Full transcript: James Albury on London Real
0:00 Hey, it’s Nick and Brian from London Real. This week we have James Albury on the show. He’s a citizen journalist who’s covered Occupy London and WikiLeaks Julian Assange. Yeah, if you’re tired of the mainstream media and want to know what’s really going on in the world, you need to give us a watch. Check it out.
0:14 This is London, motherfucking real. I am Brian Rose. This is Nick Gabriel. And joining us today is Mr. James Albury, who is a citizen journalist who covered the Occupy Movement here in London, and also Julian Assange’s recent escape, I could put it, to the Ecuadorian embassy. Welcome, James.
0:47 Thank you very much for having me, it’s absolutely great to be here, thank you. Awesome man, what is a citizen journalist? Well a citizen journalist is somebody who doesn’t necessarily have professional journalistic qualifications and it’s basically anybody who’s prepared to put their hand up and say I’ll cover that by whatever means, I mean there’s people that write, people that live tweet from situations and there’s people that live stream, there’s people like photo journalists who do it on a citizen journalism basis.
1:18 So it’s basically anybody who’s interested in news, basically, and is willing and prepared to cover it themselves, despite not necessarily having, as I said, any educational training in it. It’s just somebody who wants to do it. Why do you think we need citizen journalists? I was gonna say, I kind of anticipated that question in a way. I think there’s a lot of problems with what a lot of people refer to the mainstream media and that’s actually a term I’m gonna stop using because I’m not actually answering your question directly here but mainstream media is what currently is what people refer to as corporate media and the reason why I don’t want to keep on attacking mainstream media is because they do have a role to play however I think they get a lot wrong they’re basically top-down organizations and citizen journalism works from the grassroots up and when When you turn that on its head like that, it brings a whole load of new information to light.
2:21 I mean, corporate media, they have their sponsorship and their advertising, et cetera, and I think that compromises them to a certain extent. There’s only so much they can say about a certain business entity or something at risk of pissing off their advertisers or something. As a citizen journalist, you’re completely independent. I don’t have anything like that holding me back. I can just say what I want and I can film what I want and I don’t have any stake in any particular outcomes or anything, I can just report facts as closely as I possibly can.
2:53 How do you get into this? I mean, what, do you wake up one day and think, I’m going to be a citizen journalist? Well, the way it started for me was when the Occupy movement started here in London 15th of October last year. I looked at what was going on down there and then I’d compare it with mainstream reports. And for the most part, not all the time, but a lot of the time what I was actually witnessing with my own two eyes wasn’t really represented entirely fairly in the corporate news as far as I could see. So that kind of inspired me to be like, well, what can we do about this? And with a bunch of other people there, I actually start live streaming straight away. That was actually only really once Occupy had finished. What I was doing was going around recording with one of those little HD flip cams and I uploaded a few videos to YouTube. Again like I emphasize absolutely no media journalistic experience whatsoever. Never done any video editing in my life or anything like that. Just had to just sort of like work it out as I went along and I would say that I’m probably probably still rubbish at doing that. I found a bit more of a niche within live streaming because quite honestly you don’t have to edit it. That’s kind of a point that it is just live as it happens. But there was a lot of people that I met down at Occupy. A lot of them were sort of like really crazy and I didn’t agree with them at all. There’s a lot
4:22 Of people who really inspired me and helped me out absolutely tons. And it was just like the associations with those groups of people and that comparison with the corporate media that just made me think, you know, what else can we do? Can we get the information out there ourselves rather than having to rely on big organizations to do it for us, because they clearly won’t. What didn’t you think was being reported correctly and unoccupied? Because actually Nick and I went down there in November and we looked around.
4:49 We weren’t doing Citizen General. I think Nick and I spent 20 minutes down there. But what’s the right word? Divergence? Inaccuracies or the emissions, I guess.
4:59 Well, I think you kind of like maybe answered your own question with you spent 20 minutes down there because I was down there I was like sleeping on a cold slab floor kind of thing there were there was a there was just sort of like every form of humanity there and it was such a diverse mixture of people I’ve never been associated with such a diverse open kind of thing and I think that there was a lot of hope especially in the early days particularly you’ve got down there by November and I think think things were already starting to unravel by that point. That quick. Yeah I was saying outside element starting coming in whatever that is maybe that was you. Well yeah I mean there’s a lot of people down there working really really hard and a lot of the most active people that the people that were really into it for what I would describe possibly as better reasons than some others and I suffered from this myself a bit it’s just burnout it’s just sheer exhaustion you spend all day sort of like speaking to people explaining to them while you’re there or you know there’s people working really hard in the kitchen I mean that they were feeding thousands of people a day down there and all and all for free and you know that didn’t just come out of nowhere people were donating food they were donating money and people were like missing all that together and making some really amazing meals but because of the nature of it
6:23 Being so open and I’m not criticizing people for this but people who are desperate, homeless, drug problems, that kind of thing. They were able to go somewhere where there was as much as anything just sort of like somebody who actually listens to them. A lot of these people that were quite troubled but they didn’t feel they could get anybody to understand them or whatever and that really, really drained people’s energy. So dealing with those people. Yeah, yeah it was basically just sort of like this tidal wave of just stuff. I mean because There was media there covering it, certainly a lot more so than Occupy Wall Street in the early days.
7:01 But, you know, that was draining itself as well and I think a lot of the most active people really, really got just burnt out and tired and by November I’d certainly say things were starting to deteriorate. I would say the first two weeks were just extraordinary, absolutely blew my mind. You know James, I wanted to ask, did you agree with the Occupy movement? a broad question. With a lot of what a lot of people who are involved with the Occupy movement are talking about, certainly, yeah, yeah, the society has got some big, big problems.
7:37 You know, back in 2008, we were told by experts that the economy will be back on track by 2010. When we got 2010, they said, oh, it’ll be 2012. Well, here we are, 2012, and they’re telling us it’ll be 2014. The debt crisis across Europe and across the globe, it runs deep, really, really deep. A few other issues as well, which I think is a species we’ve got to start facing up to. Could you elaborate a little bit on that? Well, planetary possible ecological crisis, it’s not something that I actually worry about massively. I’m assuming you guys might be familiar with George Carlin. I absolutely love his attitude to it.
8:22 Sitting back and watching everything burn, right? Yeah, basically. Life is an absolute freak show and when you’re born in the USA you get a front row seat, etc. But you also said something I thought that really sort of like a hit home with me. Although I try to minimise my consumption just because I don’t think people should take more than they need from a society or from what the planet can provide it. It It does have a carrying capacity, there’s only so much stuff here, and for instance, once the oil, once it’s all gone, you know, it’s all gone, we need to sort of like start thinking about solutions to it before it’s all gone, and I think this is around about the time to do that.
8:59 I’ve kind of like lost my thread a little bit, there was a … I was just asking if you agreed with Occupy Movement and then you spoke about the problems we have as a species, and interesting. The things you didn’t agree with in the Occupy Movement? Because I think people tend to think that since you’re covering it, that you’re completely in agreement with that and with Assange. So how does that work with you?
9:20 Yeah, that’s really, really true. Yeah, that’s very interesting. If you’re live streaming something, I’ve covered a lot more than just Occupy and Assange. I also tried to do quite a lot of local issues as well. Such as?
9:35 There was Leighton Marsh. That was actually the very, very first live stream that I did, which was back in February of this year. Leighton Marsh, for the Olympics, they’re building a basketball court on an open public space. As far as I can see, they basically just rode roughshod over all the usual planning permissions that would be required. Basically, well, it’s the Olympics, so this thing’s going up. It affected quite a lot of people. It’s an area of special, natural interest. It’s a nature reserve. They’re saying this building is going to be temporary, but a lot of the local people were really not too trustful of that actually being the case because they’ve got an ice rink there which when it went up they were told it was going to be temporary and that was like 20 years ago or something. So there was a number of people that were involved with the Occupy movement that moved down there.
10:24 This was pretty much when it finished up at St. Paul’s. It pretty much coincided with that. So I went down there to cover that first of all. What else have I done?
10:32 There’s some like a police violence protest riots you did or something. Was there a police You survived protests that you covered or something? Yeah, yeah, that was a couple of weeks ago. There was an allegation of a man who was violently arrested by a police officer in Brixton and there was word going out on Twitter, et cetera, about that and bearing in mind what happened in London with riots last year, it was a hot day as well. There seems to be sort of like certain trigger points that if you get like this perfect storm of stuff happen, it can lead to stuff that I would hope no right-minded person really wanted to see.
11:14 But it’d been a very, very hot day. People are very angry and upset with the fact that they just don’t have as much stuff as they used to have. And then you get like a real flash point like Mark Duggan was the spark for the London riots last time. And I heard it on Twitter and I just wanted to go down and eyeball it because you get lot of rumor and I really really would encourage people to just treat rumor as rumor especially like stuff you read on the internet it’s not necessarily true so when I heard about it on Twitter I wanted to go in and see down what was happening and I had the opportunity to live stream that as well so yeah I basically if I see something on a social network or something and I’m able to get to it then I’ll go and try cover it I mean like have a day job and that kind as well so I can’t always be there at all times so you know that’s why I’d love to see sort of like an informal network of loads of live streams all across the planet and that’s the ultimate objective I mean ideally it’s the 100% objective news source because you’re streaming live there’s no editing there’s no cutting you don’t technically have an agenda I guess we all have agendas but it’s as objective as you can get in your opinion I think so yeah I mean I really do try to be objective I mean some of the The activism and protest that I’ve covered, I do have personal feelings about it and I do feel passionate about it, but I would encourage anybody who’s thinking about getting into live
12:36 Streaming, think about what it is that you’re doing. If you want to be an activist, then that’s fine just as long as what you’re doing is you’re not going to cause harm to anybody else. But I’ve seen a couple of people who go kind of like way over the top and I think that If you’re engaging in sort of like some kind of journalistic enterprise, you need to kind of like stick to the journalism and that can be very, very difficult to do. I know from experience.
13:02 Stick to the journalism and don’t get involved in the actual protest? Yeah, record what is going on. Record, document what is going on. I mean, like, you can give opinions by all means, but I really think that far too many people state opinion as fact, whereas what I do when I’m commentating on my live streams is I really do try to say, look, this is what I can see. This is facts as far as I can see.
13:24 But there will be other situations where people will ask me on the chat box what I think about a certain thing. And I’m happy to communicate with the audience. I think the audience participation is one of the amazing things about it. It’s fantastic. But when I’m expressing an opinion, I do try to make it clear to people that it’s an opinion and that they shouldn’t necessarily take that as gospel.
13:46 Goodness sake yeah do your own research on stuff don’t take my word for anything hopefully things like citizen journalism and the incredible acceleration of technology in particular things like video of the internet will allow us to start to disregard the mainstream media’s monopoly because I got to the point where I just stopped reading newspapers or watching the news because It is so biased. It is so biased. It’s just, it’s worse. It’s almost sensationalized.
14:16 Yeah, I stopped a long time ago. The London riots, in my opinion, were sensationalized and over-covered. Enough to where my buddies in New York calling me up saying, are you safe to walk on the streets of London? And I was in, okay, we’re in shortage, which is the edge of Hackney, but I was walking around and there were some shop owners outside looking nervous, but all you saw on the news was like the same footage burning over and over again. and I’m sure it was bad in some parts, but it wasn’t the whole city.
14:42 Do you agree or disagree? From, yeah, if you ever read the news coverage, you would have thought that the whole of London was on fire. Yeah, yeah, from the way you’re describing it. I wasn’t actually like real in central London as I am like these days at that time. And I certainly wasn’t live streaming.
14:59 I was actually up in like Hertfordshire, but even up there I did sense a little bit of tension. I mean, like there was a shop owners near me who were like boarding up. I mean, nothing ever happened, they did board up. So there was that air of tension on the streets. But yeah, from what I actually witnessed with my own two eyes, I didn’t go into Tottenham or to Croydon or anything where it apparently did get pretty bad.
15:20 Tension was there. It was a really weird feeling. You can’t put your finger on what it was, but you walked around and you just felt like some uneasiness in everyone’s face is really weird. The question I have is, for both of you guys, I wonder why, I wonder if it’s human nature to, we’ve all heard that expression that bad news sells, right? And I wonder if the reason for that is because the media has conditioned us to expect these bad stories in newspaper, or if as human beings we actually want to open newspaper and hear about the family that was gunned down by a lone nutcase.
15:52 I mean, I don’t know. We love gossip. I mean, we had Sandra Clark in here who was a reporter for like a TZM type show on the West Coast. What she was saying was really bothering me, but I have to admit that I’m guilty sometimes of looking at the sensationalist headline and being like, Tom Cruise did what? Oh, I don’t care.
16:10 But then I looked. And then on the way over here on the tube, I actively, when I see a newspaper, literally, to me it’s like a poisonous thing, a dirty thing. I don’t want to go anywhere near it. Like the Metro or something. Well, any newspaper, I sat next to this woman on the train and she was reading her paper and the headline was, shot in the head on holiday.
16:28 I was like why the fuck would I want that in my brain? Why would I want that piece of information floating around my brain? Do you know what I mean? It’s just why? I totally agree with you, what you’re saying about just really avoiding the mainstream media as far as possible. I mean like I’ve used that term again, mainstream media.
16:46 Where’s your prefer the term corporate media? Yeah, I think it’s, yeah, use the term corporate media because well, if I have my way, possibly if you have your way, live streaming, et cetera, will become the mainstream. So, you never know when that point is gonna sort of like tip when the changeover’s gonna be. So, if you constantly decry mainstream media as a term, then as the organizations, certainly, I don’t have, I’m not very keen on them, but. Do you think it’ll ever get to the point where like BBC News or the Telegraph or Sky News just don’t exist because there’s a million people out there with super high-definition iPhone 6s and are just streaming stuffs as it happens from all over the globe.
17:30 I think that’s possible. I don’t necessarily know if it’s an entirely good thing. I haven’t completely made up my own mind about this to be completely frank. I think that professionalism in journalism, it certainly has a role to play because there’s checks and balances there. And when it comes to covering stuff on the streets, perhaps livestream is appropriate, but then how far is it gonna go?
17:49 Is it sort of like really intruding people’s private lives, et cetera. I haven’t thought about that corollary, if people are just jumping out and doing candid streaming. It’s more you when you’re not looking. What about when we’re famous from London Real and people are streaming, you’re going to freak up when that happens, I can see that. What did you think about next question as far as, do we have a natural tendency as humans to love to read the scandal?
18:15 Were we just as guilty? I think that, yeah, it’s interesting you said that you avoid the newspapers, et cetera, much as possible with that knife. Yeah, I try. I pick one newspaper, but it’s like, I think it’s okay, but sometimes I even think it’s selling me a load of goods. It’s a New York Times. Yeah, the Herald Tribune, which is the international version. I think they all have an agenda of some sort, and as I said at the start of the show, they’ve all got advertisers to pay, so I don’t ever know if you’ll always get the complete truth from them. But yeah, Okay, what was the question?
18:47 Jesus. Do we have a tendency to, as humans, to want to, as Nick was saying, the BBC sensationalizes, but isn’t that exactly what we want? If it bleeds, it leads. But is that what we really want as humans? I think it’s up to the individual human.
19:02 What I can tell you is that, for the most part, my streams which get the most views tend to be the ones that involve some kind of action, shall we say, a couple of times when the police, from my point of view at least, have been sort of like quite heavy handed, unnecessarily so, those tend to be the ones that get the most amount of views. So I don’t know if that’s just people want to see the violence, like the riot porn as it’s sometimes called, or if it’s just that people are waking up to the fact that so much media is just sort of like a nonsense, it’s just sort of like a… Maybe it’s just something about society.
19:42 I mean, I don’t think, I always use the Buddhist monks as an example, but I don’t think people in Tibet want to hear about Brad Pitt’s latest infidelity, or… What about the Dalai Lama’s latest? Yeah. No, I agree with you, I mean, these guys are probably completely trying to absolve their minds out of this kind of… Yeah.
20:01 This kind of… Yeah. As I think that more… I mean, one of the things I say on my streams quite regularly, actually, is I encourage people to throw their newspapers in the bin, shut the telly out the window, and just get, you can, there’s so many sources of news on the internet, and a lot, a lot of them are a lot more independent than the current existing paradigm, so there’s loads of stuff that you can find if you, if you’re prepared to search a little bit, if you’re just going to look on BBC News. Before Occupy started, I honestly, I thought the BBC was sort of like a pretty objective, unbiased, balanced organisation, but some of the things that I’ve seen on the streets and then the way they’ve been reported later.
20:40 Would you give us an example? I’ll see if I can pick one out off the top of my head. Well, the one that jumps into my mind is Occupy. I saw some reports which were just, they just weren’t representative to me. I’ll tell you what, I’ll take an example that’s completely outside of that, go into a football match or something and then I’ll read the report or something after and I’ll be like, were these people at the same game? Or did they just kind of like make it up?
21:10 They got the score right, I’ll give them that much but apart from that they just didn’t seem to sort of like, what they’re reporting didn’t seem to have any basis in the reality. But to be fair that’s just like human subjectivity at its best because you could have written a similar report and the guy could have read yours and said the exact same thing. true and that’s one of my favorite quotes is there’s no such thing as truth only perspective so yeah what one person sees and what another person sees they can both witness the same thing ask them later what they saw they’ll both give different accounts but they’re both telling the truth I guess they’re trying to sell papers too I’ve said a similar thing to Brian before which quote from one of my favorite teachers and he says everyone’s perspective is different and the perspective is always changing from day to day it’s exactly the same thing right yeah well this is sort of like I can say for sure I changed my mind about stuff all the time and I’m not afraid to do so I wish a few more people would be because some people can get really sort of like dug into like a dogma and once that happens I think you’re in quite a dangerous place if they built their identity around the peer group that has the dogma you know if they’re I’m an occupy guy I’m a zeitgeist guy right your identity gets pulled up your peer group and then if you change your mind you’re like wait a
22:23 Second I’m losing my identity yeah but I think to answer next question I think that we’re already seeing that shift from the corporate media to the non-corporate, whether it’s live news or something like this podcast or Rogan the podcast or something, I think other people are already tuning in to different ways of getting the media. And I don’t think it’s always because it’s an advertiser issue. I just think it’s sometimes a just completely different perspective.
22:46 I always wonder if the New York Times is really swayed by their advertisers. I know their board is set up where they make decisions that’s not based on the stock price, but one thing that what you bring is at least an independent perspective. One of the other things you mentioned there, yeah, because advertisers, yeah, sure, that’s one thing. One of the great things I think about live streaming is that it does give perspective, because very often on the mainstream news, if there is a protest or something, yeah, they will cover the bit where the police come in, but that’s only for like one minute, and very often they’ll have been sort of like six hours that actually led up to that.
23:19 And a really good example is, I can’t remember if it was last week or the week before, but disabled people against cuts in association with UK Uncut to activist organizations here in the UK. They organised a protest against ATOS, a French IT company who are in charge of these work assessments. That’s a pretty long story, but if people want to check that out, look on Twitter for the hashtag ATOS. Have a look at ATOS. Yeah, ATOS. And check Check out ucancut.org.uk, I think, and also dpac.org.uk, that’s D-P-A-C, Disabled People and James Cuts.
23:58 Yeah, what was the difference that you saw between your six hours and that one minute of footage? Oh, well, okay. I didn’t stream the whole six hours, but there was one really, the thing that really occurred to me is like in terms of perspective, at this Deepak protest, they moved on to away from Atos to a DWP office right down near Westminster, and you had a few people on megaphones. There was people inside who, before arrival, had chained themselves to the DWP office. But the whole, the office itself was sealed off. There was sort of like there were police at the door. Nobody was trying to gain access to the building. There was a row of people with disabilities in front of the building, and they’ve been talking on like the, well, making announcements on megaphone, chanting, that kind of thing.
24:47 Entirely peaceful, entirely non-violent, I think protest is an essential part of a healthy functioning democracy, if you’re only allowed to protest in the way, the shape, the form and at the time and the place where the state tells you, that’s not a protest, yeah. And there’s a lot of rights and freedoms which have been gained through protest and people that are just blanket know to protest and don’t want to have a real thing about if if they want to live in a Stasi, East German type state, or if they want to live in a supposedly free country. But anyway, there was no problem.
25:21 There was no problem at all. But the police came in from the side and basically decided that they were going to form an even thicker cordon around this building. And it looked really, really ugly on the live stream, because you’ve got people pushing and shoving and they’re shouting and all that kind of thing. And that would be the bit that you see on the mainstream news, what you don’t see on the corporate media is the eight minutes that preceded it, where there was just no problem.
25:47 It’s just where did they come from? Why did that happen? And I think that that is giving more and more people who are tuning into live streams, it’s giving them an opportunity to see what actually happens. And because they’re seeing a lot more truth in that way, they’re getting a wider, broader perspective. And I think that that’s really, really important for people because quite honestly, I think sometimes, sad as it is, if protesters are getting hit by the police with their batons or pepper sprayed or something, there is a very, very large portion of society out there that basically just internally goes good for them to get back to work, kind of thing.
26:24 But if they… Are you looking at me? I think if those people saw these bits that they miss, usually, or have missed up until now, they might start to question a little bit exactly what role does the state play in a free society. I saw one of your videos in the changes outside the Ecuadorian embassy, I think it’s post-asange move over there and there was a police officer and you’re filming at night and at one point you said to him uh… excuse me but I think I have the right to be here on the sidewalk and also I’m streaming this live to people on the internet and I was just wondering first of all do you need to know all of your legal rights when you’re doing this and is that a big factor and second of all Do you see a reaction in police when you tell them what you’re doing or when they see a recording of a phone?
27:13 But that’s one thing. The second thing is it’s live on the internet now. Does that change the game and how you get reacted to? I think it does change the game a little bit. The first thing you said was should people inform themselves of their rights and I think they definitely should do.
27:26 If you’re in a public place then you have every right to photograph and film as much as you like and you will get private security and police tell you that you can’t do this and you can’t do that and but you need to know your rights you need to you can ask them okay we’ll sort of like a is that an order or a request because if it’s an order then you might want to think about carrying it out if they are ordering you then you need to ask them under what section of the law there’s a lot of time quite honestly they’ll just make this stuff off the top of their heads because they’ll just try to intimidate you just bully you out of there yeah yeah so I wouldn’t when we we had shop fresco on last week on the show and I went to Waterloo with one of our cameramen just to film us like greeting him at the station and he pulled the camera out and we basically got surrounded by three policemen and they’re like, are you filming? Are you filming? Of course I said no and it had a big like boom mic on there but they asked for ID and they were really hassling us. If I didn’t have to pick up Jacques, 96 year old Jacques, I think I might have been pushed a little bit further but I was really nice and calm but he said it’s actually private property because Waterloo is a train station and also since there’s a terrorist threat it was the Paralympic James. They say photography is allowed, movies aren’t allowed but they got up in our grills pretty quickly and they tried the intimidation factor and
28:42 I was very polite but it kind of shocked me. I think it’s good to be polite. You don’t have to turn it into a confrontation. Sometimes people are looking for a confrontation. If there’s two people that really, really clued me up on my rights. They’re not everybody’s cup of tea, but I’d really suggest to have a look on the internet for Danny Shine is the spiritual entertainer on YouTube. And the other one would be Charlie Veitch, who quite a lot of people in the UK at least know as quite an interesting character as an activist.
29:17 A few of our fans have requested that we have Charlie Veitch as a guest on the show. I think he’d make an interesting guess. Yeah, yeah, it’s sort of like, I see Charlie out and about sometimes, and actually he’s one of the people that inspired me to start doing a videography kind of thing. I don’t agree with everything that he says. And why do you mention those two specifically?
29:36 Because they’re really, really clued up on their rights, really clued up on their rights. I got an awful lot of information from both of their videos, and they’re working as a team for a little while, but I don’t think they’re doing that quite so much anymore. But yeah, those two very, very clued up on their rights and I didn’t just take their word for it, I actually researched it myself and yeah, it turns out that they’re right. I don’t believe that, I mean, personally, I think if the government wants you to stop your rights, make mean nothing to them.
30:06 Like if they really want to shut you up, they’re going to have some dudes come throw you in a van and take you away and you can say under this act, whatever I’m allowed to be here, but that means nothing to them. I think they are so it’s so far beyond that now that I don’t think I think they could do that specifically to a certain number of people but I don’t think they have the bandwidth to do that to say 10,000 people so I think if everybody doesn’t know the rights and take a stand then you can get a lot more freedom I agree somebody wants to Guantanamo you’re asked they will do it example I was thinking yeah I’m sorry you were saying about um you know in your rights and then yeah okay the other question you asked was does it change things when you’re holding sort of a camera I mean first of all it’s a camera phone yeah that must have changed the game a lot in the last two years we know it has obviously absolutely it has I mean like on the one hand police and professional press won’t take it too seriously because as far as they’re concerned I was just a mobile phone particularly for professional press won’t really take it seriously out some dude with a mobile phone or whatever you know they’re just kind of like be pretty dismissive of what it is that you’re actually doing on the most of them don’t even realize what’s going on is your peers your fellow reporter peers you’re talking oh no I’m talking about
31:12 The professional corporate press that they because sometimes when things get a little bit crowded they’re sort of like pushy and shabby and you’re in a public space and they’ll kind of like wave their press pass at you and be like you know I’ve got a bit more right to be here than you do and like you don’t you’re in a public space and it’s just just elbowing for real estate you mean yeah yeah basically just to try and get a shot because it can get very very crowded at times interesting you mentioned about that police officer like the thing in evening and yet because he asked me to stop filming him oh to stop filming yeah if it’s the one I’m thinking of there was definitely one outside the Ecuadorian embassy where police officer said can you stop filming me and so I asked him was that an order of request and I know that the answer has to be it’s a request because he doesn’t have there’s no legal basis to actually require you to stop filming is a public servant in a public place so you know I just check that it is a request confirm that and once it is sorry I’m not gonna comply over the request. There’s a lot of people watching this on the internet and they’re relying on the information. I don’t feel, I don’t have to justify myself any further than that.
32:16 Do you get a reaction to that statement when you tell them it’s live streaming? Do you feel a bit better? Do you feel safer? I think in some ways it does help protect you a little bit because I think the police are aware with the Ian Tomlinson case after the G20 that some of the most damning footage of police violence tends to come from amateur journalists or people not even journalists that just happen to be there at the time and they just capture something on a mobile phone.
32:43 Occupy Wall Street had something with the white shirt police and stuff really beating up people. Sure they did. Maybe those guys weren’t quite as clued up as to what was going on. I don’t know. I can’t really explain it.
32:53 I think that maybe the UK police are maybe a little bit more reticent especially in the atmosphere following the Tom Nixon case. Is this the guy that was arrested in Brixton? No, Ian Tomlinson was a newspaper, check out the footage on YouTube of this, Ian Tomlinson, if you do a search for Ian Tomlinson on YouTube it will come up straight away. He was G20 protest in, I think it was 2008. Oh, this is the guy that died of a heart attack when he was pushed down and died in the city out.
33:27 Yeah, he was not even taking part in any protest. Yeah, that was, the footage was really damning on that one. I thought so. Yeah, he was selling, he was a black cabbie or something? He was a newspaper salesman.
33:37 I mean, he certainly sounded like he had problems, you know, his family openly admitted he was an alcoholic, perhaps he had cirrhosis of liver or whatever, but there’s something in law that I can’t remember the exact name of it, but even if something that you do, such as pushing someone over, I wouldn’t necessarily, if I pushed you over, I wouldn’t really expect it to kill you, but if it did kill you, as a result of some other side consequence, some condition that you had that I wasn’t aware of, but I would still be culpable, manslaughter, if not necessarily murder. But there’s little way to run on that because although the attempted prosecution was ultimately unsuccessful, I think the family of Ian Tomlinson aren’t gonna launch a civil case as well. And from where I see, from what I’ve seen, I’m gonna certainly understand why.
34:26 You know, Rosa, I’ve been thinking a lot about, I don’t know, I’m gonna tie this into the current conversation, But the fact that we need video evidence to protect us against policemen who abuse their power. You once said something like human beings are inherently lazy, and et cetera. And Jock Fresco really made me think. I looked into some more of his. We had this guy, Jock Fresco, on the show last week.
34:54 I’ve been following Mr. Fresco for a couple of years. I was at the great show. I enjoyed watching it very much. So, I mean, he visited these Polynesian islands and spent time with tribes that had no contact with Western society and I mean, it was his experience and others have reported the same thing that by and large, they’re relatively peaceful, stable people, you know, and- Without the concept of money, right?
35:18 Without the concept of money and without a lot of other negative concepts that we have, you know, I’m not saying money’s negative, but I’m just wondering the fact that we have to be monitored and controlled and CCTV’d and I mean, isn’t it a function of the fact that we are doing something wrong, you know, like maybe there’s something wrong with this whole system which comes back to what you said earlier in the show. I mean, what are your thoughts on that? Well, yeah, this is, I can see why, yeah, it’s all kind of like interrelated and yeah, you asked a question earlier but I didn’t really get to finish but I think that this sort of like helped with that one about Occupy, do you agree with it or not? I kind of like I think I got this from Rogan as well in truth. He kind of like got the impression that just because there’s a bunch of people saying there’s something wrong, they know that there’s something wrong, but just because they don’t know exactly how to fix it, that doesn’t mean that they’re not right to point it out. And I guess that analogy kind of like fits in with that.
36:15 That’s an interesting point. Yeah. I just wish they had, I just wish Occupy had something concrete to show for all that sitting there and all that discourse and shouting into megaphones and sitting around drinking soup on cold winter evenings, you know what I mean? What have they got to show for it? You weren’t impressed with those people down there.
36:32 I wasn’t, bro. You weren’t disgusted, but you were really not impressed, right? Well, what would they do, Brian? Like right now, what difference has all that protest made? Has it changed any of the bank’s policies?
36:45 Has it changed any discrepancies in wealth between the rich and the poor? Has it done anything? I’d like to know, maybe I’m missing something. Is that how you should judge it? I don’t know, I don’t have the answer but…
36:57 Or is the protest itself a success? I can say from my experience of it, it’s really hard to say how people would be feeling if the whole Occupy thing had never happened, you know, we’ll never know because that’s probably some other separate branch of a multiverse or something like that. What Occupy did do was, for the very first time, you saw people organised globally all at once. A whole load of people all decided to do the same thing, and that was on the follow-on from Occupy Wall Street.
37:29 The call went out from then for everybody to Occupy globally on the 15th of October, and what do you know? Like somewhere, people say like somewhere between 900 and 1,000 cities on the 15th of October actually went for it. So I think that it proved that if people decide that they want to do something, we do now have the means to be able to do it, like, on a global basis. So that’s a good thing. I mean, like, think of, like, the potential for that going forward, for things that are a little bit more positive than having to just simply fight against the system.
38:01 I think that you’re kind of right, what did Occupy achieve? For my money, far too many people spend far too much time complaining about a system, And I think that what we should all be trying to do really is something productive to change it. Was that the flaw of it, because they were not offering a solution, per se? Yeah, I don’t think it was necessarily Occupy’s role to offer a solution, because I don’t think they could do. I think the interconnectedness of all the different problems and the law of unintended consequences says that even if you did make one demand and it was fixed, it can have a completely adverse effects on something that you never would have expected it’s kind of like it’s a lot of unintended consequences. Where’d you get that from James?
38:49 I don’t think I can answer you, I don’t know, it’s an expression I’ve used before I’m not going to say that it’s original because it might not be but it might be original. The first thing that came to mind when you said that is when we had Barefoot Doctor on the show and he was speaking about how he he asked his friend he said do you think it would be bad comma to sleep with this married woman. And the guy said, how do you know it wouldn’t be bad comma to not sleep with her? You know what I mean? Yeah, that’s interesting.
39:15 It’s interesting. Interesting. I guess I see Jane’s perspective as in maybe it was a success that had actually occurred. And I mean, I agree. I mean, there’s nothing practical. And so many people told me what you said, what did it do? What are they going to do? And, but I guess you could say it was a success that it just happened. And I think we can’t overestimate the fatigue factor of people being down there every day. And they were at Finsbury Park right by me here, and you see them every day, and you’re like, how much longer can they do that?
39:42 What were your thoughts on the Occupy move in here, specifically what they stood for? Be as honest as you can. I always am. I thought that I was appreciative of what they were doing. I wasn’t naysaying and saying there’s no solution, they’re just pointing the finger because they weren’t offering a solution, but they were protesting.
40:03 Maybe they didn’t know why they were protesting, but they were. But do you even see a problem? That was a success. Yeah, I think there is a problem. I don’t know about the 1% and the pointing fingers from the 99% to the 1%, although it was a great tagline and a great slogan that went viral.
40:18 But I don’t know. I think a lot of people, I mean, we had Zeitgeist on and they were trying to find out how to work with them and I know they didn’t want to work with them. I’m finding this a lot with Venus, Zeitgeist, Occupy, where there’s not a lot of cooperation, but then maybe inherently there isn’t cooperation in these movements since there’s no leader in these movements. Yeah, the other thing I’d have to say about Occupy as well is a lot of I think the good things that have come out of it are just completely unseen because the connections that I’ve made with people that I met down there or as a consequence of being there are just phenomenal and they’ve led my life in directions that I never would have expected at all and like really really positively as well and I’m just one of how many people occupied globally or had even some sympathy with it or went and visited and occupied site, I don’t know if there’s any way you can ever measure any figure on that. Was it millions possibly?
41:13 Probably millions. Yeah, I would think probably millions. And I think a lot of people would have had their lives touched in a very positive way and it would have given them some thoughts and some ideas on how to move forward. And that’s something that, you know, you can’t measure. It’s just sort of like, you know, we like to see sort of like measurable results and we like to see them pretty quickly. But that’s not necessarily always possible.
41:34 And the other thing that anybody involved with Occupy Always said was it’s going to be a long haul, that the world isn’t going to be changed overnight, and it’s certainly not going to be changed by camping necessarily. Yeah. I want to ask you… I want to ask you something to go for it. I just want to talk about Julien Assange, and I want to get actually Nick’s opinions first for some reason.
41:53 But before we do that, I just want to thank our sponsor, which is Alpha Brain. James has just taken an Alpha Brain, although he refused caffeine, which made him even more impressed by that. And it’s a new Tropic, hopefully we’ll give you some lucid dreams tonight, sounds like you’re a fan. But if you like some Alpha Brain or some Shroom Tech, that’s the Alpha Brain, Nick’s got the Shroom Tech. Then go to onit.com, use the customer code LondonReal and you get 10% off and support the show.
42:18 In the meantime, Nick, Julian Assange, he’s at the Ecuadorian MC, what do you think about the whole thing? I’m so disgusted by it, words fail me. By that he’s going there or by what? just by virtue of the fact that he is someone who revealed government secrets and he’s been so vilified by governments for doing that. I just, I don’t think governments should have secrets. I really don’t.
42:50 What about you James? I think that what’s really important to do is to separate Julian Assange from WikiLeaks. he’s put a lot into it I mean like it’s basically sort of like his project but there’s people working with it as well if it was not so reliant on Mr. Assange then perhaps it could have been set up in a way whereby something like Occupy where it’s just sort of like you know there is literally no leader I mean people say oh they’re always going to try and pin it on someone or whatever But I don’t know, but it seems that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are really conflated.
43:32 I mean, personally speaking, I’m with you on sort of like open government. I mean, like if there’s going to be sort of like a state, it needs to be open. We need to see where the money that we pay in tax, what it’s being spent on, because the amount that’s spent on war, et cetera, is absolutely ridiculous. And if I had a way to not contribute towards that, I mean, because in a way, I’m complicit in some of the U.K.’s foreign policy. What about diplomacy?
43:57 What about diplomacy? Should all of our U.S. intelligence be transparent? Should we tell Osama bin Laden the night before we’re going to go in? I mean, there’s diplomacy.
44:05 Should we have secrets about Putin or intelligence that we tell everyone? I mean, there is a point where you have to agree that you can’t have complete transparency to run a nation. The question is… Well, that’s the question. You get to take it one step further back and say, why are we in the situation where we’re at war with Afghanistan and why do you know I mean you could it’s every country always acts in its own interests and then by definition we can question sovereignty but you have to agree that there is a place for diplomacy well maybe you don’t well ultimately I mean we’re a long long long way from this but certainly can’t see happening in my lifetime but ultimately the borders countries that kind of thing they’re meaningless yeah we had a question about that on Facebook asking about sovereignty and why is it paramount, which comes down to Julian being at the Ecuadorian embassy, because this is a question now of sovereignty.
44:57 It’s kind of dictating what’s happening here. Well, do you know, that was the thing that actually first led me down there to start live streaming, because my immediate concern quite honestly wasn’t for Julian Assange. It was for the potential that the UK might invade sovereign territory was actually the thing that like really led me down there. It was there was the like a internet rumor perhaps. It’s a fact. It turned out not to be that that the the communique sent from the UK to the Ecuadorian Embassy it looked a little bit to me like a veiled threat. What did it say? I can’t remember the exact wording but it was a reminder to the Ecuadorians that the UK would reserve the right to revoke their status as an embassy if necessary.
45:46 For people that don’t know and viewers, if you know, can you explain the legal issues behind an embassy and an embassy located in a country? Is it legally a small piece of that country or are there caveats on that? Yeah, I’m not a legal expert, but my understanding of it is the Vienna Convention of 1971, something like that, it basically states that, yeah, an embassy is considered sovereign territory of the nation which is holding that embassy. So, yeah, technically speaking, it is an invasion invasion without invite, yeah.
46:21 Okay. Brian, you asked Jack Fresco last week if he was made president of the USA, what he would do. And I want to ask you, if you were made president of the global world federation that said it was, what would be the first thing you would do? I will answer that, but I do want to talk about this Ecuadorian thing one more time. And then I’ll give you that.
46:41 I was actually down there at the embassy like a week ago and I went down there with my stepdaughter and we chatted. We chatted as you do. Stepdaughter. And she’s eight. And I was telling her what Julian Assange did and she looks at me and she’s like, so he told the truth?
46:52 And I was like, what are you talking about? I was like, okay, this is an interesting perspective from an eight-year-old. And then we talked to the police officer and I said, are you here to grab Julian on the way out or are you here to protect the public or to make sure that, you know, something doesn’t like a riot or something doesn’t happen? Well, what is your role? And he was quite frank.
47:11 I found that this police officer was quite open and chatty. Maybe that’s the way they deal with the public. The Samar? Yeah, Samar. They’re all people on the uniform.
47:19 Yeah, of course. And he said, actually, there are some rumors that there might be tunnels underneath the building. It’s a night bridge. They don’t know if he’s still there. I was like, technically, can you grab him?
47:28 And he’s like, I really can’t comment on, we’re not quite sure if we can actually go in there and grab him or if we’re not doing it because we haven’t been told or if we can legally do it. I guess they are ready to grab him if he comes out, and I just had a lot of discussions about that with him, just from a legal standpoint. Yeah, I asked police officers, I asked two separate ones pretty much the same question, you know, are you here to, you know, maintain public order, you know, stop people from invading the embassy, for instance, might happen, because there’s a lot of people that are quite fanatical about Julian Assange, which, you know, I can sort of like understand.
48:04 The other thing I wanted to say about Julian Assange is that I think people, and I’m not in any way sort of like a, I have no idea whether he’s guilty or not of the allegations which he’s facing in Sweden. No idea whatsoever. Just for the record, he is trying to be extradited to Sweden to face sexual allegations from a woman there and I think he’s concerned that once he’s in Sweden he could be extradited to the US to face WikiLeaks issues, am I right with that?
48:29 Yeah, that is apparently his concern that he’ll be further extradited onto the USA. I’ll let you finish, you were saying, not whether he was guilty or not. Right, yeah, I mean, I don’t know, I wasn’t there in the room at the time, so I’m not able to say. I really, really object to people, and I’ve seen this on the internet, who’s saying he is a rapist. I think that’s an absolutely disgraceful thing to say, because none of us are in possession of all the facts.
48:55 But you can’t say he’s not either. Well, this is the thing. I don’t know if he is or if he isn’t, and I think that more people should bear that in mind, but I do think that the allegations which he’s facing are very, very serious, and I think he should find a way to deal with them, and it seems the way to do that might be to go to Sweden. If he is further extradited onto the USA, he’s done a really good job of getting publicity for his cause, so I think that if he was extradited onto the USA, people would really start to ask questions because what I’ve seen and read so far says that there isn’t really any legal basis or that any request from the USA to Sweden to extradite him, it will likely be refused, that it would have to go via the UK as well, and with the European Convention on Human Rights, if he was facing, for instance, a death penalty or something, then they simply can’t extradite in those circumstances.
49:50 They can’t. An EEC country cannot extradite to a country where the charges laid against somebody would be like death penalty. This wouldn’t be in this case, so they still could extradite? Do you mean from Sweden to the USA? Can they extradite from the UK? Well, this is one of the other things. We don’t know. Do you mean can they extradite from From the UK to Sweden, what’s it but?
50:18 To the USA. Direct. The USA haven’t made any request for extradition, so you can’t sort of like, there’s nothing there at the moment. The USA haven’t made any request to extradite. What do you say to the, and I’m gonna just assume here, maybe this is unfair Nick, what do you say to the Nick Gabriel’s of the world that say this is all an elaborate scheme cooked up by the US and the CIA just to grab him for exposing the secrets that embarrassed him.
50:43 There’s no sexual thing. It’s all been overblown. What do you say to that? It’s definitely possible. That’s a horrible answer.
50:49 It’s definitely possible. You can say that about anything. What have you seen on the ground that we haven’t when you’ve been there, that you can enlighten with us or perspective or have you? Yeah, okay. I don’t think I’ve seen too much outside there, but maybe I’m completely wrong.
51:06 I probably have to review some of my streams, to be honest. I haven’t had a chance to do that yet. What I’m seeing is a mixture of people who are, I think people should be really careful to sort of avoid pacing people on pedestals because people can do the most amazing things and I really applaud a lot of Judy and Assange’s work with WikiLeaks. I think they’ve done some amazing things. I really, really do very much behind it as, in principle, totally behind the WikiLeaks project.
51:33 Right. Actually him too. What? just because people good people are still capable of doing bad things and I’m not saying that that means that he is guilty by any stretch of imagination but I don’t think anybody should be placing anybody on a pedestal and if if it’s a big if if he is guilty then you know rule of law etc you know he should sort of like I have to pay the penalty for that if it’s proven properly and fully I think I think as a society, we haven’t evolved yet to follow a leaderless organization.
52:08 I’m curious what you think about this, because the fact that it’s Julien Assange, he’s so affected with his movement and you empathize with him and you see his flaws, you see his successes. It’s a figurehead business. But with Zeitgeist, everyone wanted Joseph to be that guy, but he doesn’t want to be that guy because maybe the movement doesn’t want, and I think people, and same with Occupy, I think maybe we’re not involved. Do you want me to gravitate towards a leader that I have to have?
52:27 We need to have a leader, we need to be told what to do, and I don’t know, what do you think about that? That’s interesting. agree with you, man. I agree with you. We think we’ll get there someday, or what are your thoughts? Well, if there’s one thing that I think Occupy have kind of like started to angle towards possibly more so than, for instance, WikiLeaks or Zeitgeist Movement or even Venus Project, something like that, is if there’s one thing you definitely don’t do about Occupy is you don’t pin like a figurehead in it, not a single figurehead. And I think the expression leaderless movement is an interesting one, But how about a leader-full movement where everybody’s leader, that language is everything?
53:06 I think that it inherently violates human nature. As you said, I don’t think, in fact, I have a very good friend who’s a philosopher, and he advises the US government on foreign policy, and he’s very experienced with political economy. And he said, he predicted when I said to him, when the Occupy thing was at its peak, I said, what’s going to happen to this? And he said it will recede to where it came from without anything happening. And he said the main reason is because it’s leaderless.
53:37 So that’s not the way human society or human beings work. We require figureheads to galvanize our cause. And that’s what happened. But we also have this new information intense medium. So maybe with that it can change.
53:52 That’s a really good point. Maybe it can evolve to a leaderful movement. I don’t know. advantages to having a leaderful movement or a leaderless movement? Yeah, I think so.
54:02 Because Occupy can grow organically really quickly, right? Yeah, sure. I mean, there are advantages to having figureheads. I mean, a great example would be the civil rights movement in the US with Martin Luther King, et cetera. Somebody who’s really passionate, somebody prepared to lead by example.
54:21 I’m sure, well, I know that the civil rights movement was about a lot more than just Martin Luther King, there was an awful lot of people that worked really, really hard and put themselves in really dangerous positions, and they were prepared to make those sacrifices because it was a cause that was right, they really believed in it. But you look at what happened to him, unfortunately, obviously assassinated, and this happens time and time again. You put people, and that might be what’s happening with Julian Assange. If somebody is up there to be shot at then they will be so I think that if people do want to create a better world we probably yeah we haven’t got a lot of practice at it yet but maybe like occupy is like a little practice episode for cooperation there’s some I personally think that if we are gonna like really achieve anything actually really progress then we are gonna have to cooperate with each other a lot more and I’m not gonna let you duck that question I’m gonna answer the question um I’ll do it what actually almost up but I wanted to to actually spend a little extra time and ask some extra questions. But before our time goes up, how do people contact you? How can people get involved and do their own journalism?
55:29 And is there any parting thoughts that you want to give us before we chop our iTunes listeners out as far as what you do? Sure. Yeah, no, there is definitely. If people want to reach me, they can get me on Twitter at Albury. That’s A-L-B-U-R-Y-J. I’m on Facebook. Again, Facebook.com slash Albury.
55:47 All the social networks and that kind of thing. My Bamboozer channel is Bamboozer. Bamboozer is spelled B-A-M-B-U. B-A-M-B-U-S-E-R. That’s .com slash channel slash Allbridge A. So there’s loads of ways that people can connect with me. That’s something that I’m actually really keen to do because one of the ideas that I have is that I’d like to motivate more people that inspire them into citizen journalism. I think it’s something that anybody can do. It’s not necessarily something that everybody should do because there are certain things where certain situations you can be in a little bit of danger quite honestly. There’s a few things that I’d like to point out to people to help keep them safe as much as anything because safety and liberty are the most important things before you can start getting too excited about it. What I want to do is I’m going to produce an open source guide to what I know.
56:42 With it being open source people can contribute to it because there’s going to be tons of of stuff that I haven’t thought of. There’s loads of live streams all over the world. I mean, like I connect with them on Twitter and on Facebook, et cetera. And if we can sort of like put our heads together and produce a kind of like a few guides, both video and written, I’d love people to get involved with that. So if they want to get in touch with me, they feel they can contribute to it.
57:05 Or if they just want to find me on a social network somewhere so that they can have a look at it once it’s ready. I’m thinking probably around about two or three weeks it’ll be ready. it’s not very far off. I’ve got a basic structure to it but yeah I’d really really like other people to to do what I do because imagine if we have every corner of the globe covered in people who don’t necessarily do it a lot but they’ve at least got a live streaming application on their phone if something happens and it’s near them then they can be there because there’s a lot more people on the planet than there are corporate journalists so we can get there first we can can tell the story a lot more fully. It’s just a case of like having sheer numbers.
57:45 So I think once we achieve a critical mass, going back to something that you asked earlier, could this completely? I do think it can revolutionize journalism because even if it doesn’t become the regular thing, it certainly forces professional journalism to be more honest. It kind of like puts them in a position where they look pretty stupid if their live pictures don’t look anything like the live pictures coming from elsewhere, if they’re just like being selective with their angles or something like that.
58:10 Hopefully it will ultimately give us all a clearer picture of reality and what’s happening in the world. Yeah, we could have, well, I think the more information you have, the better place you are to make decisions, to make judgements, I mean, I think we should all be a little bit less judgmental, but the more information you have, the better judgment you can make. I think that’s awesome. I think it’s really cool you’re going to open source that. I don’t think we could have enough citizen journalists, I don’t think we could have enough podcasts, I encourage everybody to do their own version of London Real wherever you are, and be ready to film, and I just don’t think we can have too much information, because like you said, worst case, it checks the mainstream media, it checks the government, it checks the police, it checks anybody as far as what they’re doing.
58:47 So I’m a big fan of that. So anyways, we’re going to come back with some questions. Nick’s going to grill me, and I’m going to ask you some more questions from our viewers. If you want to get this footage, just go to londonreal.tv, put in your email address, and we’ll send this separately in a couple days. I think it goes out Monday, and this will be out on Sunday.
59:04 And in three weeks, Nick and I are in LA to meet Mr. Rogan, and that should be fun. Fantastic. Yeah, that’s going to be cool. That should be cool.
59:13 So thanks a lot, James, for coming on. And until then, thank you so much for having me.
