You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - Captured Media, Captive Nation: The Irish Are Waking Up - Eddie Hobbs | Ep. 149

Episode Date: July 19, 2026

Eddie Hobbs is a financial advisor, bestselling author, host of the Counterpoint podcast, and a former consumer advocate turned fierce critic of centralized power. In the early 1990s he took on Ireland's endowment mortgage industry, and later won a Competition Act case that forced the government to bring in consumer disclosure laws. His TV series Rip-Off Republic set audience records in Ireland and helped bring down the country's Groceries Order. In this conversation, Eddie traces his own turning point back to February 2020, and lays out why he believes Ireland has become a testing ground for policies with global reach, from digital ID to stakeholder capitalism, and why he sees critical thinking part of the way people reclaim sovereignty.→ Please like, comment, share & follow — to help me beat the suppressing algo's. Thank you!– SPONSORS –→ Download the free report on second citizenships & setting up a plan B in another country with Expat Money: https://expatmoney.com/efrat→ Access liquidity without selling your Bitcoin with Ledn, get 0.25% off your first loan: https://ledn.io/Efrat    → Get your TREZOR wallet & accessories, with a 5% discount, using my code at checkout (get my discount code from the episode - yep, you’ll have to watch it): https://affil.trezor.io/SHUn→ Have you tried mining bitcoin? Stack sats directly to your wallet while saving on taxes with Abundant Mines: https://AbundantMines.com/Efrat - Claim your free month of hosting via this link– AFFILIATES –→ Get 15% off “Born To Be Free” all-natural, tallow-based skincare products on a bitcoin standard, using code EFRAT: https://oshi.link/1nvZYq  → Join me in these upcoming events & use code EFRAT for discounted tickets: https://www.efrat.blog/p/upcoming-events→ Get 10% off on Augmented NAC to detox Spike protein, with the code YCXKQDK2 via this link: https://store.augmentednac.com/?via=efrat (Note, this is not medical advice, please consult your MD)→ Watch “New Totalitarian Order” conference with Prof. Mattias Desmet & Efrat - code EFRAT for 10% off: https://efenigson.gumroad.com/l/desmet_efrat– LINKS –Eddie on X: https://x.com/RealEddieHobbs Eddie on Substack: https://www.1215tribes.com/ Eddie on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@RealEddieHobbs Eddie’s website: Eddiehobbs.com Efrat’s X: https://twitter.com/efenigsonEfrat’s Channels: https://linktr.ee/efenigsonWatch on all platforms: https://linktr.ee/yourethevoiceSupport Efrat’s work: ⁠https://bit.ly/zap_efrat– CHAPTERS – 00:00 - Coming Up…01:18 - Introduction: Eddie Hobbs02:37 - From Finance to Dissident: Eddie's Journey06:52 - Ireland's Quiet Coup: The Troika, NGOs & Illusion of Democracy10:32 - Ad Break: Expat Money & Ledn12:48 - Ireland's Captured Media & the RTÉ Bailout14:35 - Ivor Cummins, the IPCC Reversal & the Climate Fear Machine15:54 - Digital ID, Technocracy, Migration, Ireland as Guinea Pig16:47 - The Fuel Protests, Wokeness, "Far Right", & a Nation Waking Up24:02 - Europe's Political Pendulum: Sovereignty vs. Globalism28:24 - Ad Break: Trezor & Abundant Mines30:15 - Why Is Ireland Chosen as a Guinea Pig?32:43 - Peter Sutherland, Klaus Schwab & the Architects of Stakeholder Capitalism33:48 - Critical Thinking Fights Back: Eddie's New Book36:50 - Beyond Logic: Intuition, Spirit & the Compulsion to Speak Truth40:42 - Where to Follow Eddie Hobbs41:52 - Bitcoin, Sovereignty & the Power to Say No

Ireland was subject to, essentially, a coup. I describe the Irish government as a Vichy government, captive to the outside. On the 28th of February, 2020, the security state in America, Britain, Holland, Germany, Australia, just took over. That's the apex power in the world. This is way above governments, you know?

It's above the EU. That's what was running the show. The whole purpose is to destabilise the family unit, to break the bonds of society, and then you can control it. It's effectively a totalitarian agenda, late 2040s, on the current trajectory, which of course can be changed. The native Irish will be a minority in our own country. We've got to wake up and stand up for ourselves.

If you find the truth of something, part of the character of a critical thinking person is you must share it. You can't just die with it. I know I've described the Irish media essentially as the North Korea of Europe. Which you were part of for many years, right? Yeah, I was a contractor for them until I caused all that difficulty with the government. And then the Broadcasting Act was brought in, which basically said that you're no longer allowed to look down a camera lens and give your opinion. Hello and welcome to another episode of You're The Voice.

I'm Frat once again, but this time from Ireland, all the way from Ireland. first time in my life being here i'm at the bitcoin conference in ireland and i have the greatest honor of being here with eddie hobbs hey eddie well thank you very much efrat thank you for agreeing to come on my show this is a great honor it was reciprocal correct so i was just on your show i'm very excited for that and i was just mentioning how great your studio is and how i love what you do my audience may not know you so they're very international so i would like to say a few words. So Eddie is a financial advisor, bestselling author, and host of the Counterpoint podcast. Former consumer advocate turned fierce critic of centralized power. Eddie runs a blog

called the 1215 Tribes, right? That's right, yeah. On Substack. And it's a platform named after the Magna Carta. Well, the year of the Magna Carta, 1215. 1215. And you're also the author of Breaking the Silence, which came out in 2024. Yeah, and the return of totalitarianism. There you go and soon the author of a second book called it's called critical thinking fights back there we go it's trying to get people's critical thinking faculties back functioning again after being disassembled over the last five years we need that thank you very much for writing that book so let's start with what took you to being a dissenting voice you know you build your public figure fighting for irish consumers against rip of culture at what point did you cross from the

financial advisor part or from being more in the establishment to kind of speaking out and questioning some of the systems that we're living in well i think the the transition moment was what happened to all of us during the covid psych op which is what it was i've done an awful miles of research into it books videos you name it wrote about it studied it cross cross-checked the information and it's quite clear to me that on the 28th of february 2020 the security state in america and britain holland germany australia just took over they were always in charge anyway and that's why it felt like a military exercise because the the rate at which people were being deplatformed dissent was being closed down people were being deliced people were losing their their

their medical licenses and that's still going on in ireland it was all done with extraordinary precision and the and the actual you know the technology platforms themselves were under pressure from the same power and that's the apex power in the world this is way way above governments you know it's above the eu that's what was running the show that's that's the conclusion that i came to over time but before that i had a long-term record in uh in kind of checking power here in ireland you know so in the early 90s i collapsed the endowment mortgage industry in ireland which was a curse and ahead of it happening in britain that was a that and that kind of got me into into to other things as well through the consumer association of ireland so throughout the 90s i

was i was fighting for compulsory consumer rights for disclosure and financial products so people could see where the con was happening and and finally that was one i took an action under the competition act against the government who were supporting the banking and insurance industry and they lost and they were forced then to bring in consumer disclosure laws in 2000 2001 and then i went on then and did other work after that i did um a program called rip off republic which was 21 years ago now and uh it it had the highest um audience for factual television in ireland and that was the beginning that was the apex of it because it really rattled the government it collapsed the groceries order which was so rip off republic was all about showing the parts of

the economy that were subject to protectionism and how it was impacting on consumer prices and shoving up the cost of living and basically keeping power in the hands of kind of the Irish equivalent of oligarchies in various areas and it was very successful because it was true but it brought down the groceries order which was actually making it illegal for retailers in Ireland to pass on bulk discounts that they were getting from manufacturers to consumers and if you think about it that's nuts but it had been in existence since 1987 and I got the audience to start sending nappies into the minister because nappies were a grocery item and I was showing I was asking people could they eat it you know what it was doing all it's all funny stuff you know

it was taking I was using a lot of satire and and it connected with the people and so thousands of nappies started to be posted into government and then once I said like whoever sends in the biggest postal bag will win we'll take it down and of course it was taken down a few months later by the current Taoiseach of Ireland oh my god Micheál Martin and and then really so you just keep going forward from there and you know other things happen along the way and then of course covid for me just showed that revealed the world to me the way it was really working as opposed to how i thought it was working and it's been a complete revelation i wish i had known all this a long time ago did you think that governments were the ceiling where it stops and then you kind of saw

beyond yeah i thought like all the other normies and uh and it's it's psychologically it's a huge leap to take and you can't do it overnight you have to go on the journey yourself you you know i find so if you're engaging with people i think you need to use questions rather than make statements because it's such a huge thing you're basically telling them that the structure of the world that they look at doesn't exist in reality it's a creation if so for example in ireland Ireland was subject to essentially a coup when we went burst in 2012-2011. And we came under the Troika credit agreement, you know, which is the EU, the IMF and the ECB. And when that happened then, a deal was done.

And the deal was done between the permanent government in Ireland, the senior civil servants, which are far more powerful. I mean, the parliament we have is the summer help. You know, there's no power in it at all, really. 80 of the legislation flows down from the european union yeah you taught me about the concept of summer help yeah it's a puppet theater you know and and so the flows from the senior civil servants in brussels the commission which of course isn't elected right down through their senior civil servants to our senior civil servants and then a swarm of ngos around our parliament and that swarm of ngos has gone from eight and a half thousand to thirty three and a half thousand

in the meantime and the ngos then are a bubble around the parliament and the only ngo that was ever closed down from 2012 to today was the ngo called benefacts whose job was to tell us where all the money was going across the ngo sector that was closed what a coincidence yeah and it goes on a local government level as well so all of that infrastructure is there so the irish people then go and we go to referendums occasionally and it gives people the semblance that they actually have an influence on what's going on but do they they don't because you're sending members of the parliament who don't understand that who don't even want to begin to understand any of this stuff so the biggest problem we have just doing some numbers this morning coincidentally and using ai

and and it's quite clear for example that on the current trajectory we're on right now because we have a huge so what we're growing our economy with migrant workers and we're exporting our young most talented because they can't afford to live here anymore because of house prices and so on all that structure is by design none of it is accidental that's the point and it's quite clear that by the mid 2040s late 2040s on the current trajectory which of course can be changed but on the current trajectory the native Irish will be a minority in our own country and by 2100 by the end of the century uh we were the native irish on the current trajectory again which can be changed we'll end up somewhere between 20 and 30 percent of the population of ireland that's the big problem

yes and that that has huge huge implications across everything but the discussion we're now having is not being had in political circles in ireland bar one or two it's not being had because it's verboten and the irish media itself then effort is is now in the pocket of the same thing so the print media in ireland the main newspapers that broadsheets uh the obviously the state behemothic but behemoth in our sense the state broadcaster rt is obviously a state broadcaster which you were part of for was yeah well it was employed by them yeah it was a contractor for them yeah until until i until i caused all that difficulty with the government and then the the uh the broadcasting act was brought in which basically said that you're no longer allowed to

look down a camera lens and give your opinion so that was that was the beginning of the end of of my um few years in there and now i've described the irish media essentially as the north korea and just for people who don't know i learned about this thing just a couple of days ago and you told me about it so so this became a law right that no one on public broadcast can do that can actually speak to the camera with their own opinion yeah you have to get they can do news reading but they cannot give their own opinion about it so things that are still happening in most western countries around the world cannot happen in ireland tired of feeling like your freedom and future are fading away do you live in a country with growing inflation crazy housing

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so i was going to have to ask the question run around the other side of the table and answer the question and go back around the other side of the table again it was with ai today it's quite easy yeah of course yeah but it was ridiculous you know so but where we are if you fast forward where we are today is that the irish media commercial media are getting 15 million a year direct grants from various agencies of the state this is and this was doubled in january 2026 from seven and a half million to 15. Now, to put that into, say, American numbers, multiply that by 60 to bring it to American numbers

or multiply 15 by 20 to bring it to British numbers, 15 to 20 to bring it to British numbers. This is significant money. And then the VAT was removed on the media as well. So they're getting that, right? So the government basically- More and more controlled. Captured.

Yeah, captured completely. And RT, of course, were just bailed out to the tune of 720 million. Oh, were they? I was not aware of that bailing them out like a bank exactly

they got a bailout so the Irish so what I say is that the Irish fourth estate deserted the Irish nation at the start of COVID correct

that's when it started and it's gone it no longer exists so what you're reading every day if you're getting your current affairs from say

reading the Irish Times it's like having your breakfast with a bowl of milk and sleeping pills you know that's its effect it's the same

opinions in all of the newspapers it's a collective and it moves like a collective like for example at the end of april there you heard you know you were mentioned there off camera that i did an interview there with ivor cummins who you know and i know great guy a very good friend of mine yes and uh we and we started to talk about rcp uh 8.5 which was the taking you know the unipcc has basically said sorry guys all that scare stuff that we've been putting out there for the last 25 years is wrong regarding climate regarding those who don't know ipcc is the is the un committee for climate yes it's the doctrine for saint greta of thornburg yes for example and al

gore and and and the people throwing all the paint on the on the artwork throughout europe they're not so we were wrong about global warming we were wrong about this is the end of humanity yeah it was yeah it was it was selling fear and they knew it was wrong but it's taken they were they're forced now to admit it but it was quietly done of course and it hasn't had an inch of space in any of their newspapers but we're still getting every single day we're getting some climate zealot trying to scare keep the scare going correct so for me then it's quite clear it all everything traces because it was all predicted anyway you know 30 40 years ago climate and pandemics is the way to keep a population in fear for sure keep them in fear

and wars you can control them and wars yeah and and and then you can control them and you can bring in all your your totalitarian technology which is coming so and so so all of the stuff that's coming or here depending on i think it's well it's arriving in bits yeah yeah i mean you know we talked about um the irish um being the guinea pig for yes for digital id and so what was described as you know conspiracy theory a few years ago is actually happening on our watch yes You know, and the same thing then people were told, no, we don't. We're OK. We have we have the you know, we have the migration, especially the unorthodox migration coming into Ireland under control. They don't. They've no control of it at all. And they're under instructions anyway from above to do this. You know, so it's extraordinary. It's deeply frustrating to watch because you're seeing a media reporting on on the summer help in the in the theatre every single day.

as if it had any impact on what was happening in our lives, which it doesn't, because it's been decided outside of Ireland. And then implemented here. Yeah. So when we had the fuel protest in Ireland just a few weeks ago... Just a quick, before you get there, a quick question. Do you think the Irish population is aware of what you're saying now?

It's beginning to wake up. It's been a long time chipping away on the fringe. And what happened with the fuel protest, well there was a number of things happened this is this is the build right yeah so about two years ago the government uh led by leo vradka at the time decided to uh eliminate the mother from the irish constitution the definition family they wanted to change the definition of the family yeah yeah and all of the parent and not mother no no they want they wanted to take mother out of the constitution family basically was being was they wanted to dilute it to be to be really cool

you know and uh to be really progressive and woke and lgbtq plus plus plus whatever all of that all of that gang and the engine got going and the engine was the media the establishment and the political group and they were all telling people vote yes there was two votes vote yes yes vote and everybody was going to vote yes yes and the arch people come out and voted no no at a level of like 75 and two-thirds no no it was a firm no and nobody in the establishment saw it coming and that was the first time that there was a clear gap between the irish nation which pre-exists the state here by centuries when we go back thousands of years we pre-existed and it's it's a construct that we created in 2019 you know in the early 1920s so when you look at

our constitution the preamble of our constitution is the irish people giving their voice we the people are creating and this is these are the rules we want you to run the state by but you're doing it on our behalf but of course it switched around since then and we also had an original constitution is this based on the magna carta yeah well well the magna carta would have been the start of all constitutions really because it was the first time that that kind of the beginning of civil rights came in even though it was for the barons and the knights and all the rest of it but all of the constitutions that flowed flowed from the magna carta so after the english civil war and then the the american war of independence and the french revolution they all came all of

those constitutions came out of Magna Carta Magna Carta was the break of the divine right of the monarchy and it allowed people to be brought to court in front of their peers and so on you couldn't you couldn't just be eliminated by by order of the crown you know and all of that so that's why 1215 was important historically just just globally so the machine gets going and the Irish people said no and that was the first indication that the people have moved so the Overton window was moving in Ireland people were on the move but the establishment was still where it was and the establishment then would say anybody that had moved in that direction well you're now far right and I'll say we're not far right we're actually just right so far

and that's great yeah so so and that's what's happened and then we had a government that now is not dealing with the major issue they keep not wanting to talk about it because it's racist you're racist you're racist now father we used to say there was a comedy program called Father Ted and he did a very good show

on racism and Father Ted was a priest on an island it was very funny and he came out of his house after making a mess

of something with some Chinese people and the local farmer was looking across the field and said I hear you're racist now father he said

I've no time for the old racism myself but after seven o'clock in the evening maybe I could do a bit of racism then father you know

and it was you know so so it was peeling away the the taboo around the the term you know very clever program and so so all of that has been thrown at people and they're sick of it people are sick of being described they are sick of being described as racist which they're not generally speaking we were never an imperial country we were the opposite and we're being described as far right which we're not there's evidently no far right in ireland if they are they're they're way out on the extreme they're not getting elected even to local council you know in a lot of cases so it doesn't exist but what's happened is that the nation has moved the establishment is still where

it was still selling the old message which is kind of progressive left thinking all of the woke stuff all of that they're all over in that part of the pitch and the people are moving over here saying sorry we're over here now and and i'm getting sick of it and i think we'll begin to see that come through in the in the by-elections which are happening as we speak in galway and dublin today it's the beginning of an awakening and where it really all came together there was a fuel protest right so out of the blue tell me about that yeah out of the blue farmers and truckers well it wasn't really out of the blue farmers and truckers said we've had enough of this we cannot survive our margins are blown on the basis of the of the level of prices for for for oil and gas right for

for petrol and for diesel yeah essentially kerosene and home eating oil as well came into it so they decided to blockade the country and it was really clever they're huge machines it would take the army to shift the machines and they just went and they just they just parked up and they get they got huge public support because what they did was they pulled the scab off what i just described without realizing it they were focusing on their own personal issues you know about the cost of fuel but what they were doing for the nation without they now realize this they didn't at the time they did is they pulled off the scab and and it was a huge surge of public support behind them not just because they wanted to give the government a kicking they wanted to the people

wanted to roar at the government right they were really they were enraged by them because they weren't listening to what the people wanted to say to them they're sick of of looking at people coming into ireland getting better benefits than the own native people they're sick of of bringing their children their adult children to the airport and waving goodbye to them not seeing them again because they're leaving because they can't afford to live here any longer and then looking and seeing people coming in and getting all of these benefits where basically outsiders were are getting better benefits than the irish themselves and it's not like it just it's just unfair and and and that that did that start in april or before it was in april yeah it was it was in the early part of

april that the fuel protest happened it went along for how long it went on for about um two weeks nearly two weeks and eventually the the you know the the government decided to get tough and broke it up and but i saw some robocops in the streets but it's only temporary it's it's gonna it's all going to go again it's going to kick off again okay people are annoyed and they're slow to anger but once they anger you know and you're beginning to see in the popular media as well in the in the in the north korea europe media you're beginning to see some of the opinion farmers tiptoeing away from their hardened positions so the writers that are over there they're beginning to feel the change and they're now beginning to shift what they're saying so so it's it's incremental but it is

happening shift in what way they're becoming more courageous oh yeah okay they're beginning to say well you know they're beginning to soften their right soften their leg because they know that they're this isn't going to work because the people have moved when once that once you lose the like in football if you lose the dressing room that's the end of it the team is finished right you have to win the dressing room back and in political terms you have to win the nation back and and that's that will all manifest itself now over the next few years unfortunately we're a few years away from a general election yet but when you look at what's happened in europe you're beginning to see the same shift in holland and germany and france italy have brought in georgia

maloney uh who's breath of fresh air for me anyway she's great to listen to whatever about her policies she's she's a she's a real canister of energy you know and uh you'll be so beginning to see these political changes going on in europe and as a consequence of that the pendulum is now swinging back to the center away from the left even though those those that are in it in the bubble think that they're actually centrist themselves that they're right they're not so for me left and right is all irrelevant now anyway it's about sovereign people that believe in the sovereignty of the nation state of the nation itself and those that believe in globalism and you you can see the globalists because they believe that oh we're we're giving up our

sovereignty and it's a good thing to do to the center because we're such a small country and blah blah blah you hear that all the time yeah but there's a price for that and you hear it about inclusion you know let's just love everybody you know come by uh kind of stuff and let's have a government where we can sit down and just talk about our feelings all day long and get nothing done you know and it's a disaster and also you begin to see the linkages as well for example critical theory coming through children children being indoctrinated basically porn being taught to them in school that whole transgender ideology thing sitting next door to a country that for four years produced the cast report which is the science around the whole area and clearly showed

that the affirmation ideology is very dangerous for children and shouldn't be done so they they eliminated hormone blockers for under 18s in britain next door yes and and it wasn't even reported in ireland we're still pushing affirmation ideology and and just literally within the last two weeks the president of ireland um katherine connelly has become the patron of the central ngo promoting that in schools called belong to so she's the patron of belong to and so you can see what what we're up against you know yeah and all of that many different different attack vectors it's all the same little country yeah i know you know the stuff anyway for it but the you know the whole purpose is to is to destabilize the family unit to break the bonds of society which makes it

an amorphous blend of nothing and then you can control it it's effectively a totalitarian agenda and in ideological terms it's somewhere between socialism and communism and and that's being implemented it's been implemented slowly year by year by year so when in 2000 when we were after the burst the irish senior civil servants that had done the deal to protect themselves from job losses at the time i i did an op-ed for the wall street journal in october 2012 which caused the furore in Ireland because I described the Irish government as a VG government captive to the outside all the stuff you know and they didn't like it I was actually brought in I was brought over the coals by a TV station in Ireland it was a private economy TV station but I came in to be

interviewed by a former minister of government and the producer said to me that no she was really annoyed about what I'd written in the Wall Street Journal and and that I hadn't played you know I wasn't wearing the green jersey and I remember saying to him at the time you were not on the team so she said oh yeah he's going to and i said well you better be ready you better have the ambulance ready because you'll be picking her up off the floor if she goes with that he said i can't change i said but it's too late now isn't it we're on in five minutes and i'm gonna this is going to be fun so we went in and she started and i said i find it i just said i find it amazing that i'm sitting here on private sector television being being asked this question by a former government

minister who's on a pension of 72 000 euros per annum i declared her pension publicly and she was just looking around the table for the ejection button at that stage to get me out of the studio as fast as possible you know but i'm just simply saying that at the time that's what happened and then the irish senior civil servants along with kenyans this is interesting yeah were given the job by the un of designing the sustainable development goals the 17 sustainable development goals that are part of agenda 2030 exactly which has driven all irish policy and many other countries policies ever since but the irish created it along with some kenyans and then that was ratified by the un in at the end of 2012 2015 and that's all happened kind of behind the

scenes without much public discussion about it or any media coverage and as a consequence of that it's the permanent government deciding how it's going to be run it didn't matter what political mixture came through the parliament it didn't it didn't matter it was that was that's just the summer help that's my point it doesn't matter this is the way we're going to do it and that's what actually happened. Your The Voice is brought to you by Trezor, the original Bitcoin hardware wallet company pioneering the development of self-custody for crypto assets since 2013, empowering individuals with an open source device, enabling beginners and experts to easily and securely hold their coins. I find my Trezor super easy to use and recommend it to my friends and

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infrastructure is there a digital infrastructure is there more technology is that what is it that they're choosing to do certain things okay in Ireland in your opinion of course well well well if you look at where and firstly the answer to that question if you look at what Ireland is geographically first, right? So we're an island off the northwestern Europe. We're English-speaking. We're the only English-speaking country

now in Europe, right? And Dublin is the largest English-speaking city in the EU now since Brexit. And Ireland is also the headquarters of the... Big tech. Of big tech, of American...

Google and Facebook and all those. And Ireland also happens to be quite pro-European. And diplomatically, we haven't caused too many difficulties around the world we haven't stepped on toes and the the actual education level of the irish people is very high relative to many other countries but is particularly high and that's a consequence of that if you go on to experiment with what we call stakeholder capitalism which is what's happening here this is wrapping the

ngos around the parliament and controlling by stealth in the background which is what's been happening all of that is straight out of the world economic forum playbook as you know and ireland ireland is the petri dish for it and that was all decided when ireland burst that was the opportunity come in tie them up with credit get agreements and then we and we we now have the guinea pig uh that we can use to implement all of this and that's what's happened so ireland got some subsidies some money from higher up we were given a bailout yeah yeah 64 billion so that that's the price you have to pay for yeah but most of that money actually was should have been paid by french and german banks but they were being protected so the irish carried irish carried

the cost of the failure of french especially german banks lending into a crazy property market in ireland at the time so but that's ancient history now because we're out of that but the point is that so so ireland is is is a very good starting point to test this stuff out and we can also we can also bring it on are you saying it's history sorry that i'm interrupting you but you're saying it's history but the way that the fiat monetary system is designed is that debt is accumulating it's never gone and we're feeling the consequences of it generation after generation agreed until something pops i think that peter sutherland who by the way the other thing about peter sutherland peter sutherland was also the mentor for 18 years of klaus schwab and when he

died in 2017 18 klaus schwab eulogized him on the world economic forum website still there and like he was designing and Kissinger we should mention as well another prodigy Kissinger was American

they could deal with their problem there and I get it all and of course he had a huge impact on geopolitics you know and on Schwab

exactly but Sutherland is our Kissinger yes Sutherland designed stakeholder capital with Klaus Schwab and then he's

the High Commissioner for Refugees for the UN and then he's saying oh flood Europe with migrants and all of that and no

that's exactly what's happening and you sit down sometimes with people you just give them the facts and say no what are the chances you could say well the chance of that happening might be say one in ten but the chances of this happening and that happening together well that's maybe one in a hundred thousand but the chance of this happening this happening this happening this happening and all of these things happening being not connected it's orchestrated

yeah of course it is i mean it's way out at 26 or 27 standard deviations it's just crazy so like all of that and that's what my book was about you know in my current book but like all of this is available for many many speakers and other people as you know throughout the world and videos and discussions like this and so on so what i'm trying to do with my next book is to say well what's the real problem here right for people right and for me what i keep running across is because people are being streamed at by the media yeah stream that i'm not just talking about social media streaming now i'm talking about the active like in our case captive media they're being streamed at by the machine and they're no longer thinking for themselves they've lost the ability regurgitating

other people's thoughts we're in echo chambers messaging yes and then we're shouting at one another across from our tribal camps and it descends very quickly into unpleasantness on social media and nobody's thinking for themselves and well very few so i said well isn't that interesting i think that there's been a massive fall in critical thinking global in the west because of technology and the way we're using it it's not the technology is wrong it's the way we're using it and we need to pull back from that and the way you pull back from that is to relearn critical thinking as an individual and then to begin to think in groups so you call a critical thing you learn it you relearn it doesn't take much and then you you call critical thinking

assemblies you bring in other people from diverse backgrounds you have your question and you sit down there's no technology other than sitting down around the table of course you can record it and publish it if you want to and you actually begin to address the main questions of our lives in open discussion but using critical thinking rules that have been designed since Socrates time you know right up to recent times and we relearn it and we take away we do it away from the technology and it's human to human engagement again and that collaborative thinking i think is the way that we can counterbalance the impact of artificial intelligence and everything that that's going to bring positives and negatives to us and and also our vulnerability to propaganda

because our vulnerability to propaganda i think is growing because we're we're not engaging our critical thinking if we were or we would have a defense against the propaganda but it's streaming at us every day it's on everything you know yeah and uh so so for me critical thinking fights back was a good title to give the book yes it's not a very big book it's 80 000 words or so it's about 12 chapters that are 12 chapters and the central piece of it is critical thinking about power and helping you to begin to you to use the principles to think about how power operates and then critical thinking like a detective how detectives actually detect you know yes and then critical thinking groups and then the characteristics of critical thinking and the history which is very

interesting of critical thinking beautiful and and and that's what i'm trying to do just trying trying to wake people up and and also starting the book by saying to people look critical thinking is a fantastic tool but it's a rational way of thinking correct but we're designed differently we're designed to think rationally but we're inspired we we find our wisdom emotions and yes and intuition and intuition that's right and the divine spark spirit spirituality yes and that we you can't lose sight of that either and that's that's that's echoing throughout history and all the great philosophers if you listen if you watch what they've said they're all saying the same thing right up to today so to me then because it's often said you know that that all of this

that we're going through we've gone through many times before and it's a fence it's essentially a spiritual war you know and and it's not just a binary of good versus evil there's all sorts of grays in between but that's essentially where we are and and we've we've got to wake up and stand up for ourselves we were always called to do this by the way i think this has been this has been going on for for as long as as we've had human history this is just our version of it today so we need to stand up wow i had so many other questions to ask you but and i didn't want to interrupt that that was perfect i i do want to ask you one thing so you're talking about critical thinking indeed a logical intellectual tool i think that during the

process that you describe at the beginning of your awakening and taking agency and courage to stand up to a lot of the existing systems that you came from that required from you something else other than just critical thinking because you were observing the data and you know the logical arguments and you were reaching those conclusions but then there is something else that gives you that courage that calls you to action is that that divine spirit that you're talking about is that because there is something else that there is that there's another element and that's like it's it's a key component that i always ask people to pay attention to because at one point it will ask them to take down their guard or you know take down their ego and be open curious again

humble again i don't know what how do you define that that's a very deep question as you know but let me just try and unpack it's hard to do that in a short answer i'm sorry no no not at all um i think that firstly um you if you if you if you read not just read if you read about critical thing or you engage in critical thinking you'll quickly see that that if you find the truth of something part of the character of a critical thinking person is you must share it you can't just die with it if you find it you must share it that's that's the why you're designed to have critical thinking mind yeah it's not for you to live with great wisdom yourself while everybody else and you have to share it so there is a compulsion to do it right that's a very good

link that's a very good linkage between the two yeah there's a compulsion the other thing is that like i've been i've been i've always thought a woman was cutting a leg of lamb in two you know the story and he she was asked why are you cutting the leg of lamb in two before you before you cook at it and she said because it improves improves the flavor so they went and asked her mother and she said well i did it because my mother was doing it and i think it improves the flavor and they went to the grandmother she was still alive she said i had to cut a leg of lemon too because the oven was too small so i was always the one that was saying why are we cutting the leg of lemon too i've i've spent my life looking at yes i've always spent i can't my mind is orientated to look at the

at the gap between the stars you know what what what's unseen here what's not being said you know rather than what's being said what's really happening and it's not being paranoid or skeptical or anything it's just one curious curious to understand it you know but then then over the years i've i've stood up you know against the state against power quite often at cost because it does come at cost and if i had my life to do all over again i would do the exact same thing again because that's what i'm supposed to do i love it i love it thank you so much for sharing that and me too by the way i think you know that by now eddie i don't think i need to ask that but where should people follow you and your work well counterpoint is you know we're

out weekly we intend to grow into um in into a channel here you know uh but so counterpoint a proper tv or media proper current affairs channel yes and uh so counterpoint is simply the the beachhead but it goes out weekly and you'll get it on youtube and facebook and then we do shorts on on x instagram and instagram yeah so so that's where you'll get that and uh the book will be you know you get all that because i'd probably put the links to the book i will i will put that but if you go to my website it's very simple it's just called eddie hobbs.com you'll get the links to everything there you know so that's the hub so if you want to go there you you know that's that's the place to go if you if you want to connect but bear in mind that my

audience is i mean i regularly interview people from outside like you and which was great and and many others in there but if they mix it with local local stuff as well obviously to keep the audience interested of course and also because it's all happening in ireland of course i think ireland is a super interesting place to follow what's happening here now is going to determine a lot of where the eu is going to take things so i think also the resistance here is very important so it's it's very important to keep an eye out okay great and you are i just have to say that last word you are coming to meet me here at a bitcoin conference i am so happy that you are open-minded to it i know that it's very difficult for many people to to open their themselves into

bitcoin especially when they come from traditional finance because there is a paradigm shift when you start looking at that monetary system versus the existing monetary system though those are completely different rules so i just want to commend you for coming and listening and being open to it first time i mean i i'm sure i'm sure i have tied with i mean i i have studied it in the past i was compelled to study it actually for a high court report i had to do on bitcoin so that's really got me into it and and it's it's absolutely compelling on paper like it's absolutely compelling the issue bitcoin faces and by the way i'm saying this is just an ordinary person right yes with a great sector deep sector knowledge even though i have some crypto myself as a tester you know

i think that it's a power game now you know and it's it's about because because crypto is part of the solution but the much and it's a very important part of the solution just as i think gold is part of the solution but the biggest part of the solution is not is not the currency the biggest part of the solution is us the biggest part of the solution is us everywhere taking 70 and telling them no we've had enough of this go go or we will force you to go you know that's the biggest thing I totally agree with you. I think that's where people conflate crypto and Bitcoin because they are very different from one another. Bitcoin is the only tool where you can actually hold and say that no very powerfully because you become the bearer asset holder of your Bitcoin with no other currency. You can do that. There is no issuer. There is no CEO. There is no one that they can come and choke and take your Bitcoin because they closed an office or put a Satoshi Nakamoto in jail.

it just doesn't exist it's completely decentralized so if you hold your coins in bitcoin you have the power to say no because you hold your money and they can't take it away from you that's why i got into bitcoin as a freedom tool so that tool really helps me advance my sovereignty in life and and that's why i think a lot of my audience is even if they don't have bitcoin yet or they're not into it yet they understand that that is a tool that can help them and then the only thing we can do is show them how to do it in self-custody in the right way so yeah there is a struggle there saying no resisting it is the most important thing i agree with you yeah i agree well look listen i the no i had in mind was when you know when hundreds of thousands or a million people turn

up outside their house of parliament and they say no which is what happened in czechoslovakia remember yes they were just waving the keys at the communists they were just tinkling their keys in huge numbers and the communists got the message and that's where i'm going from here to czechoslovakia they have the largest bitcoin conference in europe with 10 000 people it's my third year there and the czech people until today are very freedom oriented they will not take shit so during covid they were pretty good yeah they didn't take the jabs and everything and they they're really great so they're the community there is a little bit more switched on i think to standing for their rights and i think you see that in different things that are happening and they are part of

the eu but they still kept their currency for example so they have some levels of of sovereignty that don't exist in other places when you go on stage to talk to them bring a set of keys which is just you know they'll get it let's see let's see okay that's a good idea well thank you so much eddie that has been a pleasure and i'd love to have you on again later on thanks very much thank you thank you thanks for being with us please take a minute to give this episode a like comment and subscribe or follow and please share it with your friends so they can also get value and choose to take some positive action in their lives till next time