Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Rounding the News.
This is your weekly news roundup presented by Rounding the Earth, hosted by me, Liam
Sturgis.
We've got a lot to get into today and it's going to be sort of nuts.
So let me just pull up my notes here and welcome you to this April 28, 2023 episode, Who is
Miles Guo?
Now we're going to get into that after a couple of news stories.
First of all, if you're watching on Rumble, Rockfin or Odyssey, you have an option available
to you to financially support the show, which would be absolutely fantastic.
If you're on Rumble, you can send a Rumble rant, which is like a paid comment.
And for the rest of this year, as far as I understand, 100% of the funds for Rumble rants
go directly to the creator, which is Rounding the Earth.
And then in 2024, they go back to a very reasonable, I think, 20% cut.
So it's a fantastic way to support the show.
You can also do the same on Rockfin, where we have a number of very, very kind supporters
who tip every time and on Odyssey.
But of course, the best way to join us and to support the show is over at roundingtheearth.locals.com,
where you can join our Rounding the Earth community for free and stay up to date on
everything we are doing as far as articles, discussions and podcasts.
And if you want to become a paid supporter, that will grant you access to all of the above
plus access to our weekly locals exclusive live streams, which this past week, a very
interesting one, speculation about World War E, the US versus Europe.
Very fascinating discussion between Matthew and myself, as well as everybody who joined
us in the live chat.
I highly recommend going over there.
Okay, so let's jump in, ladies and gentlemen.
We are going to run through just a couple of very quick updates.
First of all, hearings resume for class action lawsuit targeting BC pandemic health orders.
Yes, indeed, this past week, my friend, Kip Warner and his society, the Canadian Society
for the Advancement of Science and Public Policy.
I nailed it.
He told me to call it CSAP.
In any case, the certification hearings, the court case, the hearings to see if British
Columbia's class action lawsuit will go forward, defending against various rather over the
top public health measures that have occurred as a result of COVID.
So CSASPP.org is where you can go to find status updates on that case.
Up next, we've got some rather shocking news.
Tucker Carlson fired by Laquan Murdoch.
Basically, Tucker Carlson, the top cable news show, possibly in history, at least in modern
times was fired, let go by Fox, allegedly at the direction of the boss there, Laquan
Murdoch.
Rumors are swirling that he's about to join in Rumble or some other independent content
platform, but probably Rumble.
And that's all I know about that.
But on a one-two punch, you've also got Don Lemon from CNN being let go.
I've seen some entertaining clips of his final couple of shows.
And I don't know, I guess I'm not surprised that he was no longer in the flavor of the
direction that the new ownership over at CNN is hoping for.
But in any case, I thought it was interesting that on the same day you had the most popular
Fox News presenter and one of the very popular to some, maybe not quite so popular.
I'm not sure.
Don Lemon over at CNN, both being fired in the same day.
It's kind of nuts.
Okay.
Well, that's it.
That's all we're going to cover in advance of this show because it's going to be a long
one.
Now, bear with me because we're going to go sort of all over the place, hopefully not
too all over the place to answer this question.
Who is Miles Guo?
Indeed, this is the question of the day.
At a cursory glance, you might find on Google News that there's a picture painted of Miles
Guo, a dissident Chinese billionaire in exile whose efforts to combat the Chinese Communist
Party within the United States have led to his arrest on grounds of defrauding his supporters
with various investment opportunities.
Now, this is a convenient and well packaged profile, ripe to be exploited by both sides
of the left-wing political divide to either rip into allies of the Trump camp or elevate
Guo as the next figurehead of a societal revolution.
Well, what's the context here?
Why are we asking who this gentleman is?
What is it that we are, what led us to this moment?
Well, last week in my episode of Rounding the News titled Unreliable Narrators, we explored
the ongoing story surrounding the so-called secret Chinese police stations popping up
around the world.
This culminated in the April 17th arrest of two New York residents, formally accused by
state and federal agencies of working on behalf of China's Ministry of Public Security.
If you haven't read or watched that episode yet, I highly recommend you do.
And the links to that will be in the show notes, which as usual will be posted very
shortly after this episode on roundingtheearth.locals.com.
Okay, the crux of my analysis was that all sides of the story are biased in some form,
in a really meaningful way, with larger geopolitical machinations leading both the United States
and Chinese governments to act as unreliable narrators.
This is especially true of the non-governmental organization called Safeguard Defenders,
whose September 2022 report was the basis for all the hubbub in the first place, but
whose own agenda is thrown into question by its apparent ties to the American intelligence
community.
China's role in the United States and the rest of the Western world, or the world at
large, is unclear, shrouded by propaganda from both sides.
With this in mind, it may be helpful to zoom out slightly and take stock of some of the
other pieces on the game board.
I concluded my previous report with a case study of a New York-based rapper named DVS
7.0, who very recently went semi-viral for his strongly worded comments to United States
Representative Adam Schiff and DVS 7.0's subsequent handcuffing and removing from the
premises.
This is a picture of DVS 7.0 wearing a t-shirt that says, Free Miles Guo.
But far from an isolated incident of political dissidence, as we see by this shirt, DVS appeared
to be attending this New York event, the House Judiciary Committee's meeting on crime,
on behalf of a larger movement, under this unifying message of hashtag Free Miles Guo.
DVS had recently released a song of the same name, and his Twitter feed is full of supportive
comments from a veritable swarm of users bearing similar characteristics between themselves.
We had Chinese characters in their names, allusions to something called the new federal
state of China and the hashtag Free Miles Guo.
On first glance, this seems to be a movement largely aligned with core principles of other
groups of like-minded people in the very broad freedom movement.
There are strong assertions of defeating the Chinese Communist Party, liberating minority
groups from oppression, including the Uyghurs, protection of the island nation of Taiwan
from Chinese military invasion, corruption of the United States government through the
influence of dark Chinese money, and, more generally, the creation of a world where all
peoples are free to be who they are without fear of totalitarian backlash.
They also loudly questioned the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and warned that the available COVID-19
genetic vaccine products are not safe, to put it mildly.
But as we've explored at length on various episodes of the Rounding the Earth podcast
and as Matthew has written about in his articles on Substack, any time a movement of ideals
focuses itself around any one individual, there is reason to be very suspicious.
This is the gang theory, the governance by aggressive nonsensical gurus.
But that doesn't automatically mean, of course, that the values articulated by that
movement are bad or even counterproductive onto themselves.
On the contrary, if there were to be an attempt to rally real dissonance under an umbrella
for nefarious purposes, a necessary step would be to adopt or perhaps borrow or appropriate
the flagship cause in order to mask the true intention of such an operation.
Now as I've concluded about the COVID-19 crisis, all a bad actor needs to do in order
to manipulate large groups of people is to tap into their genuine good nature.
So I invite you along a journey of learning.
Who is this Miles Guo?
Is he a guru leading by aggressive nonsense?
Or is he a genuine dissident, being now suppressed by both the Chinese and United States governments?
These are some good questions.
Let's find out.
So Miles Guo is just one name used by the man officially named Guo Wengui.
His other names used in various contexts are Ho Wan Kwok, Miles Kwok, Brother Seven, Guo
Huyun, and the Principal.
As summarized in a profile by Business Insider, much of his background is still shrouded in
mystery and Guo's exact purpose and loyalties are the subject of speculation and conspiracy
theories.
Guo was born to an impoverished family in China's Jilin province.
He then moved to the farming village of Sikhao Ying in Shandong province, growing up there
with his seven siblings.
Now this is allegedly where the name Brother Seven came from, being the seventh son born
into the family.
According to the New Yorker, Guo dropped out of school at age 13 to find work selling clothes
and electronics.
Now Guo was arrested and put in jail in 1989 on grounds that are not entirely clear.
According to Guo, this was the result of his support for students participating in pro-democracy
protests in Tiananmen Square, which occurred in 1989.
This particular version of events is not reflected in court documents, however, with the official
story being that Guo was arrested one week before the protests began on charges of defrauding
investors in a local oil scheme.
Now after his release in 1992, Guo took a job with a Hong Kong-based businesswoman named
Xia Ping.
According to an investigation published in Nikkei Asia, in 1993, Xia's Hong Kong Lotus
Love International Group set up a joint venture with Guo called Zhengzhou Yuda Property.
Guo was named Vice Chairman and General Manager.
Through Zhengzhou Yuda Property, Guo oversaw the construction of Zhengzhou's tallest building,
the Yuda International Trade Center, which for those watching can be seen on the right
side of the screen.
Guo also reportedly ran a company called Big Boss Furniture, another good name, but in
2002, he relocated to Beijing to further expand his burgeoning real estate empire.
He purchased two parcels of land in northern Beijing right beside the then-future site of
the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
According to Nikkei Asia, in October 2005, Beijing's Land Bureau revoked Guo's company's
rights to the Olympic Park plot, saying the company failed to pay in full for the property.
This led to Guo attempting to lobby government officials to help rescue his development project
for that lucrative property.
Specifically, he approached then-Vice Mayor Liu Xiuwa, who was in charge of projects surrounding
the Olympics.
He refused to help, selling the plot back to Beijing Capital Group, a state-run real
estate firm.
But two weeks later, the Vice Mayor was detained alongside Beijing Capital Group Chairman Liu
Zhao Guang, allegedly based on a report submitted to the Chinese government by Guo, accusing
the Vice Mayor of corruption.
The report is said to have contained sexual blackmail, material which was allegedly provided
to Guo by a Chinese spymaster named Ma Jian.
Jian was appointed Vice Minister of State Security in 2006 after having worked at the
spy agency for more than 30 years, and he has been described as one of the mainland's
top spy chiefs.
While it worked, the plot of land was safely back in Guo's hands, and with the newly issued
building permits, Guo launched construction of Penghu Plaza.
The building, as you can see if you're watching, was crafted in the shape of the Olympic Torch.
Which makes sense, this was built to be timed with the Olympics, it was built right beside
the Olympic site.
Makes sense, Olympic Torch.
And it's not a bad-looking building.
This incident is cited as one of the first publicly known examples of Guo working directly
with Chinese military intelligence agencies to achieve favorable outcomes by unsavoury
means.
And it only built from there.
Guo reportedly travelled several times to meet the Dalai Lama on behalf of China's
Ministry of State Security, now led by his ally Ma Jian.
There are several pictures, including this one on screen right now, corroborating this
fact with the pair seeming to have a friendly relationship.
It looks like this is an autographed picture, in fact.
Of course, I will point out, given the current capabilities to generate super-realistic images
with AI tools, sure, these must be considered with healthy skepticism.
But on the other hand, it doesn't appear that this relationship is in question in any
reporting of Guo's past.
This appears to be real.
Shortly after the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Guo invited a man named Orville
Schell, director at the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society, for a dinner
at the Pangu Plaza.
He also reportedly had such dinners with former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George
Schultz and met with Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un on a trip to North Korea.
They're very powerful allies.
And another powerful ally that Guo courted was former British Prime Minister Tony Blair,
a relationship that first began in 2008, or possibly earlier, depending on who you ask.
In 2009, Guo purchased 5,000 copies of Cherie Blair, Tony's wife, Cherie Blair's autobiography,
and donated to Blair's various charities.
Okay, now, surely they're just friends.
Well actually, in or around 2013, it seems Guo paid for Blair and himself to fly out
to meet members of the Abu Dhabi royal family in the United Arab Emirates, including Crown
Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nayan, one of the longest names I've ever seen.
The royal family agreed to give Guo $3 billion to fund an attempt to quote, take control
of China's second largest brokerage house, Hightong Securities.
Strangely, at some point, Guo was also issued a passport from the UAE, which granted him
certain diplomatic protections.
In December 2014, Guo and the Abu Dhabi royal family created something called the ACA Investment
Fund.
Okay now, a slight sidestep here.
What was going on in China at the time?
Well, in June 2014, the Chinese government launched Operation Fox Hunt, described by
CNN as an international anti-corruption campaign targeting Chinese fugitives, often former
officials or rich individuals suspected of economic crimes.
They followed up by launching the similar and larger Operation Skynet in March 2015.
Now I will remind everybody this, these two programs were the basis on which this international
network of secret police stations was built.
That's what that program is.
So it's at this time that this is launched.
Now right after this, in late 2014, Guo accused a rival named Li Yu of corruption.
The conflict escalated into public view, bringing scrutiny onto Guo's relationship with the
Chinese government and its intelligence apparatus.
On January 16, 2015, the Communist Party of China announced that Guo's intelligence colleague
Ma Jian was under investigation.
His reports emerged in March 2015, alluding to this and Jian's, leading to Guo and Jian's
collaborations in quote, surveillance, blackmail and political influence to amass fortunes
and evade scrutiny.
Despite initially denying reports of intelligence ties, Guo later acknowledged that he was affiliated
in some form with the Ministry of State Security in China, completing tasks for the agency
under the code name Wu Nan.
But the water was getting a bit hot.
So Guo fled to London, England via Hong Kong, eventually landing in New York City.
In the winter of 2015, Guo purchased a $68 million penthouse suite at the Sherry Netherland
Hotel Tower in the Upper East Side of New York City, in cash no less.
He reportedly provided a glowing reference letter from UBS Bank, which recently purchased
Credit Suisse, and a personal recommendation, which I believe was glowing, from Tony Blair.
Very impressive.
I think it made it very easy for this building's management to accept his proposal.
After moving into the penthouse, he also purchased a $43 million yacht named the Lady May.
He became a member of Mar-a-Lago, the Florida resort owned by then presidential candidate
Donald Trump.
Trump had announced his run for President of the United States just six months prior
to this.
No stranger to the game of national intelligence, and as can probably be predicted, Guo engaged
with both the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the FBI, and the Central Intelligence Agency,
the CIA, offering to provide information on the inner workings of the Chinese government.
In the New Yorker's long profile on Guo, which I highly recommend reading, linked in
the show notes, the authors describe the FBI as being more enthusiastic about working with
him than was the CIA.
Quoting from that article, in New York, Guo spoke to the FBI about Chinese leaders'
financial and private lives, according to two sources familiar with the arrangement.
He knew who had girlfriends, who had boyfriends, a former bureau official recalled.
More importantly, Guo knew which party families profited from which companies.
Just going to Miles and asking him these questions will save you three or four months of analytical
work.
In one instance, the official said, Guo provided information about Xi Jinping's daughter while
she was attending college in the US.
Very interesting.
At this point, it is established that Guo has worked on behalf of both the Chinese and
American intelligence agencies.
He is a double agent, but it's not clear on whose behalf he truly operates.
If you ask ten different FBI and CIA people about Miles, you're going to get seven different
answers, says a former FBI official in the New Yorker.
Guo reportedly attempted to hire Jay Johnson, former Secretary of the United States Department
of Homeland Security, as his lawyer.
Johnson considered the offer, but declined.
In 2016, Chinese authorities seized ownership of Guo's Pangu Plaza Tower.
According to CNN, a court in Beijing later listed it for sale on Alibaba, selling it
for just under 5.19 billion yuan, equivalent to 734 million US dollars, a figure which
Guo commented was way below its real value.
In January 2017, Guo created an account on Twitter and began conducting interviews in
which he loudly accused Chinese leaders of corruption.
One target in particular was someone named Wang Qishan, who then sued Guo for defamation
in response.
One of these interviews was to be conducted with the Mandarin language arm of Voice of
America.
Notably, Voice of America is yet another outlet in the network run by the United States Agency
for Global Media, an agency of the United States government, which we went over in last
week's episode.
On April 17, 2017, at the request of the Chinese government, Interpol issued a red notice interpreted
by some as an international warrant for Guo's arrest.
This led that Voice of America interview to be cancelled, I believe as it was going on,
shut down live stream due to pressure from China's foreign ministry.
Then in May 2017, four agents with China's Ministry of State Security, his former colleagues,
visited Guo at his penthouse in New York.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the several-hour-long meeting saw the agents ask
Guo to cease his activism and return back to China.
ProPublica referenced this incident as an example of the Chinese government's operations
under the aforementioned Operation Fox Hunt and Operation Skynet.
Alright, then, in June 2017, Vice Minister of Public Security in China Sun Lijun made
contact with Steve Nguyen, Finance Chair of the Republican National Committee.
Sun asked for assistance in returning Guo to China, and Nguyen reportedly agreed to
raise the issue with President Trump.
From The New Yorker, in late June, at a dinner in Washington, Nguyen conveyed the request
and gave Trump's secretary a packet that included the Interpol notice, press reports,
and copies of Guo's passport.
Trump did indeed see the packet, apparently, but was dissuaded from pursuing the matter
further by H.R. McMaster, who was serving as Trump's national security adviser at
the time.
Also present was Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, who retrieved the packet and decided he didn't
want Guo to be extradited.
Okay, Act 2, Bannon and Guo.
It's this relationship between Steve Bannon and Guo that starts to bring this story
closer to home, in a way that many people may start to become uncomfortable with.
Maybe that's the point.
Let's look at how this pair started their mini-media activism empire and all of the
ways in which it interacts with the larger medical freedom movement.
So, in August 2017, Guo met with Steve Bannon at the Hay Adams Hotel in Washington, D.C.
One year later, Bannon signed a year-long contract with Guo Media for consulting services,
a $1 million contract.
This is a screenshot of an archive, the first of which is the archives of what appear to
be the now-defunct Guo Media website, dating back to January 1, 2018.
On April 24, 2018, a patent application was filed for the name Guo Media, subsequently
assigned to a new company called Saraka Media Group, which itself was formed in May 2018.
Guo's son, Qiang Guo, headed up this new company.
And Saraka Media Group went on to found a number of subsidiaries and register further
trademarks for ventures, including variations of Guo's own name.
A list here, everything is just beginning.
G-Live, G-News, G-Post, GTV, Guo Media, Guo Wengui, Guo Dot Media, Miles Guo, and Miles
Kwok.
Very interesting.
We're starting to see this empire form.
Now on November 20, 2018, Guo and Bannon launched the Rule of Law Foundation and the Rule of
Law Society.
Bannon served as chair for the society.
As for the foundation, that chairman position was at some point filled by a gentleman named
Kyle Bass.
I'm not sure if it's Bass or Bass, but his claim to fame include his successful shorting
of the housing market during the 2008 financial crisis in the United States, as depicted popularly
in The Big Short.
And his ventures in the business of carbon credits, which seems a little backwards given
his political affiliations.
He also serves alongside Steve Bannon on the Committee on the Present Danger China and
is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
This is significant.
The Council on Foreign Relations is where a lot of stuff gets done.
It at one point was delegated or relegated to a conspiracy theory.
But everyone from Dick Cheney to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, I believe, and many, many,
many other people are on this committee, all of which are on this council, I should say,
all of which are very powerful.
So this is not insignificant.
Okay, then in April 2020, Guo and Bannon founded GTV Media Group.
Bass served as a board member for this venture as well.
But now it just gets really weird.
Recognize this?
Okay, so we saw this in the previous episode.
If you look closely, there was a tweet by someone named Gordon saying, thank you so
much, my brother, referring to DVS 7.0.
And he mentions his song Free Miles Guo.
And if you look at the logo of this gentleman's profile picture, it is the same.
It is the flag of whatever this is that we're about to talk about.
So what is this?
Well, on June 4, 2020, Guo and Bannon live streamed an announcement of the launch of
the new federal state of China.
And that's what this flag is.
It is the flag of this new federal state of China.
The pair chose to hold the live streamed event on Guo's yacht, which we mentioned before,
off the coast of New York City, right in front of the highly symbolic Statue of Liberty.
Okay.
Now a glance at the Wikipedia page for the new federal state of China suggests that there's
some confusion as to what this thing actually is.
Is it a lobbying group?
Is it a political movement or something else?
Well, it describes itself in its launch documents as a government in exile whose stated intention
is to overthrow the Communist Chinese Party.
Okay.
Now the organization is supported by the aforementioned Rule of Law Foundation and Rule of Law Society,
as well as a separate entity created called the Himalaya Supervisory Organization, which
was formed in order to govern yet another associated network of activists organized
under something called the Himalaya Farms Network.
And on screen we have a capture from a report that was produced, which we'll get to again
in a moment, of the various organizations that are starting to appear.
And it's getting complicated.
You see at the bottom the Himalaya Farms Network and it's got many, many logos and we find
that these stretch across the planet.
But still, this is unclear what this actually is, right?
Well, now we start to see the sphere of influence, the full extent of where this takes us.
In May 2021, at the height of protests against COVID-19 restrictions, a New Zealand-based
channel called Counterspin Media was launched.
Its original host was GTV, among other platforms, but it was endorsed by GTV and as you can
see the background of a screenshot of this very first episode displays the flag of the
new federal state of China.
There it is.
And there it is.
And subsequent videos continue the overt promotion of the new federal state of China with the
flag of the organization displayed behind him and guess the host here.
Describing itself as New Zealand's media revolution, Counterspin has been very active
in coverage of issues related to COVID-19, particularly as you might be able to predict
the mass vaccination program and the authoritarian public health response, which was particularly
overt in New Zealand.
Okay, so we're starting to see the ways in which this organization, this network is affiliated
with or influenced by or supported by or it supports other smaller, perhaps otherwise
not clearly affiliated voices in this dissident COVID movement.
This is just one example.
It's a big enough example that it has its own Wikipedia page, which I find interesting.
And I don't know anything further about Counterspin Media.
But now here's another very interesting example.
Getter.
Guo, it turns out, was an early investor in Getter through, depending on who you ask,
at least a family foundation.
Getter went live on the 4th of July 2021, founded by former Trump aide Jason Miller.
Now notice something.
Notice that Getter's logo is in the shape of the Olympic torch, the same design as Guo's
signature Pangu Plaza building.
Notably as we saw, the launch of the new federal state of China was held in front of the Statue
of Liberty, which depicts Lady Liberty holding a torch, nearly identical to the others.
And I thought all these things were unrelated.
Let that sit for a moment.
So Guo's influence over Getter, it's explored, it's expanded a little in an article published
by the Washington Post really recently, just a month ago, March 26, 2023.
I get a quote from that now.
Former Getter employees allegedly said the arrested expatriate Guo Wengui and his longtime
money manager, William Jay, called the shots at the company, while Donald Trump's senior
advisor Jason Miller was its chief executive and public face.
Guo was known to have been a Getter investor, but his dominant financing role and ability
to influence hiring and content decisions at the platform have not been previously reported.
Miller said previously that Guo invested in Getter indirectly through a family foundation,
and that an international fund was another part owner.
But two former Getter employees told the Washington Post that Miller told them that that international
fund was Hamilton Investment Management, where Jay is founder and chief executive.
Now, further substantiating Guo's leading role at Getter, which by the way, if I haven't
made clear, is a social media platform like Twitter that was launched alongside others,
Gab, Parlor, they all had their moment of launch.
Well that's what Getter is.
It's intended to be a censorship-free, a free speech platform, particularly for political
dissonance.
So just to be clear, that's what that is, in case for some reason you're not familiar
with Getter.
Okay.
It's a Twitter competitor.
Now further substantiating Guo's leading role at Getter is the fact that the social
media company had $2.8 million seized in September of 2022 as part of an indictment, which has
since been unsealed, against Guo and William Jay.
Now so too did Hamilton Investment Management, Jay's firm located in, interestingly, the
Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands.
Interestingly, some of the $305 million seized by the government from Hamilton was held at
Silvergate Bank, the crypto-friendly bank that was recently caught up in the panic following
Silicon Valley Bank's collapse, with Silvergate itself announcing it was closing down just
under two months ago.
Now in November 2021, Guo appeared in a music video promoting something called Himalaya
Coin, the native token of cryptocurrency exchange Himalaya Exchange, with which Guo has a business
relationship.
In his promotion of this coin, he shared a quote from Bannon describing the success of
the new coin as monumental on Getter.
Let's see if we can hear just a moment of...
Well, it's catchy so far.
Okay, that's probably enough of that.
So yeah, that promo video.
Okay.
Now, notably, remember this is promoting a coin listed by Himalaya Exchange, which held
its funds in a... which were also seized, to be clear, in a Puerto Rico-based bank called
FVBank, whose business is focused on cryptocurrency and blockchain services, with recent activity
in the digital identification space.
Another related business, just to throw it in there, is the Himalaya Federal Reserve,
based in New York, which issued something called Gcoin.
So many coins.
All right.
Now, speaking of cryptocurrency, Getter users, of which I am one, and so is rounding the
earth, will note that the platform is right now, recently, promoting something called
Getter Coin.
Not the same as Gcoin, I don't think.
Getter Coin.
But in order to participate, in order to use it, to be part of the Getter Coin ecosystem,
users are required to either be a highly influential user of other platforms, with a minimum of,
I think, its 20,000 followers, or upload your government-issued identification, in order
to achieve verification.
Which is really pretty much what Twitter is now doing under Elon Musk, isn't it?
Twitter is also, speaking of being topical, promoting a new feature called Gtalk, a rather
plainly, plainly obvious, it's a clone of the controversial TikTok.
Okay, now, this naming convention, Gcoin, Getter, well, Getter as a whole, and Gtalk,
it's based, look, Gtalk is based on Getter's own branding, but it follows a naming scheme
overall, following brands shaped after Guo, including, let's see, we got G-Clubs, G-Fashion,
and G-Music, for example.
There's more.
But just looking at these three, the latter appears to be how rapper DVS 7.0 is connected
to the empire, perhaps as part of the record label.
Guo himself is listed as an artist under the G-Music label, which advertises the use of
Getter, Getter Coin, Hcoin, and HDO, whatever that is, and NFTs, to, quote, pursue freedom
and equality through music.
Now, G-Fashion, as it sounds, is a clothing brand and company owned by Guo.
It is the fashion counterpart to G-Clubs, apparently.
Now, interestingly, Sean Bannon, nephew of Steve Bannon, is listed as the chief operating
officer of the venture in a patent filing dated September 10, 2020.
Further interesting, G-Fashion was initially represented by a company called Rubenstein
Public Relations, who has also represented COVID-19 vaccine developer Johnson & Johnson.
G-Clubs is purportedly a membership organization based in Puerto Rico.
According to court documents, it is functionally controlled by Guo and his finance guy, William
Jay, despite neither man holding a formal position with the company.
Now, look, as I said, there's more.
This is not it.
It took me so long just to get to this point.
And look at that, we're 44 minutes in almost.
There's so much to go through with Guo.
And I simply must discipline myself at this point in order to get through or to reach
the most important message of today.
But before we do that, take a look.
This is, once again, from that report by Grafica, is the name of the organization.
Grafica put out this report in which they detail a network of so-called ants, which
are used to go after other so-called Chinese dissidents, so-called in their terms, because
oftentimes, as we've been discussing, it's really unclear who's vying for what outcome
and on whose behalf.
But this screenshot is that network of just some of the organizations that we've looked
at today.
You see, it's a mess.
It's a mess.
But look, let's get to the main point.
Steve Bannon and the War Room.
The War Room has been a significant platform for dissident voices over the course of the
COVID-19 pandemic era.
Given Bannon and Miles Guo's close partnership on a range of ventures, it stands to reason
that Guo's proximity would lead to at least some level of influence over Bannon's approach
to his pandemic coverage and other issues.
According to Vox, the theme song for the War Room is called Take Down the CCP performed
by Guo.
Now, to be frank, I've actually never watched the War Room, and it wasn't immediately obvious
how I would go and discover whether this remains the theme song or if perhaps it's changed
over time.
So with that caveat, it's not clear to me furthermore at this point if the War Room
as a venture is funded by Guo, either directly or indirectly.
But with this strange network of organizations, many of which now facing criminal sanctions
as Guo sits in jail, it's tremendously difficult to track what the true intentions are behind
this collection of organizations.
Now this is FTX and Alameda's org chart, or at least one that someone put together to
try to outline how complicated their corporate structure was.
And this Miles Guo empire reminds me an awful lot of this FTX and Alameda setup, which takes
planning.
This corporate structure, a lack thereof, obscures the scope of the company's activities
worldwide.
But note that Steve Bannon is not the only major player operating under the War Room
umbrella, nor one whose specialty or focus right now is on the COVID-19 issues.
Journalist Naomi Wolf of The Daily Cloud and her team, they are partnered with Bannon's
War Room for their highly publicized Pfizer documents analysis based on the court-ordered
disclosure secured by public health and medical professionals for transparency.
Recall that in our episode of our roundtable discussions this week with Pierre of OpenVate
and Josh Getsko, I know I pronounced that right this time, they pointed out that there
was at least one really glaring error in this analysis that may have been corrected for
this book that was put out, but one that dramatically overinflated the number of miscarriages as
a result of the shots when the true number is still staggering, but lower.
The point is it's an important topic and it's one that my colleagues, some of whom, some
of which I work very closely with on projects that are very important, they listen to Naomi
Wolf and they specifically give this document and this project a lot of credence.
They trust it.
So, once again, I end this week's episode by urging caution.
Just because Guo is in jail doesn't necessarily mean at this point, okay, that he is guilty
of all of the crimes he's alleged to have committed.
Now it is notable at this point that both the United States and Chinese governments,
well, previously worked with him in some kind of intelligence capacity, but have now marked
him as criminal.
But what does Guo stand for?
If he is a guru, if he is somebody asking or suggesting or calling for people to follow
him under his name, heck, the campaign is called Free Miles Guo.
It's under his name.
If that is the case, under which flag is he calling on his followers to gather?
It's broad.
It covers a lot of the same ground that many of us do.
But then you have stories like this.
Canadian Target of Miles Guo and Steve Bannon protest group says family is still living
in fear as criminal case gets underway in brutal beating of his friend.
Now just pulling up one article doesn't mean much at all.
But there are a number of these.
Some of them are very close to home in Surrey, British Columbia.
Some of them are down in Texas.
China Aid, the founder of that group, which by the way is an organization I normally would
be very skeptical of.
But if supporters are following the message of someone like Miles Guo and the result is
violent attacks on other so-called dissidents, so-called has an implication that I don't
mean here.
I mean other dissidents, other people claiming to be dissidents.
When internal conflict, which is totally reasonable, becomes physical conflict and people start
targeting and attacking other people, what line has been crossed?
The question I leave everyone with, what does it mean to be part of a movement?
And what if you are part of one is your role?
But alas, I come to no conclusions.
I simply ask questions and I encourage you to do the same.
And like I said, there's much more to be dug into with Miles Guo, but I wanted to bring
this topic to our attention because there are these so-called ants, these people who
seem to be real but may not even be.
They may be bots, they may be just ardent supporters, but they are reaching out to people
close to us.
I'm not going to name them just in case they wanted to keep it private, but people I work
very close with, multiple, have been receiving communications from people who they weren't
expecting to.
Sort of promoting this notion that Miles Guo is a savior and should be freed.
Which may be the case or may not be, but there is an active operation ongoing right now.
And maybe it's good, maybe it's bad, but I urge caution.
Thank you once again for tuning in.
This was a long one and I really appreciate it very much.
If you appreciate what we've done here today, the best way to support us once again is to
go to roundingtheearth.locals.com, sign up to be either a free member where you can keep
up to date on everything we're doing or you can contribute as little as $5 a month or
sign up for an annual subscription or even give a one-off contribution and gain access
to our weekly Locals exclusive live streams.
And once again, my weekly plug for roundingtheearth.substack.com, the platform that started it all.
Matthew continues to write incredible pieces of work that largely inform what I tend to
then pursue and look into because it's just that interesting.
So I highly recommend roundingtheearth.substack.com.
And last but not least, as a musician, I have begun to return to my roots and I have just
uploaded a music video for a song called Tuesday Afternoon, which was released all the way
back in 2018, but long before I was aware of any kind of alternative social media platforms
and back when I had a different group of people paying attention to me.
So I have uploaded this song Tuesday Afternoon on my Rumble channel, Liam Sturgis, and I
highly recommend if you haven't heard it yet, go check it out.
It may be a nice detox from some of the more stressful material we've covered.
But as always, thank you everybody for your support.
I haven't been able to look at the chats on our various platforms as much as I would like
because I've been trying my very best to stay on task and on focus for the episode itself.
But thank you all for watching and I very much look forward to seeing you again on Monday
and Tuesday.
And a reminder that the show notes for this episode will be posted on roundingtheearth.locals.com
probably within an hour.
So thank you again.
We'll see you very shortly.