reason, it's extremely important. And then, you know, even if it leads to your death kind of resonates to me because there are times when it takes courage to take the truth, you know.

And usually it's the more important it is, the more courage it takes. And so then, you know, if you're determined, you're going to live up to that. You know, I had Jeremy McKenzie. I'm going to tell this story way too much over the next. Dang you, Jeremy. It was to me, it just made sense. and it fits in with what you're talking about. He said, imagine, and I'm going to butcher this story, I should just clip it,

and that way I have it ready so I can just play it back. And maybe that's what I'll do. He goes, imagine you're getting, he's a military veteran. He is the terrorist of Diaglon, the extremist group here in Canada that has a fictional time-traveling goat named Philip, who does cocaine as their leader. and, you know, like, it's pretty funny. Is there some things in there? You know, it's a mean thing.

They got branded a terrorist organization and on and on it went. And it's been, I don't know, wild to watch at times. I'm like, I can't believe this is my country. But in saying that, he says, you know, you're getting on a plane, you're loading up to go to war. And let's say there's a guy sitting there. And I don't know who I picture there, but he's got a clipboard. And he's going to tell you, Sean.

you're going to get shot in the head the third day. And Alex, nope, you're safe. And Tom, you're going to get a bomb on the first day. And then you have the choice of, well, do I get on the plane or don't I get on the plane? And he said, you know, if you're getting on the plane, it's probably worth it. Like, I'm going to die, but it's, you know, and it's, it's the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, they come in and we'd say, like, everybody's going to die at some point. It's like if your cause is worth going, no matter the consequences, you're probably in the right spot. If you look at that and no matter what, you're like, I don't want anything to do with it, you're probably not there yet.

Or you probably don't have the right frame of mind. You don't have the right cause. You don't have the right thing. You're thinking about it. And I'm like, that makes a ton of sense to me. To me, that was the freedom convoy. People loaded up and went because they felt it. They knew this is the one.

We're going. And we don't care. We can't go on what we're doing. Most people, I don't know. I shouldn't say most people. In my life, COVID pushed me to that brink where I was like, I don't know any other way. I don't care what the outcome is. I need to go.

And when you talk about the truth and trying to do it more, the truth will put you in those situations. Because you'll see it and you'll have the choice of like, well, am I going to lie today? Or am I going, you know, everybody, I have this, you know, I feel like it would be a pretty tough thing to do. Maybe it would be super easy. But, you know, everybody has these like 30 day challenges, whatever. Like, how do we have a 30 day challenge where you just tell the truth?

And I'm not saying where you, you know, the wife comes and says how the pants look and you got to be an ass about it. I just mean like, don't participate in any lies for a month and see how that goes. Yes. But, well, you know, there is something. There's a funny quote that comes of all people from Tucker Carlson, not known as a source of profound quotes. But he said, the more you tell the truth, the more powerful you are. Yes.

And I was kind of taken aback by that quote, but actually there's really something to that. You know, there's really something to that. Lying really does make you weak and vulnerable. And if you don't do it, if you just tell the truth, you know, something's, you know, something's, in your life are going to shake up. But what's going to be left is going to be rock solid. And, you know, it does something to you. You know, it does something to your confidence and your, you know, self-assurance. So I think it works in many ways. I think we just maybe, I don't know, we maybe got used to thinking that it's okay, a white lie or maybe it doesn't matter if I, you know.

Sure. But it's actually, you know, it can be. if it becomes a slippery slope where you're just habitually deceiving people for small little insignificant advantages or to spare yourself embarrassment or whatever, then, you know, maybe it becomes just like this where you're like habitually this little shit that they just like, you know, slaloms around issues to not deal with it. And, but I think it actually makes you weaker. it does the more you do it you know i'm going to stop apologizing for this but i imagine being on a

sailboat why would that make any sense to me uh alex i literally live in the grasslands like like there's no there's no ocean near me but i just when i see issues coming to me i see a storm on the water and i've never been on the open water so i have no idea what you're supposed to do but in my mind you go well, I either get beat up in the rocks or I go hide away and act like, you know, and stay safe. And that's probably what I honestly on a boat. I'd be like, let's get into safe harbor. But in my mind, the only thing you can do is steer into it. And once you steer into those, sometimes they're not as big a storm as you think.

And you learn a lot about yourself. And you actually probably learn, oh, okay, well, that's what that was. Yeah, I'm a little better for it. I'm okay. I didn't know I had it in me. Yes. Yeah, yeah. That's what often comes back.

Yeah, you start earning your own self-respect, and that in itself is worth it. You know, I was looking at, so I've been talking a lot about, well, off and on about this conference, because I haven't cemented dates. And me and you were going to talk about that after hours here once we were done. But one of the things I was staring at, you know, when I look at 2024 in the next year, and like what are some of the biggest threats we face? You know, obviously war, you've brought it up right off the hop. You know, like do we want to send our sons and daughters off?

And once it's going, you know, things get tribal real fast. Yeah. The other one, you know, that comes to mind. And I've listened to you talk on it several times is CBDCs. And, you know, in my mind, I'm like, ah, we're a long way away from a CBDC. But then, you know, I had Martin Armstrong on not that long ago. and he almost, I almost made him laugh with that, with that train and thought. He's like, oh, no, it's, it's coming way faster than you think.

And I guess I'd like your thoughts on CBDCs because, you know, like, I look at the, the financial system and some of the numbers that are just getting thrown around and where we're throwing money and how we're spending money. I'm like, it just, it's like, it's like, they're using such big numbers, Alex, that nobody cares anymore. It's like, you know, it's a trillion dollars. It's over there. The debt's going this way.

It's nobody can make sense of it. anymore. It just doesn't make sense because the numbers are so big. It's too big to fail. I'll never, you know, what's the big deal? And yet, you know, like I listened to you talk about CBDCs and I'm like, oh, that is about as scary as it gets. Well, yes, but you know, I, I'm convinced that the CBDCs will fail because the whole thing is so insanely ambitious and so insanely complex that while it's conceptually possible to achieve, in practice, I think it's going to fail. But they are going to put it into place. Are they not? They're trying. They're trying. But it's a nightmare. And, you know, people on top of the,

you know, command and control hierarchy in the Western societies, they desperately want it. and they have almost unlimited resources. And there's a lot of people who want some of their unlimited resources, so they'll promise them all kinds of everything. But the problem matter is extremely, extremely complex. So one case, they tried to launch a CBDC in Nigeria at the beginning of 2022. And it was a very serious project. and they very carefully selected Nigeria as a test market.

And it was Biden administration who made that decision. And then they sent all these experts from the IMF, from some Western consultancies. I'm not sure which ones. But it wasn't McKinsey. It wasn't a Boston consulting group. It was something else. But, you know, where they tried to bring together the best and the brightest,

and then, you know, they assisted Nigeria's central bank to implement these. And they chose Nigeria because it was a relatively simple case. You know, many people had very ordinary bank accounts or didn't have any bank accounts whatsoever. There wasn't all this complexity of legal implications for your pensions and your real estate properties. and there's a lot of legal work that needs to be done in order to make the CBDCs possible. There's a lot of procedural things that need to be redesigned. Anyway, I sat once through a presentation by an Accenture guy.

Accenture is no longer called Accenture, but it's something else. Anyway, that company. They were giving a presentation about CBDCs. They're totally involved in it, this company, formerly known as Accenture. And one thing I can tell you is there are light years away from confident. So they're talking about all these things that need to be fixed, but it's obviously that they don't know how to fix them.

Okay, back to Nigeria. So first Nigeria had a referendum about the CBDC, and it was rejected by something like 99% of people. People didn't want it. And then, well, you know, We don't take a no for an answer. They voted wrong, so the president overruled them and signed a decree that Nigeria is going to have a CBDC anyway.

And they gave the Nigerian people a deadline to turn in all their currencies, the Naira, and to convert it into the E-Naira, the CBDC thing. People were very confused. They didn't exactly know what happened. So they extended the deadline, like another 10 days. And then they went for it. And the thing was managed by the governor of the central bank. The whole thing lasted 108 days, okay, in Nigeria.

So, you know, not a premium democracy, forced down the people's throats, and people flipped out. Okay? And there was complete chaos in the country. and after 108 days, the project came to a grinding halt. The president voted out of office. The central bank governor who was in charge of the project ended up in prison. And I don't know if he's still in prison, but when I looked into it, in June, last June, he was still in prison.

So it wasn't just like they took him to prison to write an article in the newspaper, and then let him go back to live in his villa. No, no, he stayed in prison. And so the test market that brought together the best of the Western know-how that Bank of International settlements and IMF could put together. And they took a simple test market as a case to demonstrate success. It was extremely important for this to be success. so they can go to other countries and say, like, see how awesome everything is in Nigeria now?

Don't you want to do it yourself? Well, now that, you know, the president was voted out of office and the central bank governor ended up in prison, who wants to try it now? You know, maybe you'll get it in Ukraine because it doesn't matter. You know, like they'll do anything to get bailout money to continue fighting the war and all this. You know, Zelensky will do anything. It doesn't matter. But find me another country where they're going to be. the central bank governor wants to risk going to prison and where the political leadership

wants to risk being voted out of office, nobody's willing and nobody's confident about it. And so they may, you know, like they are developing the technologies, but technology is a fragile thing. You can put however much money you want to put into it, it's not a guarantee that the product will come out good. You know, I can give you a thousand examples, but the most famous one perhaps is the, you know, joint, what's it called, F-35, you know, Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. It's a complete nightmare.

It's a morass. It's like a trillion dollars flush down the toilet for a thing that barely flies. So, you know, the technology development doesn't necessarily respond to how much money you put into it. So it can be the most powerful people in the world, the BIS, the Rothsch, the HSBC Federal Reserve, whoever, they can put trillions of dollars into it. But whether they're going to achieve success with it or not is unpredictable. You cannot predict it. And the problem matter is so complex that I would be willing to bet money that whatever

they roll out is going to fail on a short order. And it may not fail in the sense that they go back to cash. But people will. okay because if you force people to use as means of exchange something that doesn't work that's inconvenient that people feel creeped out because everything about them is on some card on some server people will just go to black markets that's what's going to happen that's what you so what do you think then when you stare at you know impending financial crisis maybe or just financial crisis right like everything going on in the world today what is what is

you know, I don't know, I sit here in Canada and I look at it and I go, oh, okay, maybe it'll just keep rolling along them. We'll keep using cash. And yet, like, the slow creep of like, you know, I just think of going to Rogers Place to watch Tucker Carlson when he was on stage. No cash allowed. So no physical cash allowed in that building. Everything has got to be card. You're like, well, that's a slow little trend towards, you know, and can they do that everywhere? No, certainly not.

you know like i go to the farmer's market and they're like i'll take whatever you give me you know and there's exactly you know and so there's there's certain things like that but when you stare at you know the the problems coming in the next year or years what do you think they're going to do then i i don't know sean i can tell you one thing i wouldn't want to be them because they are seriously they are they have a lot to lose and they're of ideas and they're desperate. And now they're pushing everything forward by force. And the resistance is only gathering.

It's not like it's not like the more we hear from Klaus Schwab and Ursula von der Leyen, the more people are like, oh yeah, that sounds good, reasonable. I think I'm going to go along. No, the more people hear them, the more people say, like, are these people mad? I'm not going along with that. You know, and so you see already, when was it? like a year or two ago when Tedros of the World Health Organization announced Monkeypox Health Emergencies of International Concern.

And he declared this health emergency of international concern. Did you notice what happened? Nothing. Nothing. Yeah, because I remember just laughing about it. Exactly. You know, normally when the head of the World Health Organization, declares a health emergency of international concern,

everybody's supposed to go crazy and start with lockdowns and masks and... And nobody's doing it. Nobody's doing it because people are like, yeah, whatever. You know, you do you, I'll do me. And then everybody does that. So with this agreement coming up in May, you know, sitting here as a Canadian, and we're signing on to, well, I don't know if we're, you know, the plan. There's a petition that out against it, but I mean, I don't know what any petitions.

I shouldn't be, you know, I'm trying not to be so dark. But anyways, you know, there's this petition coming up, or sorry, this agreement with the WHO coming up where we're supposed to sign on and, you know, preparedness for the next one so that we all go lockstep with whatever they do, you know. And then I've had different chats around it, Alex, where it's like, Yeah, it's just agreement. Like, I mean, what are they going to do? And if you don't go along with it, who cares? And so there's two schools of thoughts, right? There's a school of thought.

If we sign on to this and then they implement different things like CBDCs and start freezing bank accounts and all that, jazz, like we go into this really dystopian world. But if you just don't go along with it, what are they going to do? Yeah, exactly. What are they going to do? Because they can put half of Canada into prison, right? And, you know, they are deathly afraid.

of us figuring it out. You know, they're deathly afraid of people going to black markets, start using, you know, indigenous currencies because people always figure it out, you know, like even if, even if people trade for, you know, packs of cigarettes or, you know, whatever, Pokemon cards, I don't know. What happens is that every transaction that happens on the black market, well, you know, black markets are wonderful because they are exactly the free market. market economy where people find all kinds of good.

You know, like if you talk to people in Argentina, they sell like, oh, you can find anything you want on the black market. The prices are much lower because there's no red tape taxes, none of this shit. There's real competition, actually. So it's extremely attractive to consumers. And it's extremely attractive to entrepreneurs because they get to, you know, they get to do business. And so if the if the authorities lose.

control of the people and the people start kind of gravitating towards these black markets, then guess what? Every transaction that happens on black market, you know how much money the government collects in taxes? Nothing, right? And do you know, can you report income on that? No, you can. Do you have to? No, you don't have to. Can they police it? No, they can't. And I guarantee you that if if they start misbehaving, is they start getting too oppressive. Let's say they limit you because of, you know, climate change. They limit you to, I don't know, one tank of gas a week. I guarantee you somebody in your community will steal a tanker truck.

And they're going to be selling the stuff. Well, actually, well, it's funny. You say that, not the stealing. They're just going to make it. Like in our, you know, they're just, in our area, there's all these brilliant people. They're just like, well, we'll just start. start making our own purple gas and carry on with life. That happens.

That really happens. Yes. I mean, you know, people are law abiding and. Until they're not. They do everything by the rule until they realize that you're trying to screw them over. And then some of them are going to get creative and entrepreneurial. And then people are going to say like, oh, my God, you know, like you can go to Joe's behind, you know, in his backyard. He can fill you up for half the price.

awesome, let's go. And it doesn't, you know, like, it doesn't have, you don't have to seal a tanker truck. You can just figure out a way to siphon it off from the gas pump, which people will. You know, this is, you know, okay, so I grew up in Eastern Europe. I grew up in former Yugoslavia,

and I'm speaking out of experience, you know, because we were under the communist, I grew up under the, you know, socialist system under one-party communist rule. And it came to the point that nobody cared what the rules are. People just did what they did. And, you know, that's actually not a bad place to be because actually you kind of feel free.

It's liberating. And, you know, you deal with people 101 according to, I think according to natural law. And natural law is a very simple thing. Act with honor and do no harm. And then people just, you know, forget the rules, forget their restrictions and regulations. I just talk, you know, I talk to Sean.

Hey, Sean, you got any eggs? Yeah, I got some. Hey, you know, what do you need for that? And, you know, that's what people do. And then, you know, the government suddenly finds itself with a massive gaping hole in their budget. And then the central bank has to print. And then, you know, by virtue of that, the currency, their currency, the one that they control, starts to lose value. and so they actually paint themselves in a corner in a very massive way.

So, you know, they try to play this big game of, oh, we're so powerful, we're so omnipotent. All resistance is futile. Just, you know, obey and comply and you'll be fine. But in fact, they're scared shitless. And they're out of ideas and they're out of solutions. And there's going to come a time when the whole thing's going to crumble. protests in Europe. A, I like your hopefulness.

I like when we get Alex rolling like this because too often we stare into the dark void and go like the end of the world is coming, you know? And then you know, you witness things like certainly the trucker convoy, certainly a lot of different things happening across the board. Protests are happening everywhere it seems like. Or at least that's my feed.

And I don't know if I'm, you know, I don't know if the algorithm is just like, hey, Sean needs to see some protests today or what? You're on the other side of the pond. What do you see? Only what comes through Twitter. I'm sitting in Monaco, right? I haven't seen any protests here. But apparently they are all over France.

And that's not unusual either. French just like to protest, you know, if they don't put up with nonsense easily. But you know, the fact that German farmers went protesting in such absolutely massive numbers is pretty awesome. You know, you know that the situation became completely intolerable when Germans are out on the roads. And so what's going to be the result of it? I don't know. But, you know, people have been rubbed raw by the nonsense of their governments. and they've lost faith in the government. This is always, again, the point in time when you start questioning,

what does it mean to be compliant? It looks like being the law-abiding citizen is actually punished. You're being a law-abiding citizen to your detriment. And then you start thinking out of a box, And you think, like, I don't have to put up with this shit, you know. I'll just take care of me and my family. And we'll see where, and then, you know, like when people start making these decisions in their hundreds of thousands and millions, then, you know, the ruling establishment lost control. And, you know, I feel that whatever they're trying to do now, they're pushing on a wet noodle.

And that's how effective it is. I have a random question for you. I don't know if you know the answer to this. Um, who's the, who is it, um, who's the new prime minister of, uh, Argentina? Malay. Malay, thank you. Malay. Um, he, there was a video that came out of him kissing the wall in Israel.

Do you understand what the heck is going on here? And can you, can you lay it out for me in a way that I understand? Because I, I watch it and I'm like, what, what is this? And why is it that I've seen now, not only him, but like I've seen Donald Trump have to do it. I've seen, I believe Biden did it, I think. But I've never seen like Justin Trudeau go do it. So is it just certain countries do it?

Is it certain faiths that go do it? Am I missing something? Why, you know, why does this happen? Do you know? I don't really. The whole thing mystifies me, and particularly in the case of Millay, because he, I don't know what experience he had kissing that wall,

but he totally broke down. And he started having these tight hugs with whoever was standing next to him. I didn't know who the man was. Yeah, I don't know. I find it very weird. People are very impressed with his speech to the World Economic Forum. Like he supposedly spoke truth to power. But I didn't read his speech like that at all.

I thought it was just pretty much a nothing. from as far as I'm concerned. You know, Trump's speech to the World Economic Forum, that was a spit in their faces. That was a real thing. Millet, okay, Trump wasn't there this January. He was there, I don't know, two years ago or so, or maybe even more. But Trump's speech to World Economic Forum is worth watching again.

Millais, to me, I was, I actually kind of felt embarrassed for him. I didn't, I, yeah, whatever. Interesting. So he, why, why? Because a lot of people celebrated him going over there and what he did. He didn't say anything particularly important. He's talking about freedom. He's talking about not paying taxes.

I don't know. I didn't find anything really inspiring in his speech. Like literally nothing. And it was all a lot of what he said, you know, you could interpret it like this or you could interpret it like that. He didn't actually speak to that structure of power over there. He just talked about concepts about being free. What does that mean?

Does it mean being free to abuse and brutalize ordinary people and immisorate them and push them into poverty? Free to do that? He didn't really define his terms for me. Which makes it a nothing burger. When you're not specific, is that what you mean? Yeah, it was more like empty. It was more like sloganeering that kind of sounds good, but it could be interpreted in more than one ways.

So I thought, yeah, why weren't you a bit more strong and more specific? If you watch Donald Trump's speech to Davos, that was a good. kicking the crotch to the to the to the to the gathering you know i'm going to have to go watch it because i got to be honest i haven't watched um yeah no no it's so it's obviously a few years ago because you can imagine if don't don't trump showed up there this year uh i don't know if they well you know i don't i don't think they're inviting him anymore after that speech i don't think so um yeah no i my my my final question i want to go all the way back to uh uh uh Tucker and Putin.

Here in Canada, everybody always wants people to get involved in politics or involved in whatever and, you know, and nobody's ever involved in anything. But that interview, you go sit at the hockey rink, who are like, if you, you watch in the interview tonight, I'm like, oh, this is wild. And it wasn't just, you know, a certain section of the population. I found it was everybody. It was bigger, to me, it was as big as a Super Bowl. I mean, like, it was just, you know, people, you know, harp on the Super Bowl and everything else. But the Super Bowl, you have to admire what they've built there.

Like, I mean, they've literally built this thing where my wife won't watch Jack Squat when it comes to sports. The Super Bowl, she's like, yeah, we could toss it on, right? I'm like, wow, that's something. They've found a way to make it open to more than just, I don't know, big white men, you know, who drink beer and eat Cheetos. This interview that Tucker did was that on steroids. I don't remember, you know, a couple people said, oh, yeah, what are you doing?

Oh, Super Bowl, okay, yeah, whatever. But I was sitting there and people are like, you watch in the interview tomorrow? And then it was like, has it aired yet? You know, and everybody was like on pins and needles. Was that the same way it was in Europe? And did anyone even care in Europe? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they did. They did, definitely.

Definitely. Well, you know, it was in English. So if, unless you have a good command of English, it was not, you know, maybe people had to wait until subtitled versions. come out. So maybe, you know, many people were resigned to not watching it straight away. But I think that among the, among the like English-speaking people, yeah, it was definitely very, very, very highly anticipated event. Everybody knew about it. I got actually, you know, Saturday two weeks ago, a friend called me from Moscow. Yeah. And this is Saturday morning breakfast time and he's like you'll never guess who i had a chat with and i'm like yeah of course i'm not

going to guess who was it Tucker Carlson I'm like dude what you're in moscow and he says like yes he says like he's staying at my hotel so I was having breakfast and I see him and his his team they said like he had all these you know the people with you know cameras and stuff and I was like and he said like I went over there and I and I said hello and he was Tucker was very nice and he stood up which your cans we had a we had a little chat together and uh he didn't tell him why he was in moscow but die it was obvious you know he didn't he didn't go uh there for for his amusement and so i was okay so we're getting a we're getting the interview so i i knew it a week before it actually happened yeah yeah part of me wants to just go travel to moscow like part of me yeah yeah yeah like you know

I'm so tired of being dictated. You know, we just talked about this, I think. My brother and I, who you've met, you've been in his barn, Dustin. We bike Canada. And when we bike Canada, you know, like I was shocked because I'd, you know, were some Quebecers maybe more unfriendly than some, I don't know, Saskatchewan folk, maybe. But by and large, every preconception I had of Canada was shattered. on that trip because I thought, you know, like,

been told Ontario people are just like standoffish. They're, you know, they're, you know, uptight. They're whatever. Nicest human being I ever met was in Ottawa. Literally, you know, fixed our bikes, guided us, guided us through the city. Like, we would have been, I don't know what to happen. We would have figured it out, obviously. But like, I mean, he led us to rush our traffic, fixed all our stuff, fed us supper.

Like, just was like great human being. Same thing in Quebec. We had, we had people just like watch out and, and like, treat us kindly. and all these different things. So then you get back and like, why would they keep, why would they do that, you know?

And to me, you look at Russia and you go, I lived in Finland and they're like, do not go there. And that was, that was, you know, shoot,

how many years ago? That's a decade ago. A decade ago, I was basically told, do not go there. Oh, yeah, yeah,

not going there. But I never felt like imminent danger living there by any stretch either. And, And now I'm like, man, a guy should have just went. And just to step his toe in there. Right? Because I have no idea what it is.

It's this boogeyman of like what it is. And it probably is nothing of the sort. I mean, there's probably. Exactly. There's nothing of the sort. You know, I went in 2015. I went on my own personal fact-finding mission to Russia. And I went by myself and I spent two weeks in St. Petersburg.

And I enrolled myself in a course of Russian language. And I spent my time just like wandering around, you know, eating lunch, sitting at bars, walking down the streets, going to museums. And guess what? It's just a normal place. You could have been in any European cities, any of the European major cities. It's just a normal place. People are nice. You know, like they're Russian.

They have, you know, like everybody has some kind of a. how do you call it, idiosyncrasies, there's, you know, like Italians are not the same as Germans and then the Finnish are not the same as Portuguese and, you know, Russians have their national character, but they're nice people, they're good people, right? And if you meet them, you realize that they're good people. You know, if somebody tells you over the fence, so don't go there, the people there, they're going to chop you up and eat you, then you go like, oh, you know, that's dangerous. I'm not going there. But if you actually do go there, find out that they're good people and that they're nice.

Have you gone to a place, Alex, where you're like, I don't know about that place. Not a country, but I've gone to like local communities, you know, where you feel a little bit creeped out. You know, where you go to a small village and people are looking at you, you're like, hey, stranger, what are you doing in our village? But I'm not talking about Russia. I'm talking about California. I went to a place called Paradise, California, which means... California is where you get stared at? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was Paradise, California, right? It was in 1980s. And everybody was like, everybody looked like a lumberjack with big long beard and those shirts, square shirts and jeans and boots and hats. And they were just, you know, they were just not used to, I don't know, maybe it was the particular place where I was. And then also I know that in Croatia, you know, we have a lot of islands. Croatia has a thousand islands. And many of these islands are kind of their own communities, generations. And they're relatively isolated.

You know, maybe you get one ferry a day or something like this. And sometimes when you go to these little islands, you notice that people are kind of a closed community. You know, they look at other people as strangers and, you know, you don't feel like you're in danger, but you're not feeling like you're welcome either. So that does happen. But, you know, most places, whether we're talking about Russia or Croatia or Italy or anywhere, you know, you discover that people are good. People are nice. If you ask for help, they give you help. You know, this is the way humanity is, I think, if they're not.

traumatized and oppressed and and whipped up into a frenzy of hysteria of some sort. If people are cool, chilling, doing their stuff, you know, well, if you read travel books, everybody always says how they feel welcome. You know, like you don't read so many times that somebody goes somewhere to Iran or somewhere and then, you know, the people cook them up and eat them. I think more people need to get out from their computer and go see. Well, myself included. I think exploring the world is one of the great gifts, you know, that we have the ability to do, you know, until they try and shut that down, you know, because we're all killing the, you know, we got to go carbon, you know, no flying for you, you know, and down and down it goes.

You're going to eat, eat bugs and be happy. And you're not going to fly anywhere because it's going to be, you know, you're going to, you're not going to drive anywhere. We're not going to build any roads here in Canada. And we're going to give you made when you get to press. about it, man. Who needs to when you can live in a 15-minute city?

That's right. What we're going to do, folks, is we're going to slide over to Substack for one final question. So if you want to come join us there, come on and join us over at Substack. Either way, thanks for hopping on

Alex today. And we'll finish the conversation, folks on the other side. So come follow us over on Substack.